Yet again Apple succeed in blowing my mind and doing it with something that is almost a side comment to them.Genius is a new integrated feature in tunes which automatically creates playlists of your songs based on which will go well together. Sounds simple, but it isn't...
To take part you provide the genius service with information on your music library, your tastes, ratings, playcounts... and then compare this with information at their end to make the right suggestions. But it is cleverer than that... At the same time millions of other people do the same thing and so genius becomes cleverer and makes better and better suggestions.
And all of this is free, so what's the catch...? Well as well as making me very very happy with my
own music collection and helping me to rediscover music that is tucked in my collection, it also offers Apple a highly targeted sales tool. When you play a song you have the option of a window which will tell you which songs by that artist you are missing and which other artists may be of interest. However because this is such a relevant service I'm actually quite pleased i have the option, so still no catch...
Here's the link to the keynote to hear more:
P.S - there's also a great new visualiser and the new ipod nanos pretty darn cool.
