Apple released an update to iTunes today, bringing it up to version 11.0.3. After the massive makeover the app received back in November, the latest version won’t turn your musical world upside down, but it does boast performance enhancements for searching and managing large iTunes libraries along with a few other goodies.
First up, there’s a snazzy new miniplayer that includes album artwork and a progress bar indicating how much time is left in the song. There’s also a drop down menu item where you can view upcoming songs and a button in the upper corner to rate the song, add it to a playlist, or view it in your iTunes library or in the iTunes store. Of course, computer and Airplay volume control are still present along the bottom of the miniplayer.
Also new in this update is improved support for multi-disc albums, meaning that Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” will appear as one complete album in your library instead of “The Wall (Disc 1)” and “The Wall (Disc 2).” However, after updating our iTunes app, we noticed that it caught some of the double albums, but it missed a few of the older albums that we had ripped from CD, such as the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” There doesn’t seem to be a way to inform iTunes of double disc status, but we’ll let you know if we find one.
Lastly, it’s now possible to view album artwork in the songs view, which is both more aesthetically pleasing and useful to people who can identify albums by cover more quickly than by name.
The update for both Mac and Windows is available now via software update.
