iTunes 9.1 now available, brings iPad syncing and iBook support
By Darren Murph 
posted March 30th 2010 4:08PM
posted March 30th 2010 4:08PM
Update: We're hearing that the new version renames "Applications" to just "Apps" and the Genius Mixes / iPhone / iPod touch sync pages have been retooled. Anything else major? Let us know in comments!
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
iTunes 9.1 comes with several new features and improvements, including:
• Sync with iPad to enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, books and more on the go
• Organize and sync books you've downloaded from iBooks on iPad or added to your iTunes library
• Rename, rearrange, or remove Genius Mixes
@Javindo
anything below 100MB is something i'd regard patchsize nowadays :/
@suicidebob
iTunes is fine. Apple haters just love to bitch about it for no reason.
@Fliesen
You clearly aren't suffering from a serious case of living-in-Britain-itous where 100MB means 1 hour of 100% bandwidth allocation.
And I am not an Apple hater!
@Javindo Hey, I'm British and it didn't take me anywhere near that long and I have what I'd consider a craptacular internet connection; I'm also including downloading the latest version of Safari in that less than an hour, to see if it still sucked... it does.
I wonder if they fixed any of the enormous syncing bugs they have.
/iTunes hater.
@Jf
Which ones would those be, then?
@Jack The ones were the Smart Playlists choose not to sync, not syncing in the correct order. Random errors on syncing with helpful messages like "An error occurred."
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10374885-263.html
http://iphone-chat.org/smart-playlists-not-syncing-correct-content-on-iphone-3g-66248/
@Jf
Oh right, those bugs that barely affected anybody. Funny how those "enormous" bugs didn't affect me at all, despite the fact that I also sync smart playlists. Without any problems at all.
Yeah, I'm not sure you actually know what "enormous" means.
@Jack
You're a real prick, ya know that?
I got a brand new 3rd gen iPod touch as a gift at Christmas and to this day it still won't sync smart playlists correctly without me having to disable Live Updating. And I would call it enormous because the only two people I know besides myself who own a touch have the same issue.
For the record, what iPod do you own?
@Jack The problem with a product that has sold as much as the iPod/iPhone is that a "minor" bug ends up affecting an enormous amount of people. The upsetting part of this to me is that for months and months and months, Apple updated iTunes seemingly every week or month and then for the last however long, there has been nothing. They only care about blocking the Palm Pre - not about the user experience.
I would expect something as simple as syncing playlists would be a core competency of the iTunes software by now, but they've managed to be just as bad as Microsoft/Adobe/name-your-company at fixing bugs that actually affect people.
When I plugged in my 2G iPhone at the bottom of the summary screen it has the option 'Convert higher bitrate songs to 128kbps AAC'. Has this always been there?
@jaCoomey Nope. Not for the iPhones.
@grapefr00t Nice one, last now I know I'm not as daft as a liquid brush. Should help with my underweight 8G washed up hack of a 3G-less, compass-less out of date wonder that I love.
@Javindo
ouch! :(
good to know, since i'm gonna be in London next week.
I better bring my own interwebz then!
You have to select books from preferences to get it to show up in the left hand column. Select it, and a page comes up for the bookstore, but you can't click through.
So if I add PDF books to iTunes 9.1 will they show up in the Books section?
@TypeMRT I don't know. I tried opening some digital booklets I had from album purchases, and they opened in Adobe Reader instead.
Great!!
I use MediaMonkey to sync my iPod touch.... Works like a charm and no iTunes needed!
Is it just me, or did the iTunes-sound quality dramatically improve with this update?
Maybe it's in connection with 10.6.3 on my MacBookPro, but playing lossless files, I hear details and clarity that simply never have been there before. I'm amazed..
Safari seems snappier
.raw file support on iPhone!
I was wondering what was taking my iPhone to sync tonight. Raw files from my Canon 5d, s90, and older G9 all sync to my phone now. Makes sense given the iPad's raw file support.
Becoming more and more bloatware.
O crap I synced my iPhone and it erase all of my music when I told it to add music
May be this post is irrelevant here but I think this is as relevant as a post on an update of a software (In which improvements can be counted using fingers)
The first time I used iTunes, I was blown away by its simplicity and usability. the three column browser view just tipped the balance towards iTunes all the way. I had always been a rabid supporter of iTunes and most of my music was organised using iTunes till January 2010, when I tried Zune software 4.0 and it was like a revelation to me, that there are better softwares.
The most obvious problems with itunes are, big download and install size, bloatware (bonjor, quicktime, safari etc), resource hog (especially while syncing), complicatedly simple interface (grid view), no way to create an account without a credit card and the list can be extended with lots of minor irritations.
Zune software scores pretty on the resource efficiency part . Very light weight, sexy interface, much more music oriented. and very very very simple to use (especially on win7)
Its not that I hate iTunes now but iTunes is like what winamp used to be to me when i was using iTunes. Since there are lot of good softwares for music organisation nowadays which beats iTunes to pulp when it comes to a competition (song bird, new winamp, etc). I would recommend them to others.
Damn you Apple, first you screw it up so I need a tethered jailbreak, now you want to take away my right to sync with my pc. All I did was go behind your back & hack the electronic equivalent of your firstborn baby, is that so wrong?
I can no longer assign half-star ratings directly in the library. I gotta remember how I enabled that in the first place.
The option to convert higher bit-rate songs to 128 kbps AAC is showing up for my 1st gen iPod touch with Mac OS 10.6.3.
@Evodadi
I am using iPhone OS 3.1.3
Holy bejasus!
Forget the iTunes Update. the real news here is some 420 MBs of Updates - including over 200 MBs for 'Security'.
Thankfully, Macs are stable, secure and their OS bullet-proof - otherwise I'd be inclined to say this looks a lot like a particularly bad PC Patch Tuesday or, dare I say it, a SP.
But nothing goes wrong with Apple products, right?
also, slightly better windows 7 taskbar integration
I just noticed that i can no longer convert songs purchased in itunes (m4a) to mp3 within itunes itself.