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Apple Releases iTunes 4.6
sinclair44 writes "Apple has released iTunes 4.6. The new version 'includes support for playing your music wirelessly using AirPort Express with AirTunes. It also includes a number of other minor enhancements.' The update is also available in Mac OS X's Software Update."
One poster in the macrumors forums claims that songs de-DRMed through Hymn no longer play.
Can anyone verify?
I'm curious to see how AirTunes works with multiple speaker sets. If I can pump the same playlist to the stereo in my front room, my bedroom, my living room and the one outside, then Apple has just sold 4 Airport Express boxes. The cost of four will be much less than the cost (dollars+personal time) of running all that wiring and getting the speaker sets to all work well.
Can't wait to get my hands on this tonight!
What the other 'minor changes' are?
So I've just checked iTunes 4.6 and it appears to NOT break iTunes sharing, unlike last time.
I've updated my iTunes webpage to mention this.
Anyhow, one really cool feature that it seems to add for that AirTunes stuff is the ability to 'push' music upwards, rather than just pull down. This will allow one to control remote devices (what music is playing). Now I just can't wait to get my hands on an (Australian) AirPort Express device to reverse it. I can already think of a tonne of applications for this.
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would be the ability to press a button in any app and have the track change(well, kind of how the volume up/volume down/brightness up/down works on the iBook), provided the app currently being used doesn't use the button. I know you can re-map keys, and you can script iTunes rather easily via applescript, but is there a way to associate a key with an applescript? Could save a lot of time flipping through windows.
Simply run the HYMN de-DRM'd files through a tag remover such as tgutf, and "poof!"... you're good to go. Of course, you'll have to add whatever tags you use back into the file, but at least iTunes will now play them.
A friend of mine is an Apple Sales Consultant - he's downloaded the presentation from Apple's consultant website and provided the two following tidbits of info:
First, the iTunes program is re-encoding everything into Apple Lossless, then sending that wirelessly to the Airport Express station. So if you want to get a head start, start reverse-engineering that.
Even when that's done, there's still one other small problem; apparently Apple is encrypting the music streams sent to said Airport Express stations.
He said the presentation he downloaded wasn't particularly clear on either of these two points so I could be wrong here, but it sounds very plausible to me.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
You may be able to control all of those streams using this hint: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040 60806111322
Basically set up a playlist, play it as your multiple users, and control it with one final user (adding/deleting tracks).
I was quite relieved to see this move on Apple's part. It's not in *their* best interests but it's certainly in the best interests of hymn users because it will force them to remove the ID tag. The notion of leaving the ID in the hymn'ed file was foolish and reckless -- a horrible disservice. If you had a hymn'ed file in your library and had enabled iTunes sharing then somebody could use something like Leechster to copy that file without your consent. If that person then shared the file to Kazaa or whatever and Apple got hold of it then you would take the fall.
And no, enabling iTunes sharing is *not* consenting to have other people copy your songs, it's consenting to have other people *listen* to them. If they abuse that privelege it's not your fault. It's an Apple-approved feature and there's no sensible reason why I should be able to use it for songs I've ripped from CDs but not those I've purchased from iTMS.
Last time I tried to fast-user-switch iTunes wouldn't run, claiming "Another user is running iTunes, please ask them to close it" or something similar to that. Is that still true or did some update sneak in multi-user iTunes support without me noticing =(
Yep, I already read those two things on some website.
It looks from the binary that the encryption is aes. It shouldn't be too hard to break their aes key.
I'm surprised there isn't already someone doing the apple lossless codec.
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