iTunes 11

More iTunes Power Search at Your Fingertips [UPDATE: In iTunes 12.2 and later, selecting "Music" in this script will go to the "New" section of Apple Music. The other kind selections work as expected.] Kirk has noticed that Apple has spruced up the iTunes Power Search page. Inspired, I improved this simple AppleScript to launch a Power Search by kind (click the AppleScript Editor icon below the code to display the code in AppleScript Editor on your machine): set chooseOptions to {"All Results", "Apps", "Music", "Movies", "TV Shows", ¬ "Podcasts", "Books", "iTunesU"} set optList to {"mt=3", "mt=8", "mt=1", "mt=6", "mt=4", "mt=2", ¬ "media=books#powerSearch&restrict=false&submit=media", ¬ "institutionTerm=&media=iTunesU"} set opt to (choose from list chooseOptions with prompt "iTunes Power Search...") if opt is false then return repeat with i from 1 to length of chooseOptions if opt as text is (item i of chooseOptions) then set opt to (item i of optList) end if end repeat set link to ("itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?" & opt) as text tell application "iTunes" to open location link Save that as something like "Power Search" in your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder and assign it a shortcut. When you launch it, you can select the area you want to search: iTunes 11 posted in DIY

Genius Playlists Can Be Shuffled So I just discovered that everytime I play a Genius playlist it plays in the same order. My guess is that everybody else already knew that. Today, however, I discovered that if you place a Genius playlist inside a Playlist Folder and then select the Playlist Folder, set it to shuffle, and then play, the songs play shuffled. That is, the tracks play in a different random order each time the Playlist Folder containing the Genius playlist is played. When I told Kirk McElhearn about this he imagined that one could create several Genius Playlists based on the same Artist seed in order to maximize variety. So I tried that. And here's what's cool: My presumption was that two (or more) Genius Playlists based on a similar seed each might contain duplicate tracks which would therefore be duplicated in the Playlist Folder that I put them in. But they are not. While the two Genius Playlists show 100 songs each, the total of tracks for the Playlist Folder is 174; the duplicate tracks don't "register" in the Playlist Folder context. I like this because I can maintain the Genius playlists longer without having to refresh or recreate them. Tips and Info posted in iTunes 11

Apple Releases iTunes 11.2 iTunes 11.2 is out and primarily fixes some Podcast management features, fixes unresponsive Genius updating (I had that!), and (as usual) improvements to overall performance and stability. iTunes 11 posted in Apple

iTunes 11.1.5 Released Apple has released iTunes 11.1.5 which fixes a problem with unexpected quits while connecting a device and improves compatibility with iBooks. Not sure what issues with iBooks are addressed. posted in iTunes 11