In all the gizmomania of yesterday, I failed to mention that iTunes 5 was also released. If you’re on a Mac, go ahead and run software update. You’ll also get the latest Quicktime update (7.0.2). If you’re on a PC, you can go to the iTunes downloads site, and pick up the installer.

After using it for a day, I have to say I’m pretty happy with it. It has some nifty new features, and I thought I’d go over them with you. So let’s take a look, shall we?

Appearance

The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s a new look. It’s oddly subtle, and striking at the same time. Over all, it has corners which are more square, and a different bevel to it. Personally, I think that aesthetically, it’s an improvement. Another change in the appearance is that the Source column now sports a pale blue background which I like quite a bit. It seems to help separate it from the Library/Music Store area.

Search

The first feature I wanted to look at was the new “Search Bar.” I think this thing is pretty neat, but it took me a little while to get used to.

The basic idea is that you can better filter your search results. When you are viewing your Library or any of your playlists, you can start typing in the Search form in the upper right hand corner of iTunes, and the Search Bar will appear just below it, at the top of the main area. The left portion of the bar has buttons to focus your search on All (meaning everything in your library), Music, Audiobooks, Podcasts, Videos, or Booklets. The right portion of the bar then has buttons for All, Artist, Album, or Name.

As an example of how this works, take a look at this:

Typing the search term “death” in the search form of my iTunes results in 25 songs. This is the same as using iTunes 4, but I now also get the Search Bar. Clicking on the “Music” button reduces the search by one because the WGBH Morning Stories podcast episode, “Death and Life” is removed from the results:

Then, if I click on the “Artist” button, the results go down to 19 (all Death Cab for Cutie and Death in Vegas):

Notice that as I do this, not only does the Library list change, but so do the browse columns (Genre, Artist, and Album columns at the top)

The cool thing is that this also works in the Music Store, but slightly differently. If you are at the front page of the store, the Search Bar does not appear as you type, but will appear after you hit return and get your results. Also, since there are no browsing columns in your search results, it functions very differently by taking you to a new screen when you click on the various buttons.

Honestly, I think this is a huge improvement, especially for the store.

Playlist Folders

This is something people have been begging for for a long time. In past versions, your Source column could get very unwieldy very quickly just by adding a few playlists.

The idea is really very simple. You can go to File, select New Folder (or you can press command+option+shift+N on Mac (I don’t know what the hotkey is on PC)), and the folder appears in your Source list. You give it a title, and then you can either start dragging other folders and playlist into it, or create a new playlist (static or Smart) while the folder is selected. Next to each folder is the typical drill-down arrow. Clicking on it opens or collapses the folder to reveal/hide it’s contents.

So simple… and it’s about freakin’ time.

Parental Controls

This is extremely straight forward. Go to the iTunes menu (in the menu bar) and select Preferences. In the Preference window, click on the “Parental” button and you’re given several options of what to restrict. You can disable Podcasts, the Music Store, shared music, and restrict purchases of explicit content in the Music Store.

When you decide what you don’t want your kids to do in iTunes, click the little lock icon below the checkboxes. That part’s important. If you don’t, nothing will be restricted.

I actually decided to give this a try since one of the younger iMonks likes to blast Snoop Dogg in the middle of the night. If you restrict explicit lyric content, then go to the music store, the explicit songs still show up, but the Add Song button is grayed out and won’t function. Ha-ha! Take that young ‘uns.

Smart Shuffle

I don’t usually shuffle my songs in iTunes, so, to be honest, I can’t tell you how well this new feature works. It apparently can make your random play (shuffle) experience more or less random by using a slide bar to control how likely you are to hear multiple songs in a row by the same artist or the same album. You get to the slide bar by going to the Preferences and clicking on Playback.

Lyrics

You can now enter the lyrics of a song in iTunes and view them anytime. Select a song and choose File then Get Info. In the Information window, click Lyrics and enter the words to the song. QED.

You can then view them later by doing the same thing. I’m sure this will eventually result in some visualizer plug-ins that will scroll the lyric for you.

Apparently some iPod models will allow you to view a song’s lyrics if you’ve entered them in iTunes. I don’t know which ones yet, but the iTunes Help says, “Make sure your iPod has been updated with the latest software.” I’m hoping they’ll release an iPod update to make this work on my 2nd Gen Mini.