Apple seems to still be looking for the right-hand place for Ping , its novel euphony - centrical social internet , introduce in iTunes 10 . When Apple release a minor update to iTunes at the end of September , the company replaced iTunes ’ Genius sidebar with a Ping Sidebar . Now , Apple has quietly made another alteration to combine the two features .
AsMacworldsenior contributorKirk McElhearn noted on his blog , instead of an all - Ping sidebar , iTunes now have a form of hybrid iTunes Sidebar . The top now features an area for the currently play song and buttons to “ like ” or post a scuttlebutt about it . Just below is a My Recent Activity section to help listeners keep in touch with feedback from Ping protagonist on their activity ; possibly an answer to initial complaints that Ping does n’t make much effort to keep user total back .
The third and largest section James Ussher in the return of the Genius Sidebar , now a Genius Recommendations department that displays exchangeable euphony from the iTunes Store ( as long as iTunes can cut through down the currently choose song , of course ) .
Apple was able to make the variety without unfreeze an update to iTunes . The sidebar is power by HTML — it ’s basically a thin Webpage built into the side of iTunes , so Apple can serve up whatever it wants in that spot .
Interestingly , the aim of the raw iTunes Sidebar mean that , as long as users choose into both Genius and Ping , Apple is now providing iTunes music hearer with warm access code to two dissimilar kinds of recommendation systems : Genius , mechanically ( and anonymously ) father by the six degrees of iTunes Store purchases ; and Ping , ideally a more organic stream of novel music that flows from the circle of friend that you manually create in the computer memory .
