The selection of TV shows once again includes programs from NBC, which seems to have come out of its sulk and realized that it can, in fact, make good money off iTunes. Unlike Apple's HD movie downloads, HD TV downloads don't come with any extra usage restrictions beyond those applied to all TV and movie downloads from the iTunes Store. On the video front, the iTunes Store now offers high-definition downloads of TV shows for $2.99 each. Update: Apple spokeswoman Teresa Brewer e-mailed Thursday to say that "iTunes Plus accounts for approximately half of the overall music library.") I'll update this post when they can get me that number. (Although Apple announced that the iTunes Store now stocks 8.5 million songs, two PR reps didn't know how many were iTunes Plus downloads this morning. (Think of Pandora's automatic music recommendations, but with a cash register attached.) Unfortunately, the Genius recommendations don't distinguish between higher-quality, unrestricted iTunes Plus purchases and the regular, lower-quality, usage-restricted downloads. You now have yet another way to dig into your music - a "Genius" mode that, if you let Apple analyze an anonymized copy of your playlist, will suggest other songs you might like to buy from iTunes. The big difference is its new default "grid view" - instead of presenting a long, spreadsheet-esque list of songs, it now shows thumbnails of your albums (if you've used iPhoto '08's Events view, this should all look very familiar). The new version installed fine on a Mac this morning, although I had to wait a few minutes for it to process my music library. Apple shipped iTunes 8 yesterday, a free download for Windows XP and Vista and Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. The other half of the expanding iPod universe - and the part you can try now - is iTunes. The revised iPod classic, however, doesn't offer much beyond a price cut and a slimmer figure given the plummeting price of flash memory, I wouldn't be surprised to see that it's the last hard drive-based iPod Apple sells. The updated iPod touch, meanwhile, gains the physical volume controls it always needed and now starts at $229, making it much more competitive with the iPhone's pricing (one colleague told me yesterday that she'd buy that and stick with her existing cell-phone service instead of getting an iPhone). (I hope I don't see too many overeager users of new iPods accidentally chucking their prized possessions into the sidewalk or the trees.)Īnd one other thing: The new nano now includes a "spoken menus" option that makes it accessible to people with impaired vision - a first for the iPod line. ![]() That accelerometer also lets you shuffle the playback order of songs just by shaking the iPod. The new model has a larger screen which changes orientations from portrait to landscape depending on whether you hold it vertically or sideways, which should make it a much more palatable option for video viewing. Yesterday Apple updated its line of media players, as Mike Musgrove outlines in today's story.įor my taste, the upgraded iPod nano - available in a choice of nine colors at $149 for an 8-gigabyte model or $199 for a 16-GB version - once again looks like the most attractive option. Attention, readers who have been asking if it's the right time to buy a new iPod: It now is.
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