Latest iTunes upgrade makes it easy to share your favorites

by Walt Mossberg

Apple’s iTunes program is one of the most popular software products in the world. The company says hundreds of millions of copies of iTunes have been downloaded, far exceeding the 220 million iPod music players it has sold.

That’s because many people use iTunes to organize, play and buy music and videos on their computers, or to burn music CDs, even if they don’t own iPods or iPhones. Ironically, the vast majority of iTunes copies are on Windows PCs, not Apple’s own Macintosh computers, because Windows machines are much more numerous.

Last week, Apple released its ninth major version of iTunes – which first came out in January 2001, before the iPod even existed – and I’ve been testing it. This release is the biggest overhaul of the familiar program in recent years, with improvements in the look and functionality of each of the software’s three main portions: the media jukebox, the built-in store and the synchronization features that move media and applications to and from iPods and iPhones.

In my tests, performed on multiple Windows PCs and Macs, iTunes 9 worked as advertised, and I found it to be less cluttered, more intelligent and easier to use than the prior version. It synced music and videos properly for me using both an iPod Nano and an iPhone. It’s available as a free download at apple.com/itunes.

To me, the two biggest new features in iTunes 9 are something called Home Sharing and a new, easier way to organize the apps on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

For years, iTunes users have been able to wirelessly stream music from nearby computers running iTunes whose owners chose to share their music. But Home Sharing takes this one step further, allowing users to actually copy the song files from one computer to another.

Right inside iTunes, you can simply peer into the shared library on another computer set up to allow this, and then select the song you want and drag it into your own library. It doesn’t delete the original from the other computer.

In my tests, this worked perfectly with music, as well as TV shows, movies and audiobooks, and it worked between any combination of my PCs and Macs. You can even configure Home Sharing to automatically transfer to your library new media purchased on another shared computer.

But Home Sharing has limitations. It only works with a maximum of five computers. These computers must be on the same local network, not connected over the Internet. And they must be the same computers authorized to play copy-protected media you buy from Apple.

With 75,000 apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it has been easy to download so many that your device becomes cluttered, with numerous icons scattered among numerous screens in a manner that isn’t optimal.

There’s a way to move them around, or delete them, right on the device, but it’s clumsy, partly because you can’t see all the screens at once, and partly because it’s difficult to move an icon from a location on one screen to another location several screens away.

The new iTunes lets you organize your iPhone’s screen right on your computer

Now, in the new iTunes 9, when you plug in your device, the software displays an exact visual representation of your iPhone or Touch screens right on your computer, and allows you to rearrange them with your mouse. When you disconnect, the new arrangement is retained on the phone. It worked fine for me.

In iTunes 9, you also can create up to 12 automated “Genius Mixes” from your personal music library – essentially personal radio stations consisting of songs iTunes considers to be related, that play on and on. I enjoyed this feature, and found it generally made good choices.

There are also a number of small visual improvements throughout the program. In the jukebox, for instance, you can now locate all songs by a particular artist using a Column Browser – an optional left-hand column that lists the artists.

In the store, categories like music, movies and TV shows are now arrayed across the top, with drop-down menus for genres. The store also is generally better organized, with richer graphics, more white space and easier navigation.

A small touch of social networking, not exactly Apple’s historic strength, has been added to iTunes. From inside the store, you can post a link to a favorite title to either Facebook or Twitter, though this of course serves Apple by encouraging others to buy the title.

You can now buy special albums, called “iTunes LPs,” that attempt to replicate the experience of old vinyl albums by including lots of extra material. For instance, for one such title by the Doors, iTunes delivered to me liner notes, digital scans of old posters and set lists, plus photos and video interviews. Another, called Mayhem, by the singer/actor Tyrese Gibson, includes just one song, but also a vivid digital comic book with voiced dialogue.

However, these iTunes LPs take up a lot of space on your hard disk – about half a gigabyte each for the ones I tried.

Overall, iTunes 9 is a nice improvement on a much-used program.

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iTunes 9: Seven Features We'd Kill For

by Nate Lanxon

1. Text messaging via iTunes


With the iPhone docked, we'd love to see a function that allowed us to send text messages via iTunes using the computer's keyboard. This is something you've been able to do with Nokia's PC Suite for years. But it would be even more useful on the iPhone, what with touchscreens not being geared towards the typing of novels.

2. HDD backup and import

In its recent life, iTunes has introduced a feature to backup your entire library to CD of DVD, but far more useful would be a one-click backup to a networked hard drive, which not only backed up your music and video, but also your playlists, ratings and play counts. And it would be in a format that could be imported back to PC or Mac with a single click.

If nothing else, people moving from PC to Mac would benefit enormously by not losing years of play data and ratings when making the switch. Do we sound bitter?

3. Sync to other MP3 players

Now the iTunes Store has dropped its DRM, the AAC files it sells are compatible with loads of other devices. The store may exist primarily to fuel the sale of iPods, but selling music to owners of non-Apple MP3 players would net Apple a small income and potentially lead to a conversion to the iPod world further down the line.

For this reason, we would like to see iTunes natively detect AAC-compatible music devices, and offer to transfer your DRM-free iTunes Store purchases to them. Yeah, plugins and hacks exist to do this already, but imagine a native function that worked like iPod syncing. Handy.

4. Complete restore from iPod

Simple one this: your Mac or PC blows up, but all your music is on your iPod or iPhone. Plug it into your new computer, fire up iTunes, and instead of installing fresh, choose to install from the iPod.

This would work a little like installing OS X from a Time Machine backup. iTunes would be installed first, then your MP3s, videos, play counts, ratings and playlists would be pulled from the iPod and loaded up into your library, and the iPod would automatically be synced.

Again, hacks and programs exist, but we want a native solution that handles playlists and whatnot as well.

5. Stream content from iTunes

This is a long shot, but extending Apple's Remote app to let you stream music over Wi-Fi (or even the Internet) would bring new meaning to the words 'flipping awesome'.

If that wasn't possible, backing up your library to Apple's MobileMe service would put your music into the cloud, accessible for streaming on the iPhone over 3G or Wi-Fi.

6. One-click DVD ripping

Ian Rendall from our forums suggests the ability to rip DVDs within iTunes, for instant transfer to the iPod or iPhone. Legally questionable, and highly unlikely, but no doubt useful.

7. Active folder monitoring

Twitter follower Richard Gunther suggests active folder monitoring. iTunes can create and modify folders within its directory, but what about the other way around? This feature would add anything to iTunes you drop in any folder within the iTunes music folder.

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Apple launches new iPods and we take a look back at it's successful iPod history

by Andrea

Last night Apple once again did what they do best and launched a new range of iPod players.

First on the list was the new iPod Nano with a built in video camera that lets users capture footage when they're on the move, and upload the clip to video-sharing sites such as YouTube. It also has an FM radio and voice recorder .The video Nano 8GB can store up to 2,000 songs and will cost £115, while the 16GB version is priced at £135.

"Video is exploding in popularity, we want a piece of that," Steve Jobs said.
Next on the Apple play list was a larger capacity version of the iPod touch, which at 64GB can store up to 14,000 songs. This will cost £299.

The company also updated its iTunes software, and showed off a a new service, iTunes LP, which allows users to download cover art, sleeve notes, and other content, such as artist videos and interviews, when they download an album from the iTunes store.

"Some of us are old enough to have bought LPs," said Mr Jobs, who promised that the new service would recreate some of the joys of listening to old records.
However, if you don't fancy any of these new gadgets then you're in luck. The company also lowered the prices of existing iPods.

We think Apple has done amazingly well over the years, bringing out newer products, and in my view, revolutionizing the way we listen to music.

With this new announcement, we decide to look back at the history of this music device, which has gone from brick to slick over the years.

Read on over the jump for more information.

Apple introduced the first-generation iPod classic on October 23, 2001. The first iPod had a 5 GB hard drive capable of storing 1,000 songs encoded using MP3. It also had a 1.8" hard drive, compared to other manufacturers that used a 2.5" hard drives at the time. The iPod had a rated battery life of 12 hours.

The second generation iPod classic was introduced on July 17, 2002 and had the same body style as the first generation. The hold switch was redesigned, a cover was added to the FireWire port, and the mechanical wheel was replaced with a touch-sensitive wheel.

On April 18, 2003, Apple revamped its iPod classic, giving it the very original name of the third-generation iPod classic. Thinner than the previous models, the third generation models replaced the FireWire port with a new Dock Connector.

Released on February 20, 2004, The iPod mini kept the same scroll wheel as the 3rd generation ipod but because of its size the four touch buttons that were beneath the screen were moved beneath the wheel itself. It was the height and width of a business card and was built around a 1 inch 4 GB hard drive.

A second Generation ipod mini was introduced in February 2005 with a new chipset, 6 GB version, and much longer battery life of 18 hours. This year also saw the launch of the ipod photo.

The ipod shuffle was created in 2005 to keep the price of the iPod down. To do this Apple scrapped the scroll wheel and the LCD display and upgraded the device's shuffle mode. This was the year the first iPod Nano was launched and was intended to replace the iPod mini which was discontinued the same day the nano was released.

The old Nano was replaced in September 2006. The new one was still tiny but tougher and dressed in aluminium. It had a brighter screen and an improved battery life and came in three capacities and six different colors; 4 GB blue, green,pink, and silver; 2 GB silver, and 8 GB black. This year the first iPod Touch was also launched.

The iphone. In my opinion one of Apple's best product, this device was launched in January 2007. It didn't have a scroll wheel but used the same touch screen technology as the iPod Touch and let people make calls.

In 2008, we saw the iPod Touch Second generation and iPod Nano 4th and 2009 bought us the iPhone 3GS and our most recent announcements.

We expect to see a lot more from Apple in the future.

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iPod Touch: The Pocket Computer for Motivation

by restlesslimbs

The iPod Touch as the Motivator in My Pocket

The iPod touch is more than just an mp3 player, it is literally a pocket-sized computer. iPod touch applications are constantly being developed to expand the possible uses of the device. One of the functions my iPod touch serves is being my pocket personal motivator.

Photos - Native iPod App

I use the photos application and slide show as my portable vision board. The purpose of the vision board is to have a visual aid for holding my intentions to be or have something. I collect and create images in a folder I've named "vision board" on my computer and sync it to my iPod touch with iTunes. I play the images in the slideshow to keep the vision fresh in my mind.

Goalkeep - $3.99 from App Store

Goalkeep is a simple application that keeps track of what I am doing each day to acheive my goals. With Goalkeep I create a list of goals and for each goal there is a calendar. I check off every day that I work toward my goal and write a comment about what I did. The Goalkeep app motivates with a congratulatory screen that tells me the number of days streak I am on when I check off a day. I like that I can go back to any of my checked days and my note for the day is displayed.

Note: I generally do not pay for iPod applications but the Goalkeep app is a worthy exception.

DoBot ToDos - Free from App Store

Once I write down my to-dos I am much more likely to get them done. This simple and free application is an almost perfect to-do list. With it I can categorize different lists and set due dates. The only features I would like to see in this app would be access to the iPod dictionary for auto-correction and the ability to nest tasks within tasks.

There are more than a few free to-do apps available from the app store. I like DoBot ToDos because others that I tried turned out to be overly complicated.

Music - Native iPod App

I have motivational mp3s stored on my iPod for when I need to get my mind in order. Some of my mp3s are meditations and some are lessons that remind me that I am in control over my future success. With my iPod in my pocket, I am never far from a positive message.

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Why There Is No Camera In the iPod Touch and Why That Sucks

By Jesus Diaz


I don't expect Apple to deliver on rumors. After all, most rumors are crap, even John Gruber's iPod touch camera prediction. But that doesn't stop me from asking questions: Why the hell there is no camera on the iPod touch?

• No Space:

The iPod touch is much thinner than the iPhone. There is not a lot of empty space in there, so maybe this is a technical decision. Perhaps Apple couldn't find a part that could fit in the current case, and they didn't want to alter the touch's physical dimensions. But then again, if the minuscule iPod nano can get a camera, why not the touch? Perhaps it's because the nano got a pretty weak camera.

• Features Mix:

Apple could possibly have fit the iPod nano camera in the iPod touch, and kept the price. After all, it's a super-tiny, ultra-cheap VGA camera. But maybe that acronym the key: It's VGA. Low resolution. The nano doesn't even do still photography because it will look like crap—video is more forgiving. People buying the iPod touch would be expecting a lot more. I know I would. So while there's the possibility of a camera in the iPod touch, perhaps is not the camera Apple thinks would be right for it—namely, the iPhone's camera.

• Technical Difficulties:

This was one of the late-minute rumors: Apple had technical difficulties during manufacturing, so the rumor said the iPod touch—with camera—was going to be delayed. If that was the case, Apple would have just announced the iPod touch with camera, and get it to the stores later. However, the iPod touch without camera is here, available immediately, which means that they have been churning them out the factory for a long long time. It doesn't seem like a last minute change of plans to me.

• Pricing Issues:

Apple wanted to have a $199 iPod touch, and keep the prices of the bigger units while increasing capacity. This sounds more reasonable than the technical excuses. The 8GB version, however, is just the old one, which is being manufactured like always to get that "low" price. No camera could be added to it, unless Apple wanted to sacrifice on the price front. Only the 32 and 64GB versions have internal hardware modifications. But would Apple have an iPod touch with camera and one without? Seems unlikely for a company obsessed with uniformity and streamlining.

• Market Segmentation:

Here things get more interesting. Apple said they wanted to compete with the Flip, which is a sub-$150 device. It's almost impossible to get the iPod touch to that price level while keeping the large touchscreen, the wireless capabilities, and the strong processing guts that the iPhone OS needs. Not right at these prices—at least, not without affecting their profit margins negatively. The iPod nano, however, can fit the Flip competition role nicely. This is a probable explanation.

• iPhone Cannibalization:

The other explanation is cannibalization. This is a good one too. Add a camera to the iPod touch and, boom, the iPhone loses yet another advantage over its lesser brother. So maybe putting the iPhone's camera into the iPod touch is feasible. Apple may just be protecting the market for the iPhone.

• Feature Evolution:

This, to me, is the most reasonable explanation. Apple is getting oh-so-lazy. Or, better said, greedy. They are the number one player in every single category. They own the market. And they know the competition is just catching on. So instead of releasing an iPhone that is way better than the previous model, they release the modest upgrade of the iPhone 3GS. And instead of releasing an iPod touch with a nice camera, they just slap some new software, slightly updated guts and more memory.

That's what you get when a company owns an empire, and the other tiny people are trying to catch up with an already phenomenal device. The company gets slow and complacent, and does the minimum to keep its products ahead.

So no, I don't expect Apple to deliver on rumors. But it pisses me off that they don't do their best every single time. That they get boring and lazy. And yes, perhaps it's not in their best economic interest to release insanely great products in every single update, but the lack of camera on the iPod touch is sure going to be a letdown for a huge number of people.

Some other people won't agree. Some cheerleaders would even go onto their soap boxes, saying that "Apple is firing on all cylinders." Maybe they are. It's just that they left the Porsche GT2 at home, and they are now driving an old Mini.

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Apple iPod nano with video recorder (5th Generation)

by Tim Gideon

Remarkably, the latest iPod nano looks almost identical to its predecessor, but this player packs so much more into its small frame: A video camera, an FM tuner (a first for iPods!), a pedometer for joggers, and a larger screen.

Priced at $149 for 8GB and at $179 for 16GB ($20 less than last year's 16GB player), this nano is more affordable and capable than any other similarly priced player out there, so it's our latest Editors' Choice.

With a new polished and colorful paint job (you can choose from seven bright hues), the new nano is one good-looking device. At 3.6 by 1.5 by 0.2 inches (HWD) and a mere 1.3 ounces, it's truly identical in size to the previous (4th-generation) nano.

The screen, however, is significantly larger—2.2 inches as opposed to 2 (it may not sound like a lot, but on such a tiny player, that 0.2 inch makes a big difference), and its 376-by-240-pixel resolution is a bit higher too—the display on 4th-gen nano is 320-by-240.



The big news here is the inclusion of a video camera, a mic, and a built-in speaker on the back panel. At the bottom left on the back of the player, the orientation of the camera is slightly awkward. Since the player is so small, it can be tricky to start recording without a digit slipping into the frame. It's nothing practice can't fix, but my first few videos were full of fingers.

The proprietary connector (now on the left) and the earphone jack (on the right) on the bottom panel of the player are reversed, but the scroll wheel remains the same size and is in the same spot below the display as on the previous nano.

The included (and terribly underwhelming-sounding) earbuds act as an antenna for the new FM radio, and the device also ships with a proprietary cable for computer syncing, a plastic dock adapter, and, of course, two Apple logo stickers.

File support on the nano is standard for Apple. You can play AAC (both old Apple DRM and unprotected files), MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV files. There's still no FLAC or OGG support. Video is limited to H.264 (this is also the format the video camera shoots in), and MPEG-4. For photos, JPEG and most other common photo formats are supported.

One note: While the new iTunes LP feature, which includes video, song lyrics, and liner notes with album purchases is very cool, you can only experience those extras in iTunes, not on the nano (same goes for the touch, classic, and iPhone too).

The menus haven't changed much in appearance—a small space below the main menu displays a visual for whatever menu option is currently highlighted—scrolling album covers if you're on Music, or the last radio station you heard if you're on Radio, for instance.

Cover Flow still pops up when you select music and turn the player sideways to landscape view, but since there's no touch screen, like on the iPod touch or the iPhone, you can only scroll through your albums using the wheel, which dulls the experience a bit, but it's still the best user interface you'll find among comparably priced players.

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A closer look at iPhone 3G S Cortex-A8 ARM and PowerVR chips

By Prince McLean

The iPhone 3G S uses a Samsung processor incorporating an ARM Cortex-A8 processor core and Imagination's PowerVR SGX graphics core to achieve a significant new class of speed while remaining backwardly compatible with existing iPhone apps.

The use of the Cortex-A8 core has been cited by multiple sources, including an analysis by AnandTech. This makes the new iPhone 3G S very similar in terms of processor design to the Palm Pre, although Palm's phone uses a device built by Texas Instruments.

ARM Processors

The Cortex-A8 is a seventh generation CPU core design licensed by ARM to a variety of manufacturers. The vast majority of all smartphones, handheld games and other mobile devices use ARM processors.

The Cortex-A8 class is referred to in general terms as ARMv7, not to be confused with ARM7, which was actually a third generation ARMv3 used in the Apple eMate300 a decade ago. Previous generations of iPhone and iPod touch used an ARM11 processor, part of the ARMv6 generation.

Apple partnered with its British equivalent Acorn in the late 80s to adapt Acorn's RISC processor for use in mobile devices, forming the ARM partnership. Apple subsequently used a third generation ARM6 in its first Newton MessagePad in the early 90s.

By the time the company discontinued its Newton and eMate devices in 1998, ARM processors had become the most popular mobile processors available, in part due to ARM's licensing of its highly efficient technology to a variety of chip manufacturers. Steve Jobs sold batches of Apple's shares in the ARM partnership at a huge profit to help keep the company afloat.

When the company introduced the iPod in 2001, it used a fourth generation ARM7TDMI processor. The latest generations of the AirPort Extreme also use an embedded ARM processor.

ARM CPU generations

 S is for speed

The Cortex-A8 in the iPhone 3G S sports "a two-issue in-order core, capable of fetching, decoding and executing two RISC instructions in parallel," according to AnandTech's report, which also notes, "the ARM11 processor in the iPhone/iPhone 3G has a basic vector floating point unit, but the A8 adds a much more advanced SIMD engine called NEON. The A8 also has twice as many double precision FP registers as the ARM11."

"The combination of higher clock speeds, more cache and a dual-issue front end results in a much faster processor," the report states. "Apple claims the real world performance of the iPhone 3GS can be up to 2x faster than the iPhone 3G, and I believe that’s quite feasible."

The report states that if the processor is running at 600MHz, it would draw three times the power of existing iPhone processors, but notes that in typical use, the device spends a lot of time in standby. Separately, Apple has detailed technologies for maximizing the performance of a processor by running it at less than its top rated clock speed while scheduling tasks more efficiently. This was done with the original iPhone.

As a result of new efficiency measures, Apple claims significantly longer battery life over the current iPhone 3G when using the iPhone 3G S for general processing tasks despite the big leap in performance and the extra power consumed.

Apple has increased the maximum rated battery life of the iPhone 3G S in WiFi internet browsing from 6 hours to 9 hours, video playback from 7 to 8 hours, and audio playback from 24 to 30 hours. Ratings for 3G browsing and talk time are unchanged, as the baseband processor that handles the intensive work of communicating with 3G data networks is independent from the general purpose ARM processor. Apple has bumped up rated 2G GSM talk time from 10 hours to 12.

SGX is for graphics

Just as ARM processor cores are the most widely used in mobile devices, Imagination Technology's PowerVR graphics cores are also extremely popular in embedded appliations, commonly appearing as integrated together with an ARM processor on System on a Chip (SoC) devices.

PowerVR started out in the late 90s as a rival to 3dfx in the desktop PC graphics processor market, with both makers also vying for inclusion into the Sega Dreamcast video console in 1998. However, by 2001 the company's third generation PowerVR began falling behind rival products from ATI and NVIDIA.

Imagination subsequently withdrew from the desktop market to focus on embedded graphics components with its highly efficient PowerVR MBX technology, which, like ARM, the company has widely licensed to a variety of device makers, including Apple.

PowerVR GPU generations

The latest technology generation is branded PowerVR SGX. Anandtech reports that the new graphics architecture improves over MBX in part in that "pixel, vertex and geometry instructions are executed by a programmable shader engine, which Imagination calls its Universal Scalable Shader Engine (USSE)."

The report also states that Imagination's new SGX graphics cores range "from the PowerVR SGX 520 which only has one USSE pipe to the high end SGX 543MP16 which has 64 USSE2 pipes (4 USSE2 pipes per core x 16 cores). The iPhone 3GS, I believe, uses the 520 - the lowest end of the new product offering." It has not yet been confirmed what version of the SGX design the new iPhone 3G S uses.

However, the report noted that "in its lowest end configuration with only one USSE pipe running at 200MHz, the SGX can push through 7M triangles per second and render 250M pixels per second. That’s 7x the geometry throughput of the iPhone 3G and 2.5x the fill rate. Even if the SGX ran at half that speed, we’d still be at 3.5x the geometry performance of the iPhone 3G and a 25% increase in fill rate. Given the 65nm manufacturing process, I’d expect higher clock speeds than what was possible on the MBX-Lite. Also note that these fill rates take into account the efficiency of the SGX’s tile based rendering engine."

Apple's video introduction of the new phone indicates significantly faster launching of and switching between applications and speedier browser rendering and other operations. Overall the company indicates up to a 2x performance improvement.

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