Is this the best Mac app ever? Well, if you keep all your music on iTunes then it will may well be!

CoverFlow is a visual album browser, in other words it lets you flick through your albums, just like you used to do. If you’ve always hated the clinical lists in iTunes, then you’ll understand why this is so cool.

Coverflow gives you a sort of 3D view of all your albums. You can whip through them with the slider bar and click on covers to bring them to the front. It’s really fast, and very funky. Just check out the screen shots and it’ll all be clear!

It has a nice little search button, a slider to navigate, and a set of buttons to play and skip tracks. There’s also a menu option to go straight to the current track that’s playing (which would be handy in the main window). It’ll even search your choice of Google or Amazon to find better artwork for you! In fact it makes getting cover art so addictive it should come with a warning about how much time you are likely to waste browsing for the best possible image!

I don’t know whats more fun – clicking on a blank album icon and watching the artwork appear by magic, or dragging the slider and watching your albums just skid past – gorgeous !

You can also set up which track appear in the preferences, for example discount all podcasts, or untitled albums and so on.

Before I get too carried away it’s not perfect and I can think of loads of things I’d like to see but it’s so far ahead of any other way of browing your digital music. Apple, you should hire this guy. Now! No, actually that would suck, scratch that!

So, what would be cool to add? I’d like to see multiple artwork and (usable) tracklistings. Display the current track playing, not just the album. Import artwork into iTunes. More control over playing and searching would be handy – eg a genre selector, sort on option etc. Also some kind of way to minimise/maximise it (into the menubar?) so it can be tucked out of the way and just appear when needed. And of course, if there was anyway to network this to the Mac I have all my music on then I really would be in love.

But enough! Coverflow will spank you til you can’t sit down, it rocks – kudos to Jon at Steel Skies.

...and while you’re there check out Gaslight, a very cool iTunes visualiser plugin – awesome!

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