Apple releases iTunes 8.1

Apple released an update to its iTunes music management software on Wednesday, adding a host of enhancements as well as support for a new line of iPod Shuffles it released earlier in the day.

In addition to some security fixes, iTunes 8.1 adds new features to Genius--a feature that lets you put songs together in your library that somehow "go great together"--and support for CD imports to iTunes Plus.

Among the other enhancements Apple made:

•  Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.

•  Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.

•  Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.

•  Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.

•  Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

The update comes on the heels of Apple's unveiling earlier Wednesday of a new iPod Shuffle. The new device, which is smaller than a AA battery, adds a new VoiceOver feature that can recite song titles, artists, and playlist names, as well as provide status information, such as battery life. Apple claims the gadget's battery life clocks in at 10 hours.

In conjunction with the iTunes update, Apple also released an update to Front Row, its media application for that allows users to access music, movies, and TV shows in one place, although the company did not detail the update.

[assman]

All I want is a fix for the terrible performance issues in Windows.

[Perry_Clease]

Okay...I won't say it, but I am sure AppleRocks will post a suggestion. :)

[Jonnygthedrummer]

haha i think i no wat hes goin to say,

buy a Mac

[xcal78]

Seeing as the windows version makes the greater majority of the business you'd expect it to work better in windows then on a mac. It was a flop before they made a windows version.

[Hairbawl87]

That's the first thing I thought when I finished reading the headline.

[jinx101a]

I think the let the interns code the Windows version of iTunes because it's the worst, slowest music manager ever. It's sad when Vista performs very well on hardware, and on that same hardware iTunes takes no less than 2 seconds to respond to any mouse click. This isn't rocket science, it's clicking on a check box in a list.

Hopefully they fix some of these issues because the last version of iTunes was a fail.

[kfloydh]

why do people keep saying it adds a genius sidebar for movies and tv shows?

when I click on a movie I get the message in my genius sidbar "Genius sidebar only works with music. Select a song in your library to see related music."

[MadLyb]

Went to get the new version of Quicktime and SURPRISE, Apple is back to bundling iTunes with it and once again I am back to not using Quicktime.

Guess they need to artificially run their download and adoption numbers for iTunes up again by forcing downloads.

Hey Apple, I don't need iTunes, I don't want iTunes, I will never use iTunes. Is that clear enough for ya?

[arj8138]

Have they not been bundling it together for the past so many years? I just tried to download the version before this latest release and I had to get iTunes with it.... Both programs are so integrated with eachother that when you go to get quicktime, it is easier for apple to just include iTunes.... and if they get a couple of switchers along the way then so be it ^_^

Also ALOT of people made the switch to mac because of their iPods and iTunes, so it would be stupid of apple to try and forget all of that and just give people quicktime.

I on the other hand got an iPod because Macs do not play nice with any other type of mp3 player.

[kcotham]

@arj8138
It isn't that Macs don't play nice with other portable music players, it's that the other manufacturers don't write software for the Mac OS. One of the biggest at fault is Sony. You'd think that after all these years, they'd be making their software available for Mac OS. I was looking at the MD players several years ago, until I saw that the syncing software was Windows only. Shame, shame, shame.

[gboess82]

"Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods."

Well that sounds pretty usefull. I'm tired of changing playlist settings so I completely fill up my 8 gb nano without going over. If it's even 8.001 GB you get a message saying "not enough room..." and have to go back and take off 1 more song....


For the people that don't use iTunes to manage their music (whether you have an iPod or not) what are you using and why is it better? I think iTunes is pretty good, what am I missing?

[arj8138]

Umm, if your iPod is only 8gigs then once formatted and your iPod software is on it you have closer to 7 gigs free than 8, so somehow thinking that going even .001 over 8gigs would be acceptable in the first place shows how much you dont know about available space.

[gboess82]

wow arj8138, I was making a point stating the 8 gbs. No one cares if I have 7.12 available gbs or 6.85 gbs and I'm certainly not going to launch iTunes and find out for your sake. Your post shows how much you don't know about the practical way people think.

[Pishkado]

I don't drive a Toyota or a Bentley. That doesn't mean they're not good cars that meet the real and imagined needs of a whole bunch of people. For me to deny that, or to say that my not using them makes them bad or should send them a message, would be pretty arrogant - and would say more about me than it ever could about either of them.

[tipoo_]

Still ***********. I thought it was just my computer, i'm still on a single core so it was understandable. but when i saw it lagging on my friends Phenom II (quad core) i was thoroughly convinced that its crap.

[alenas]

They still did not fix 2 year old bug, when Synchronization with Outlook crash all the time (using iPhone 3G). What's the use of the software or the iPhone - when I can not have my contacts and calendar synchronized...Apple are useless devs...

[Perry_Clease]

Go check the Apple Support Forums, if you have not yet done so, and see if someone has a solution that works for your situation.

[nobdoy_knose]

Has Apple acknowledged yet the complete inability of ITunes to sync with computers running Windows XP SP3 ?

[nobdoy_knose]

I meant to type "Has Apple acknowledged yet the complete inability of iTunes on computers running Windows XP SP3 to sync with Apple TV."

For details, see:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8844451&#8844451

[drbyte]

The few times I was asked to set up clients ipods with this software were really eye opening. Love the way Ipods look and the players work, dislike the system and software they use. To restricting and the control I'm used to with my Sansa player requires extra steps with itunes. I figured they would fix that. With other mp3 players,

I can just plug my player in, no software needed, and add / remove mp3s as I want like I had a flash thumb drive plugged in. I probably would have got a nano if this was similar with apple players cuz they are so tiny and convenient for walks.

Itunes is like installing a large adobe program on XP. Hope they fixed some of the bloat.

[Stormspace]

Does it suck less? Let me count the ways...Does it not take hours and hours calculating gapless intervals? Loose the library when iTunes is on and the laptop hasn't reestablished the wireless connection when it's waking up, then take several hours to reconnect to the library, not including the aforementioned gapless issue? How about randomly deleting content on the iPod every few weeks? Suffer from a general malaise at all times? Or does it constantly prompt you to install Apple bloatware?

[GlennCaton]

I just finished running it on an older 2.25 ghz celeron based machine with 512 meg of RAM using a plug in that allows it to see my itunes music library over the internet. Response to inputs was instantaneous. Took a while to load the first time, but after that it came up quite quickly. According to the Task Manager it uses 3-5% of CPU capacity and 87 K of RAM. Not what I would consider really a bloat problem. They must have made some progress along those lines, but to be truthful, I never had enough problem with it before to cause me to wonder about performance. If only the antivirus, malware and firewall stuff I have to run on that machine were that efficient.

[angrykeyboarder]

What I'd like to know is, why does iTunes so often leave you with duplicate files (either actual files or "ghost files") in your music library?

I don't have this problem with the myriad of other music players I've used. I can import the *same* folders with files that are already in my library in Windows Media Player or SongBird (to name a few) and those apps are smart enough to recognize files that are already in the library and therefore they don't *re-add* them creating entries that link to non-existent files the way iTunes does.

Dear Apple, if everyone else can do this, then it can't be rocket science!

Were it not for the myriad of other unique features in iTunes (not to mention it's pretty much the de facto client for podcasts, I'd drop it like a rock).

And wasting disk space by duplicating files in your iTunes folder is NOT a decent solution (although Apple seems to think so).

[fhinner]

This update is so bad that my home entertainment (apple) system basically stopped working. Thank you apple for a piece of software that basically does not allow me to watch the movies I downloaded from iTunes.

Sure MS sucks, but Apple my Apple what the f... happened? This is basically reminding me of my unproductive windows days...