iTunes 7, iTV

Posted on Thu 14 September 2006

Apple released iTunes version 7. More than just tunes, iTunes is now a complete "downloaded media" organizer. By this I mean the media you haven't created yourself, which you organize with iPhoto or iMovie.

The coolest new thing is the cover flow view that gives the feeling of browsing physical CDs (or DVDs), something that we kinda lost with the advent of MP3. This new view of course works well if you have the covers of these hundreds of albums that sit on your hard drive, otherwise it's a bit useless. And the good news is that Apple is kind enough to allow you to download covers you don't have from iTunes Store for free! Great you think! But wait... why do they offer that for free?

This is actually a clever marketing trick: you can download the covers if you have an iTunes Store account! Plenty of people use iTunes to organize their digital media coming from other (illegal?) sources, and they certainly don't need an account for that. Now having covers is so nice. Want them? Easy, create an account! Et voilĂ , you passed the major barrier that refrained you to buy music on iTunes, which is now one click away. Clever, eh?

Apple also introduced a product code-named iTV, a box with audio/video outputs that receives media from iTunes to play it on a regular TV. See it in Steve Jobs' keynote (foward to 50 mins) and at engadget. Don't know what level of "openness" this box will have or if it will be completely tied to iTunes, but it would be pretty cool to be able to send it other sources of media. I'm not sure Apple will make that easy though, as their goal is also for you to buy content at the iTunes Store. They will probably try to build the same kind of monopoly position as they already have in music with the iPod.



Why do I have green hairs?

Spring switching to Maven? Oh no, think twice!