Apple announces iTunes 7

Scott nailed it right on the head ladies and gents: one of the big announcements of today's event was a much-updated iTunes version 7, bringing a slew of new shopping, organizing and playing options to Apple's media software. As of this writing, Apple hasn't made the new software available yet, so we're going to recap the announcement to help you stay on top of the essentials. Here's a rundown of what's new:

• The iTunes Music Store is now, simply, the iTunes Store. While removing 'Music' from the title certainly helps move the store's branding into the multi-media monster it has become, it sounds like they're stuck with the 'iTunes' (music related) branding

• Album & Cover Flow views - you can now view your library by album art covers, or use a snazzy 3D 'cover flow' (you mean, like CoverFlow?) to really show off

• New Source organization - each media type gets its own library and source, offering much easier access and organization

• Gapless playback - MP3, AAC and Apple Lossless files that are one cohesive album can now sound like one

• 640 x 480 video resolution for TV and - as everyone predicted - movie downloads from the likes of Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, Miramax. Movies adopt the same usage rights as TV shows (i.e. - no burning)
  

• Integrated iPod management - you can adjust what media is synced to your iPod from within iTunes, instead of having to clunk around in the preferences. We haven't seen what this looks like yet, but it sounds like a much better idea for obvious reasons

• Transfer purchases via iPod - now when Engadget and MacRumors reported this, it sounded like the entire library was transferable between registered computers. This feature, taken from the actual keynote slide, makes it sound like this will work only for iTS purchases

• Download manager - begin listening to and watching your media while it finishes downloading

There's the wrap of what we heard so far. keep an eye out for a walkthrough as soon as we can get our hands on a copy of iTunes 7.