Thursday, September 15, 2005

iTunes 5: Stealth Release?

It's been all over the web that iTunes 5 includes resources, images and strings, that lead you to believe it already supports an iPod video! It had better. I just spent close to 30 minutes going through iTunes 5, seeing if behavior changed for existing settings, seeing if I had missed functionality in the 4.x point releases, and wow, I am amazed by how little new is visible in iTunes 5. Sure, the UI is reskinned, and I really like it. I am all for removing extraneous pixels wherever they might exist. This is one of the worst tyranies of Windows, there is so much wasted space. Damn you BillG for allowing 42 icons to consume my screen real estate near the clock!!! Anyway, iTunes 5 will either go down as the least spectacular "major" release in a long time, or as genius for stealth enabling functionality that isn't visible. Just about the only thing that might have an immediate impact is folders, and I don't even feel like bothering organizing my playlists into folders. I have had a flat list for years, why bother now?