This series of tutorials will introduce iTunes' main features. This will be especially useful for anyone coming from another media player like Windows Media Player. Except when otherwise noted, we will focus on features common to iTunes on both Mac and Windows. For the most part, iTunes for Windows shares the same features as the Mac version of iTunes.
We will start by exploring the iTunes Column Browser, which allows you to efficiently browse your music, TV shows, podcasts, etc. without resorting to iTunes searching or filtering capabilities: the Column Browser is like iTunes' on-demand table of contents.
You will then discover iTunes' MiniStore and the iTunes Mini Player (a separate mode to play audio content with an unobtrusive player window), iTunes' built-in sound Equalizer and the Visualizer; how to use the artwork viewer as movie preview, and load custom album artwork for imported music, either straight from the iTunes online store, or from graphic files on your computer (or from pictures publicly available online). You will also learn how to use "iTunes Views" to see your music and other digital content in List View, Album Grid View, and Cover Flow View. Each iTunes view has its advantages and limitation, but combined, they each ideally fit certain situations - whether you want to see all music, only under a certain sort order, etc.
We will close this section with a quick overview of the iTunesHelper.exe background process, and how to disable it; related processes on Windows are AppleMobileDeviceService.exe
, iPodService.exe
and the "Bonjour
" networking service.