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Apple Announces iTunes 7, Movies, Set-Top Box
necro81 writes, "As anticipated, Apple announced several additions and upgrades to its iPod and iTunes lineup. The iPod now comes in an 80 GB model, with a $50 price drop for the 30 GB model. The 2nd generation iPod Nano harkens back to the iPod Mini with metallic, multi-colored shells (though as diminutive as ever) and comes in an 8 GB model. The Shuffle has been completely redesigned and shrunk down to the size of a matchbook. All of this comes with the release of iTunes 7, which includes support for downloading full-length movies from iTMS." All 75 movies initially available are from Disney-related studios. The new iTunes will download cover art for all the songs in your library, no matter where you got them from, as long as you have an iTunes account. (A confirmation dialog says: "Information about songs with missing artwork will be sent to Apple. Apple does not keep any information related to the contents of your music library.") There's a new album-cover browsing view of your library. And Steve Jobs gave a sneak preview of a project code-named iTV: a Mac Mini-like wireless set-top box. Engadget has a blow-by-blow of Steve Jobs's presentation.
MacRumorsLive
09:51 am iLounge: Griffin Technology, Belkin, Incase and Nike are in attendance.
09:52 am iLounge: Folks are crowding to get up-front seats. (wonder why?)
10:03 am iLounge: theater is filled to capacity (755 person theater). Podium on the right, a computer setup on the left of the stage (looks like an iMac)
10:04 am the event appears to have begun
10:05 am iLounge: talks about iPod sports kit. Foot Locker is blown away by sales. 450,000 sales in 90 days
10:06 am iLounge: iPods. 3 iPods: iPod, Nano, and Shuffle
10:07 am iLounge: iPod is getting enhanced today. 60% brighter with brighness control, 3.5 hours video playback (up from 2 hrs... big version goes to 6.5 hours), new headphones, gapless playback
10:08 am iLounge: new iPod software features: instant searching, new games (Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini golf, pac man, tetris, texas holdem, vortex, and zuma)
10:09 am iLounge: games for sale off iTunes for $4.99
10:10 am iLounge: games will work on 5G ipods
10:12 am iLounge: 249 and 349 with 60GB and 80GB capacity [SHOULD BE 30GB, 80GB. See below]
10:12 am iLounge: Nano is now, as rumored, Aluminum and in colors
10:14 am iLounge: Green silver black blue pink
10:14 am iLounge: 24 hour batter life
10:15 am iLounge: New software just like standard iPod
10:16 am iLounge: 3 models, but with double storage capacity at each model (and varying colors available)
10:16 am iLounge: 2GB is $149 in silver only
10:16 am iLounge: 4GB is $199 in all colors but black
10:16 am iLounge: 8GB is $249 in all colors
10:17 am iLounge: All models are 52% smaller in volume than previous nano. new charger, new armband, new lanyard
10:18 am iLounge: iPod Shuffle is now 2nd generationl size of iPod Radio Remote
10:21 am iLounge: metal body, 1 model (1GB), $79, ships in october.
10:22 am Engadget: (for nano) $149 2GB ipod is aluminum only, $199 4GB has colors, $249 8GB is black only
10:23 am iLounge: iTunes 7 today
10:24 am iLounge: Source list now includes library with sep libraries for all forms of media
10:24 am iLounge: Store now has own section, devices have their own sections, playlists too
10:25 am iLounge: iTunes will give you cover art for free if you are missing cover art (thanks Steve)
10:26 am iLounge: 3 different views of iTunes, list view, album view (with art and tracks), then "cover flow view" lets you rapidly find what you want by album cover
10:27 am iLounge: iPod updater appears to be now integrated into iTunes
10:28 am iLounge: TV shows are now encoded at 640x480 (h264), up from 320x240
10:28 am Engadget: Today we're introducing the biggest single enhancement: iTunes 7
You say "it looks the same," but it isn't
[the left nav is more cleanly organized without being radically different]
We've added a View switch, a 3-position switch. we've added a 2nd view called album view, so you can scroll through your music library and look at it by album. what if you ripped your CDs and don't have the covers? Today we're announcing free missing album cover art for all the music in your library if you have an itune acct. itunes will automatically download it for free
but there's something even better. that's the third view. it's called Cover Flow view. [LOOKS LIKE FLIPPLING THROUGH YOUR CD RACK]
10:30 am iLounge: you can now sync between multiple computers using an iPod, as long as both are authorized on the same account
10:30 am Engadget: Now, all of this video is encoded with the best encoding in the world, H.264. We've been distributing it at 320x240. Today, we're going to take that up a notch to 640x480. That's 4x the resolution. iTunes 7 also has seamless playback for video.
10:31 am 10:27AM Engadget: You can update your iPod from right inside iTunes now, you don't need to go to Preferences. You can say, "I want to sync the 10 most recent unwatched episides of all my TV shows."
10:31 am iLounge: Demo of iT
Alas, I have just seen that one of the wondrous features the new iTunes Music Store boasts is the ability to lock out iTunes 5. This is the version I've been using on all my macs for one real reason - when I download their free singles of the week (which vary a lot in quality), I like to be able to remove the DRM immediately afterwards. It appears that I am being forced to upgrade. Ahh well. I can also presume that my 4th Gen iPod Colour will not be able to play the new games. How I love thy, apple....
My UID is prime. Is yours?
Use the scroll-wheel on your mouse to browse those albums. MMMmmmm, tasty!
I haven't finished sync'ing my video iPod yet, but after installing iTunes 7, it brought up a dialog as it went through my library saying it was updating for gapless playback.
This would imply that it's done within the audio files themselves, perhaps making it usable on all iPods.
I'll see shortly.
The new music view/organize modes in iTunes are great. One is divided by albums, showing a small image of the album cover along with all the tracks. The other looks like they licensed "Cover Flow", it looks like flipping through albums in your old physical collection. Definitely better visual feedback then scrolling through a huge text list of songs.
It was blue (and other colors) before.
Behold! The iTunes Icon Timeline! Note that the icons on that page are the real deal until you get to "Alternative iTunes icons", then the rest are mildly crappy "fan art". (Ugh.)
I know this is not new, but enabling this functionality for iTMS tracks only is a real dick move.
No, iTunes has never had true gapless playback. There's always been at least a slight hiccup in between tracks, no matter how you set it up. The old crossfade set to 0 trick also wasn't a complete solution - if you had a transition with a fast tempo, you'd hear it screw up a beat or two.
I'm really eager to try this out and see if they truly fixed it.
Say hello to zMac.
Gapless Playback for iPod! Wonder if they will update the 5th gen with this?? Please???
Don't get too excited, MP3s encoded with too old a version of LAME would need to be re-encoded as these older version automatically padded the file. You should be fine with AAC though.
Summation 2
I downloaded The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a test.
- The movie is 1.22 GB, and downloaded in about 20 minutes on a 100 Mbps connection (Internet2).
- The movie was able to be played before downloading was finished, and could skip to anywhere in the content that was already complete.
- The content shows itself as being protected by "FairPlay Version: 2".
- The bitrate is 1.5Mbps.
- The framerate is 24fps.
- The audio on this particular movie is Protected AAC, stereo, 128kbps, 44.1kHz.
- The video on this particular movie is Protected H.264/AVC0 640x272 (Widescreen format, probably just 640x480 with the black bars eliminated).
- The video looks very good (indeed, "near DVD quality") on a high quality 20" LCD. (I'm not a "videophile", but this is absolutely more than watchable on a nice quality large TV or monitor, and I suspect most consumers would agree).
- The video can be played in QuickTime, and uses QuickTime Chapters for DVD chapters; chapters are also accessible in iTunes.
- The video file can be burned to a DVD, but you cannot burn the file as a video DVD.
- You can play the file on multiple computers (I *believe* up to three as opposed to five for music), or on an unlimited number of iPods (if the usage rights haven't changed with iTunes 7; I haven't looked through the terms - if someone knows this to be different please correct me. In any case, it's already less restrictive than Unbox).
- iTunes 7.0 requires QuickTime 7.1.3.
- Pretty much every movie I looked at was $9.99; some new releases were up to $14.99, but were cheaper if preordered.
- When used on a Mac in a media center configuration, or with the forthcoming iTV solution that will presumably be much like a video AirPort Express (and yes, I know it's not an AirPort Express, but it will probably act a lot like a AirPort Express functionally, except allowing the streaming of video to your TV), this will be a pretty compelling and vertically integrated solution for most consumers.
the cover view is made crappy by not grouping compilations - hence the same album art repeated for different artists.
It seems it shows you cover art in the order in which your music is sorted. If you're sorting by "Artist", for example, then yes, it will show you the same cover art multiple times if there are multiple artists on the album. That's because it's actually sorting the cover art by artist.
If you sort by Album, however, I think you'll find that your complaint goes away.
It looks like it will be an appliance that will simply stream video wirelessly from any Mac or Windows system with iTunes.
But, since you can absolutely import any video you wish (including, say, ripped DVDs) into iTunes, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to play any media you wished.
This is likely for people that DO NOT already have some kind of media center or EyeTV/EyeHome/DVR setup: the target for this isn't people who already have made the leap to having full-fledged computer systems in their living room. The target for this is the same as for AirPort Express: not people who build an MP3 and media station computer in their living room. People who want to plop down a device, hook the A/V outputs up to their TV and entertainment system, use an assistant (like AirPort Express) to set it up, and it's ready to play media they download/import on their computer/laptop/etc. elsewhere in the house.
No second whole computer in the living room. This is, essentially, an AirPort Express for video (and yes, I know it's not exactly like an AirPort Express, but its functionality in the context of video and the living room can be summed up that way).
There probably will be *some* advanced or interesting functionality, but it looks like this is more or less an appliance designed to play video content downloaded to iTunes on a remote computer via a Front Row-like interface. But yes, you will be able to add your own video content, since you can do that with iTunes now. The only requirement is that it be some format QuickTime understands.
Warning: The intelligence of this post may be larger than it appears.
I just downloaded iTunes 7 and pluged in my 20 GB 2nd Gen iPod (probably the same one you have - the first one with the non-turning wheel). I was pretty impressed that it copied the music from the iPod to my work Mac and pulled down the album cover art and things look really nice. I'm impressed.
And I'm seriously considering the 80GB model...
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Where've you been? Brushed metal was ditched with iTunes 6. And none of the cosmetic changes with iTunes 7 bear any resemblance to Mail.app.
:(
The most noticable difference appears to be the new scollbars. I agree with the original poster -- I don't like them.
Can we please just get everything looking consistent again Apple? Please? Before you stick Java scollbars on iTunes 7, can we please ditch brushed metal in Finder (and a half dozen other Apple apps that ship with OS X)?
I mean seriously, OS X is starting to look more frankensteinish than your typical Linux installation. I can count 5 different application "looks" now:
- iLife (darker, unified toolbar, squared off corners)
- iTunes 7 (same as iLife, new scrollbars)
- Mail.app (unified toolbar, lighter than iLife, rounder corners)
- Safari/Finder/iCal (etc) (brushed metal)
- TextEdit/Preview (etc) (older non-unified look)
I love my MacBook Pro, but I'm not sure what happened to that consistency that Macs were supposed to be known for.
that's for the iTunes phones. Motorola's ROKR, the RAZR v3i ...
for a minute there, i lost myself...
You can also rip the DVD directly to H.264 with Handbrake and skip the second encoding.
I expect the iTV to support the same codecs the iPod does: H.264, MPEG-4, MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV.
In addition to the great new gapless playback feature, one cool thing "power users" of iTunes might be interested in is that there is now a "Skipped Count" (and "Last Skipped") attribute in iTunes. This will be great for finding those overrated songs that you constantly skip without remembering to downgrade them to fewer stars. Smart Playlists everywhere rejoice!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Would it be nice if all the iApps had a similar look? Yes. Is it more important that they all have a similar "feel"? Yes.
OK, please follow me and close the main window by clicking the red button in:
iTunes - nothing remarkable happens, it is just the window that vanishes
iDVD - closes the current project, goes to opening screen
iChat - nothing remarkable happens, it is just the window that vanishes
iDVD - closes the current project, goes to opening screen
iPhoto - quits application
Three types of behaviour in five applications on a principal part of the interface. I wish Apple shared your beliefs.
There is an app out there that will unify all of the OS X apps (even Firefox) with a common skin. It skins them to be a pretty standard OS X-ish feel, a much like Mail.app (w/o unified buttons), exept slightly darker. It also stips the brushed metal from brushed apps. I haven't ran it in awhile, so can't say if it works with the new iTunes. Its called UNO.
If the interface schizophrenia is getting to you, it might be the best solution, until Apple at least realized that their getting slightly off base with the "a style per app" philosophy. How hard is it to just use some stardardized Aqua on everything? Do individual apps really need to stand out, can function speak for them? I damn well know I'm running iTunes (sound coming from speakers, etc), and don't need it to be styled in such a way to let me know that "yep, thats itunes" when I look at it. Its annoying that they screw up their own standards.
Sorry for the rant, preaching to the choir.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Oops... /. ate my link:
http://gui.interacto.net/
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
As yet, I have not seen anything telling us definitively whether or not we will be able to rip copys of previously purchased DVD's for playback on an iPod.
That's because it's not "legal" in many jurisdictions, including the US.
I wasn't saying that iTunes or iTV would do this; what I'm saying is that it's definitely going to be technically possible, and in fact it's possible right now, in one step, with tools like:
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
But it won't be iTunes itself that does it for you; you'll still have to rip it with another tool first, such as HandBrake. But you can then certainly import into iTunes, play via iTV, or put on your iPod (and you can put it into iTunes and sync it to your iPod today).
As I said elsewhere, it works on my 5th gen, although Sound Check creates a noticeable volume change between the two songs.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
According to the website of the old CoverFlow.app, they did in fact sell their software to Apple, and that's what's being used in iTunes 7. Good for them. I bet they're glad they didn't end up like Watson or, to a less extent, Konfabulator (though they did manage to get bought out by Yahoo!).
iTunes 7 addressed every last issue I had with it.
Quicktime still installs an icon in your system tray in Windows, no matter if you had that checkbox deselected previously. Dammit.
Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
The old shuffle had its USB interface built in, and you could use it as a USB key to take some data with you. Now you have to carry along a dock. This is less geek-friendly.
Actually that's the way it should be. Allow me to explain the reasoning:
iTunes/iChat: They can keep doing their thing even without any windows around and you will probably use them that way. iTunes will keep playing music, iChat will keep you connected and people might contact you.
iDVD/iMovie (I assume that was a typo): They are project based. Close the project, go back to the opening screen. There's not much to do with neither app without a project open.
iPhoto: The window manages the library. Nothing to do without it around. Application quits.
Hope that helps.
a quick note to let others running iTunes on Windows 2000 pro NOT to download & install the new iTunes just yet. I only get an error message after the EULA, re. app. cannot be started, unknown error, errcode #0x666D743F. I don't know about others, am monitoring mac-centric websites just in case.
will investigate this further, but for now, win2k users should wait a few days. i am right now re-installing iTunes v6.0.5, hoping none of my music got wiped out.
You can still charge over firewire, but not sync.
You can sync via USB 1.1, although it will be very slow.
For the people who've reported gapless playback in existing generation iPods, can you double check? Any further details? Firmware versions? Won't work for me. I guess I'll have to listen to one of the new iPods in store before purchasing.
Say hello to zMac.
Just a warning. The iTunes 7 update appears to break my Volume Logic plugin. You may not want to upgrade if you use Volume Logic.
I seriously doubt the shuffle will ever support gapless, but I'm still wondering about the Airport Express problem. iTunes 6 connects just fine to the same unit that iTunes 7 won't talk to. iTunes 7 sees it, but nothing happens when you select it.
Say hello to zMac.
Click the "Album" column header again. It goes from sorting by "Album," to "Album by Artist," to "Album by Year," then back to "Album."
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
How Apple's iTV Media Strategy Works
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The Apple iTMS vs Amazon Unbox Rivalry Myth
Having tested it this afternoon, I can report that iTunes 7 does indeed do true gapless playback.
:)
Now, there seem to be two types built in:
- The first is standard gapless - the end of one file and the beginning of another coincide with no introduced gap. This is presumably a change in the playback / buffering code.
- The second is scanned gapless - in addition to the introduced gap being eliminated, you can mark a 'gapless album' - which I assume actually removes (or rather, removes for playback) silence from the start and end of tracks. This would explain the 'scanning for gapless playback' background scan upon the initial launch of iTunes 7.
What I have been wanting for so long is the standard gapless kind - I don't want silence trimmed from the tracks, I just want them to from one to the next with no gaps introduced. So for those who have been after the same thing, I can confirm that this now works with no extra flag-setting or configuration.
For the record, I tested it out on Pink Floyd's The Wall. Sounded great.
After playing with iTunes 7 for a day, I found this new version unstable. The download view does not work properly and often make the software hang. I could not burn a cd which was working fine on previous version. The new views are slow even on a 2 gigz cpu. Some songs does not play on airtunes as they are supposed to. Bottomline, the feature set is great but it does not seem that this version is ready for prime time.