Apple Mac HQ

I’ve had the opportunity over the past day to test out a pretty cool new Mac application. TuneUp is a iTunes companion application that can “clean” up your music collection. It can find lost cover art and all the information within the ID3 tags (album, track info, etc). To get a sense of what TuenUp can do and how it works, watch the short video below.

I’ve played around with the application and it’s something that I could definitely see myself using. I was able to easily update the ID3 information and cover art on a number of my tracks. What I like about the application is that once you’ve cleaned your tracks, the application is still useful. “The Now Playing” and “Concerts” tabs along the top provide valuable information about the contents of your iTunes library.

The “Now Playing” tabs take the currently playing track and shows matching YouTube videos, upcoming shows, Amazon album recommendations, recent news via Google, and eBay auctions. Playing a Black Keys song showed news headlines, including information about the lead singers upcoming solo album; cool!

The “Concerts” tab shows concert matches from artists within your iTunes library. There are links to purchase tickets right from the application. When you sign into the application, you input your city/state/country so it knows what concert venues to list in the Concerts tab.

While the application is certainly useful, it just doesn’t quite feel like a “true” Mac application. When you open the application, it “sticks” to the right side of iTunes. You can’t move it away from iTunes. When you reopen iTunes, TuneUp also starts up. I’ve tried to close TuneUp first and then iTunes, but TuneUp still starts up when reopening iTunes. In fact, I haven’t yet found a way to open iTunes without TuneUp opening too. TuneUp also shifts upwards when I move iTunes from my MBP monitor to my external monitor. This is likely a side affect of the “sticking” feature. I also had a beachball when accessing some of the menus but this has been reported as a known issue and should be fixed by the release date. I hope some of the other issues are fixed too.

TuneUp has been available for Windows since earlier this year. The Mac release is scheduled for release sometime today. You need Leopard and an Intel Mac to run TuneUp. Tiger support is scheduled to be added “shortly after launch”. TuneUp is free, with TuneUp Gold costing $11.95 a year or a one time fee of $19.95.

Update 12/11/08: A contact for the TuneUp folks notifed me that you can set the TuneUp start up preference.  Do a Ctrl click on the TuneUp interface and choose Preferences.  It looks like they are also going to make the preference pane more visible too (hopefully as a menu bar option).  Glad to see the company behind TuneUp is listening to feedback!