Software development is tied to an update cycle that requires continuous releases for a number of reasons – engineering – keeping up with technology, marketing – keeping your product looking fresh and in front of consumers and sales – use your products to sell more.   Branding also needs considering –  do you make a new version a major update – something like MyProduct 5 or a minor update MyProduct 4.5 — is this really some new and different or just an evolutionary step?

Apple this week released iTunes 8, a free download for Windows and Mac.  If you own an iPod you most likely use iTunes to manage your music and your videos, so you’ll probably consider downloading the upgrade.

What’s New?

There are one and half new features worth noting.

One – Genius Playlists and (sidebar) – The major new feature in iTunes 8 is the ability to create “Genius” playlists.  Select one of your favorite songs, press the Genius button and iTunes will try and create a new playlist for you from songs already in your library which are the same kind of music and would be good to listen to together. 

You can refresh the genius playlist and get more songs and if you really like, you can save it and listen to the playlist again later.  It’s kind of like Pandora.com for your own music library.  There is a less exciting associated feature – the genius sidebar which when you select one of your songs will show you in a sidebar songs that Apple might like you to buy you might like to buy from the iTunes store.

Half – Grid View – A minor, but cute, new feature in iTunes is a view of your albums featuring a grid of thumbnails of cover art.  You can view your albums, by album, artist, genre and composer.

That leaves us with the question – did those feature make this a major upgrade – should it be iTunes 8 or iTunes 7.5? Let us know in your comments.

Download iTunes 8