iTunes Genius Is… Well… Genius!

iTunes is one of the main reasons I have not switched to a Mac. I really do not like it. All I want is a simple music player, and iTunes definitely does not fit into that category. And iTunes has some of the worst UI design flaws ever. (Don’t even get me started.)

Well, the whiz-kids at Apple have finally forced me to soften my position on iTunes with the addition of their latest killer feature – Genius. This gem categorizes all of the music in your iTunes library, allowing you to create a custom playlist with a couple mouse clicks. Simply chose a tune to seed the playlist, and Genius does the rest – instantly creating a playlist of similar music. These lists can be saved, so that means that they can be fine-tuned and combined with other playlists. I’ve been using Genius for days now, and really like the way it works. It finds tunes in my collection I might not ever have listened to and creates playlists that rival my best efforts. VERY cool!

This is probably a good time to mention Pandora – another nice piece of software that does something similar, but from a vast on-line music collection. If you don’t have or don’t want iTunes, I recommend you check out Pandora.

3 Comments Add yours

  1. ScottO says:

    Pandora great; has a decent variety, most popular groups, and streams well in the background. Being web based, you get your playlists wherever you login and you’re not limited to music you own. Genius sounds very similar.

  2. Hugh Caley says:

    I have to admit I agree about the iTunes interface; it’s just plain ugly, and never quite does what you want it to do.

    I love Pandora, but use it while you can. They’re probably going out of business.

    Genius is an ego-killer; evidently not enough people have played my music on the iTunes store to make any recommendations 🙁

  3. I am not an iTunes fun either, but using that as an excuse to use an inferior OS, that’s pretty lame, dude. There are gazillions players for the mac, more so of the simple kind. Pandora is great, but it is different thing. It plays their music, not yours. What is your favorite player? Suggestions anyone? We need to rescue the dude from the evil side. @Hugh: what do you use if I may?

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