Naturally, we couldn't help but test it out ourselves from both a Mac and iPhone 4, so click through for our first impressions.
Of course, you can let iTunes control your downloads by selecting the appropriate content -- Music, Apps, and/or Books -- in the iTunes preferences. By default, these automatic settings are disabled.
Generally speaking, the whole ordeal was fairly intuitive as you'd expect from Apple software, even in beta. Unfortunately, the $24.99 per year iTunes Match service that adds music to your iTunes in the Cloud library after scanning your local hard disk drive is not part of the update (it's coming in the fall). Regardless, the 10.3 beta release of iTunes is definitely a welcome update as we look forward to Apple's other unfulfilled "Post PC"-era promises of wireless activation, OTA software updates and a full suite of iCloud services coming with iOS 5 and OS X Lion. We just can't help wondering when Apple will offer a proper subscription music streaming service (a la Rhapsody, Spotify, Rdio, etc.) and leave this individual pay-per-track download nonsense behind. While some might be fine paying $24.99 annually for songs they already own, others would prefer to pay about $10 per month to stream (and locally cache) any and all of those 18 million songs stored in Apple's new North Carolina data center, to any device of their choosing. Baby steps, we suppose.
Generally speaking, the whole ordeal was fairly intuitive as you'd expect from Apple software, even in beta. Unfortunately, the $24.99 per year iTunes Match service that adds music to your iTunes in the Cloud library after scanning your local hard disk drive is not part of the update (it's coming in the fall). Regardless, the 10.3 beta release of iTunes is definitely a welcome update as we look forward to Apple's other unfulfilled "Post PC"-era promises of wireless activation, OTA software updates and a full suite of iCloud services coming with iOS 5 and OS X Lion. We just can't help wondering when Apple will offer a proper subscription music streaming service (a la Rhapsody, Spotify, Rdio, etc.) and leave this individual pay-per-track download nonsense behind. While some might be fine paying $24.99 annually for songs they already own, others would prefer to pay about $10 per month to stream (and locally cache) any and all of those 18 million songs stored in Apple's new North Carolina data center, to any device of their choosing. Baby steps, we suppose.
Hit the source link below to try iTunes 10.3 beta for yourselves. While anyone can install it, the Automatic Downloads for iTunes Music appears limited to the US and Canada during the beta.
