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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?
They are also reporting over on the Apple Discussions that the problems with sharing large (somewhere over 50 gig) libraries has been fixed.
I'd place good money on there being changes that support the upcoming UK/European version of iTMS rumoured to be announced next week.
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!
It might be interesting to note that the changes in the licensing terms are only for the newly bought songs in 4.5, i.e. for the songs you already purchased before upgrading to 4.5, the old terms still apply.
That aside, nothing changes in the licensing terms from iTunes 4.5 to 4.6.
Oh great, iTunes 4.6 is out, but now Apple are having problems fulfilling orders for the Airport Express units that make use of the new features. I ordered 2 on Monday (from the UK Apple Store) with an estimated ship time of 3 days. Received an email this morning telling me that it's going to be mid-July before they will be available.
Anyone know a reason why? Too many orders? Problems with the unit? Announced too early?
It is supposed to have fixed the crashing on radio stations and sharing of large libraries problems
I look forward to having an AirPort Express to try this with, not so much to play music directly as to have a chance to reverse engineer the broadcast protocol. Apple don't seem to have published much about the protocol to be used to send music from a Mac to the Express but I can imagine that lots of people are looking forward to buying a number of the AirPort Express hardware units for distributing audio and there is almost certainly another set of people who want to know how to use iTunes 4.6 to stream audio to other computers.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
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.
Just turn it off in preferences. It's called "Group compilations while browsing".
Just read a post on the Apple Support forums from an Apple Employee who says that it will be possible to send different streams to different AE boxes under Panther by starting multiple instances of iTunes under fast user switching and letting each one stream to a seperate box (assuming your bandwidth can take it). Sounds pretty cool to me.
Temporary fix:
Open the Hymn'ed song in a hex editor.. Look for "geID" or something with "ID" as the last two characters there. I'm not sure if it's always the same or not. Anyway, change this to "xxID" and save it. Then try the file in iTunes again.
Or wait for a new Hymn to remove the ID entirely.
Or just don't install 4.6. It doesn't add a whole heck of a lot of functionality except for compatibility with that new wireless access point/stereo output thing they've got coming out.
Frankly, this was an *extremely* stupid move by Apple. What's the point? Look, people can crack the DRM, okay. But the programs tried to be nice by leaving the ID in there. The point was to enable fair use, not to enable file sharing. By leaving the ID in there, it makes it extremely easy to figure out who illegally shared their purchased music. People using it for fair use purposes wouldn't be sharing the music, and so they have no worries about the ID being there or not.
This "fix" by Apple just makes it HARDER for them to actually catch anybody sharing music. Because now a new version will be created to remove the ID as well, and thus make files that are indistinguishable from normally ripped and encoded ones. Now somebody shares music, and there's no way to track them down. How STUPID can Apple be? Seriously? This is just freakin' preposterous.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I still say the best way to de-DRM iTunes purchases is to burn then to an Audio CD-RW, then rip back as MP3s. Grab the album art from WalMart.com and you're all set.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Yup, and I'm one of them ;).
However, the original poster wasn't asking Apple to write a Window Manager or anything -- they just want iTunes for Linux.
Why would Apple want to do this? Probably because the iPod and iTunes Music Store are two of their biggest money makers, and extending their reach would only serve to increase those profits.
Unfortunately, I can't see them actually doing this. But hey, as someone who has both Linux machines and a PowerBook G4, one can hope :).
Brad BARCLAY
In case you haven't noticed it, the new iTunes has support for trailers, an although this is just a small departure from their current feature set, I bet they are just fine tuning the backend technology to support a full video on-demand service. In a few months, you'll be using iTunes to buy a movie for $9.99 and stream it to your Airport Express II to watch it in your own home theatre. I can't wait.
Originally posted here.
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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People would only be able to copy your songs on the local subnet though. I can see how this is some kind of problem in a dorm or something, but for most people it's not a huge issue.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.