Apple has released a DRM-free version of certain songs for $0.30 more than the regular DRM version. The quality of the new songs is 256kbps whereas the older DRM songs’ quality is 128kbps. You can upgrade existing purchases (if available) for the $0.30 difference. In order to get iTunes Plus, you need to upgrade to iTunes 7.2.
I was browsing the iTunes Music Store tonight and one of the links on the main page caught my eye. The List: ’80s Pop Covers is a list of 80 songs, all covers of popular songs from the 80′s. Some of the songs include Alanis Morisette’s cover of The Police’s King Of Pain, No Doubt’s cover of Talk Talk’s It’s My Life, and Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over covered by Sixpence None The Richer.
Apple released iTunes 7.0 today which includes movies along with music and TV shows currently available. The pricing is comparable to buying the DVD in the stores except it’s basically already ripped so you can watch them on any PC/Mac or on an iPod including the new ones they released today. Apparently they realized how popular the different colors were for the iPod mini so they decided to release the iPod nano in the same colors. The new iPod shuffle was also redesigned and is now not much bigger than the click wheel interface to control it. iTunes 7.0 can now do gapless playback, which a lot of customers have been screaming for, and automatically import album artwork into the songs you import into your library. Before iTunes would only add the artwork for songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store, so you would have to add the album artwork on your own. iTunes 7.0 can now sync with Outlook for your contacts and calendar information. Previously, you had to export vCards from Outlook and then copy them to the iPod manually.
A little over month after Apple released iTunes 5.0, they come out with iTunes 6.0. iTunes 6.0 now supports video for the 5th generation iPods that support video. It has finally happened. Apple has true video capability in an iPod. There are even docks with IR ports for a remote control. As of right now, I don’t see myself wanting/needing a video iPod but that may, and probably will, change in the near future.
iTunes 5.0 was released today along with the new iPod nano. The nano replaces the mini but is slimmer and has a color display. It looks like a wider version of the shuffle with a color display. It comes in a 2GB and 4GB version whereas the mini was available in 4GB and 6GB models. The nano is also available in black instead of the stereotypical iPod white. I can honestly see the nano causing the end of the shuffle. The shuffle is $129 for 1GB whereas the nano is $199 for 2GB. I’ll have to go to the Apple store in the mall here to see how light the nano is.
The new version of iTunes isn’t much different from the previous version. They changed the look of iTunes and now podcasts that you’re subscribed to in iTunes show up under Podcasts and in your main library. Other than that, the only reason for iTunes 5.0 is to give the nano and the new iTunes phone, the Motorola ROKR available only through Cingular, something to sync with. The one thing missing from the new iTunes is BitTorrent support. A lot of the lesser known podcasts can’t afford the bandwidth that iTunes may bring them so most turn to BitTorrent to help control bandwidth demand on their sites. All of the other podcatching clients like Doppler, iPodder lemon, and iPodderX support BitTorrent.
iTunes 4.9 was released today and one of the new features is podcasting. Apple has finally embraced the idea of podcasts and podcasting. Not only can you subscribe to different podcasts through iTunes, but you can also create your own and submit it to Apple’s directory which is pretty much the same as Adam Curry‘s iPodder.org. I’m going to check it out for about a week or so and decide if I want to use iTunes for my podcasts or stay with iPodder lemon. So far it’s having a hard time with a few of the shows I subscribe to, no matter if I subscribe through the iTunes music store or manually add the URL.
I’ve discovered an iTunes plugin that will post the song I’m listening to into my blog here. You can either set it up to insert it automatically in the top of the post, the bottom of the post, or manually anywhere by hitting F11, which is the way I’m doing it for now.