Apple's iTunes 9 rumored to have Blu-ray, social media support

***AppleInsider*** · 08-08-2009, 04:29 PM

A new report suggests that the next version of Apple's iTunes could carry support for Blu-ray discs, visual management and rearrangement capabilities for App Store software, and integration with social media Web sites.

Citing a "pretty reliable source," The Boy Genius Report revealed Saturday what could become new features in an anticipated upcoming new release of Apple's digital media software.

"One of the new additions to iTunes is said to include Blu-ray support which lines up nicely with a recent AppleInsider report about Apple integrating Blu-ray into their new iMac line-up," the report states. "Something else that will most likely make a bunch of people happy is that we’ve been told iTunes 9 will finally include the ability to visually organize and arrange your iPhone and iPod touch applications. Something that wasn’t so clearly described was some kind of Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm integration. Maybe broadcasting what song you’re playing to your friends?"

The rumors regarding Blu-ray corroborate with a report this week from AppleInsider. Sources cryptically suggested that two compelling new features would come with Apple's newest iMacs, leading some to speculate that official Blu-ray support from the company could be coming in the near future. One of those features is said to have long been on the wish-lists of many Mac users while the other is expected to cater to the semi-professional audio/video crowd.

The source for The Boy Genius Report reportedly didn't provide a time frame for the new iteration of iTunes, but one might assume that Apple could make an announcement at its annual iPod event in September.

If the Blu-ray rumors pan out, it would be a major turnaround for Apple. Less than a year ago, Chief Executive Steve Jobs went as far as to call the technology "a bag of hurt."

gearhunter · 08-08-2009, 04:33 PM

...snappier!

zunx · 08-08-2009, 04:36 PM

Blu-ray support (both movie payback and rewritable disks) is an absolute must across all Macs.

Crowley · 08-08-2009, 04:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

If the Blu-ray rumors pan out, it would be a major turnaround for Apple. Less than a year ago, Chief Executive Steve Jobs went as far as to call the technology "a bag of hurt."

Not really a turnaround, the "bag of hurt" was in reference to the licensing, which was a mess at the time, but I'm led to believe has been notably tidied up since then.

charlituna · 08-08-2009, 04:49 PM

okay i'm trying to figure out the itunes supports blu-ray part of the equation. cause its not like i can pop a DVD in and have itunes rip it to put on my ipod. so what exactly is itunes going to do with my blu-ray disks.

perhaps someone can explain that math to me

ipodrulz · 08-08-2009, 04:49 PM

Everyone keeps bringing up the "bag of hurt" quote... but they never continue with it... he also said "We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off before we burden our customers with the cost of licensing." So things have probably settled down.

wizard69 · 08-08-2009, 04:50 PM

I'm really hoping Apple isn't thinking that Blu-Ray is compelling because it isn't. Frankly it strikes me as being about as modern as magnetic core memory. Plus the premium you pay for the media is a joke.

On the other hand iTunes is showing some significant aging and a completely Cocoa based iTunes would be fantastic. My biggest fear thought is that it will be Snow Leopard only. Well not so much a fear as I will update to SL the minute it is out, but rather there will be weeks of whining from people that think Apple owes them.

My thinking is that to power some of the more interactive parts of an enhanced iTunes they would need to go parallel with GPU processing. In other words to get all the goodies on screen you will need a fairly modern machine. Of course iTunes 9 could be designed to degrade gracefully when running on older OS'es and hardware. I'd rather see Apple push forward though.

Dave

Hattig · 08-08-2009, 04:52 PM

I presume that also means BluRay support in Quicktime?

I think that last year or earlier this year, the BluRay disc association was looking into simplifying the licensing for BluRay, and maybe they now have, in to a single reasonable fee per device, instead of the mess that it reportably was before.

Will iTunes 9 be Cocoa? Could be why SL iTunes 8 versions show no real improvements so far.

gearhunter · 08-08-2009, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlituna

okay i'm trying to figure out the itunes supports blu-ray part of the equation... ...what exactly is itunes going to do with my blu-ray disks.

Beats me too!!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69

I'm really hoping Apple isn't thinking that Blu-Ray is compelling because it isn't. Frankly it strikes me as being about as modern as magnetic core memory.

I second that dude!!

I'd like to see full screen cover flow behave as it does on the iPods - i.e. flip the cover round to allow selection of a particular track. I may then actually use the feature as I tend not to bother with it as it stands.

dagamer34 · 08-08-2009, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zunx

Blu-ray support (both movie payback and rewritable disks) is an absolute must across all Macs.

As far as I know, there aren't any slot-loading Blu-ray drives. Apple can't put a product in their computers that doesn't exist yet.

If anything though, it should be an option for Mac Pros.

iTuomas · 08-08-2009, 05:12 PM

Blu-ray, great. But in iTunes? Why not in DVD Player, or even QuickTime?

I think it's time for Apple to stop and ask themselves: what is iTunes, after all? iTunes used to be a light and fast music jukebox, but today it's one giant app that handles everything. For me it would make sense to build video library and video store into QuickTime, have iTunes for audio content, and maybe create an entirely new app for App Store and device sync.

Just my 0,02€.

cdy · 08-08-2009, 05:18 PM

I couldn't care less about Blu-ray. Give me the app sorting thing, though!

Oh and find a way to block the Palm Pre again. Vampires.

1984 · 08-08-2009, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dagamer34

As far as I know, there aren't any slot-loading Blu-ray drives. Apple can't put a product in their computers that doesn't exist yet.

If anything though, it should be an option for Mac Pros.

There have been slot-loading Blu-Ray drives for a couple years now.

Dzign · 08-08-2009, 05:38 PM

One feature I've been wishing for is some sort of "CSS" formating for all the metadata so all text of songs infos is formated the same in a snap...

Another one would be integration of the star rating in the metadata so you don't lose it if you reinstall everything... My work around has been to create a genre for best songs...

Oh and cocoa for sure !

Askew · 08-08-2009, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1984

There have been slot-loading Blu-Ray drives for a couple years now.

Yep, the PlayStation 3 features a slot-load Blu-Ray drive. It works beautifully.

Zandros · 08-08-2009, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dzign

One feature I've been wishing for is some sort of "CSS" formating for all the metadata so all text of songs infos is formated the same in a snap...

Another one would be integration of the star rating in the metadata so you don't lose it if you reinstall everything... My work around has been to create a genre for best songs...

Oh and cocoa for sure !

Or you could backup your iTunes Library and Database files? I assume you're already backing up the music.

wobegon · 08-08-2009, 05:56 PM

I too don't get where 'Blu-ray support' comes in concerning iTunes, unless they're retiring DVD Player in Snow Leopard, but that seems unlikely. Perhaps Mac Pros will feature optional Blu-ray drives, but they're not likely to be introduced at the annual iPod event.

Some things I'd like to see on the App Store side of things include the ability to gift paid apps, perhaps Genius app recommendations, the ability to rate apps in iTunes without having to visit the app's store page, and (dare I say?) some new policies for developers. See Craig Hockenberry's wishlist for some good ones, like developer approval (rather than app update approval) and public responses to customer reviews (sort of like how a forum works). If they're going to do a 64bit Cocoa iTunes, maybe a new foundation for the store itself is in order.

Finally, an Apple TV revision would be nice, some worthy additions being Netflix and/or Hulu integration, a pointer remote (as has been pictured in patent filings) for intuitive point-and-click media browsing, web browsing, and/or third party Apple TV apps/games (which could also be controlled with or enhanced by a paired iPhone/iPod touch).

I'll believe The Tablet when I see it.

7Aces · 08-08-2009, 05:57 PM

Blu-ray would be a very welcome addition in my opinion. I already have an external Blu-ray drive hooked up to my iMac. It's pretty much the only reason why I have a BootCamp partition installed on it, so I can view BDs on Windows. Just hope someone'll make some sort of decryption tool available for Mac sooner or later - not a big fan of region coding and user restrictions on my own discs.

str1f3 · 08-08-2009, 05:57 PM

I really don't care about this stuff and I'm guessing that most iTunes users (Mac & Windows) feel the same way. I want a faster 64-bit Cocoa app. I could care less about social networking in a media player. iTunes is the slowest app on my Mac. Even slower than Office now because of SP2.

bobmarleypeople · 08-08-2009, 06:07 PM

Here's hoping they'll release a standalone Apple Blu-ray drive (or have compatibility with 3rd party ones). My Blu-ray player is a fairly early model and takes about 5/6 minutes to load a disc (and is only profile 1 compatible, so no picture-in-picture or online content for me at the moment). I get the feeling my iMac could handle it just fine. It'd have to be a firewire connection though. I doubt USB will be fast enough (plus I've ran out of USB ports and have a Firewire 800 port free).

CanadianMac2008 · 08-08-2009, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by str1f3

I really don't care about this stuff and I'm guessing that most iTunes users (Mac & Windows) feel the same way. I want a faster 64-bit Cocoa app. I could care less about social networking in a media player. iTunes is the slowest app on my Mac. Even slower than Office now because of SP2.

Yes, very much agreed. iTunes is a great concept and I like it, BUT, it us WAY too slow and basically suffers from feature bloat. They need to completely rethink their implementation of everything from the groundup. Give us a completely new iTunes.

Galley · 08-08-2009, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlituna

okay i'm trying to figure out the itunes supports blu-ray part of the equation. cause its not like i can pop a DVD in and have itunes rip it to put on my ipod. so what exactly is itunes going to do with my blu-ray disks.

perhaps someone can explain that math to me

Blu-ray Disc supports something called "Managed Copy" which does allow you to legally rip the disc as full resolution.

DimMok · 08-08-2009, 06:14 PM

Are the current screen/monitors from Apple considered HD? Wouldnt this be a requirement for BD?

bobmarleypeople · 08-08-2009, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DimMok

Are the current screen/monitors from Apple considered HD? Wouldnt this be a requirement for BD?

Well, my 24" iMac has a resolution of 1929x1200. That's slightly higher than HD. It is also connected to my 40" TV (which runs at 1920x1080 i.e. 1080p). I doubt that the Macbooks and minis are likely to get a Blu-ray drive. Mac Pros and high end iMacs might though.

Drow_Swordsman · 08-08-2009, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69

My biggest fear thought is that it will be Snow Leopard only. Well not so much a fear as I will update to SL the minute it is out, but rather there will be weeks of whining from people that think Apple owes them.

Yeah, like the people who bought PPC Macs back in 2006 who can't upgrade to SL?

enzos · 08-08-2009, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CanadianMac2008

Yes, very much agreed. iTunes is a great concept and I like it, BUT, it us WAY too slow and basically suffers from feature bloat. They need to completely rethink their implementation of everything from the groundup. Give us a completely new iTunes.

They did that with iMovie08 and you can still the howls of indignation echoing around to this day. Of course Apple was right in that case but just Imagine what is would be like for an everyday program like iTunes!

dbfreq · 08-08-2009, 07:04 PM

The BluRay licensing association (whatever their official name is) approved Managed Copy in the past month or two. Licensing also became significantly more reasonable at the same time. They can see the writing on the wall -- downloads are going to make physical media obsolete over the next 2-4 years and they want to make as much money as they can with the higher-margin BluRay media while they can, so making licensing easier and cheaper and allowing people to store copies of their discs on their hard drives only makes sense. I wonder whether DVD will start to make similar concessions?

I think Apple will be adding BluRay drives with Snow Leopard. Also remember the "leak" in iTunes 8.2 that listed CD, DVD and BluRay metadata copyright GraceNote. Apple has used GraceNote for CD metadata for a long time, but I believe mention of the use of GraceNote for DVD and BluRay metadata is new. This leads me to believe that Apple is going to provide some mechanism for loading personal DVD and BluRay discs into iTunes, since they didn't mention GraceNote for movies or TV shows for material that was purchased through iTMS). Because of the legal issues, this may only be for BluRay discs sold with Managed Copy.

GraceNote's DVD metadata service is fantastic. For instance, if you get metadata for a TV series you have on DVD, GraceNote's metadata tells you which chapters on the physical disc belong to which episode in the season. So, using that service, you can jump right to a particular episode. Real's DVD ripper / cataloging software used / uses GraceNote, but it's been mired in legal trouble for about a year now (Real was hit with an injunction within a week of releasing the beta).

Since iTunes is really just a fancy database and web browser (for accessing the iTunes Store) and QuickTime is the playback engine, anything playable in iTunes would also be playable with QuickTime alone. DVD Player does not use QT as its playback engine (DVD Player can play Video_TS files, QT can't... at least not yet).

Also, as much as I'd like to see a native Cocoa iTunes, it seems unlikely. iTunes needs to run on Windows, too, and I don't see Apple maintaining two separate branches of the code or porting Cocoa to run on Windows. Although, they must be doing one or the other with Safari, so, I guess it isn't completely out of the question.

Finally, I wonder what "semi-professional audio/video crowd" means, and what the new feature will be? Could it be a PCI-e slot for an audio or video card? That would be fantastic for me, but the only way it would fit would be to have the ports dangling out the side of the monitor. I can't see Steve going along with that. Maybe an external box to house audio and/or video cards with a PCI-e dongle? I'm probably just dreaming.

BenRoethig · 08-08-2009, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dagamer34

As far as I know, there aren't any slot-loading Blu-ray drives. Apple can't put a product in their computers that doesn't exist yet.

If anything though, it should be an option for Mac Pros.

There are slot loading Blu-Ray drives, just not in the 9.5mm superslim for the portables. The iMac and mini have options using 12.7mm regular slim.

BenRoethig · 08-08-2009, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69

I'm really hoping Apple isn't thinking that Blu-Ray is compelling because it isn't.

Dave

It isn't compelling to you. There are many with a different opinion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iTuomas

Blu-ray, great. But in iTunes? Why not in DVD Player, or even QuickTime?

Hopefully, they're finally rolling DVD player into iTunes. It (and quicktime for that matter) should have been merged in iTunes years ago. We only need one media app.

al_bundy · 08-08-2009, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69

I'm really hoping Apple isn't thinking that Blu-Ray is compelling because it isn't. Frankly it strikes me as being about as modern as magnetic core memory. Plus the premium you pay for the media is a joke.

On the other hand iTunes is showing some significant aging and a completely Cocoa based iTunes would be fantastic. My biggest fear thought is that it will be Snow Leopard only. Well not so much a fear as I will update to SL the minute it is out, but rather there will be weeks of whining from people that think Apple owes them.

My thinking is that to power some of the more interactive parts of an enhanced iTunes they would need to go parallel with GPU processing. In other words to get all the goodies on screen you will need a fairly modern machine. Of course iTunes 9 could be designed to degrade gracefully when running on older OS'es and hardware. I'd rather see Apple push forward though.

Dave

It's not only going to run on snow leopard. It's also going to run on windows vista and 7 like it does now. Probably going to native 64 bit. Not like apple is going leave most of us iPhone users with an old version.

Quadra 610 · 08-08-2009, 07:08 PM

Blu Ray?? What's that?? Most of
my media is already 1080p or 720p.

Gotta love x.264.

jb510 · 08-08-2009, 07:10 PM

Seriously? Version 9... NOTHING is a bigger example of over stating minor upgrades than iTunes. We really should be at about version 5.5. Sorry to say I could care less about BR support in iTunes, Mac OS X I would care about though... not sure how you get support in iTunes without support in OS X? Organizing applications visuallly would be nice, but what about organizing EVERYTHING ELSE?

If they are yet again going to jump a whole version number II sure as hell hope they finally overhaul the entire library and interface.

- Podcasts, TV shows and Movies should not be buried as folders in the iTunes Music next to albums.
- There damn well ought to finally be a way to manage and organize photos on a mobile device.
- It'd be really nice if they'd complete the thought with the "whole shared library functionality" to give us both the ability to control iTunes remotely from another computer as well as the ability to use Genius functions on a shared library.

al_bundy · 08-08-2009, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dagamer34

As far as I know, there aren't any slot-loading Blu-ray drives. Apple can't put a product in their computers that doesn't exist yet.

If anything though, it should be an option for Mac Pros.

What's wrong with the regular push button ones?

kotatsu · 08-08-2009, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cdy

Oh and find a way to block the Palm Pre again. Vampires.

And that hurts you exactly how? Stop being so damn vindictive and nasty.

kotatsu · 08-08-2009, 07:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CanadianMac2008

Yes, very much agreed. iTunes is a great concept and I like it, BUT, it us WAY too slow and basically suffers from feature bloat. They need to completely rethink their implementation of everything from the groundup. Give us a completely new iTunes.

I agree. iTunes is a bloated mess now and really needs to be re-written from the ground up. With large media libraries it's horribly slow and unstable too.

And why is the iTUNES store the place to go for applications and the latest movies? Even the name has outlived it's usefulness and should be replaced.

noirdesir · 08-08-2009, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlituna

okay i'm trying to figure out the itunes supports blu-ray part of the equation. cause its not like i can pop a DVD in and have itunes rip it to put on my ipod. so what exactly is itunes going to do with my blu-ray disks.
perhaps someone can explain that math to me

What was already alluded to (but dismissed for no reason): Why do you need an app called DVD player when you already (can) use iTunes to watch a lot of video material (video podcasts, music videos, movies rented or bought from the iTMS)? And particularly when instead of DVDs you will watch Bluray disks in the future?
The only reason I can think of is that iTunes takes longer to start up (but then just start iTunes once after login and be done with it for a couple of weeks).

Quote:

Originally Posted by str1f3

I really don't care about this stuff and I'm guessing that most iTunes users (Mac & Windows) feel the same way. I want a faster 64-bit Cocoa app. I could care less about social networking in a media player. iTunes is the slowest app on my Mac. Even slower than Office now because of SP2.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CanadianMac2008

Yes, very much agreed. iTunes is a great concept and I like it, BUT, it us WAY too slow and basically suffers from feature bloat. They need to completely rethink their implementation of everything from the groundup. Give us a completely new iTunes.

The only thing that is slow in iTunes is the startup. Everything else is fast on my 2006 Mac. Maybe a slight hesitation when switching to a device or to applications in the source pane. But that's it. Searching is lightning fast.
Ok, I 'only' have about 65 GB of music and podcast files. It might very well feel different with 300 GB.

Wiggin · 08-08-2009, 07:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BenRoethig

Hopefully, they're finally rolling DVD player into iTunes. It (and quicktime for that matter) should have been merged in iTunes years ago. We only need one media app.

My guess is that DVD Player is a separate app because it requires a licensing fee to play DVDs. Apple gives away iTunes for free on both Macs and PCs and all upgrades are free. If they only give you major updates to DVD player when you by the OS, they can just roll the cost of the license into the price of the OS.

Just a guess...

On another note, however they include blu-ray support, I hope it includes existing Intel hardware with an internal or external 3rd party blu-ray drive. I'd like to add blu-ray playback to my mini HTPC, but I'm certainly not purchasing a new mini to get it.

noirdesir · 08-08-2009, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jb510

Podcasts, TV shows and Movies should not be buried as folders in the iTunes Music next to albums.

My iTunes has Music, Podcasts, Audiobooks and Applications sections as the first four entries in the source pane. I don't really understand what you mean with Podcasts being buried as folders in the iTunes Music (unless you mean the physical folder structure, which is completely irrelevant since you never need to interact with that folder structure, again unless you complicate your live by distributing the iTunes folder of several logical disk volumes).

MacTel · 08-08-2009, 07:56 PM

I'd be surprised if blu-ray drives didn't come to the Mac Pro beforehand or at the same time as the iMac. We'll see in the next few months if Apple keeps to releasing new iMacs before Christmas as they've done in the past.

It does seem strange that only iTunes is rumored to be supporting blu-ray. Why not throughout the entire OS for DVD player and iDVD etc.

eAi · 08-08-2009, 08:06 PM

If the DVD association have decided to allow 'managed copies', I'd bet iTunes would be the first to support it...

08-08-2009, 04:29 PM	#1
*AppleInsider* Kasper's Automated Slave Join Date: Nov 1997 Posts: 6,157	Apple's iTunes 9 rumored to have Blu-ray, social media support A new report suggests that the next version of Apple's iTunes could carry support for Blu-ray discs, visual management and rearrangement capabilities for App Store software, and integration with social media Web sites. Citing a "pretty reliable source," The Boy Genius Report revealed Saturday what could become new features in an anticipated upcoming new release of Apple's digital media software. "One of the new additions to iTunes is said to include Blu-ray support which lines up nicely with a recent AppleInsider report about Apple integrating Blu-ray into their new iMac line-up," the report states. "Something else that will most likely make a bunch of people happy is that we’ve been told iTunes 9 will finally include the ability to visually organize and arrange your iPhone and iPod touch applications. Something that wasn’t so clearly described was some kind of Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm integration. Maybe broadcasting what song you’re playing to your friends?" The rumors regarding Blu-ray corroborate with a report this week from AppleInsider. Sources cryptically suggested that two compelling new features would come with Apple's newest iMacs, leading some to speculate that official Blu-ray support from the company could be coming in the near future. One of those features is said to have long been on the wish-lists of many Mac users while the other is expected to cater to the semi-professional audio/video crowd. The source for The Boy Genius Report reportedly didn't provide a time frame for the new iteration of iTunes, but one might assume that Apple could make an announcement at its annual iPod event in September. If the Blu-ray rumors pan out, it would be a major turnaround for Apple. Less than a year ago, Chief Executive Steve Jobs went as far as to call the technology "a bag of hurt."

08-08-2009, 04:33 PM	#2
gearhunter Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: TheShadowlessUmbra Posts: 22	Will it also be... ...snappier!

08-08-2009, 04:50 PM	#7
wizard69 Registered User Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 2,481	Nice, but it won't get me to buy a Blu-Ray disk. I'm really hoping Apple isn't thinking that Blu-Ray is compelling because it isn't. Frankly it strikes me as being about as modern as magnetic core memory. Plus the premium you pay for the media is a joke. On the other hand iTunes is showing some significant aging and a completely Cocoa based iTunes would be fantastic. My biggest fear thought is that it will be Snow Leopard only. Well not so much a fear as I will update to SL the minute it is out, but rather there will be weeks of whining from people that think Apple owes them. My thinking is that to power some of the more interactive parts of an enhanced iTunes they would need to go parallel with GPU processing. In other words to get all the goodies on screen you will need a fairly modern machine. Of course iTunes 9 could be designed to degrade gracefully when running on older OS'es and hardware. I'd rather see Apple push forward though. Dave

08-08-2009, 05:12 PM	#11
iTuomas Registered User Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 9	Blu-ray, great. But in iTunes? Why not in DVD Player, or even QuickTime? I think it's time for Apple to stop and ask themselves: what is iTunes, after all? iTunes used to be a light and fast music jukebox, but today it's one giant app that handles everything. For me it would make sense to build video library and video store into QuickTime, have iTunes for audio content, and maybe create an entirely new app for App Store and device sync. Just my 0,02€. MBP Early 2008, iPhone 2G, PM G4.

08-08-2009, 05:18 PM	#12
cdy Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 8	Forget Blu-ray I couldn't care less about Blu-ray. Give me the app sorting thing, though! Oh and find a way to block the Palm Pre again. Vampires.

08-08-2009, 04:36 PM	#3
zunx Registered User Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 373	Blu-ray support (both movie payback and rewritable disks) is an absolute must across all Macs.

08-08-2009, 04:49 PM	#5
charlituna Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 656	okay i'm trying to figure out the itunes supports blu-ray part of the equation. cause its not like i can pop a DVD in and have itunes rip it to put on my ipod. so what exactly is itunes going to do with my blu-ray disks. perhaps someone can explain that math to me

08-08-2009, 04:49 PM	#6
ipodrulz Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 33	Everyone keeps bringing up the "bag of hurt" quote... but they never continue with it... he also said "We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off before we burden our customers with the cost of licensing." So things have probably settled down.

08-08-2009, 04:52 PM	#8
Hattig Registered User Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 464	I presume that also means BluRay support in Quicktime? I think that last year or earlier this year, the BluRay disc association was looking into simplifying the licensing for BluRay, and maybe they now have, in to a single reasonable fee per device, instead of the mess that it reportably was before. Will iTunes 9 be Cocoa? Could be why SL iTunes 8 versions show no real improvements so far.

08-08-2009, 05:38 PM	#14
Dzign Registered User Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 22	One feature I've been wishing for is some sort of "CSS" formating for all the metadata so all text of songs infos is formated the same in a snap... Another one would be integration of the star rating in the metadata so you don't lose it if you reinstall everything... My work around has been to create a genre for best songs... Oh and cocoa for sure !

08-08-2009, 05:56 PM	#17
wobegon Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 754	I too don't get where 'Blu-ray support' comes in concerning iTunes, unless they're retiring DVD Player in Snow Leopard, but that seems unlikely. Perhaps Mac Pros will feature optional Blu-ray drives, but they're not likely to be introduced at the annual iPod event. Some things I'd like to see on the App Store side of things include the ability to gift paid apps, perhaps Genius app recommendations, the ability to rate apps in iTunes without having to visit the app's store page, and (dare I say?) some new policies for developers. See Craig Hockenberry's wishlist for some good ones, like developer approval (rather than app update approval) and public responses to customer reviews (sort of like how a forum works). If they're going to do a 64bit Cocoa iTunes, maybe a new foundation for the store itself is in order. Finally, an Apple TV revision would be nice, some worthy additions being Netflix and/or Hulu integration, a pointer remote (as has been pictured in patent filings) for intuitive point-and-click media browsing, web browsing, and/or third party Apple TV apps/games (which could also be controlled with or enhanced by a paired iPhone/iPod touch). I'll believe The Tablet when I see it. False comparisons do not* a valid argument make.* Last edited by wobegon; 08-08-2009 at 06:41 PM..

08-08-2009, 05:57 PM	#18
7Aces Registered User Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 8	Blu-ray would be a very welcome addition in my opinion. I already have an external Blu-ray drive hooked up to my iMac. It's pretty much the only reason why I have a BootCamp partition installed on it, so I can view BDs on Windows. Just hope someone'll make some sort of decryption tool available for Mac sooner or later - not a big fan of region coding and user restrictions on my own discs.

08-08-2009, 05:57 PM	#19
str1f3 Registered User Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 126	I really don't care about this stuff and I'm guessing that most iTunes users (Mac & Windows) feel the same way. I want a faster 64-bit Cocoa app. I could care less about social networking in a media player. iTunes is the slowest app on my Mac. Even slower than Office now because of SP2.

08-08-2009, 06:07 PM	#20
bobmarleypeople Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 26	Here's hoping they'll release a standalone Apple Blu-ray drive (or have compatibility with 3rd party ones). My Blu-ray player is a fairly early model and takes about 5/6 minutes to load a disc (and is only profile 1 compatible, so no picture-in-picture or online content for me at the moment). I get the feeling my iMac could handle it just fine. It'd have to be a firewire connection though. I doubt USB will be fast enough (plus I've ran out of USB ports and have a Firewire 800 port free).

08-08-2009, 06:14 PM	#23
DimMok Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 171	Are the current screen/monitors from Apple considered HD? Wouldnt this be a requirement for BD?

08-08-2009, 07:04 PM	#27
dbfreq Registered User Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 1	The BluRay licensing association (whatever their official name is) approved Managed Copy in the past month or two. Licensing also became significantly more reasonable at the same time. They can see the writing on the wall -- downloads are going to make physical media obsolete over the next 2-4 years and they want to make as much money as they can with the higher-margin BluRay media while they can, so making licensing easier and cheaper and allowing people to store copies of their discs on their hard drives only makes sense. I wonder whether DVD will start to make similar concessions? I think Apple will be adding BluRay drives with Snow Leopard. Also remember the "leak" in iTunes 8.2 that listed CD, DVD and BluRay metadata copyright GraceNote. Apple has used GraceNote for CD metadata for a long time, but I believe mention of the use of GraceNote for DVD and BluRay metadata is new. This leads me to believe that Apple is going to provide some mechanism for loading personal DVD and BluRay discs into iTunes, since they didn't mention GraceNote for movies or TV shows for material that was purchased through iTMS). Because of the legal issues, this may only be for BluRay discs sold with Managed Copy. GraceNote's DVD metadata service is fantastic. For instance, if you get metadata for a TV series you have on DVD, GraceNote's metadata tells you which chapters on the physical disc belong to which episode in the season. So, using that service, you can jump right to a particular episode. Real's DVD ripper / cataloging software used / uses GraceNote, but it's been mired in legal trouble for about a year now (Real was hit with an injunction within a week of releasing the beta). Since iTunes is really just a fancy database and web browser (for accessing the iTunes Store) and QuickTime is the playback engine, anything playable in iTunes would also be playable with QuickTime alone. DVD Player does not use QT as its playback engine (DVD Player can play Video_TS files, QT can't... at least not yet). Also, as much as I'd like to see a native Cocoa iTunes, it seems unlikely. iTunes needs to run on Windows, too, and I don't see Apple maintaining two separate branches of the code or porting Cocoa to run on Windows. Although, they must be doing one or the other with Safari, so, I guess it isn't completely out of the question. Finally, I wonder what "semi-professional audio/video crowd" means, and what the new feature will be? Could it be a PCI-e slot for an audio or video card? That would be fantastic for me, but the only way it would fit would be to have the ports dangling out the side of the monitor. I can't see Steve going along with that. Maybe an external box to house audio and/or video cards with a PCI-e dongle? I'm probably just dreaming.

08-08-2009, 07:08 PM	#31
Quadra 610 Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 2,064	Blu Ray?? What's that?? Most of my media is already 1080p or 720p. Gotta love x.264. (Formerly LTD on Neowin.net) (currently *LTD* on Macrumors.com) Mac OS users have made a conscious technology choice and are therefore typically better informed than their peers. -- Paul Thurrott, winsupersite.com, December 06, 2004

08-08-2009, 07:10 PM	#32
jb510 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 25	Version Leap Seriously? Version 9... NOTHING is a bigger example of over stating minor upgrades than iTunes. We really should be at about version 5.5. Sorry to say I could care less about BR support in iTunes, Mac OS X I would care about though... not sure how you get support in iTunes without support in OS X? Organizing applications visuallly would be nice, but what about organizing EVERYTHING ELSE? If they are yet again going to jump a whole version number II sure as hell hope they finally overhaul the entire library and interface. - Podcasts, TV shows and Movies should not be buried as folders in the iTunes Music next to albums. - There damn well ought to finally be a way to manage and organize photos on a mobile device. - It'd be really nice if they'd complete the thought with the "whole shared library functionality" to give us both the ability to control iTunes remotely from another computer as well as the ability to use Genius functions on a shared library. Last edited by jb510; 08-08-2009 at 07:21 PM..

08-08-2009, 07:56 PM	#39
MacTel Registered User Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 636	I'd be surprised if blu-ray drives didn't come to the Mac Pro beforehand or at the same time as the iMac. We'll see in the next few months if Apple keeps to releasing new iMacs before Christmas as they've done in the past. It does seem strange that only iTunes is rumored to be supporting blu-ray. Why not throughout the entire OS for DVD player and iDVD etc. Tory Hagen Break the Wedge!

08-08-2009, 08:06 PM	#40
eAi Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 366	If the DVD association have decided to allow 'managed copies', I'd bet iTunes would be the first to support it...

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