To the last reply, as discussed that can actually be implemented right now.
I've thought of one very important suggestion:
When I first started using iTunes, I was on Windows and all of my songs were MP3s I'd obtained... from methods other than ripping them from their CDs. When I started iTunes, I saw that AAC could help fit more songs on my iPod, and of course just simply re-converted them to AAC. At the time I didn't really care about audio quality (my speakers and headphones were both crap), but now that my collection's pretty large and I've moved over to my iMac G5 and some nice headphones, I've realized a lot of my songs sound like crap (not content-wise, though I've noticed that too a bit from early last year, lol).
With He-AAC on the horizon, I've decided to do something I read from someone else on here.
I'm going to re-rip all of my albums into AIFF (Apple Lossless would be great, but I don't think Final Cut supports it, and I know AIFF will be around forever), and keep a copy of those probably on DVDs. Then I'm going to re-convert them all to He-AAC from AIFF (shouldn't be any loss there, should there?).
What I'd like Apple to do is for me to type in the name of a song in my library when in the "Get Info" palette, and then have the song I've gotten info on take on all the attributes (playcount, date added) of that other song, which I would also have the option of deleting. Would make my musical life a hundred times easier whenever a new codec comes out.