I never personally cared for the Genius sidebar in iTunes, but I know that a lot of people used it as a way to branch out into new bands and albums and who were therefore distressed when Apple decided to replace it with the Ping sidebar in iTunes 10.0.1.
Good news, though: early on Saturday, Apple decided to do an about face and bring the Genius features back to the sidebar, albeit with a slight rename: it’s now called the iTunes Sidebar and integrates both Genius and Ping data in one easy-to-access place.
Most of the sidebar seems dedicated to Genius recommendations (and all of the sidebar is dedicated to them if you haven’t signed up for a Ping account). Ping users will get a small breakdown of recent activity. Genius recommendations are now plucked on-the-fly as songs are recommended, while Ping users can like or post about a selected song from the sidebar.
What do you think? Glad to see the Genius sidebar back? Let us know in the comments.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
