iTunes

Apple’s iTunes software is undoubtedly the king of digital music, thanks to its shop and the ubiquitous iPod it helps to power. And as you might expect, the music-organising tool is no slouch either.

The current highlight, from a user’s point of view, is Cover Flow. It downloads the album artwork of all the albums in your library and lets you flick through them, giving the impression that you’re flicking through a superbly organised record box. It’s almost worth having iTunes for this feature alone.

The downside is its push to convert everyone to the Apple philosophy. Unless you manually change the settings, your CDs will be converted to Apple’s proprietary AAC format, which isn’t overly popular outside Apple circles, and it doesn’t stream music to non-Apple devices or allow non-Apple portable music devices to share its musical bounty.

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