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Whether you want to buy
your first iPod or you want to replace your current one,
read on for some tips on choosing the iPod that’s best
for you. |
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There’s a lot to iTunes. While
its primary function is as a digital music player application, it also enables
you to manage a library of music, automate the playback of your favorite tunes,
and accomplish other “killer” tasks such as burning audio CDs and loading and
unloading songs from an external MP3 player. Launch iTunes for Windows for the first time.
Once you have it
downloaded and installed, the first time you launch the program you’ll be
greeted by the iTunes Setup Assistant. Here’s how it works in Windows:
1. The first screen you’ll see is the Welcome screen; click Next after you’ve
read the text.
2. The next screen is the Find Music Files screen. If you select Yes, then
iTunes will look in your My Music folder for MP3 and AAC digital audio files.
Those that it finds, it will place in its library. You can also choose No (by
clicking the radio button next to it) and iTunes will not search for music.
Click Next to move to the next screen. On the Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized
screen, iTunes is asking you if you want to allow iTunes to reorganize the
folders and files that you already have stored in your My Music folder. If you
already have an organization in that folder that’s important to you, choose No;
if you choose Yes, then iTunes will reorganize the folder so that songs are
stored in folders by artist, which are then subdivided by album. (If you already
have your music stored by genre or by some other system, then you probably don’t
want iTunes to change it.) Click Next once you’ve made your choice.
3. On the iTunes Music Screen, you’ll choose whether you want to launch the
iTunes Music Store when iTunes finishes launching itself or go to your iTunes
Library (the main iTunes screen) instead. Make your choice and click Finish.
That’s it. You’re done with the Assistant. It will take a little time to look up
songs in your My Music folder and then to query the CDDB database to get names
and other information about those songs. From there, you’ll be taken to the
iTunes Music Store or your library, depending on the choices you made.
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Once iTunes is launched, you’re presented with its main interface window if you
end up finding iTunes useful on a regular basis, you’ll get to know this window.
Unlike some applications you may be familiar with, most of your interaction with
iTunes will occur in this window. You’ll occasionally open a dialog box and so
on, but as far as managing and playing back songs, that happens mostly in the
single iTunes window.
- The source list On the left side of the window is the source list, where
iTunes stores the various sources of audio you can play back. That includes the
main library, where all of your digital audio files can be accessed and managed.
(This consists of audio files that iTunes has automatically located, those that
you’ve imported, and those that you’ve copied from your CD collection or bought
from the iTunes Music Store.) You can also access the iTunes Music Store from
the source list as well as from Internet radio stations. It’s in the source list
that you’ll create your own playlists for managing your audio files.
- The main list when you select one of the sources in the source list, a list of
its songs (or stations or albums for purchase) will appear in the main list
area. As you’ll see the lists that you encounter can generally be sorted
and searched in a variety of ways that make managing even a great number of
songs relatively easy.
- Playback controls up in the top left corner are the controls used to play and
pause songs, skip through them, or skip to the next (or previous) item in a
list. They should look familiar if you’ve ever used a tape recorder, VCR, CD
player, and so on. You’ve got a volume slider here, too.
- The status area Up at the top of the window, you’ll get information about the
song that’s playing and the elapsed time. Just for fun, you can click the small
arrow icon to change the status area to a visual representation of the song
playing:
- The Search box
enables you to quickly whittle down
a list of songs in the main list.
- The Action button This button changes depending on what you’re viewing in the
main list.
- Playlist buttons The buttons in the lower left corner enable you to create and
manage playlists and other items in the source list. It’s here, for instance,
that you can set an audio CD or playlist to repeat or shuffle, as you might on a
consumer CD player or the player in your car.
- Extra buttons On the lower right side are buttons that enable you to access
the built-in equalizer, the Visualizer (which displays patterns that are in sync
with the music), and the Eject button for opening and closing your computer’s
CD/DVD drive.
Play Your Music
iTunes can play back a lot of different digital music.
Play Songs - If you have a music file already in your iTunes Library after the
Setup Assistant has searched your home folder, for instance you can play the
song in one of two ways. The first is to simply double-click it in the main
list. When you do, a small speaker icon will appear next to the song and you’ll
see information about that song displayed in the status area. You should hear
the song begin to play, and a small scrubber bar will appear in the status area.
That bar can be used to quickly move to different parts of the song just click
and drag the small diamond back and forth. Note that you can also click the
Elapsed Time entry to see other time information such as the Remaining Time and
Total Time for the song.
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Playing a song |
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The other way to play a song
is to select it in the list and click the Play button in the playback controls
at the top of the window, or press the spacebar. Again, this places the small
speaker icon next to the song as it begins to play. In either case, when you
play a song, you’ve actually begun a process where iTunes will, by default, play
every song in the current list after that song. (That’s true as long as you
don’t have the Repeat One option enabled in the Controls menu. More on that in a
moment.) So, if you’re viewing your library and you play
a song, all songs that come after it in the list will be played. When iTunes
gets tothe end of the list, it will stop playing. If you don’t want a particular
song in the list to play, click to remove the check mark next to that song’s
name in the list. You can also get iTunes to play continuously, meaning that
when it gets to the end of a list, it will loop back to the beginning. To turn
on continuous playback, select Controls | Repeat All in the menu. (Choosing
Controls | Repeat One will set iTunes to repeat the list once and then quit.)
You can also click the Continue button in the lower-left corner of the interface
to activate the Repeat All mode. Click it again to get into Repeat One mode.
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