Apple iTunes
iTunes is a computer program made by
Apple Computer intended to play, organize and buy music files. It is compatible with computers using the
Macintosh and
Windows operating systems. The player has gained a reputation of ease of use and good organization, even with thousands of song entries, which may point to local or remote files or streams.
The program allows users of
Mac OS 9,
Mac OS X,
Windows 2000, or
Windows XP to manipulate digital music. Users are able to organize their music into playlists, edit file information (ID3 tags), record
compact discs, upload files to a
digital music player, purchase music on the
Internet through its built-in music store, run a visualizer to display the music in a visual form, and encode music into different audio formats, such as
MP3,
AIFF,
WAV, and
AAC. A plug
[1] also enables iTunes to play
Ogg Vorbis, a free audio format. Another feature is the 'smart playlist', a playlist that is automatically updated (like a
database query) based on a customized list of criteria.
iTunes is a derivative work of SoundJam MP. SoundJam MP was a popular commercial
MP3 application created by the Macintosh software company
Casady & Greene. Apple hired the SoundJam MP developers and purchased the SoundJam MP software. The first release of iTunes was very similar to SoundJam MP, however it lacked some features such as the ability to use interface skins and broadcast audio over the Internet. iTunes still lacks both of these capabilities, much to the frustration of its (relatively few) critics. For the overwhelming majority, however, iTunes has surpassed all other MP3 playback software on the Macintosh, and is one of the most popular Windows downloads as well.
Version 4 (released on
April 28,
2003), introduced the ability to browse and buy songs available on the
iTunes Music Store, and to share unprotected music via a
network.
Sharing songs via a network can be done automatically using
Zeroconf (Apple uses the term
Rendezvous for the same technology). Shared lists of songs within the same subnet are automatically detected, while shared lists outside of the subset can be added by specifing an
IP address. The original version of iTunes supported sharing over any network (including the
internet). This was disabled when people started using it in ways Apple considered to violate their
EULA. Specifically, their concern was targeted at a music-sharing effort called iCommune. (iCommune said and continues to say it did not intend to go afoul of either the contractual agreements, or copyright law.)
On
October 16,
2003 Apple released a version of iTunes for the Windows
platform. The initial release caused some problems for some users, which were rapidly addressed by the version 4.1.1, released less than a week later.
iTunes is the preferred music player for Mac and Windows PC users using the
iPod music player. Apple does not plan on making a large profit on the music service, a market which has a great deal of competition and where profits would only be pennies per song. Rather it hopes to make money largely off the iPod, where it has a technological and brand recognition advantage.
The last version compatible with Mac OS 9 is 2.0.4, which does not support the Music Store.
iTunes Digital Rights Management
In iTunes Apple included technically-sound DRM (Digital Rights Management) capabilities, dubbed FairPlay. The popular standard MP3 has no DRM, so Apple opted for AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). The EULA limits the downloaded music files to use on three computer devices. The devices are limited to Apple and Windows products; Unix, GNU/Linux and other operating systems are not supported. Jon Lech Johansen, creator of DeCSS, published code to allow alternative operating systems to use the DRM music under the premiss of Fair use on January 5, 2004.
In early April 2004, an anonymous programmer posted another tool called PlayFair on SourceForge under the GPL. PlayFair removed the FairPlay DRM without re-encoding the audio file. The project and software were pulled from SourceForge after the host received a cease and desist order from Apple. The project was immediately moved to Sarovar.org, an open source project host based in India. While hosted on Sarovar.org, the program received a basic graphical interface and other improvements. On April 16, 2004, the project was removed from Sarovar.org due to a legal notice from Apple, but then reappeared under the name Hymn, which is an acronym for "hear your music anywhere".
In iTunes version 4.5, the DRM was changed to allow five computers to be authorized to play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store with the same account -- two more than the initial iTunes Music Store DRM.
iTunes version history
Mac OS 9
- 1.0 - January 9 2001\n** Original release.\n* 1.1 - February 21 2001\n** Support for external burners.\n** Improved visual effects generator.\n** More supported burners.\n* 2.0 - November 2 2001\n** iPod support.\n** Equalizer.\n** MP3 CD-burning.\n** Crossfader.\n** Sound enhancer.\n** Burns CDs 2x faster than before.\n* 2.0.2 - November 16 2001\n** Language support for French and German.\n** Improves ID3 tags for double-byte languages.\n* 2.0.3 - December 13 2001\n** Only checked songs are synchronized with iPod.\n** Rio One MP3 player support.\n* 2.0.4 - March 20 2002\n** Expanded AppleScript support.\n** Improved stability and performance.
Mac OS X
- 3.0 - July 17 2002\n** Smart playlists.\n** Audible.com audio books support.\n** Sound check.\n** Ratings.\n** New ID3-tags, which have play counts etc.\n** Join tracks.\n** Playlist importing and exporting.\n* 3.0.1 - September 18 2002\n** Performance improvements.\n** Better support for Mac OS X 10.2.\n* 4.0 - April 28 2003\n** Music Store support.\n** Music sharing.\n** AAC encoding.\n** Album artworks.\n** DVD support.\n** Improved searching.\n** Track categorization with beats per minute.\n* 4.0.1 - May 27 2003\n** Music sharing only in subnet.\n** Performance improvements.
Mac OS X & Windows
- 4.1 - October 16 2003\n** Voice notes and On-The-Go playlists synchronization with iPod.\n** Support for large library to be burned on multiple CD's.\n** Music Store link drag & dropping.\n** Music Store now features Audiobooks.\n** Music Store has more advanced Power Seach.\n** Music Store supports allowance.\n** Music Store supports gift certificates.\n* 4.2 - December 18 2003\n** AOL-account support in Music Store. \n** Performance improvements.\n* 4.5 - April 28 2004\n** iMix.\n** Party Shuffle.\n** CD insert printing.\n** Music Store Quick Links.\n** Automatic WMA to AAC-conversion.\n** Apple Lossless. Lossless audio-codec.\n* 4.6 - June 9 2004\n** AirTunes support. \n** Minor improvements.
External links
\nCategory:Apple software\nCategory:Digital audio
