iTunes

For a beginner's guide to iTunes, see here or the official Apple iTunes Overview.

iTunes is the media player written by Apple for playing and organising all your music files, downloading music from the iTunes Music Store, and burning music to CD. It is also used to download songs to the iPod.

iTunes is available as a free download for Mac and PC and is an excellent and easy-to-use application even if you do not possess an iPod.

In the iTunes Music Store you will find an incredible range of more than 6 million songs, 100,000 free podcasts, over 27,000 audiobooks and iPod games. You can listen to free 30-second previews of all songs. It is very easy to search for any particular song you want. Single tracks are 79p.

For more technical advice and information about iTunes see the Apple Support website: http://www.apple.com/uk/support/itunes/

Download Movies and TV Shows

The iTunes Store in the UK features over 700 films available for rent or purchase, with titles available for purchase on the same day as their DVD release, including favorites such as I Am Legend, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, and classics such as Dr. Zhivago.

With iTunes Movie Rentals, once a movie is rented, it starts downloading from the iTunes Store directly to iTunes or Apple TV, and users with a fast Internet connection can start viewing the movie in seconds. Customers have up to 30 days to start watching it, and once a movie has been started customers have 48 hours to finish it.

iTunes movies are available at £6.99 for library title purchases and £10.99 for new releases. iTunes Movie Rentals are £2.49 for library title rentals and £3.49 for new releases.

TV shows are now available, with full series of Heroes, Lost, Ashes To Ashes and more at your fingertips, you'll never miss your favourites. Shows are available for as little as £1.89.

Games

Choose from classic games such as Tetris, Monopoly, and Sonic The Hedgehog. At £3.99, each iPod game offers hours of fun.

Important: Note that these games can only be played on the iPod Classic, the 5th generation iPod (commonly called the video iPod), or the latest nano. They cannot be played on any other iPod including the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

File Usage Restrictions

When you buy a song from iTunes it is downloaded in AAC format (using Apple's FairPlay digital rights management). Though this is said be higher quality than MP3, the format places restrictions of how you can use the file (unlike unrestricted MP3).

FairPlay will allow a protected track to be used in the following ways:

• The protected track may be played on up to five authorised computers (you can authorise five computers per Apple Account). This could be a combination of Macs and PCs (for example, three Macs and two PCs). When you transfer a purchased song to another computer you will have to authorise that computer via iTunes. For more information, see the Apple article Authorizing your computer.
• You can copy a purchased song onto as many iPods as you like.
• The protected track may be copied to a standard CD audio track any number of times.

Now, for the same price you can choose iTunes Plus songs that feature higher quality, 256 kbps AAC encoding - twice the standard bit rate - and no DRM (digital rights management). You can play these iTunes Plus songs on any iPod, other digital music players, and an unlimited number of computers, now with no extra charge.

(There is a way round these restrictions because Apple have been quite generous in allowing unlimited audio CD burning of songs. After doing this, you can reinsert the CD and use iTunes to rip the CD in MP3 format. All restrictions will then be removed, and you can do what you like with your music. However, I should add that if you were based in the United States, circumventing the FairPlay protection scheme in this fashion would represent a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.)

Adding Album Artwork in iTunes

Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store come with album art automatically, but what's the easiest way to add artwork to your other MP3s? It's actually very easy to add album art to these tracks in iTunes.

First, make sure that your Album Art area is visible in iTunes. This is the small square area in the bottom left of your main iTunes window. If it is not visible, press the fourth button from the left in the bottom left corner.

Next, in iTunes select the song (or multiple songs) that you’d like to add album art to (I'll select "Boogie 2Nite" by Booty Luv).

If you have a scanned image as a file on your hard drive, simply drag it into the Album Art area from Windows Explorer (PC) or the Finder (Mac). But if you don't have the artwork image, seach for the song on Amazon (Important: you must click on "See larger picture" for a suitable image file). Then simply drag the image from your web browser into the iTunes Album Art area:

Great For Parties!

These tips are great if you're using iTunes to DJ at a party!

In iTunes, select Edit->Preferences->Playback and in that window you can select Crossfade Playback so that iTunes will fade songs in and out (mixing them together like a DJ) during playback. You can also select to automatically adjust the volume to the same level for all songs (by selecting Sound Check):

Fantastic iTunes Visualizer

iTunes comes with a built-in visualizer which provides graphics to match the music you are playing (in the View menu, select Show Visualizer). However, for really eye-popping visuals download the G-Force visualizer here. It's available for Mac and PC.

The screenshots above really do not do it justice - it's completely mind-blowing! Great for parties.

Once you have installed it, in the View menu, select Visualizer -> G-Force, and then in the View menu select Visualizer. Choose Full Screen in the View menu to really blow their minds!

Flick through album cover art

iTunes allows you to flick through your songs' collection of album covers as if you were holding the covers in your hand! Simply click on the "Cover Flow" button (the rightmost View button):

You can then smoothly flick through all the albums in your library:

For more information, see the Apple Cover Flow article