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Finally, the ‘Let’s Rock’ event hyped for what seems like weeks now, came and went. As Trentiles said, the event wasn’t much to talk about and in fact was highly disappointing on so many levels – but what did catch my eye was iTunes. Our beloved media player / operating system (Ok maybe not yet – but it is getting close), just got updated to version 8.0.

Hit the jump for more details …

So, Whats New?

• Genius Playlists and Sidebar
• Grid View for Albums
• Support for High Definition TV shows
• Magnetosphere becomes Default iTunes Visualizer

Genius Playlists and Sidebar
The genius sidebar is a new service which allows you to match songs which ‘just go’ with the song your currently playing! – it really does work well. In order to setup Genius within iTunes 8.0, you must be prepared to complete a process in which you will agree to send your library information to Apple.

This is apparently in order for Apple to have the ability to display possible matches with songs in your library, through the new sidebar, and although this can be disconcerting at the time, it is logically required for the service to function. As well as matching music, Apple have made the Genius sidebar ‘Accidental Click’ prone – Yes, you can buy the matches on the sidebar with just one click. As well as matches, Genious also offers Apple’s ‘Complete my Album’ service in a very convenient, easy to use user interface – We advise users with ‘one click purchasing’ active, to beware! “The sidebar is evil, eviil I say!”

Grid View
A revolutionary new way to browse your music? – Uh, Hell yeah. Grid view does what it says on the tin, it displays your albums in a user-scalable, very visual, grid. You have four display options which go along with it too – Albums, Artist, Genres or Composers – Simply select one, and away you go.

Subtle UI changes are also in effect with the grid view now boasting a black gloss feel (seen above) – It’s really so very, very nice … seriously, but also to define which album or play list is being played, iTunes now highlights the current album in electric neon blue – trippy stuff.

Support for High Definition TV shows
Also new in iTunes 8.0? – HD TV shows! – Finally. First movies, and now TV content – I tell you, Apple is really pushing me to buy the AppleTV now. Imagine harnessing the power to download HD TV content straight from your big-screen TV – Just awesome, well with iTunes 8.0 and a $299 AppleTV, now you can … :O

Magnetosphere: The Visualizer to be Reckoned With …
Finally we come to an unannounced feature of iTunes 8.0 – A nice Apple ’surprise’ if you will. iTunes has today changed it’s default visualizer to something much much cooler, ladies and gentlemen, introducing Magnetosphere (if there’s anything that’s truly worthy of it’s name, it’s this):

Can anyone say ‘Koolilicious, It’s delicious‘?

In summary …
Overall, yes the ‘Lets Rock’ event wasn’t all that ‘Rocky’ after all, we’re disappointed, but maybe we’re not currently in the market for an iPod? Maybe that’s the reason? – I know I’m not – but Apple have yet again wet our taste buds with some beautiful eye-candy while they slyly delay the release of the very-much-needed iPhone 2.1 software for 3 more whole days – not on Apple, just not on.

We hope that once Apple release iPhone 2.1 this coming Friday we can say we’ll love iTunes 8.0 even more due to the lack of 3-5 hour backup processes! According to Steve:

“No crashes, fewer dropped calls, big battery improvement, and faster backups.”

All we can say Steve, is ‘Lets hope so’.

What are you waiting for?!
All this is available right now, and for more information about the change log of iTunes 8.0 and to download the latest version, please visit apple.com/itunes/download/