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.