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Anyone know what's new in iTunes 4.5?

From the Versiontracker listing:

- Share Your iMix. Post and email songs in your playlists for everyone to see. Rate iMixes from other music lovers to drive them up or down the charts, and discover new music at the same time.

- Party Shuffle. Be your own DJ with a playlist that's always full of songs. Add, delete and rearrange them on the fly to create the best mix for the moment.

- Print CD Inserts. Create stunning CD jewel case inserts for your album or mix disc using designer templates for both color and black & white printers.

- Discover Music. Find out what's playing on more than 1,000 radio stations around the United States. Get music and audiobooks related to a movie. See a music video, get the track. Download a free song.

- Previews in Playlists and Quick Links. Save store previews to purchase later. Find more music from the artists you love via Quick Links in your library.

- Automatically convert WMA to AAC. Convert the music you saved in Windows Media Player (unprotected WMA files) to AAC format.

- Apple Lossless. Use the new lossless encoder to import music from CDs and achieve sound quality indistinguishable from the original, at about half the original file size. Plays in iTunes and on iPod.
 
party shuffle and the thing apple calls "lossless encoder". that needs further investigation since at first sight it seems it's just an aac encoder that is smart enough to select suitable bitrate between 800 and 1000 kb/sec. but the party shuffle rocks :)
 
Wow, this is an awesome update.

Hint 1: Option+click the little arrows next to artist/album/song names in your library. Normal clicking the arrow takes you to the listing in the store, but option+clicking takes you to the relating listing in your library. I've wanted this forever.

Hint 2: Apple+L or the little icon in the display area will take you to your currently playing song. If you're in the mini-mode, it will switch to the large mode.

Hint 3: Printing your library to PDF is cool!

Hint 4: Right click a song, and you can enqueue it in the party mix.

There's much more, but that's a start!

Oh, and you can now send purchased music to 5 computers (instead of 3).

Congrats on an awesome update, Apple!
 
JFreak, AAC isn't lossless, so there should be a difference. I'm curious to see how Apple's lossless encoder compares with the various lossless encoders available.

Oh, by the way, the WMA->AAC feature is "Windows only".

Thank you, Apple. :mad:
 
crenz said:
JFreak, AAC isn't lossless, so there should be a difference. I'm curious to see how Apple's lossless encoder compares with the various lossless encoders available.

Oh, by the way, the WMA->AAC feature is "Windows only".

Thank you, Apple. :mad:
Click to expand...

Well, AFAIK there is a Windows Media SDK (developer stuff) for Windows but not one for Mac OS X. If you can't get the software to actually do the decoding, you can't re-encode it to AAC can you? I agree that it sucks, but I can't see many Mac owners having a large number of WMA files either (and now their PC using friends who do can tell them to get iTunes and convert to AAC).
 
Yeah

http://www.apple.com/itunes/share.html

"Real Fast User Switching
For Mac users, iTunes 4.5 now takes full advantage of Mac OS X Panther fast user switching, so you don’t have to quit iTunes to switch users on your Mac. Even better, you don’t have to maintain two separate libraries, either. iTunes figures it all out, so you can manage your music with ease."


Can someone please confirm that on a single Mac the music owner can easily share with another account holder, and what the features Apple hint at are?
 
actually

I dislike this update.

it turned itunes into an interface to the itunes music store, instead of a really great jukebox with a music store imbedded.

I don't want to have access to the music store from every single one of my songs.

thblblblblbblblbl
 
dragula53 said:
I dislike this update.

it turned itunes into an interface to the itunes music store, instead of a really great jukebox with a music store imbedded.

I don't want to have access to the music store from every single one of my songs.

thblblblblbblblbl
Click to expand...

Then go into General Preferences and turn off "Show Links to Music Store".
 
crenz said:
JFreak, AAC isn't lossless, so there should be a difference. I'm curious to see how Apple's lossless encoder compares with the various lossless encoders available.
Click to expand...

yes, i know. but at first sight that lossless encoding seems to put m4a files in the music library, so that beast needs further investigation. it might be "lossless" with quotes, as the 800k-1000k aac stream might sound (and look in freq analysis) as original, but as you said, aac is lossy format, so if apple advertises lossless and implements lossy, that's going to soon hurt them in the form of bad press.

someone confirm that i'm wrong here. i'd be gladly so :)
 
What software changes have been made to the iPod and am I reading this correctly--it is for all iPods, including the 1st Generation Pod :eek:

I thought us 1st Generationers were a forgotten breed!
 
JFreak said:
yes, i know. but at first sight that lossless encoding seems to put m4a files in the music library, so that beast needs further investigation. it might be "lossless" with quotes, as the 800k-1000k aac stream might sound (and look in freq analysis) as original, but as you said, aac is lossy format, so if apple advertises lossless and implements lossy, that's going to soon hurt them in the form of bad press.

someone confirm that i'm wrong here. i'd be gladly so :)
Click to expand...

.m4a really just means MPEG-4 Audio, it doesn't mean a specific codec (such as AAC Lossy). It is possible that Apple's Lossless is a variant of AAC or another codec that is truly lossless. The MPEG container, like the Quicktime MOV format it is based on, it capable of holding media of nearly any type.
 
I was going to try and open a lossless file in QuickTime to look at the specs in the Info Window, and QuickTime (and also VLC can't open it, must be iTunes only format :(

edit: added iTunes file info FWIW...

listed as 928Kbps
 

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Check again, Frisco...

Frisco said:
What software changes have been made to the iPod and am I reading this correctly--it is for all iPods, including the 1st Generation Pod :eek:

I thought us 1st Generationers were a forgotten breed!
Click to expand...

From the iPod update page:

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

Sounds to me like earlier iPods really ARE becoming obsolete now. Oh well... finally a good reason to move up from my pre-ordered first generation iPod.
 
Goodness. How many songs could you fit on an iPod mini in Apple Lossless format...maybe a couple hundred?

Wish lists and lots new ways to find music....the ol' plastic's gonna be burning after this! And I might actually have enough excuses accumulated to get a printer now, too--those CD inserts would be very handy (I'd prefer an option to add my own graphics too, but what can you do).

I even have five free codes left, including the Ben & Jerry's one....
 
i am having a problem with the 4.5 upgrade the itunes window is not as snappy as i would like it to be. Sometimes if i switch windows the itunes window doesn't pop up. going to try to do some permissions checks

edit: after the check worked fine
 
It's on the main page of the ITMS within iTunes, and I presume it will remain there.
 
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