- Smart Shuffle: Excellent. Very nice to have some control over shuffle play. Suits the way I listen to music nicely.

- Search Bar: Great. Easier to use than the old drop down search criteria and a lot more powerful. It's fast, even with my large library stored over a wireless network. And you can easily change the search criteria by clicking the different labels. I'm going to start using the search feature a lot more than I used to.

- Parental Controls: Is it a sign that I'm growing up that I'm even thinking about this feature?! I hope not. Anyway, I've been wondering how Apple was going to react to the recent hubbub about the steamy podcasts that they have in their iTunes directory. I didn't try the "Restrict explicit content" feature because I like all the explicit content I can get, but by being able to restrict access to podcasts and the music store independently and then have that additional explicit content check box, this seems like a robust and detailed method to deal with the issue.

What iTunes v5 is missing that I had hoped it would include:

- Make Sound Check work better: This is becoming a big deal for me. The volume of my music is all over the place, and while Sound Check helps a little bit, the volume can still vary widely from one track to another. This problem is magnified when listening with canal phones, since a loud track (like that one damned Billy Joel song) can actually hurt my ears.

- Smarter Smart Playlists: True 'and/or/if/else' matching criteria for song selection. Try to make a Smart Playlist that consists of music from two bands and does not include the word "live" (or any common word your library contains) in the album title and you'll see what I mean.

- "Keep all iPods in Source list": You can keep your iPod shuffle in the left Source pane. I want to keep all of my iPods there, regardless of model.