Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday unveiled iTunes 4.5, a new version of the company's music jukebox software that contains many new features. Included in the new version is iMix, Music Videos, Video Trailers, a new lossless audio codec, free weekly downloads and Radio Charts. According to information posted on Apple's Music Store early Wednesday morning, iTunes users now have access to a free downloable single, which will be made available every Tuesday.
New Features
- iMix Post and email songs in your playlists for everyone to see. Rate iMixes from other music lovers to drive them up or down the charts, and discover new music at the same time.
- Music Video Section With a total of 72 videos, users can watch the video of a song and below the video purchase the song while they watch. Movie trailers have made their way from Apple's QuickTime to iTunes in the new release, as well.
- Radio Charts will track the most played songs in more than 1200 stations across hundreds of cities nationwide, according to Apple.
- Lossless Encoder Use the new lossless encoder to import music from CDs and achieve sound quality indistinguishable from the original, at about half the original file size. Plays in iTunes and on iPod.
- Automatically convert WMA to AAC. Convert the music you saved in Windows Media Player (unprotected WMA files) to AAC format.
- Download iTunes 4.5 (Windows - 19.5MB)
- Source: Neowin
- Main Source: MacCentral - Includes more information, and screen shots.
Smidge of an update:
Among other additions Apple Computer made to its iTunes software, the Mac maker has plugged a hole that allowed some people to download music from another computer.
Apple's iTunes allows Macintosh and PC users to play music stored on other PCs on a network. The music is streamed off the other computer. But file-swapping enthusiasts quickly created other programs, such as MyTunes, to capture the songs and allow them to be saved to the computer's hard drive. With the latest iteration--version 4.5--Apple appears to have plugged that hole.
An Apple representative on Wednesday confirmed that with the new version of iTunes, the company has "strengthened" the music-sharing feature to make sure that song sharing is limited to personal use and that only another copy of iTunes can access the music stream. Also, once iTunes users have upgraded to the newest version of the software, they are no longer allowed to stream music from computers running older versions of iTunes. Apple imposed a similar restriction earlier, after some people used the music-sharing feature to swap files over the Internet.
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C| Net News.com
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