Posts tagged with "itunes"

Billboard: Beatles Coming To iTunes Tomorrow

Following Peter Kafka’s comments at All Things Digital about streaming and cloud services not coming to iTunes tomorrow, Billboard now weighs in consolidating the rumors that Apple is going to announce an exclusive deal to bring the Beatles’ library to the iTunes Store:

That’s not fully confirmed, but after a day of phone calls, e-mails and cryptic messages, Billboard.biz is sticking its neck out and saying this is what we’re going to hear tomorrow.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Apple was “on the verge” of announcing a Beatles deal. For years, every music-related announcement coming from Apple carried a hint of maybe “today’s the day.” But this time it’s very likely that it’ll be the case tomorrow morning.

For these (admittedly thin) reasons and others that we can’t yet divulge here, place your bets on a Beatles announcement tomorrow. Now comes the speculation as to what that announcement will entail.

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Is “iTunes Live Stream” The Announcement We’ll Never Forget?

Italian blog The Apple Lounge found something really interesting the property list file of iTunes 10.1: code references of a feature called “iTunes Live Stream”, although it’s not clear what such feature could be aimed at. The Apple Loung and MacRumors speculate it might be something video-related, as Apple recently deployed its own HTTP streaming solution for Apple devices by live streaming the latest Steve Jobs’ keynotes. Read more

All Things Digital: Don’t Hold Your Breath For iTunes Cloud Tomorrow

Uh oh, here’s what Peter Kafka from All Things D has to say about Apple’s teaser on its homepage and the big iTunes announcement tomorrow:

I’ll be very surprised if it is music related — like a new music subscription service, or even one that lets you stream music you already own to multiple devices. The music industry sources I’ve talked to so far today don’t know of any new deals between Apple and the big music labels. So that would rule out a new subscription service, which would definitely require a new rights deal.

And that also makes it very unlikely that Apple does the next best thing: Letting users upload their iTunes catalog to the cloud, and letting them access it anywhere they want.

It’s getting trickier. Speculation continues.

“Exciting Announcement from iTunes” Coming Tomorrow

Oh, look what we have here. Apple just updated its homepage on apple.com to include this banner, which states an “exciting announcement” from iTunes is coming tomorrow at 7 AM PST. “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget” – that’s quite a thing to write up on Apple’s homepage.

We know that iOS 4.2 should drop tomorrow at 10 AM PST, and we know that iPhone and iPad users will be able to download the software update using iTunes. Will Apple change the system underlying the whole software update process? But then again, how would that be something we’ll never forget? It definitely must be something else than iOS 4.2-related rumors.

What comes to mind if the long-awaited “iTunes in the cloud”, based on that huge data center Apple is building in North Carolina. Apple could deploy a cloud-based sync and streaming solution for apps and media, or the rumored iTunes subscription service for music. The possibilities are really endless, and it’s just up to Apple and how much they’re willing to deploy in the first version of “the new iTunes”. What we’re sure of is, Steve Jobs doesn’t hype something so much unless it’s totally revolutionary and breakthrough. So the cloud would be, in my opinion, the most plausible answer.

We’ll check back tomorrow at 7 AM PST. Is there going to be a live streaming of the announcement, anyway? Or just text and screenshots? We’ll keep you posted as we find out more.

Update: more speculation here.

Apple Brings Ping To The iPad

Earlier today, ahead of iOS 4.2 launch, Apple updated the backend of the iTunes app for iPad to include support for Ping. Once you’ve authorized Ping in iTunes 10 on the Mac, you can access your stream through a Ping tab at the bottom of iTunes app. Just like the desktop version, Ping for iPad integrates with Twitter and automatically tweets every time you like or post something on Ping.

You can like and post songs available in the iTunes Store (sadly, there’s no way to integrate Ping with the native iPod app), check on your profile and see your activity. There’s also a concert-specific section that shows local concerts, bands on tour and links to purchase tickets on ticketmaster.

Ping integration in iTunes for iPad suggests iOS 4.2 is really around the corner now, as we reported when Apple released the second GM build of iOS 4.2 for iPad last night.

Check out more screenshots below. [Thanks, Tim] Read more

Hide and Disable Ping in iTunes 10.1

iTunes 10.1, launched a few hours ago, introduced two new options to hide Ping from the sidebar and disable it completely using parental controls. First, check out our previous post detailing how you can hide Ping’s dropdown menu using a Terminal hack.

If you want to hide the Ping element from iTunes’ sidebar, open iTunes’ preferences, hit the General tab and deselect Ping in the “Show” section. That will remove it from the sidebar.

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Apple Releases iTunes 10.1, Brings iOS 4.2 Support

iTunes 10.1 just went live on Apple’s website. iTunes 10.1 is required to update your devices to iOS 4.2. You can download it here.

iTunes 10.1 introduces overall performance and stability improvements, sync support for iOS 4.2, video streaming to the Apple TV. After Mac OS X 10.6.5 and iTunes 10.1, iOS 4.2 is the next step.

How To Sync Your Entire iTunes Library With Dropbox

Those who follow me on Twitter have probably read that I’ve been struggling in trying to make iTunes play nice with Dropbox. As I wrote many times here on MacStories in the past, I moved all the files and app databases I access on a daily basis into Dropbox, but iTunes was missing. I read in many forums and blog posts that making iTunes work fine with Dropbox sync across multiple computers was quite a mess, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to take the effort and spend hours messing with 80GB of music (and hours of uploads for my connection) and all those apps I have in my library. Fortunately, I don’t store movies in iTunes.

So as I wrote, I was having doubts about going Dropbox all the way with iTunes. The advantages of this method are obvious: you can sync your devices on multiple computers as long as Dropbox is updated to the latest version, you can check for app updates on any of your computers – you can add music to your library no matter the computer you’re using. With Dropbox, iTunes simply thinks it’s running on a single machine, while in fact you’re using it on multiple machines. I have a MacBook Pro and an iMac, but I’m sure the same method works on 2 or more computers.

There are some tricks you must know, however, and some steps you have to follow in order to make it work and avoid errors. iTunes is not exactly the most stable app for the Mac or the easiest to tweak: by default, it stores its database in a directory other than /Library (where most apps usually reside), it relies on a .xml library file that can easily be corrupted and if you go ahead and store app betas in your iTunes Library, you’ll have to deal with additional folders. In my experience, iTunes has turned out to be the hardest application to sync with Dropbox, but I think I’ve nailed it. Here’s how. Read more