iTunes

iTunes

In this blog I will tell you about iTunes and its history. Hopefully useful to all.

iTunes is a proprietary digital media player application, used for playing and organizing digital music and video files. The application is also an interface to manage the contents on Apple's iPod, iPhone and iPad.
iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store to purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, iPod Games, Audiobooks, Podcasts, movies and movie rentals (not available in all countries), and Ringtones (only available on iPhone and iPod Touch 4th Generation). It is also used to download Apps from the App Store for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.


iTunes was introduced by Apple Inc. on January 9, 2001. The latest version, which is currently version 10.2.2, is available as a free download for Mac OS X v10.5/Windows XP or later on Apple's website. In June 2010, Apple released a new privacy policy pertaining to the capture and collection of users' real-time location information^. The information had been included in various device-specific EULAs since 2008, but was only recently included in Apple's general privacy policy^.

History Of iTunes

SoundJam MP, developed by Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid and released by Casady & Greene in 1999, became the basis for iTunes when Apple purchased it in 2000. Apple added a new user interface and the ability to burn CDs, and removed its recording feature and skin support, and released it as iTunes in January 2001.



Originally a Mac OS 9-only application, iTunes began to support Mac OS X when version 2.0 was released nine months later, which also added support for the original iPod.^[6] Version 3 dropped Mac OS 9 support but added smart playlists and a ratings system ^. In April 2003, version 4.0 introduced the iTunes Store; in October, version 4.1 added support for Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP.^[8] Version 7.0 introduced gapless playback and Cover Flow in September 2006.^[9] In March 2007, iTunes 7.1 added support for Windows Vista,^[10] and 7.3.2 was the last Windows 2000 version.^[11] iTunes lacked support for 64-bit versions of Windows until the 7.6 update on January 16, 2008. iTunes is currently supported under any 64-bit version of Windows Vista, although the iTunes executable is still 32-bit. The 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are not supported by Apple, but a workaround has been devised for both operating systems.Version 8.0 added Genius playlists, grid view, and a new default visualizer. iTunes 9 added "Home Share" enabling automatic updating of purchased items across other computers on the same subnet and offers a new iTunes Store UI. Genius Mixes were added, as well as improved App synchronization abilities. It also adds iTunes LPs to the store, which gives additional media with an album. Apple added iTunes Extras as well to the store, which adds content usually reserved for films on DVD and Blu-ray discs ^. Both iTunes LPs and Extras use web-standards HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The latest version of iTunes, iTunes 10, was released by Steve Jobs during a Press Release on September 1, 2010.
A version of iTunes was shipped with cell phones from Motorola, which included the ability to sync music from an iTunes library to the cellphone, as well as a similar interface between both platforms. Since the release of the iPhone, Apple has stopped distributing iTunes with other manufacturers' phones. In the absence of support from Apple, Nokia has released a Mac application called Nokia Multimedia Transfer that supports transferring data from iTunes and iPhoto onto some Nokia devices.



Palm however reverse engineered iTunes to allow its Pre device to sync directly with iTunes. It did this by fooling iTunes into thinking the device was an iPod.

In late March 2010, Apple released version 9.1, which has support for the iPad and its iBooks application.

In late June 2010, Apple released version 9.2, which brought support for the new iPhone 4, as well as any iDevices running iOS 4, included support for the new iPhone and iPod Touch version of the iBooks app. It can now install and run on Windows Server 2008 R2.


In September 2010, Apple held their annual music press event where they unveiled an updated version; iTunes 10. The new version was available for download later that day. One major feature include the integration of "iTunes Ping", which brings a social factor to the iTunes experience. Apple CEO; Steve Jobs also announced a new logo, one without a CD in the background because of the increasing popularity of iTunes digital downloads. However, the new logo has begun spanning controversy, as many of iTunes's users favored the usual logo that labeled iTunes as the application it is for almost a decade.

File format support

iTunes 10 can currently read, write and convert between MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4, AAC (.m4a) and Apple Lossless.
iTunes can also play any audio files that QuickTime can play (as well as some video formats), including Protected AAC files from the iTunes Store and Audible.com audio books. There is limited support for Vorbis and FLAC enclosed in an Ogg container (files using the Ogg container format are not naturally supported) or Speex codecs with the Xiph QuickTime Components. Because tag editing and album art is done within iTunes and not QuickTime, these features will not work with these QuickTime components. As of Snow Leopard, iTunes 9 (Mac) will play HE-AAC / AAC+ internet streams. The latest version of iTunes (Win/Mac) supports importing audio CDs with the default iTunes standard file format of AAC at 256 kbit/s, but users can choose from 16 kbit/s to 320 kbit/s constant bit rates (CBR) in either AAC or MP3.


Importing of audio CDs into MP3 or AAC formats can also be accomplished using variable bitrate (VBR) encoding. However, a double-blind experiment conducted in January 2004 of six MP3 encoders noted that the iTunes encoder came last, in that the quality of the files produced by iTunes was below par. It was stated in the final results that these tests only covered VBR encodings, thus iTunes might have performed better with a Constant bitrate (CBR). In a follow-up test performed in October, 2008, iTunes' results were similar to those of the four other MP3 encoders being compared.





The Windows version of iTunes can automatically transcode DRM-free WMA (including version 9) files to other audio formats, but does not support playback of WMA files and will not transcode DRM protected WMA files. Telestream, Inc. provides free codecs for Mac users of QuickTime to enable playback of unprotected Windows Media files. These codecs are recommended by Microsoft.