iTunes 8

Two bits of iTunes awesomeness... first up, iTunes 8 is out, as many of you must know by now. Well there are some nice new changes and one annoying one. First the good: the new Genius feature lets you get a chance to make playlists that are similar to the song you are currently listening to. A lot like Pandora al in itunes with your music. The other great new feature is the new visualizer!

Along with being really cool it can be controlled with some pretty basic key commands that make it even more fun!

Check it out:

• • + and -: Increase or decrease the intensity (brightness) of the particles; multiple presses further increase or decrease the intensity.
• A and S: Add or Subtract particles to the visualizer. You can make the visualizer as complex (or sparse) as you wish.
• R: Reset the intensity and particle count to their default values.
• E: When in nebula mode (press N), this greatly accentuates the nebula clouds, making them very easy to see. (If you’ve used the M key to change modes, you may find that the nebula clouds aren’t visible; it seems they’re only used in certain modes.)

And my one annoyance is that now iTunes has the arrows to the iTunes store on always... not cool. Well throw this line into your terminal and goodbye annoying little arrows!

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

Until next time, enjoy!