iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Playing Music

To turn your computer into a jukebox, click the triangular Play button in the upperleft corner of the iTunes window or press the Space bar. The computer immediately begins to play the songs whose names have checkmarks in the main list.

The central display at the top of the window shows not only the name of the song and album, but also where you are in the song, as represented by the diamond in the horizontal strip. Drag this diamond, or click elsewhere in the strip, to jump around in the song.

Or, just click the tiny triangle at the left side of this display to see a pulsing VU meter, indicating the current music’s sound levels at various frequencies.

Tip

You can also control CD playback from the Mac’s Dock. Just Control-click the iTunes icon (or click and hold it) to produce a pop-up menu offering playback commands—like Pause, Next Song, and Previous Song—along with a display that identifies the song currently being played.

As music plays, you can control and manipulate the music and the visuals of your Mac or PC in all kinds of interesting ways. As a result, some people don’t move from their machines for months at a time.

Smart Shuffle

With its sometimes uncanny ability to randomly pluck and play songs that just seem perfect together from all around your music library, the Shuffle feature (Section 1.4.7.13) has won over a huge number of fans, especially those who don’t want to think about what to listen to as they noodle around on the Internet. But, sometimes, the random ...