Apple may have absorbed the super-neato Magnetosphere visualizer into iTunes, but they did make some tweaks in their Borging process. Just like those Picard-obsessed skinjobs, the iTunes version is obsessed with planets and launching millions of photon torpedoes into them. The original, seen here, has more sparklies and lines, which is quite a bit of a different feel than the one you already have. Unfortunately Magnetosphere download links have been taken down everywhere, but we managed to find one linked to on the official site. If those go down, we've got a Mac Mirror and Windows Mirror too. Enjoy. Instructions: To install it on Mac, put it in /Users/username/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins

Filed under: Audio, Multimedia, Rumors, iTunes On the heels of our earlier post about new features in iTunes 8 comes this post from video producer and designer Allan White, speculating that the new visualizer in iTunes might be Processing artist Robert Hodgin's amazing Magnetosphere, which was available up until a few months ago from The Barbarian Group (aka Robert's design company) as an iTunes plugin. As Allan points out, there are two very strong pieces of evidence for this: 1) Allan emailed Robert, who told him Magnetosphere had been sold to a "third party", and 2) a twitter from Digg founder (and amateur Apple rumor mill) Kevin Rose on Sept. 2nd describing the new visualizer as "planet like objects wrapping around each other w/stars/light streams". As you can see in the image above, this sounds like a pretty apt description of Magnetosphere, which visualizes sound as particle explosions like supernovas. The Barbarian Group website's page for Magnetosphere says that "We've had a ton of interest in it, and we've got some exciting plans, but it's gonna take us a couple months to make it all happen." Of course, nothing is confirmed, but it all points in the right direction. Personally, I'd love to see Magnetosphere on every iTunes user's screen, and not just because Robert is an amazing artist and also always gracious and helpful when I email him because my Processing particle system animations don't look as cool as his. The world just needs stuff this cool-looking everywhere.(Thanks to Poopie for noticing that I'd accidentally added an "s" to "Hodgin"!)[via Create Digital Music]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments