The latest update to iTunes is such a drastic change that many users are scratching their heads trying to figure out where everything is and how to work it.

Sure, if you just want to hit Play, you’re good to go, but if you’re looking for the alleged ringtones Steve was talking about, or how to share your music via Twitter and Facebook, it’s not that cut and dry.

We jumped right into iTunes and hopefully, this list of tips will help you get back to enjoying your music while basking comfortably in the new features of iTunes 9.

Arrange Your iPhone Apps

You can now arrange your iPhone apps from within iTunes. Woo-hoo! Not so fast there, buddy, It’s still a bit of a pain. You can’t drag apps from, lets say, Screen 2 to Screen 10. The navigation doesn’t scroll automatically as you attempt to drag and drop. The best method to move items from Screen 2 to Screen 10 is to click on Screen 2. Then scroll to Screen 10. Drag and drop your app from Screen 2 to Screen 10. You’ll have to navigate back to Screen 2 in order to grab other apps, unless you Command-click to select more than one in the first place.

UPDATE: Move more than one app at a time. Command-Click on a second, or third, app and you can move them all at once to a new screen.

UPDATE: Commenter woolyninja points out that you can indeed drag apps to screens and have the screen list scroll as your drag. My two test machines with iTunes 9 wouldn’t allow this, no matter how hard I tried. I just tried it on a third machine and it works like a charm. Thanks catching this Mr. woolyninja, may all your throwing stars hit their mark.

Navigate the iTunes Store

All categories now have a menubar item at the top of the store window, and those menubar items have contextual menus. To move forward and back, you use the arrows in the upper-left corner. This may seem like “duh!” but a few folks have missed the drop-down menus entirely while navigating the new store layout.

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Reviewing iTunes 9 at All Things Digital, Walt Mossberg calls it “the biggest overhaul of the familiar program in recent years.” Citing Home Sharing (“worked perfectly”) and easier app organization on an iPhone or iPod touch as his favorite new features, he concludes: “Overall, iTunes 9 is a nice improvement on a much-used program.”

Smart Playlists in iTunes 9 can now be more than just (A and B) or (A or B or C) to build a playlist. Now the rules can be combined and nested. In addition to the plus and minus buttons, there’s a new three-dot (ellipsis-like) button to generate the nested rules. For example, A and (B or C) was previously not possible.

In iTunes 9, you can now do this. First add rule A and set the top “Match” criteria to All. After you have rule A done, click on the three-dot button to get a lower level rule, add rule B and set its applicability pop-up to Any. Finally, click the plus sign and add rule C. This will create the logical structure of A and (B or C). You can get even more fancy and click the three-dot button again, and add a D or E conditional, giving you a final rule structure of A and (B or C and (D or E)).

The iTunes 9 help is silent about this new feature, but it’s quite powerful.

Source: MacOSXHints

A tipster just drop a handful of iTunes 9 screenshots.

“The first notable feature depicted in the new shots is the Facebook integration. The images show the ability to create a new playlist and then share it on Facebook,” Epstein reports. “The Facebook entry that subsequently appears on the user’s FB wall will include an iTunes link, presumably pointing to the shared playlist found on an iTunes page.”

Epstein reports, “Up next… How about some third-party device support?”

Full article, with the screenshots, here.