Product Reviews

Accompanying the new iPod, and also available for free download from Apple's Web site, is the latest version of iTunes. iTunes 4 includes support for the latest iPod, as well as several new features of its own that add significantly to what was already one of the finest pieces of MP3-playing software around.

The interface has been changed slightly, with the buttons now visually flatter and with more subtle shading. There's now an additional button along the bottom left to show or hide cover artwork for a song. This is included with songs you buy from the Apple iTunes Music Store, or you can drag your own scanned artwork into place. Overall, though, there are few other changes to what was already an incredibly good, clean interface - a welcome case of not messing with something that works.

However, there are now two additional icons in the Source bar to the left hand side of the interface. The first, Music Store, is used to access the iTunes Music Store for buying music online.

Although not available yet in the UK, the iTunes Music Store promises to make buying music online easier than ever. Certainly, to judge by the interface alone, it succeeds on this score: searching for music is simple, with a Power Search option that allows you to specify searching for song, artist, album, genre and composer. Navigating around the store is also simple.

The second new icon is for Shared Music, a feature Steve Jobs demonstrated at last year's Macworld Expo in New York. Now it's possible to share your music library across a network, with other users able to stream songs from your Mac to theirs. As might be expected you can't actually copy the song files on to another Mac: this is strictly for streaming songs across the network.

Of course, this being Apple you don't have to enter any complex instructions or commands to access shared music. Instead, iTunes uses Rendezvous, the auto-discovery technology introduced with Mac OS X 10.2, to allow users to see each other's song libraries easily. Whenever a user makes their library available, it simply pops up nested under the Shared Music icon, and clicking on it allows you to play anything on their Mac, including any playlists they have created, as if it was on your own machine.

Stream of consciousness

The options for sharing music are reasonably flexible. You can password-protect your library to limit access to users you know, or you can share only some of your playlists rather than your whole music collection. All of this is done through a simple dialog in iTunes' preferences.

Sharing music in this way can be a fantastic experience. In the home, for example, it allows you to store all your music

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on a single Power Mac and use an iBook and AirPort networking to access that music from any room. It effectively makes the dream of having access to your music anywhere in the house not only possible, but simple to do - a great example of how Apple is using technology to deliver real benefits.

iTunes 4 also includes support for encoding music in AAC format instead of MP3. This offers the benefit of allegedly better quality encoding at lower bit rates, and thus delivering smaller files, but to our ears 160Kbits/sec MP3 files sound better than 128Kbits/sec AAC, with the AAC file having better high-end 'treble' but poor and occasionally distorted bass. However, the difference is barely noticeable, so the best way to determine which suits the kinds of music you regularly encode is to test a few of your own CDs.

Overall, iTunes remains the best music-playing software around. The addition of shared streamed libraries in iTunes 4 is a real bonus, and genuinely great for any home or office with more than one Mac.

We only hope that Apple won't be too long in bringing the Music Store to the UK, because it will round out iTunes 4 perfectly.

iTunes Music Store

One of the biggest disappointments of Apple's music-related announcements was that the iTunes Music Store is to be US-only. The reason is simple: artists are often signed to more than one label around the world, with each label having exclusive rights to a particular territory. This means that, for a global service, Apple would have to both negotiate with a plethora of labels, and also ensure that music sold into particular territories had money channelled to the right company.

None of this is impossible, and the fact that most of the music currently available on the store is from the 'big five' major record labels is likely to make the process of providing a service for Europe easier. Although no one from Apple is commenting on when the Music Store will be available in the UK, it is unlikely the company will ignore a major market like Europe for too long.

But is the iTunes Music Store actually worth waiting for? The answer is almost certainly yes. The store allows you to download individual songs or whole albums at 99 per song, with most albums at $9.99 - significantly less than the cost of a CD. Unlike some other music services, you 'own' the music, rather than having to pay a subscription fee to access it, and you can burn it to CD. The only limitation is that a playlist containing bought songs can only be burned to CD 10 times before you have to change the order of the playlist, helping prevent mass piracy. Songs can be played on an unlimited number of iPods, and on up to three separate Macs.

At present, there are about 200,000 songs on the store, including artists such as U2, Nirvana, and Eminem. The content is easy to browse and search, thanks to a clear and simple interface that works as part of iTunes, but the weak point of the store is the lack of diversity in the music available. There's almost nothing beyond the major labels, and the selection is heavily biased towards rock. This will undoubtedly change as more labels become involved, and, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, other labels are already inquiring about getting their songs on to the store.