Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple Releases Major iTunes Update

Posted by pudge on from the more-sharing-less-burning-plus-some-wacky-stuff dept.

shunnicutt writes "Apple has released iTunes 4.5 (and iPod software 2.2 and QuickTime 6.5.1) and relaxed some iTunes Music Store restrictions: now tracks you purchased can be authorized to play on up to five other computers, instead of three. However, they reduced the number of times you can burn a playlist to an audio CD from ten to seven. Another new feature is iMix, which allows you to publish playlists on iTMS, including comments on each track. The iTMS also offers a weekly free single for download." crazney adds "This release also changes their network sharing protocol in a way that breaks the open source iTunes sharing applications that have been released (based on my work on iTunes 4.2's DRM)." kefoo writes "Among the new features is Apple Lossless Encoding, which claims to compress losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD quality audio." Hm, and I was about to re-rip all my CDs at 320 kbps MP3 ... Update: 04/28 14:56 GMT by P : I just tested, and I can listen to previously de-DRM'd AAC files from playfair, but I cannot use either playfair or FairTunes any longer. The former "Couldn't get DRM key for user," and the latter produces a blank file.

3 of 910 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My personal iTunes wish list by amichalo · · Score: 0, Redundant

    2. Copy playlists: Another major issue with the above is that if I have 2 playlists that are 90% the same, I'd like to set the first one up, then just copy the list logic into a new one and only edit the 1 or 2 differences.

    Today is your lucky day. Thanks to the folks at Xerox PARC, you can accomplish your goal very easily.
    1. create a new play list
    2. select the items in the original play list (select all I presume)
    3. drag and drop them into the new playlist

    Now you may edit them as you wish.

    --
    I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
  2. Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog by Mwongozi · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Gapless playback has been available for a while, but it's not very obvious.

    Turn on "Crossfade playback", and drag the seconds slider to zero.

  3. Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection by phong3d · · Score: 0, Redundant

    But iMS has always offered the option for artists to sell their albums as whole packages instead of individual tracks, so they're either misinformed or have other issues with the service.