iTunes 9 bringing iTunes LP functionality, 'beautiful new look'
By Paul Miller 
posted September 9th 2009 12:47PM
posted September 9th 2009 12:47PM
Update: It's more or less official now, complete with a non-working "Download iTunes 9" button and everything. Apple's mainly touting the new interface for the store in this blurb, but we know it's just a front for taking more of our hard-earned cash and putting it in the hands of starving musicians. The nerve.
New features mentioned:
- Improved store navigation, including persistent navigation menu.
- Full window iTunes store. For times when that sidebar is just too much.
- Previews from anywhere in the store -- don't have to drill down to preview.
- iTunes LP includes lyrics, liner notes, video, photos and "more."
- iTunes Extras. It's like DVD extras, but with iTunes. Not clear if it includes director's commentaries, but let's hope.
- Genius Mixes. It's like Genius Playlists, but it plays forever like a radio station.
- App management, letting you set up and arrange your home screens on the iPhone and iPod touch. You can drag and drop to move certain apps or whole pages of apps.
- Home sharing enables file transfers between up to five local computers of songs, videos and even apps.
- You can send items in the iTunes Store as gifts, add them to a wishlist, and publish them to Facebook and Twitter -- look who's getting all social all of a sudden!
- It's available today.
oooooo
"Home sharing enables file transfers between up to five local computers of songs, videos and even apps."
Wait, so does this mean I can sync my iPhone to my netbook when I'm on business trips, without having to break the sync to my desktop, and reload everything from scratch?
Please Steve... I've only been asking for this functionality since the 3rd gen iPod.
ooo is right. That's exactly what I thought when I started iTunes 9. oooo it still looks ugly on Windows. C'mon Apple, stop with the hate and allow your precious ugly slow iTunes to look cool with Aero. We all know that without Windows users, neither the iPod or iTunes would have the following it has today.
ooooh.... looks like zune 3.0 software with an apple skin....
And what's more, iTunes 9 is causing more problems than 8 ever did... and far more than zune 3.0
Apple has missed an opportunity to bring iTunes to living room. It has not been designed to be viewed from a TV in a living room. Text size even on large size is simply too small.
http://mymediaexperience.com/2009/08/apple-has-missed-opportunity-with-itunes/
ooooo...
The question is, can it boot up in under 20 secs on a 4GB RAM PC?
Yay??????
?????
ehhh ... i'll just stick with torrentz but nice try apple, you almost had me
damn pirate
Now, if this iTunes LP actually had LP quality...
(For all you kids out there, Vinyl still beats the crap out of any kind of CD out there)
ARRRR...
This iTunes rev. be High.. Sez "i"
Arrr..
@TT: Well, that's still just speculation. Vinyl has a different sound, partly from being mastered differently. CDs have the same (or greater) maximum bandwidth (technologically), but the way they are mastered usually destroys much of the detail through compression. On top of this, in order to get all of the benefit of the recording you would still probably have to spend quite a lot of money for a CD player with a superior-quality D-to-A converter. I think it's unfair to criticize the medium just because the prevailing implementation is inferior.
But then again, I've never been able to hear the difference...my ears are already in pretty poor shape from a short stint in a small rock band that tried to convince me that earplugs were for woosies, and that ride cymbals were best experienced at a distance of three feet.
TT: You make it seem such a simple scenario. "Just throw in the vinyl and you're set to go with pristine audio quality." Not so fast.
First of all, you have to pay a much higher premium in order to get great sound out of vinyl. Mostly due to the mechanical nature of sound reproduction from vinyl. Mechanical means more labour in manufacturing the turntable, tonearm and cartridge (which also wears which leads to even more costs). You also have to buy an expensive RIAA-stage in order to get high fidelity.
Secondly, you have to pay a much higher premium for the medium itself. Great sounding vinyl requires high quality mastering and pressing processes. Fullfilling those criteria equals high premium. And, in order to get a well mastered and pressed vinyl, high premium is not always enough, since you cant's just walk/log into a store and pay for the product. There are thousands and thousands of beautiful recordings which have never been re-released in high quality vinyl editions. So, you have to look for the original pressings. Nowadays it's relatively easy since we have musicstack.com and such but those original pressings require, you guessed it, even higher premium.
So, if you have infinite funding and infinite time on your hands, sure, you can get the best audio quality out of vinyl. Actually it's highly subjective. Vinyl has a lot of harmonic distortion and lacks in resolution. But I admit, good vinyl sounds damn nice.
I personally have a decent vinyl system in addition to an accurately-ripped-flacs outputting PC media player hooked to a high quality DAC. I prefer, to the nth degree, the cost and ease of operation of the PC media player.
Vinyl rules for the ritual that is taking out that PVC slab from the seventies scenting jacket and putting it on the platter and dropping the needle and listening to the earthy, fleshy tone! The album art also in sensationally better then ones in CD or downloads... Still, I love the flac-thing...
TT-
I do not know about that. I believe it is subjective.
Some albums I try and find the original. But it is very hard to find original copies that don't pop, skip, etc... or aren't warped. I've started buying the audiofile versions and they sound awesome. But at $25 a copy, it's a bit expensive compared to the CD.
To each his own. Although this new LP thing is cool, I probably won't ever buy one. A hard copy I can back up at a higher quality is better then a few bonus tracks or extra artwork.
Vinyl is great in terms of artwork and such. I'm trying to buy music on vinyl whenever I can.
I think the best idea bands ever had was to sell vinyl with a free digital download. That way you get the best of both worlds!
Rocket Raccoon hits spot-on.
In my utopia albums would be released as vinyls which included a voucher for an at least 24bit/96kHz FLAC download including detailed meta data (composers, performing personnel) and high resolution artwork. There would also be a significantly cheaper option of purchasing only the download.
All older recordings would have gone through a remastering process of the highest degree.
You can dream...
erm, there are albums that are NOT deluxe versions that do the same...
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPreorder?id=327432907&s=143441
lol - yes!! finally mp3 collections are more expensive than the physical counterpart!
what took you so long apple?
where are the apple fanatics that love donating? i'm going to spit on my iphone
Time to upgrade my speakers and amp, and get rid of the old CD player. :D
iTunes 9 leaks... on iTunes. http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/09/itunes-9-leaks-itunes/
Get knotted, Apple. The reason people download music is because it's cheaper. CHEAPER. I mean, most people don't pay anything, and they're certainly not going to pay more than nothing for something they can find on Google Images anyway.
You apparently don't know too many Apple fans, do you? :)
@Peter S: Thats great!!!! Made my day!!!
sometimes it's cheaper... sometimes it's $635,000!
Seriously, mall record stores are outrageously expensive (I'm seeing $20+ at my local "record" stores now), even compared to iTunes. You can't buy everything at BigBox stores because you never know if they edit content on the disk... like a certain Wally does, and they don't stock releases more than 3 months old unless they sell.
"The reason people download music is because it's cheaper"
Disagree. The best thing about downloads is that they are damned near instant. If you want a particular track or album then you can have it on-demand. The price of downloads has never been something that has concerned me. Convenience is always king.
This is nothing really new. I know I bought a few Deluxe versions of albums a few months ago. They came with some music videos and a couple extra songs.
I poop on iTunes.
You mean iPoop?
I'm completely uninterested in buying one of these "enhanced" albums - even for an album I'd ususlly buy on CD.
How come I don't see any mention of the iPod linewide price reduction? Did Engadget not get the memo?
I already get all that stuff for free from decent torrent seeds. 320k bitrate, videos, and liner notes.
Can't find this on the UK store. The biggest change I'd like in iTunes is to be able to tag a song with multiple artists.
that's my tip! holler
For the love of all that is holy, please tell me this version FINALLY STOP SKINNING THE WINDOWS VERSION!
will it be as slow as all the other version of this great product? i'm referring to the windows implementation...
"[W]e know it's just a front for taking more of our hard-earned cash and putting it in the hands of starving musicians."
Rrriiiiiight.
i clicked download iTunes 9 and it downloaded 8.2.1 instead. hmmm.
still says 8.2.1 for me
Will it be a 64-bit cocoa application or is it still based on carbon?
sure as heck won't be carbon, Apple is going all-Cocoa with Snow Leopard and on
Carbon? Cocoa? Are you buying music or following a recipe?
too bad, the iTunesHelper is 64bit, iTunes still isn't
It's still bloody 32-bit Carbon. For crying out loud, Apple, get this key application rebuilt in Cocoa and give us the same improvements that we have seen in the Finder.
@Johanu: What the hell are you cooking with carbon as an ingredient?!
Steve Jobs just said the App Store has 75,000 apps! very cool!
And 74,647 of them are useless.
@Patrick
you give 350 apps too much credit. maybe only 3 are worth anything.
Oh really, you've examined each one of them?
Only MS fanboys/Apple haters make sorry attempts at trying to make the App Store's vast quantity of apps as a negative. Keep amusing us big boy.
What a shame that no one will develop for Zune HD. They'll all be busy making money at the Apple App Store.
we know it's just a front for taking more of our hard-earned cash and putting it in the hands of greedy labels. The nerve.
fixed it for you.