ITunes
iTunes is a computer program made by Apple Computer intended to play, organize and buy music files. It is compatible with computers using the Macintosh and Windows operating systems. The player has gained a reputation of ease of use and good organization, even with thousands of song entries, which may point to local or remote files or streams.
The program allows users of Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows 2000, or Windows XP to manipulate digital music. Users are able to organize their music into playlists, edit file information (ID3 tags), record compact discs, upload files to a digital music player, purchase music on the Internet through its built-in music store, run a visualizer to display the music in a visual form, and encode music into different audio formats, such as MP3, AIFF, WAV, and AAC. A plug [1] also enables iTunes to play Ogg Vorbis, a audio format designed to be free. Another feature is the 'smart playlist', a playlist that is automatically updated (like a database query) based on a customized list of criteria.
iTunes is a derivative work of SoundJam MP. SoundJam MP was a popular commercial MP3 application created by the Macintosh software company Casady & Greene. Apple hired the SoundJam MP developers and purchased the SoundJam MP software. The first release of iTunes was very similar to SoundJam MP, however it lacked some features such as the ability to use interface skins and broadcast audio over the Internet.
Version 4 (released on April 28, 2003), introduced features to browse and buy songs available on the iTunes Music Store, and to share unprotected music via a network.
Sharing songs via a network can be done automatically using Zeroconf (Apple uses the term Rendezvous for the same technology). Shared lists of songs within the same subnet are automatically detected, while shared lists outside of the subset can be added by specifing an IP address. The original version of iTunes supported sharing over any network (including the internet). This was disabled when people started using it in ways Apple considered to violate their EULA. Specifically, their concern was targeted at a music-sharing effort called iCommune. (iCommune said and continues to say it did not intend to go afoul of either the contractual agreements, or copyright law.)
On October 16, 2003 Apple released the version of iTunes for the Windows platform. The initial release caused some problems for some users, which were rapidly addressed by the version 4.1.1, released less than a week later.
iTunes is the preferred music player for Mac and Windows PC users using the iPod music player. Apple does not plan on making a large profit on the music service, a market which has a great deal of competition and where profits would only be pennies per song. Rather it hopes to make money largely off the iPod, where it has a technological and brand recognition advantage.
The current version is 4.5 which was released on April 28, 2004 on the iTunes Music Stores' one year Anniversary with several new features [2] that allow the user:
- import music CDs with lossless audio encoder
- watch music video while listening a song
- publish playlists—a feature known as iMix
- see radio charts and receive free weekly music pieces in iTunes Music Store.
- support for the new lossless AAC variant, called Apple Lossless Encoding.
The last version compatible with Mac OS 9 is 2.0.4, which does not support the Music Store.
iTunes Digital Rights Management
In iTunes Apple included technically-sound DRM (Digital Rights Management) capabilities, dubbed FairPlay. The popular standard MP3 has no DRM, so Apple opted for AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). The EULA limits the downloaded music files to use on three computer devices. The devices are limited to Apple and Windows products; Unix, GNU/Linux and other operating systems are not supported. Jon Lech Johansen, creator of DeCSS, published code to allow alternative operating systems to use the DRM music under the premiss of Fair use on January 5, 2004.
In early April 2004, an anonymous programmer posted another tool called PlayFair on SourceForge under the GPL. PlayFair removed the FairPlay DRM without re-encoding the audio file. The project and software were pulled from SourceForge after the host received a cease and desist order from Apple. The project was immediately moved to Sarovar.org, an open source project host based in India. While hosted on Sarovar.org the program continued to be developed with enhancements such as a basic graphical interface. On April 16, 2004 the project was removed from Sarovar.org due to a legal notice from Apple, but then reappeared under the name "hymn", which is an acronym for "hear your music anywhere".
In iTunes version 4.5 the DRM was changed to allow 5 computers to be authorized to play songs purchased off of the iTunes Music Store with the same account, this is 2 more than the initial iTunes Music Store DRM.