Well, iTunes 5 is out and I’ve been using it for the past few days. If it wasn’t for the “streamlined” interface then it wouldn’t seem so much like it was worthy of being 5.0. That’s not to say that it isn’t good, it’s just it seems to be lacking from what I thought iTunes 5 would be.

The most obvious change is the new interface. Gone is the brushed metal, here is the, well.. umm… grey thingy. Now I’m not one of the people who likes to talk about how they hate brushed metal every 5 minutes, because in all honesty, I kinda like it. I think that this new look could be the new brushed metal of OSX and I think it’s pretty nice. The bigger display is nice, though I liked the more rounded sides. I also like the small changes they’ve made to the source list. The blue background, the shadow on the highlighted text.

Searching has been improved quite a bit. The search bar is nice to switch between what you want to look for but searching also filters the browser columns too, which is nice cause when you have a few 100 artists it can get annoying to scroll through, but a simple search may not return just the results you want.

Folders for playlists is pretty good as well, though I’ve moved away from playlists now and listen more to entire albums. I can’t exactly comment on the new shuffle features because I never shuffle, but if Apple has raised its IQ then I’ll just take their word for it.

Now for the gripes. The most annoying thing is the lack of ability to add multiple artist and album tags to songs. For example, when two artists produce a song, I don’t want to have to put the artist as artist 1 and artist 2. I want to be able to use the browser to choose one artist and have it appear in there and then the other artist and have it appear in there. The same would be good for greatest hits albums, if you already have the song in another album.

There’s still no way to view the iTunes Music Store in tabs. I mean, when there is talk that the next version of iChat will have tabs, which aren’t really essential IMO, tabbed IMs being a flawed concept, you’d think that something such as iTunes or even the Finder would gain tabs.

And now for my last two gripes. I’m still having to look elsewhere for some music that I could buy on the US iTMS but isn’t available in the UK (even though they are available on CD’s). And the most annoying thing. The top two corners are STILL not antialiased. It bugs me so much that of all the windows in OSX iTunes seems to be the only one with pixelated corners. It may not seem like much but when you like things to be pixel perfect in an interface then it sorta gets on your nerves