Apple Releases Major iTunes Update 910
shunnicutt writes "Apple has released iTunes 4.5 (and iPod software 2.2 and QuickTime 6.5.1) and relaxed some iTunes Music Store restrictions: now tracks you purchased can be authorized to play on up to five other computers, instead of three. However, they reduced the number of times you can burn a playlist to an audio CD from ten to seven. Another new feature is iMix, which allows you to publish playlists on iTMS, including comments on each track. The iTMS also offers a weekly free single for download."
crazney adds "This release also changes their network sharing protocol in a way that breaks the open source iTunes sharing applications that have been released (based on my work on iTunes 4.2's DRM)."
kefoo writes "Among the new features is Apple Lossless Encoding, which claims to compress losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD quality audio." Hm, and I was about to re-rip all my CDs at 320 kbps MP3 ...
Update: 04/28 14:56 GMT by P : I just tested, and I can listen to previously de-DRM'd AAC files from playfair, but I cannot use either playfair or FairTunes any longer. The former "Couldn't get DRM key for user," and the latter produces a blank file.
Re:This whole limit of computers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Full speed, icebergs ahead (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, I have a 17" screen, so I don't know what it looks like on a twelve incher, but I've never had any complaints about the interface layout.
Re: losslessly to half the size of uncompressed CD (Score:5, Insightful)
hmm, isn't that pretty bad actually? can't you get that kind of compression(get 40mb wav into 20mb file) with just zip&others on pretty easily anyways, fucking _ten_years_ago_.
Try playing a .zip file on your iPod...
Encoding is free if your time is worth nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)
You either have very few CDs or way too much time on your hands.
I was considering making higher bit rate versions of my library but would only hire my brother to do it for me (over 200 albums).
Re:Wow, so it's now almost as good as winamp (Score:1, Insightful)
from what I can work out, and you can correct me if I am wrong. the DRM is only available on music store purchased tracks, and no matter how hard you try it cannot be enabled on personal tracks
don't buy music from itunes music store = all the great features of winamp (minus some of the not so great) + better mp3 archive management.
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:5, Insightful)
More artist will come. Apple now allows certain albums to be sold in their entirety (some artist didn't want their albums picked apart), and Apple now allows users to print cover art (some artist hated the lack of album packaging).
Re:Wow, so it's now almost as good as winamp (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog (Score:4, Insightful)
Lossless (Score:3, Insightful)
And, as you mention, pretty much everything I listen to is unavailable. Now where are those terabyte drives?
Is this FLAC? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't seem to be the case. These files are given the file extension '.m4a'. Attempting to decode them with the CLI flac program only produces errors.
It's a shame too, because FLAC is really starting to pick up as the lossless format of choice for internet distribution. In certain cirlces at least. If Apple had decided to throw their weight behind, it could have really taken off.
Re:They have Cradle of Filth albums!!!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog (Score:1, Insightful)
That's interesting, because I don't think they are exclusive. I happily use them both. It's great to be able to share multiple desktops to different types of activities. These activities may again need multiple windows, where Expose comes to play.
Re:Apple Lossless encoding (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I would think the Genre of music would make a difference, just like compressing an image of snow versus an image of a gumball machine.
Re:Slight change in the rules... (Score:2, Insightful)
This whole iTMS rests on Apple's reputation of being Good People (tm) (which they usually are) but they are a for-profit company, and money always wins in the long run not being nice. Some pressure from the RIAA and maybe this deal takes a turn for the worse?
Re:Still not using it (Score:5, Insightful)
Unenlightened moderators or those that are crack dependent may mod you down.
I think the point needs to be made that as good as all the itunes seems to be, everybody is forgetting one critical fact;
You can not resale the music that you have purchased like with a regular LP, tape, or CD. Apple has purposefully left out first sale rights as it would erode the artificial value of the music. Even if there was a mechanism to erase all your copies and resale your itunes to someone else, Apple would not allow it, as this would put downward price pressure on the music Apple sells.
The music industry has controlled the price of CDs through illegal collusion, and probably are still managing to do so. Itunes is a natural extension of artificially controlling the price of music.
If normal economic forces were allowed to take over, there are quite a few industry executives that would no longer be able to afford their drug habit.
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that would be cool, but I'd be very surprised if they did that. The problem is that you could easily strip the DRM by burning it to a CD and re-ripping it, and unlike DRM'd lossy files, there would be no loss in quality from the transfer.
Well, not that I think that would be a problem, but I'll bet Apple would.
Re:Missing: Basic Features (Score:3, Insightful)
MPC/FLAC/SHN/APE/etc. support. If applications like Foobar, Winamp, and QCD can pull it off, why can't iTunes, with it's beefy 19.5 MB download, play simple file formats like these that've been around for years? Wouldn't it work in their favor to allow their users more choice, to let their users listen to their music in whatever format they've chosen to encode them in?
Because listening to something in iTunes that you couldn't then sync to your iPod would defeat the purpose, which is to provide the complete iPod experience and sell more iPods.
Support for competing MP3 portables. I think I read somewhere that iTunes may support another mp3 player besides the iPod, but that really isn't enough. Once again, I think it'd be beneficial the popularity of the program if they supported other players. Have they released an SDK for their community to toy with? The Foobar and Nullsoft teams did this, and they got great results.
Right... but iTunes is free, and if they're not selling iPods it doesn't make any sense to go after that market. Even if they made a little money on the iTMS, those tracks wouldn't play on the competitive players so again you're missing out on the integration, which is iTMS' strength.
Don't get me wrong - some of your points, like that about Speed and Gapless Playback, make a lot of sense. But you have to look at this from a business perspective when you ask, "Why doesn't Apple..."
Re:PlayFair'ed files not working? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole reason they can get so many of the labels they do is that they protect their rights. I know it sucks for the little guy who wants to give music to all of their friends, but I find their version of DRM within acceptable limits, unlike most other DRM systems.
DRM Agreement Changed. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly what the anti-DRM nazis were talking about.. they CHANGED the licensing agreement and nobody cares.
Do you realize what this means? They could simply one day revoke all but 1 of your machine licenses, put all your m4p's into one big encrypted image, and turn your genitals into scrambled eggs and there's nothing you can do about it because YOU agreed to it by buying DRM.
Sure, THIS time it's not a big deal, in fact most people will be happy with this new way of doing things.. but doesn't it bother you that they can take as well as give?
Seven burns down from Ten on tracks you already own.
Think about that..
And no, I'm not a stinkin pirate or anything like that. Just think if the implications
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder why they release singles and videos?
Damnit, Steve! (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that Apple could do the same thing that they're doing with DRM, and authorize 5 computers to share via IP. (on different subnets) - I have no interest in P2Ping music with all the leaches out there, but the ability to share my Library over the net with a few others would be quite welcome. (iTunes 4.0.1?) It seems like iTunes is one program that really shows the limitations that the RIAA puts on Apple. Of course, I could get an iRaise, and go buy an iPod, but i'Ve got enough iCrap to carry around.
Simple Concept (Score:5, Insightful)
The more times an iTMS-unavailable artist shows up on user-submitted playlists, the more pressure Apple has to try to sign that artist.
I like where this is going.
Re:Wow, so it's now almost as good as winamp (Score:2, Insightful)
Create new smart playlist, match contition Play Count, pick >,=,, pick a number.
Not to hard
Re:Missing: Basic Features (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ITMS already restricts some sales to complete.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to listen to Pynk floyd's 'The Wall' in random mode for example.
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:1, Insightful)
Many artists have no say in how their music is distributed. Take the Beatles for example. A certain accused child molester in California has 50% say in how their recordings are distributed, while the surviving band members slowly grind their teeth and wait for him to go bankrupt.
Re:Yay for WMA conversion (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple has the tough job of managing all those feature requests and distilling them down to the key features - to make the apps good without unnecessary complexity.
As for the DRM. Noone likes putting limits on their flexibility. I'm now being penalized for all the jackasses pirating music. But, I wouldn't use a system if the DRM was intrusive. For my needs, and apparently a lot of other users, iTunes works well. On my home LAN, the music sharing works great. When I'm not at home, the iPod carries my whole music collection with me. Beyond that, my needs are pretty limited.
My complaints about DRM aren't with the companies trying to play fair, like Apple. It's with the music labels, who are lobbying and making it seem like this is a threat to our national security. And, their lapdogs in congress and state legislatures proposing laws to clamp down on this.
BTW - there is no 'i' in joyed.
Re:It makes sense to go up to 5 auth. systems (Score:2, Insightful)
Without DRM, there would be no technological reason that all of your iTunes tracks couldn't be played on Tivo, et al.
DRM reduces your rights to use works you have paid money for, and you get nothing in return.
U.S. Copyright law says you have an absolute fair use right to format-convert in order to play content on your own equipment. DRM says otherwise. One of them's gotta go.
Re:DRM Agreement Changed. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right about the DRM agreement changing, but only sorta. They EXPANDED what you could do, DRM wise.
They agreed to let you play on 3 computers, that's what I agreed to when I signed up and bought many many songs. Now they said I can use 5 computers, I'm happy.
The second change isn't to the DRM. I can still burn a song to a CD as many times as I'd like, as I agreed to. What they don't let me do, through software, is burn the same PLAYLIST more than 7 times. In other words, I can't make the exact same CD more than 7 times. Change a single song or (I believe) even reorder the songs and you can burn them another 7 times. It's not a DRM change, it's a tool change.
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:4, Insightful)
A flaw in your arguement (Score:4, Insightful)
So Apple is faced with an issue. They couldn't just cut something out, without giving people a reason to agree to it. I nthis case, to continue shopping at the store and gain the ability to use 2 extra computers, I have to give up 3 identical CD burns. Big deal. Th emost I have ever burned is 2.
I see your point, but I think that reasonable business desires will keep DRM in check because otherwise, people wouldn't buy it at all.
Re:21 iTunes per iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
But leave it to the Apple freaks to wonder why people are not paying iTunes for songs they have already purchased on CD.
Not exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Seven burns down from Ten on tracks you already own. Think about that.
Actually, this is wrong. First, you can burn non-DRMed songs as many times as you want. Second, you also have unlimited burns of protected songs...BUT, you can only burn the *same playlist* 7 times. You can make a new playlist - with the songs in the exact same order - and burn another 7 times. As many times as you want. This restriction is simply to make it impractical to make 1000 copies of some new album you downloaded from iTunes with a CD recorder tower. You can still burn the music that you bought an unlimited number of times (which, incidentally, strips it of all DRM as well).
Tethered access? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple lossless (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tethered access? (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't make much money at the store, only on the iPods that come with it.
Re:Lossless (Score:3, Insightful)
If you take a file containing raw audio (WAV for example), compress with lossless compression, and then decompress back to WAV, the resulting file is bit-for-bit identical to the original.
Re:Update shows iTMS needs more selection (Score:2, Insightful)
That was a similarly short-sighted decision.
No, that's wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
But playfair/FairTunes do *NOT* work now. I just tried to de-DRM a file I bought from iTMS, and guess what? Now it errors out, telling me that this computer isn't authorized to play the file. I can still play the file in iTunes, but I can't de-DRM it with FairTunes.
So no, it doesn't still work.
Re:By the numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't allofmp3.com selling songs under the same license that allows a radio station to play a song? They are misusing the license and I would imagine that "it is just a matter of time" before allofmp3.com is shut down.
So they have no licensing fees to pay the RIAA, how much are they making on a 4MB download? could they scale to be the #1 music distributor to the world? I think a resounding ** NOT **.
The bottom line is Allofmp3.com is breaking the law by improperly using the license. If push came to shove, the licenses would be changed. Allofmp3.com is irrevelent now and will continue to be.
Re:Multiple Downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who's spent $10k at iTMS deserves to be able to download load them again.
Apple happily lets everyone and their grandmother download all those huge movie trailers for free, I think they can spare some bandwidth for the guy who just gave them $10,000.
Re:DRM Agreement Changed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple lossless (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog (Score:5, Insightful)
The logic is fairly easy to understand: Apple's leadership position in the downloadable music market hinges entirely on its ability to get the labels to license the tracks for download. If Apple doesn't go way out of their way to keep DRM irritatingly hard to work around, the labels yank the music and head over to Redmond which is more than happy to screw the consumer.
Apple is walking a fine line here... Without the tracks, it has nothing to sell. Without fairly liberal license terms, people just head back to the latest peer-to-peer client and nobody makes money.
So the logic in breaking backwards compatibility is that if there's no penalty to keeping a 4.2 or 4.0 version running, people will still be able to use Fairplay or stream to non-lan IP addresses while enjoying all of the benefits of the new 4.5 version.
What's going to end up happening is that everyone will maintain a full library of iTunes versions (like I do) and use the version that's most appropriate for their needs. Want to listen to your home library at work or on the road? Fire up 4.0 before you leave. Want to get rid of the DRM on your tracks? Run 4.2 and FairPlay, then switch back to 4.5 and enjoy the new features.
I'm sure these older versions will break with a system upgrade down the road, but by then, there might be an even cooler jukebox out there.
To me, the larger question is how long it's going to take the media industry to schedule a rectal craniotomy and figure out how to deal with the 21st century instead of hanging out in the 1990s.
Re:Missing: Basic Features (Score:3, Insightful)
iPod battery life with lossless? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Slight change in the rules... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iTunes 4.5 is a screen hog (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It's more of a "Let's hope we make the interface spacing easiest on the eyes without overloading the per square inch of screen real estate so not as to alienate individuals who find such crammed UI's as complex and intimidating.
These are just guesses but ones that have persisted since NeXTSTEP.
Cannot sort by first column (Score:2, Insightful)
Does sorting work on OS X for anyone?
Lossless encoding ? More proprietary-ness (Score:2, Insightful)
They are acting more and more like Microsoft.
Re:They have Cradle of Filth albums!!!!!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Those who do not know the band, go there [nightwish.com] to listen some samples (as 192 kbit MP3).