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iTunes is a computer program made by Apple Computer intended to play, organize and buy music files (it is also a common name for iTunes Music Store). It is compatible with computers running Mac OS X, Windows 2000, or Windows XP operating systems. Earlier versions of iTunes also run on Mac OS 9. The player has gained a reputation of ease of use and good organization, and has been positioned by Apple as the preferred music player for users using the iPod music player (succeeding Musicmatch Jukebox on Windows). It is freely downloadable from Apple's website and is also supplied with Mac OS X as well as Apple's iLife home-application suite. iTunes was developed from SoundJam MP, a popular commercial MP3 application distributed by the Macintosh software company Casady & Greene. Apple purchased the rights to the SoundJam MP software and hired the three programmers who created SoundJam. The first release of iTunes was very similar to SoundJam MP with the addition of CD burning, and a makeover of the user interface. Apple has added a number of significant features in subsequent versions.
FeaturesUsers are able to organize their music into playlists, edit file information, record compact discs, copy files to a digital audio player, purchase music on the Internet through its built-in music store, run a visualizer to display graphical effects in time to the music as well as encode music into a number of different audio formats. 'Smart playlists' are playlists that are automatically updated (like a database query) based on a customized list of selection criteria. Music libraryiTunes stores metadata about the audio files in two files. The first is a binary file called iTunes 4 Music Library that uses its own music library format, independent of the audio format's tag capabilities (for example the ID3 tag). The second file, called iTunes Music Library.xml, uses XML format, allowing developers to easily write applications that can access the information (e.g. Apple's own iDVD, iMovie, and iPhoto or Freshly Squeezed Software's Rock Star (http://freshsqueeze.com/products/rockstar/)). File format supportiTunes can currently encode to MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4 AAC, and Apple Lossless, and can play anything QuickTime can play (even video formats, as long as they have audio), including Protected AAC files from the iTunes Music Store, plus Audible.com (http://audible.com) audio books. It can be extended to play other formats such as the free Ogg Vorbis audio format through the addition of QuickTime components. However, critics suggest that Apple have neglected their MP3 encoder in favor of the AAC encoder. In a January 2004 double-blind public listening test of six MP3 encoders encoding at 128kbps, conducted by Roberto Amorim, the iTunes MP3 encoder came last. [1] (http://www.rjamorim.com/test/mp3-128/results.html) The Windows version of iTunes can automatically convert unprotected WMA files to other audio formats, but it does not support direct playback or encoding of WMA format. Music sharingiTunes Library songs can be shared over a local network using Rendezvous - Apple's name for the Zeroconf (zero configuration required) open network standard - which allows shared lists of songs within the same subnet to be automatically detected. When a song is shared, iTunes can stream the song but won't save a copy on the local hard drive, in order to prevent piracy. Songs in Protected AAC format can also be accessed but authentication is required. Originally with iTunes 4.0, users could access shared music anywhere over the internet, in addition to one's own subnet, by specifying IP addresses of remote shared song libraries. This feature was soon removed by Apple with version 4.0.1, claiming that users were violating the EULA. Music sharing uses the Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP), created by Apple for this purpose. [2] (http://daap.sourceforge.net/) Just days after the Windows version of iTunes was released, Bill Zeller, a 20-year-old Trinity College student, wrote myTunes (http://www.cowpimp.com/), a program which allows Windows users to circumvent the iTunes restriction and download music from an iTunes shared playlist over a network. The program quickly became popular and is now widely used. An open source Java client that does a similar thing was also developed called ourTunes (http://ourtunes.sourceforge.net/). PluginsMissing image ITunes_Viz.jpg iTunes visualisers. The default Apple visualiser is in front, with a 3rd party plugin behind iTunes supports visualizer plugins and device plugins. Visualizer plugins allow developers to create music-driven visual displays (iTunes includes a default visualizer). The visualizer plugin software development kits for Mac (ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Development_Kits/iTunes_Visual_Plug-ins_SDK.dmg.bin) and Windows (http://developer.apple.com/sdk/itunesvisualsdk.html) can be downloaded for free from Apple. Device plugins allow support for additional music player devices, but Apple will only license the APIs to bona fide OEMs who sign an NDA. Synchronizing iPod and other playersiTunes can automatically synchronize its music library with an iPod or other supported digital music player every time it is connected. New songs and playlists are automatically copied to the iPod and songs which have been deleted from the library on the computer are also deleted from the iPod. Ratings awarded to songs on the iPod will sync back to the iTunes library and audiobooks will remember the current playback position. Automatic synchronization can be turned off in favor of manually copying individual songs or complete playlists; however, iTunes supports only copying music to the iPod and not from it, which has inspired third party tools for that purpose. It is also possible to copy from the iPod using ordinary Unix command line tools. When an iTunes music library that is larger than the iPod is synchronized, a special playlist is created that is named after the iPod and contains just enough music to fit will be created. The user can then modify this playlist to include preferred songs and exclude less-preferred songs.
iTunes Music StoreVersion 4 of iTunes introduced the iTunes Music Store from which iTunes users can legally buy and download songs for use on a limited number of computers and iPods. Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store are copy protected with Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) scheme. To date, over 250 million songs have been downloaded since the service first launched in April 2003. iTunes version historyMac OS 9
Mac OS 9 & Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X & Windows
See alsoExternal links
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