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

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  • Reply 21 of 248
    galleygalley Posts: 971member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by charlituna View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 22 of 248
    dimmokdimmok Posts: 359member
    Are the current screen/monitors from Apple considered HD? Wouldnt this be a requirement for BD?
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  • Reply 23 of 248
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DimMok View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 24 of 248
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    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?
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  • Reply 25 of 248
    enzosenzos Posts: 344member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CanadianMac2008 View Post


    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!
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  • Reply 26 of 248
    dbfreqdbfreq Posts: 2member
    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.
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  • Reply 27 of 248
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dagamer34 View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 28 of 248
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    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 View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 29 of 248
    al_bundyal_bundy Posts: 1,525member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 30 of 248
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,759member
    Blu Ray?? What's that?? Most of

    my media is already 1080p or 720p.



    Gotta love x.264.
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  • Reply 31 of 248
    jb510jb510 Posts: 129member
    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.
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  • Reply 32 of 248
    al_bundyal_bundy Posts: 1,525member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dagamer34 View Post


    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?
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  • Reply 33 of 248
    kotatsukotatsu Posts: 1,010member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cdy View Post




    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.
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  • Reply 34 of 248
    kotatsukotatsu Posts: 1,010member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CanadianMac2008 View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 35 of 248
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by charlituna View Post


    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 View Post


    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 View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 36 of 248
    wigginwiggin Posts: 2,265member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BenRoethig View Post


    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.
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  • Reply 37 of 248
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jb510 View Post


    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).
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  • Reply 38 of 248
    mactelmactel Posts: 1,275member
    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.
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  • Reply 39 of 248
    eaieai Posts: 417member
    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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  • Reply 40 of 248
    str1f3str1f3 Posts: 573member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by noirdesir View Post


    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.



    I disagree. You may have a different experience but everyone I know considers it slow. I don't even bother going into the applications section because it takes forever to load and scroll through. I consistently get beach balls while scrolling through my music. I have to also turn off the Genius sidebar. The idea that they would add more stuff to it and for it to continue the way it is now is mind boggling.
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