iTunes 8 Genius? Not so genius!

I using iTunes 8 right after its launch and I encounter my first error as I posted to flickr group

I am lucky cause I am in Malaysia Store and I can't view the store =P I can not imagine if I clicked dozen of musics then only found out the iTunes Store bills on my credit card!Whew! the Genius sidebar button Removed!Here we go!

==============Late-BreakersWednesday, September 10 2008 @ 09:15 AM PDTiTunes 8: Properly Using the Genius

Users have found that upon updating iTunes to version 8, the Genius Sidebar is enabled by default. When users select the options to set up Genius (which requires an iTunes account) the sidebar shows songs available in the iTunes store with options to purchase them. Many users have assumed that this is all Genius offers, and hence made the false conclusion that it is purely a marketing ploy by Apple.

Eric Brown8:

"I've got to say Genius is a major disappointment. It barely lists anything in my library (which is 37GB+, so you'd think there would be a few potential matches!) and top-lists what's for sale. What a sleazy marketing gimmick! Fortunately your can shut it off. Too bad, it sounded like a fun idea."

While the way Apple presents Genius to first-time users makes it seem that this is the case, this "Genius Sidebar" is in fact the replacement for the "Mini Store" that was available in previous versions of iTunes. The Mini Store is no longer available, and Apple uses the Genius searching technology to present content that's available for purchase in the store, and has move it to the sidebar instead of having it below the song library. Users can hide this sidebar by clicking the arrow button at the bottom-right of the iTunes window.

Despite this apparent "marketing ploy", this technology is primarily available to organize iTunes music that's currently in a user's library. To have it create playlists, select a song and then click the Genius icon (looks like an atom) and the playlist should create. There is a limitation to the Genius, in that it will only include and work for songs that are available in the iTunes store. If users attempt to base a "Genius" playlist off of a song not in the store, an error will notify users that Genius is not available.

When users get Genius to work, it seems to create decent playlists ; however, there have been some users who have noted it does not work too well for certain genres of music, particularly classical music. These limitations may be due to Genius being so new, and Apple claims that since it is based on the input from many iTunes users, it will get "smarter" as more people use it. This indicates that more popular music will probably be better organized and matched at first.

In addition to this, users have been confused by the changes in preferences and settings locations. In iTunes 8, Apple has shuffled the location of the iTunes settings around in the preferences. For instance, the location of where to set import quality is no longer in the "Advanced" tab, but instead is in the "Import" section of the "General" tab. Having had iTunes go through several versions with very little changed in terms of layout and settings, the changes in iTunes 8 have taken a few users off guard. All the original functionality of previous iTunes versions is still there, but might take a little hunting around for.

On a slightly different note, by default iTunes provides links to the iTunes store for finding songs by similar artists as the one that's currently selected. Many users do not appreciate this and wish to not have these arrows function, since they see them as yet another marketing ploy for the iTunes store. For users who wish to remove the arrows altogether, entering the following command in the Terminal will do this:

* defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

Alternatively, one way to change the functionality of these arrows to something useful is to reverse the default behavior of the arrows and instead of having them show similar library contents upon clicking them, instead of having this behavior result from clicking with the options key held down. To do this, users should enter the following command in the terminal:

* defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES

These commands can be reversed by entering them with "TRUE" and "NO" at the end, respectively.

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