# iTunes 5 Rumor



## twister (Oct 14, 2003)

http://www.macosrumors.com/ is reporting



> iTunes 5 to accompany Apple music announcements Thursday? Several rumor sites have suggested this to be so. We have recently seen test builds of iTunes 5, and it does indeed appear to include WMA audio support -- even with the Mac version.



More at the rumor site.


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## Trip (Oct 14, 2003)

WMA support would be so awesome!


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## Pengu (Oct 14, 2003)

I think a better (lame?) mp3 codec would be more useful than wma support.


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## Ricky (Oct 14, 2003)

A couple more days and we find out...


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## Trip (Oct 14, 2003)

The rumor about iTunes 5 having that "music loan" feature sounds cool. I think that'd be great (maybe a minute of songs instead of 30 seconds?). But of-course all the little kiddies out there would steal that music so fast.


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## joek (Oct 14, 2003)

MOSR is just repeating what has been posted at macrumors.com and appleinsider... but with a bit of their own BS pixie dust.

to see the orignial source of the itunes rumors, see those sites.


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## Jason (Oct 14, 2003)

i wonder if ipods will get updated to support wma also


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## Arden (Oct 15, 2003)

I think WMA support would be very useful in iTunes, as would WMV in Quicktime.  And I think they should toss in RM support while they're at it.


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## Sogni (Oct 15, 2003)

WMA? Why? What for? 
Having WMVs and AVIs on my Mac is bad enough! 
Never cared for WMAs... 

Hmm... maybe it's for all those Windows suckers who tried or will try buymusic.com and napster and figure out they suck?


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## hulkaros (Oct 15, 2003)

Does this means that with iTunes 5 we will see a new QuickTime version as well, say, 6.5?


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## Cat (Oct 15, 2003)

Maybe Apple will configure iTunes to automatically convert WMA files to AAC ... just a thought.


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## monktus (Oct 15, 2003)

Adding WMA (and even RM) is a good idea. It just adds to the switcher argument - "Look, now you can play WMA files too, and it's easier then Microsoft!". It's also good for Mac users who don't like WMA (and RM) but end up having to use it anyway. It looks good for Apple  supporting lots of formats helps dispel the old myth of incompatibility, especially when the standards that Apple uses are open ones.


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## Arden (Oct 15, 2003)

Sogni, you may not like them (neither do I), but you will run across them, and when you do you may be thankful that iTunes supports them, if indeed it does at the time.


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## Pengu (Oct 15, 2003)

For those that even read my last post, i didnt mean that we shouldnt get WMA, i just think that updating the mp3 codec used (who's to say it isnt the same one used way back when it was SoundJam??) by iTunes is more important than adding WMA support. Yes, options is nice, but why not make iTunes a Coccoa app, and make it easier for it to use third party *NIX tools as plugins, like Obb Vorgis, LAME, (im sure there is a *NIX WMA codec somewhere) etc. I love iTunes, and I love it's features, but I think sometimes features need to take a back seat to performance, and evolution.


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## dlloyd (Oct 15, 2003)

Amen Pengu


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## jackdahi (Oct 15, 2003)

I really don't think that Apple would include WMA playback support in winTunes for many reasons. The first beeing, MONEY! It does'nt make financial sence for Apple to glorify AAC audio and go to great lenghts to school the public of its superiority to WMA, and then turn around and include WMA supportin their products. The second, ITMS. With a library now soon to reach 500,000 AAC songs, there is a a lot of investment in time and resources, that were put on the store. They will surely not support WMA in fear that PC users will use iTunes to purchase music from another music store such as Napster 2.0. and sync to the iPod. "If the iPod contains WMA support."


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## Pengu (Oct 15, 2003)

These are all good points, but who says itunes will support DRM in wma, if it does support wma??


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## toast (Oct 15, 2003)

monkster: adding RM is a completely different technology (stream vs still audio). But of course, that would be freaking awesome.


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## twister (Oct 15, 2003)

iTunes does streaming.  They have the radio section


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## mindbend (Oct 15, 2003)

Does anyone have an idea of what the ratio of WMA to MP3 file quantity is in the Windows world? My assumption is that MP3 still dominates, but by what percentage I don't know.

If WMA is a minority player in the Windows world, then Apple can afford to ignore it and just let the Windows people play their MP3s and gradually move up to AACs. But if WMA is taking over, then Apple simply has to make iTunes play them (at least the Windows version). In the end, Apple wants Windows users to buy new songs from the ITMS. And they need to go through iTunes to do that. If iTunes doesn't support WMA and Windows users have huge libraries of WMA files, they AIN'T gonna use iTunes.

What Apple definitely won't do is provide WMA files through iTunes. That would be pointless.


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## cq107 (Oct 15, 2003)

support for WMA doesn't mean that apple will USE it... iTunes store will ALWAYS be AAC Exclusively,  which is the only thing that counts anyways...


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## dave17lax (Oct 15, 2003)

I think it makes sense to include wma support for the win version, since pc users may have a ton of wma files. If I was someone who had never used a mac or itunes before, maybe someone who didn't care about the differences between formats and OS's, I'd be pissed if I tried to play a wma that worked before, and didn't work in the new app I had just downloaded. "iTunes is cool, but....it doesn't even play wma's". Don't let them export to wma, but at least let them play them so they don't have to have two apps for music, or convert a ton of files or something.


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## twister (Oct 15, 2003)

great point!!


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## adambyte (Oct 15, 2003)

I bet the new iTunes will support WMA playback (for those windows users who have those files), but not actually natively encode to WMA. This is a way to support playback of those files while still promoting the AAC format.

Or, at least, that's how I think it SHOULD be.


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## Krevinek (Oct 15, 2003)

The problem is licensing. Nothing stops Apple from including WMA support except fees that MS is likely to extract from them.


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## spitty27 (Oct 15, 2003)

> _Originally posted by hulkaros _
> *Does this means that with iTunes 5 we will see a new QuickTime version as well, say, 6.5?  *



lol not for a while. 6.4 is bundled with panther.


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## twister (Oct 15, 2003)

Now they say iTunes 4.1 and QuickTime 6.4


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## doofy10 (Oct 16, 2003)

What about .shn support??  I have tons of live shows that are compressed .wavs in .shn format.  Winamp has a 3rd party plugin for .shn playback, I would love something for iTunes, and possibly my iPod.
-Doofy


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## Pengu (Oct 16, 2003)

What the hell is a .shn?


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## adambyte (Oct 16, 2003)

.shn- front part of your lower leg.


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## Stridder44 (Oct 16, 2003)

yea, sounds like iTunes 4.1 guys...I don't think they'd have a whole new iTunes version yet...


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Oct 16, 2003)

Yep, confirmed!  iTunes 4.1 and Quicktime 6.4.

iTunes for Windows doesn't play WMAs as far as I can see...


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## twister (Oct 16, 2003)

i can encode as wma in the OSX version so i'm sure you could play them too.


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## mindbend (Oct 16, 2003)

Looks like I was wrong. I thought for sure iTunes for Windows would support WMA. I'm glad it doesn't frankly. I guess Apple always has it as an ace-in-the-hole (adding WMA support) if iTunes doesn't catch on as quickly as they anticipate.


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## mindbend (Oct 16, 2003)

Twister, how can you encode to WMA in the OS X version of iTunes?


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## twister (Oct 16, 2003)

my bad. it's wav


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