I don't like how pressing return when a song is highlighted now starts playing the song instead of making the title/artist/album/etc. editable. It's inconsistent with the rest of the Mac UI.

I'm pretty certain that's been the behavior throughout the existence of iTunes. I have version 2.0.4 on an old machine and it behaves this way. However, whether on a laptop or using a full-size keyboard, pressing the Enter key will go into Edit mode.

Yeah, I think it's always been that way. But I wish they would change it to be in step with the rest of OSX's UI. It would make things much easier to edit...

I have often used the return and enter keys to make the fields editable, at least until iTunes 8.x. Doing more than a few tracks manually makes using the mouse/trackpad a pain, since I have to single click twice (without inadvertently double clicking) in order to make the fields editable. Finder still behaves as always; it appears only the behavior of iTunes has changed.

I've checked this in iTunes versions 2.0.4, 7.7.1 and 8.1.1 and they all behave the same. Pressing Return begins playing a song and pressing Enter goes into Edit mode.

Ah, so all I have to do is hold down the Command key if I want to edit, eh? Never knew that, learn something new every day I guess.

Well, that's not what I meant, but I see you're right that Command-Return does work for going into Edit mode.

When I said the Return key, I'm referring to the key directly above the right-side Shift Key. For Enter, I'm referring to the Enter key on the Number Pad or, on notebooks, in two places: 1) Function (FN)-Return or 2) on older models made before the Chicklet style keyboards, the Enter key to the right of the Space Bar.

I couldn't tell you why there is a difference, but the behavior has indeed changed on my machine for version 8.

Oh, sorry, I should have mentioned I'm on a laptop. So, command+enter is the best way for me to do it...

I know what you mean, but you demonstrated a frequent source of the confusion. I presume you mean Command+Return, but people often speak of Return and Enter interchangeably when they are distinct, though sometimes they will perform the same function.

Simple Example: In Photoshop, if I am entering text, pressing Return is the same as in any text editor and it inserts a line break. If I press Enter, though, it takes me out of text-editing mode.

But, yeah, you could use either Command-Return or use Fn-Return (which on Apple notebooks is equivalent to Enter) for entering Edit mode in iTunes.

Hmm, I didn't know that this was such a complicated topic! I wonder what other applications I use that have another function for enter that I don't know about...

Well, there's a good chance I made it sound more complicated than it is. Plus, the overlap of functions between the keys doesn't help. For example, in any dialog box with a default button which is shaded, pressing Return or Enter works the same. But these other times – such as this iTunes issue – there is a distinction which can make it confusing for people, and J Christopher alluded to this since pressing Return on a selection in the Finder has a different effect than pressing Return on a selection in iTunes.

The other one that confuses me is the difference between delete and backspace, which I don't even think I have on my keyboard, so maybe I should forget about it...

On Mac laptops (maybe aluminum keyboards, also?), pressing [delete] once will delete one character to the left of the cursor. pressing [fn]-[delete] will delete one character to the right of the cursor.

This assumes nothing is highlighted and the user is using a "left to right" language.

There should be no issue with the big aluminum keyboards, as it has a dedicated "delete" key.

Actually, they're both called delete keys, but the one located above the arrow keys is marked with a right-pointing arrow.

On the smaller aluminum keyboards, I think you get an fn key, and it's just like the MacBook/Pro keyboards.

The other way to do a forward delete (to the right of the cursor), is with Control-D. I like this simply because it can be done with one hand.

I'm guessing this is from emacs, and if so I imagine it won't work in non-Cocoa applications.

And now I know how to delete things on the right side of my cursor! Wow, I've learned two very important things (both of which I probably should have known years ago!) Fun :D.