Brief Hands-On Report--iTunes 6

Apple released iTunes 6 just 7 weeks after releasing iTunes 5. iTunes 6 adds the video component to iTunes and is needed for obtaining videos from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). iTunes 6 requires QuickTime 7.0.3 which is now also available simultaneously with iTunes 6 in the Mac OS X Software Update window. iTunes 6 is available as a standalone download from this Apple Web page. According to the Read Me file,

With iTunes 6, you can now preview, buy, and download over 2,000 videos on the iTunes Music Store and sync your music and purchased videos with iPod to enjoy on the go. To watch purchased videos, you must have Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

After purchasing music from the iTunes Music Store with iTunes 6, you will also need to upgrade your other computers that purchase music from the iTunes Music Store to iTunes 6.

We downloaded and installed iTunes 6 on a number of Power Mac G5s, Power Mac G4 Cubes, Mac mini, PowerBook G4s and iMac G5s. We lost no music or podcasts in the process and brief use, including downloading songs, presented no problems.

There is a new entry "Videos" in the "Source" pane of iTunes. In the iTMS, there are three new genres: Music Videos, Pixar and TV Shows. Pixar has 6 of 10 short animated films, including Luxo Jr. The ABC (owned by Disney) TV Shows list currently has Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, The Suite Life and That's So Raven. Gifting is now built in and the gifts are sent by and redeemed from an email. The iTMS now has customer reviews. There is "Just for You" section that predicts what you would like based on your previous sales or entered data. There are over 2000 music videos at $1.99 ea. with the song. A Pixar movie and ad-free TV episode are $1.99. Apple's digital rights management software, Fairplay, does not allow burning the videos to CDs or DVDs, just storage and playing on a Mac or iPod. [Bill Fox]