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iTunes 4.5 Released on iTunes Anniversary

Apple released iTunes 4.5 today.

The newest version of iTunes offers several new features.

- iMix - Share your taste. Publish your playlists
- Party Shuffle
- Printing - Creating Jewel case inserts
- Radio Charts - What's playing around the U.S.
- Movie trailers. Music Videos
- WMA - Convert WMA to AAC
- Apple Lossless - CD Quality Sound. Half the size.

iTunes now has over 700,000 songs in the iTunes Music Store.

According to MacWorld.co.uk, Apple also posted an update to Quicktime to 6.3.1 but does not appear in Software Update at this time. "QuickTime 6.3.1 delivers enhanced support for iTunes and other QuickTime-based applications".
iPod Update 2004-04-28 was also released today, providing support for the Apple Lossless format as well as compatibility with the iTunes 4.5

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102 months ago
so how do i print the jewel case insert?
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
102 months ago

Apple Lossless - CD Quality Sound. Half the size.


somebody please confirm if this is really a lossless one and not a 1024k aac...
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
102 months ago
Plus now you can play on 5 Macs rather than 3. Way to go Apple for making the DRM LESS restrictive. Who'd of thought we'd see that?

EDIT: I discovered this in their press release:

"Honoring Apple’s commitment to discourage music theft while preserving fair personal use rights, the number of times a user can burn the same playlist onto CDs with iTunes is being reduced from ten burns to seven. Users can still burn a single song an unlimited number of times and listen to their music on an unlimited number of iPods."

What's the point when you can just change the playlist... this must be to keep dumb non-techie record execs happy. Mwah Ha Ha.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
102 months ago
Nice upgrade! Damn, I wish I had iLife '04 now... Looks like iTunes 4.5 gives me even more reasons to upgrade now! Damn you Apple... ;)

Anyway, there looks like there are some cool new features in 4.5 - and I see WMA in there as well - very interesting! Well done Apple!
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
102 months ago
Way to go Apple, even though I erased all my WMA's.
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102 months ago

Apple released - Apple Lossless - CD Quality Sound. Half the size.


Ack. and I JUST finished converting my entire collection to FLAC..
Does anyone know what kind of lossless file format this is? As the previous person noted, is it just a very high bitrate lossy format?
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
102 months ago
eh? you dont need iLife 04' to get iTunes!

Nice upgrade! Damn, I wish I had iLife '04 now... Looks like iTunes 4.5 gives me even more reasons to upgrade now! Damn you Apple... ;)

Anyway, there looks like there are some cool new features in 4.5 - and I see WMA in there as well - very interesting! Well done Apple!

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102 months ago

so how do i print the jewel case insert? o and first post :cool:


file>print as simple as that!
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
102 months ago
It's nice to not have to go to work today. W00t!
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102 months ago
Downloaded it, some observations:

First thing I noticed... Every song / artist /album in your library has that arrow to the right of it - and if you click on it, it searches the music store for that song. Interesting... Option Click goes to it in your library

"Windows Media Player 9 or later must be installed to convert unprotected WMA files" -> PC only I guess.

Printing covers is pretty easy - File -> Print, it gives you a preview. I had a playlist with about 55 songs, and it shows the first 25 on the print and then "and 30 more..." Plus it prints "Printed with iTunes" at the bottom. It even has a bleed, crop and fold marks!

This party mode thing... I was hoping to just put iTunes in Party mode, and someone could double-click on a song and it would be added to an 'on-the-go' type playlist. Cause thats what most people do, just double click on it, cause they want it. What this does it pick random music from your choice of a source (any playlist or library) and will show 0-100 upcoming songs along with 0-100 already played songs. If you have those selected to something more than 0, and you delete something in the playlist, it just adds another. If you have it at 0, you have to add your own songs. there is an option to play higher rated songs more often.

I guess the point is that you can have it choose from a playlist or your library and see whats coming up, remove something if you don't like it, or rearrage it, all without disturbing any existing playlist.

iTMS - I was hoping that based on the long load time it would say "Your country is now supported" (Canada) but no - Just a long load time for the first time. the one free song a week is cool, but you still have to have an account of course.

The iMix allows anyone to publish a playlist to iTMS - and Steve already has a playlist that is rated 5 stars out of 5 with 100,000 votes, and so it is at the top. You have to have an account to vote on an iMix

Lastly the movie trailers are cool, its an easy way to see new trailers and browse them - except that they still remind you you are in a store and there are things to buy (soundtracks).

All in all a decent upgrade, but nothing spectacular in my books, the only feature I may use is the party shuffle.

Enjoy the new toy.

And as a PS. there is a new iPod update:

iPod Update 2004-04-28 supports all models of iPod and iPod mini introduced before April 28, 2004. This update is required to take advantage of new features in iTunes 4.5 and the iTunes Music Store.

Changes for iPod without a Dock connector
-Compatibility with iTunes 4.5 and the iTunes Music Store
-Improved playback performance

Changes for iPod with a Dock connector and iPod mini
-Compatibility with iTunes 4.5 and the iTunes Music Store
-Improved playback performance
-Support for the Apple Lossless Encoder, to enable compressed music encoding at high quality

Let the rumours begin "All models introduced before April 28, 2004" So what about the ones introduced after or on this date?
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