2) external context - serach engine: use that embedded web brwoser in iTunes (which should also be the basis for sherlock, right?) to support an (embeded) Sherlock so that another Finder like pane can open up to render the results of (googleesque) seraches/blogs ... so that people who want to get more zine background info from the web associated with artist/song/genre etc.

... i had a houseguest this week from china who did not knwo about western musical idioms ... so i installed iTunes for him, and gave a him a sort of tour / musicology lesson (4 hours!) ... i would have loved to not have to jump out into his (windows) web browser or his IM to illustrate my explanations better ...

in case anyone cares ;-) .... my 'history' picked:

blues: nina simone; billie holiday
jazz: miles davis
rhythm&blues: cant remember :-(
rock'n'roll: elvis
swing: benny goodman
hard rock: various thrash metal
pop: cant remember ;-)
punk: sex pistols; nineinchnails, ramones
alt rock: nirvana, greenday, REM :-)
rave/trance/techno/chill: lots!

big picture is that iTunes needs as much integration as possible for all data types, states, presentations, etc (eg video/mpeg4 is urgently needed even if iPod is going to be late in supporting video; when itunes is running on a pc, it should run any content).

in other words, avoid the silly repeat state of affairs where there was a separete mac DVD player, external to the core Quicktime player ... how dumb! ... how windows!

a hub is a hub is a hub.

it is bad enough that cocoa has languised for a decade (ie no proper deep agent technology has been deployed) ....

apple should not let another franchise fall apart because it cant figure out how to pull together the bits and pieces it has not let whither on the vine.

IMHO, of course ;-)