GeekForce

…was developed by a team in the Apple Corporation as bundled software in the variety of computing products produced for the Mac line.   Immediately upon its launch, it was tremendously popular.  After a fashion, Windows rolled out a somewhat clunkier but equally popular version for the vast numbers of Windows-based PC’s out there.

What’s best of all about iTunes is its user-friendliness; ten-year olds around the World dabble with it effortlessly.  The purpose is to support the store-and-play files of the possible millions of commercial–and burned–CDs that are out there.  The timetable has no beginning and is up to the second in retrivability regarding the program’s embedded automatic search for album art (we’ll cover a bit more about that before ending).  Insert a, say, the 1971 Faces release ‘Long Player’, and the album art appears the first time the music files are ripped into the drive of the computer/PC.  That’s pretty obscure stuff to be retrieving, but it’s there.

 It’s wise not to exceed more than about 2/3 of the memory capacity of your unit; ripped files can gobble up some space.  It’s also wise (TRUST ME!) to back up all the music you’ll painstakingly rip over the course of a week or so after you set up your iTunes files.

You can store your favorites in a file that you’ll later enjoy random play of the tunes you like best at any particular time, and trash the ones you get burned out on and replace it with one or two you’re not.  The ’Most recently played’ folder/file is great for when you’re in another room and the ‘random play’ sequences a kickass tune you’ve never heard before from a CD you recently bought or ripped from your friends collection while he was unaware of your stealth tactics–am I right, Dave?   ha ha.

Burning CD’s from a variety of tracks from a variety of artists (I don’t do this, but millions do) is THE EASIEST and MOST user friendly way on the planet to accomplish, and I’m including shelf-software and the horrific CRAP that’s embedded into Window-based CD Burn programs.  iTunes is simply unrivaled in this dimension of sound and music play/record/storage capabilities.

SIDETRACK:  A lady will always associate music you give her (regarding burned discs) with the person who gave it to her.  Remember these wise words, youngster men out there.

DRAWBACK: (note singular, not plural)–some artwork is missing.  As bizarre as this sounds, I popped in a pristine CD pair of the Beatles White Album (’68- ‘The Beatles’) and was amazed that iTunes didn’t successfully retrieve the cover art from  its mega-file of artwork.  I wouldn’t suggest downloading any alternate ‘artwork retrieval’ program from the Internet; keep your iTunes factory-fresh so as not to have two cover art retrival programs slugging it out in your hard drive as though it was a ‘techno-boxing ring’.  Leave that stuff, however well designed or intentioned, alone.  These alternate software programs won’t do any better than iTunes can, and  WILL create issues affecting the integrity of what it is that is gleamingly wonderful to begin with.  When you DO run into artwork issues, go to the iTunes main page, and in the bottom of the field, text the artist and album so the Mac iTunes team can add it on the (pretty long, actually) list of these issues to attend to.  They will, I know; they’ve squared me away several times so far.