iTunes 7

You can hardly have failed to notice the new version of iTunes announced last week by Apple. In the past I've advised my clients to think twice about upgrading to new versions but this time I'm in no doubt.

iTunes 7 is a must. Why?

First there's a cute new way to see album art called Cover Flow. It has the practical benefit of helping you spot albums you've not noticed for ages.

Then, for registered iTunes Music Store account holders, you can now have iTunes automatically add missing album art. Although you need to have a store account, there's no charge for the service. It's reasonably comprehensive (images taken from the store's collection) and compared to the software we've been using, very fast.

The previous free standing iPod Update program is a thing of the past, that functionality (plus more features) is now built right in to iTunes.

Gapless playback should do exactly what the name implies, backed by some (unexplained) intelligence. iTunes will now scan your library looking for albums in which tracks should flow seemlessly from one into the next. How does it do this - I've no idea, but it does seem to work. Alternatively you can edit track info to force an album in your collection to be 'gapless'.

There is a downside to gapless playback. The formware needed to listen gapless is only supplied on the very latest iPods.