After some late hour bug hunting I sat down and surfed around a bit on the Apple web site to have a look at their new stuff. It’s all nice, but little I can afford or need, so I didn’t really get into any of the details.

The most interesting new release is iTunes 7, which I downloaded on Wednesday, For some reason the update has made iTunes users all over the globe wish Apple took it back to the drawing board. I really can’t see what all the commotion is about; iTunes is still a crappy piece of software and always was. I feel, however, that Apple is getting close to an what can best be described as an acceptable media player - or maybe it’s just me getting used to it.

For instance, they added Coverflow. For a brief second, I thought that had stolen the whole idea, but according to the Coverflow website, the authors got all the credit and money they deserved for their excellent idea.

We are pleased to announce that all CoverFlow technology and intellectual property was recently sold to Apple. It has been incorporated into the latest version of iTunes.

Good going, Apple! But why the hell can’t you please let me define the value of the streaming buffer manually? That’s the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night.

Their implementation of Coverflow downloads cover images from the iTunes Store. Problem is that it uses your local iTunes Store, in my case the Norwegian one, a store with a very limited international collection. So now I have to go through my entire collection agaiiin to grab the cover images from Amazon.com. Luckily, there are a couple of widgets that make the process a bit less painful.

You might be wondering why I’m not spending my Friday night doing something else than complaining about software. I’ll tell you why. It’s the great¹ thing about being the lucky winner of the company’s support position this week!