I hope it's got a lot of the bad/lack of features sorted out this time !
Here's what's wrong with iTunes right now, it's just my opinion but they're all obvious points only a fool would defend as acceptable compromises because it's a free product :
Example 1 :
Open a streamed playlist on mp3.com. It doesn't open as a seperate playlist, just adds it to the library and doesn't play them in order.
Example 2 :
Add an album to the playlist, not only won't it play them in order but sorting by artist will throw the play order off even more. If you've encoded several albums by an artist, it won't keep them in album order or track order.
I've got over 10Gb of MP3s, all in folders named by artist and album, they have the track numbers in the file name too, nothing plays back in the correct order, absolutely nothing. I've tried adding the folders using the menu and it's just as disorganised as dragging them over the iTunes window.
Example 3 :
Encode some random audio files :
Select one or 2 audio files from a folder, let it encode them, wait for the encode menu item to stop being greyed out so you can encode more. You can't even create a simple playlist to encode multiple files from different sources. Dragging files over the encoding files list while it encodes the ones you've added with the menu isn't as easy as simply creating a playlist and then encoding from it.
General problems / missing features :
No record audio input option, this is a pretty basic feature and it's hardly a way of organising you're music library if you can't transfer from tape/vinyl and other sources easily. Obviously even if you could, the concept of "Organising" by any means in iTunes is laughable to say the least.
larger than necessary and fairly slow interface, 9 point text in the geneva font would be better, you could scroll faster too without the large smoothed typeface in the playlists. (the search field is cool though)
What they need to enhance in iTunes :
Sort out that damn interface, at least add the option of changing the font playlists use.
Add mp4 support now QT6 is out.
Add a "create new playlist for new files" option like soundjam had so that streamed playlists don't infest you're library playlist.
Play files back in the correct order, it's a joke right now, sorting by any field related to title or artist is hopeless, We need a "keep album tracks together" option aswell.
It's just soundjam with a lot of it's ease of use and organisation features stripped out and given a crappy brushed metal cranky interface, iTunes compared with soundjam is like Sherlock compared with Sherlock 2, with all the extras in the world it still isn't as good because of the awful interface.
For a freebee it's okay, as it's the only option now Soundjam is dead it needs a lot of work before it's totally useful.
On the subject of Mp4...
by my ears, a 128Kbps Mp4 is easily on a par with a 192 or 256Kbps mp3, better even. If you try encoding any lower than 128, it drops to 32Khz, this makes perfect sense to me but i'd love it if they're implementation of mp4 in iTunes allows you to choose the Khz instead of choosing it for you like quicktime does. It slightly lowers the quality of the audio while lowering the lossy effect of the compression, 32Khz makes a lot of sense for lower bandwidth files anyway, infact for low bandwidth streamed media it's perfect.