Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Apple released a new version of iTunes 9 today, and it’s chock full of new features. Check out the official What’s New in iTunes page to learn about iTunes LP, Extras, and more. I want to tell you about another new feature–my favorite–called Genius Mixes:

Perfect mixes come automatically.
Meet Genius Mixes. This new feature searches your iTunes library, finds songs that go great together, and creates multiple mixes you’ll love. All automatically. These mixes are like channels programmed entirely with your music. You may discover songs you never knew you had — and rediscover forgotten favorites.

They’re actually as good as Apple claims they are. To get started with genius mixes, first update your iTunes to version 9, then click on Store->Update Genius:

Then you’ll see a new “Genius Mixes” under the Genius bar on the left hand side:

This brilliant feature then scans your library, clusters your music into your favorite styles, and mashes them together into a continuous listening experience. My iTunes has suggested Rap, R&B, Metal, 4 Pop Mixes, Rock, Alternative, Latin, Japanese, and Electronic. Too bad there’s no Chinese mix, because I have an absolute ton of Japanese music:

I just synced an mp3 album I had downloaded and copied into iTunes on my iPhone (1st gen, not a 3G), but every song was stuttering and skipping. The files themselves are fine–they all play fine in iTunes. The file I was trying to play had the following attributes:

Bitrate: 96 kbps
Encoder: FhG
Tags: ID3 v1/v2
Sample Rate: 44.100 khz

Trolling through online forums, the following advice was offered:

• Use the “Rock EQ” preset (didn’t work for me, and I tried turning EQ Off / Soundcheck On/Off too)
• Restore the iPhone (that sounds like a pain)
• Delete the playlist and remove all the songs from the phone, then create a new playlist and resync them
• Convert the music to AAC (right-click, convert to AAC)

Since the last option is the easiest, I tried it. And it worked–smooth playback. It’s possible that there really was something horrible with the files, as they stutter in VLC too!

This is kinda neat, I think my iTunes ran out of memory. It stopped being able to correctly render images, and everything just kindof showed a default placeholder “broken image” picture:

I have 4Gb of physical memory in my computer, and at the time, only iTunes (dead) and a web browser (alive) open. So strange that iTunes ran out of memory and started rendering garbage. Pretty picture, though!