Andre Yoskowitz
9 Sep 2009 14:11
Apple, speaking at their "Rock n' Roll" live event today, introduced iTunes 9 and with it, a plethora of new features.
The first addition is that of Genius mixes. Apple CEO Steve Jobs explains that the Genius library now has 27 million libraries built from 54 billion analyzed tracks, which will create Genius Mixes, personal radio stations similar to Pandora.
The Genius also works for movies and even applications you have downloaded from the iTunes store.
The second improvement was improved Syncing, as Apple says, for when "you sync to your iPod Touch or iPhone we have made that much better." Users can now choose select playlists, artists, genres, and photos from certain events, certain albums or even photos that only include certain faces. Movies have been give a "recently added" and you can manually choose favorites.
Additionally, Home Sharing makes it easy for users to sync an iTunes library between up to 5 computers in a house. All authorized computers can share music, movies and TV shows between them, and will be viewed as part of a shared group where users can drag and drop content from one library to another.
The next feature is iTunes LP. All the artist pages have been given more visual material as well photos, liner notes and essays. iTunes Extra allows users to check extra content on DVDs and Blu-rays.
Finally is the App Management page which allows users to virtually arrange all the apps, while seeing a preview of how your iPhone home screen will look. You can also easily search for your applications, good for those that have tens or even hundreds of apps.
"iTunes 9 is a great iTunes release, with innovative features that make using iTunes better than ever and iTunes content richer than ever," added Steve Jobs. "iTunes LP, for example, lets artists share more of their creativity with fans and gives music lovers the feeling of being immersed in an entire album with art, lyrics, liner notes, photos and videos."
So far at the event, Apple has also announced they have sold 30 million iPhones, served 1.8 billion Apps, and sold 8.5 billion songs through iTunes.
Apple also announced the iPod market share is at 73.8 percent, 225 million iPods sold, and that there are more games for Touch than PSP & NDS.
The company also revealed a 64GB iPod Touch, lower price on 160GB iPod Classic, new Shuffles, and a camera-equipped Nano.