iTunes 7 Now Available

iTunes 7 is now available for free download. This is a first major overhaul of iTunes in some time. Lots of new features and so far all rock-solid in my short experience with it.

Of course the major (expected) announcement is movies. You can now download movies in near-DVD quality from Walt Disney, Touchstone, Miramax and Pixar. 75 movies are now available with more being added all the time. New releases during pre-order and the first week of release are $12.99, $14.99 after the first week. Most library titles are $9.99. Movies and TV shows' resolution are improved 4x to 640x480 resolution. People with 5-6 megabit broadband (cable modem) can download a movie in about a 1/2 hour.

On to the interface. The source menu is new and better organized. Instead of a library bucket, it is now organized by media type. The new device section shows your connected iPod and CDs. Highlight your iPod and you can now fully control preferences in the main window. The interface is really nicely done and makes so much more sense than how you previously managed iPod preferences.

There are two new views - album and coverflow. Album view organizes your song list by album with the album art. Coverflow is really slick and enables you to quickly scroll through your album art. I think it will be a fantastic way to discover music that might be forgotten. It's a much more visible way to experience music selection. To accompany this, iTunes will find and download free album art. Coverflow also works with TV and Movies.

To me the most important new feature is gapless playback. Experience two songs that were meant to flow seamlessly together without the annoying 1 second gap.

There are lots of other nice tweaks here and there. Download it today.