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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Monday, May 09, 2005iTunes 4.8 edges ever-closer to being an all-in-one media playerIt's early yet, and I need more time to digest what's going on here, but I do have a couple of observations on the newly released iTunes 4.8, which includes QuickTime-based video playback for the first time. These observations are based solely on the Windows version. My understanding is that the Mac version of iTunes 4.8 also includes Calendar and Contacts synching with an iPod. I'll look at that a bit later today.First, video playback is configured through the Advanced tab in iTunes Properties, using a checkbox option called Play videos. You can choose to play videos via the main window (using the optionally displayed area that iTunes uses to display CD album art), in a separate window, or full screen. But these options aren't hard coded. If you choose to display videos in the main iTunes window, you can later display movies, on the fly, in either an external window or full screen. To accommodate this, the iTunes user interface has been changed subtly. There's a new button for displaying videos full screen. And if you click on the album art pane while a video is playing, it will pop-up into an external window. The following shot shows all this, and more (click on it for a larger image with callouts).  So, where is this leading? Is Apple moving into Windows Media Player territory? It sure looks like it. One of the problems with this approach, of course, is complexity. Apple has had problems scaling the ultra-simple iPod UI, for example, to include more advanced functionality. Hopefully, this problem won't grip iTunes as well, as it moves forward to do more and more and more. [ Posted at 3:24 PM | Permalink ]
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