iTunes 5?

[MacRumors]

An unverified but unusually detailed submission claims that iTunes 5 will be introduced on October 16th, and will be both Mac and PC compatible. New features are said to include WMA support, music store "listener loans", new encoding options and an all new interface.

New iPod accessories are said to include a recording device, a new dock to transfer and view movies and photos on a television and a bluetooth dock/headphone pair.

Meanwhile, a different report claims that beyond the recording device, there will be an adapter to provide SD and CF card interface to transfer photos to the iPod... possibly validating some information in the above report.

 

[wuntrikpony]

They better not change the interface too much, i LOOOOOOVE iTunes the way it is.

 

[nagromme]

I wanted BT headphones (mic?) anyway

Hope those headphones work with PowerBooks!

IF any of those rumors are true, they'd make a nice event all together with the Windows iTMS next Thu.

WMA support? I hope Apple doesn't support MS in that way. And I hope the iTunes UI is refined at most, not scrapped altogether.

It always did seem likely to me that iTunes for Windows would be a NEW version, not the same old, and that therefore a new Mac one would come alongside it.

 

[timdorr]

A bluetooth dock is out of the question. Bluetooth is too slow, they might as well add USB1.0, in that case :S

The movie transfer and playback capability seems fishy too. Someone would have already come across somethign like this, and the iPod just isn't powerful enough to decrypt a full MPEG stream.

The iTunes 5 stuff also sounds way too out there, and doesn't coincide with what people inside Apple are telling me. I say this one will be disproven a bit

 

[nagromme]

BT Dock

A BT "dock" could be JUST for the wireless headphones, and maybe other functions (synching iCal and ratings? updating a couple new songs slowly while you work, if you want that option)... it need not be the main music-transfer method.

The bandwidth of BT apparently exceeds that needed for digital audio listeneing.

 

[.a]

...that would be awesome!

i am still one of those without an ipod. i'm in the market for one.
.a

 

[SiliconAddict]

I think I speak for most what I say SWEET [BEEEEP]

 

[arn]

yep.... take it with a grain of salt.

arn

 

[bitfactory]

Windows Media? hahahaha - that blows the credibility of this report... i find it hard to believe they would do that - especially if the iPod doesn't support it (and hopefully never will). dream on.

 

[oliverlubin]

um wow. if all of it were true ... wow. loaned downloads though, what's that, a limited lifetime download for cheaper or an alternative to the current "preview"?

 

[Stella]

WMA support

Please, No.

 

[Makosuke]

Huh... there's a lot of interesting-sounding features in there, but I'd be pretty skeptical of the whole thing.

The Movie stuff, although cool, isn't anything Apple has talked about doing, or implied they're going to do, or anything that's been rumored, and I'm not even sure how much people would really care. That'd also sort of dilute the hugeness of announcing a PC-compatible iTMS.

I'd also question WMA... if it supported DMA features, it'd give them a shot at the business of other online stores, but I think Apple would much rather just make the sales from their own store. If it were just "ripped" WMA, maybe, but again I sort of wonder since isn't the whole point of releasing iTMS for the PC to get people thinking Apple Tech?

Then again, if they want to dominate the PC audio player space, the thing will need to handle some sort of WMA, even if the iPod can't.

I'd question any major interface changes even more (though a refresh is quite possible), since they just went through all the trouble of making the FINDER look a lot like iTunes. Could happen, but I doubt there'll be any major shake-up in the look.

 

[bluedalmatian]

And I hope the iTunes UI is refined at most, not scrapped altogether.

I don't think they'd scrap it. Look at how they keep explicitly drawing analogies between the new Finder and XCode and iTunes.

Clearly Apple holds the iTunes interface concept very hightl.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by nagromme


WMA support? I hope Apple doesn't support MS in that way.

nagromme, you and every Mac user that is holding a grudge against MS better get over it in a hurry. 95% market share means that to beat MS at their own game Apple needs to be compatable. iTMS and the iPod are not Macs and Mac OS. These products are OS independent going after the general consumer. They dang well better be as compatible as possible with everything if Apple wants to take on MS, MusicMatch, Napster, etc, etc, etc. If this does come true and you feel betrayed you better get over it because as Apple becomes more consumer device oriented this is going to become the norm. Obviously they are going to continue to push OSX...I mean for god sake it IS Apple and that is their baby.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by timdorr

The movie transfer and playback capability seems fishy too. Someone would have already come across somethign like this, and the iPod just isn't powerful enough to decrypt a full MPEG stream.

True, However it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities that a sleve of some sor would do most of the CPU/GPU intensive processing. I've seen such things for the Compaq\HP Pocket PC. In this case the iPod would be treated as a simple storage device.

 

[tny]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
nagromme, you and every Mac user that is holding a grudge against MS better get over it in a hurry. 95% market share means that to beat MS at their own game Apple needs to be compatable. iTMS and the iPod are not Macs and Mac OS. These products are OS independent going after the general consumer. They dang well be as compatible as possible with everything if Apple wants to take on MS, MusicMatch, Napster, etc, etc, etc. If this does come true and you feel betrayed you better get over it because as Apple becomes more consumer device oriented this is going to become the norm. Obviously they are going to continue to push OSX...I mean for god sake it IS Apple and that is their baby.

Funny, most of the software on my Windows machine is compatible with MP3. So is my Mac, iTunes, and iPod (though of course the iPod is formatted HFS+ and so isn't usable directly with the Windows machine). WMA isn't a standard format - it's MS trying to force its own solution down everyone's throat.

 

[arn]

new info added to main story.

arn

 

[frozenstar]

Originally posted by timdorr
A bluetooth dock is out of the question. Bluetooth is too slow, they might as well add USB1.0, in that case :S

The theoretical peak data rate of Bluetooth v1.1 is 1 mbps. The real-world sustained data rate is about 150-200 kbps. Clearly, that's more than enough to stream a 128 kbps AAC file. If necessary, iTunes can even re-encode higher bandwidth files on the fly.

 

[bitfactory]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
nagromme, you and every Mac user that is holding a grudge against MS better get over it in a hurry. 95% market share means that to beat MS at their own game Apple needs to be compatable.

this isn't about a grudge, its about quality. and WM doesn't have 95% market share.

the logical extension of this is that the iTMS would offer WM files... NOT GOING TO HAPPEN... file that next to "OSX on Intel chips!"

 

[SilentPanda]

Originally posted by frozenstar
The theoretical peak data rate of Bluetooth v1.1 is 1 mbps. The real-world sustained data rate is about 150-200 kbps. Clearly, that's more than enough to stream a 128 kbps AAC file. If necessary, iTunes can even re-encode higher bandwidth files on the fly.

I believe what the parent poster meant was that using Bluetooth to update your iPod was too slow. Using bluetooth to go to a headset should be fine though. With a ghostbuster battery pack to keep the headphones charged up...

 

[frozenstar]

Originally posted by Stella
WMA support

Please, No.

Perhaps they should strip Windows support out of Jaguar too. Does that make any sense?

 

[SilentPanda]

It might be possible that iTunes would support playing WMA files... I haven't used a PC at home for quite a while but doesn't MusicMatch and Windows Media Player by default encode CD's into WMA format? If so then your typical home user would have all of their music in WMA format. Thus supporting the playing of WMA files would be greatly needed to allow the seamless integration. Or at least they would reencode your WMA files on import to iTunes and maybe not let you play WMA files or make new WMA files... I suppose I really don't care either way... but it is a consideration for the reasoning that might be behind that.

 

[macr1jxb]

Most this stuff seems pretty unlikely, but I'd like to make a couple points:

WMA Support.
iTunes for Mac already supports ripped WMA (at least non-rights managed) correct? Supporting, at least, playback of WMA in iTunes for Windows is actually pretty simple(even rights managed), because the Windows Media technology is actually a shared resource other applications can take advantage of. So what may end up happening is iTunes has its own software for playing and ripping MP3/MP4 and then farms out the backend to Window Media for WMA support (never exposing a user to the horrible Window Media Player)

WMA support on iPod is a whole different matter though.

Blue Tooth Accessories
I think this is somewhat unlikely, but not for a lot of the reasons others have pointed out. If they are using it only for headphone output it seems that they would get a good enough performance that a lot of people would like the idea of being able to, say, keep their iPod in their bag and just wear the headphones.

The issues that I think makes this unlikely is with how you'd configure or set it up. There'd have to be some interface to configure the bluetooth, and that would require an update to the iPod software. Also I haven't heard about any Blue Tooth audio configuration in Panther (like we saw found out about the wireless keyboard and mouse support a while back), and it seems unlikely to me that Apple would release a Blue Tooth headphone for iPod that would not work on the Mac as well.

New Dock
I connect my iPod to my home stereo all the time, and I know I'm not alone. The oft rumored stereo-dock/remote control seems like a great idea that would probably sell well. But the idea of using this to playback movies or pictures on your home theater is doubtful. That would require a new version of iPhoto to export the photos, or a new version of iSync, which was just updated yesterday (with no hint of such functionality)

It also breaks from the Digital Hub model. In the digital hub model we've seen so far everything centers around the Mac, and from there connects specific tools for specific tailored functions (digital cameras, cell phones, iPod). Using iPod for photo or movies seems overly complicated, because it's not suited for that. If Apple wanted to connect the home stereo to the Digitial Hub, I'd expect a new device (like the Tivo Series 2) or something akin to a home media server. In the end adding those features would just complicate the iPod too much in my mind, and take away from the mac, which handles those functions better.

Ok, that's my thoughts on the matter.

 

[NavyIntel007]

Originally posted by SilentPanda
I believe what the parent poster meant was that using Bluetooth to update your iPod was too slow. Using bluetooth to go to a headset should be fine though. With a ghostbuster battery pack to keep the headphones charged up...

Bluetooth does not have the bandwidth to support stereo sound.

That's why all the bluetooth headsets have only one earphone not two.

 

[ennerseed]

Originally posted by tny
Funny, most of the software on my Windows machine is compatible with MP3. So is my Mac, iTunes, and iPod (though of course the iPod is formatted HFS+ and so isn't usable directly with the Windows machine). WMA isn't a standard format - it's MS trying to force its own solution down everyone's throat.

Snap Snap, thank you!