iTunes was introduced by Apple on January 9, 2001, at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. On May 9, 2005, video support was introduced to iTunes with the release of iTunes 4.8. It wasn’t until version 7 that iTunes created different libraries for the different media types – Audio & Video.
Apple kindly gave us iTunes 9 in September 2009.
I consider iTunes to be one of the most important applications, apart from the OS itself, that Apple provides. In our household, at least, our trusty iMac runs all day, every day, providing us with an easy-to-use music library that we can instantly listen to or buy any tunes we like in just a couple of clicks. In the evening we hire and watch a film, or simply browse for a great application for our iPhones to play with on the bus to work the next morning.
What’s next for iTunes, then? Download eBooks to read on your iPhone? Quite possibly. The recent introduction of iTunes LP has given us a more visual experience with our music by providing interactive ‘sleeve notes’ and lots of images to explore. Some artists even offer comics as part of their ploy to encourage whole album downloads as opposed to single tracks.
My questioning of iTunes is not of what it provides, but the actual name of the product. Tunes now play a less significant role than way back in 2001 and the possibilities of the direction that Apple could take with the structure of the software are huge.
I could see iTunes being used as ‘The new Apple Finder’ application. A simple way to organise everything that is held on your hard drive. Playlists eventually becoming the equivalent of today’s folders. Or, it could simply concentrate on the theme of entertainment, but are all applications entertainment?
What could it be called? What name could possibly sum-up the features and benefits of an application that is capable of organising music, films, books, images etc.?
This is what I think.
- iLife – an amalgamation of everything. Everything that you deal with on a day-to-day basis, all organised within a simple application.
What do you think?
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