somefoolwitha.com ...since 2002

iTunes 7.2 is out.

With iTunes 7.2, preview and purchase iTunes Plus music—new higher-quality, DRM-free music downloads from participating music labels.

After lots of hunting on the internet, I found press release and webcast (downloadable) about today's Apple and EMi announcement of DRM free and higher quality tracks from EMI on the iTunes store. Sounds like a pretty major announcement to me and I hope to read more on Apple's site soon (so far there's no mention I can see).

Seems the higher quality, DRM free tracks also cost more money - not so good.

"DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song."

Apple's US press release.

”We are going to give iTunes customers a choice — the current versions of our songs for the same 79 pence price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 20 pence more”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.”

UK press release.

I noticed that DRM free full albums are the same price as the DRMd, lower bitrate ones - nice. MacBreak Weekly has a special with John Gruber on iTunes + EMI - DRM and a video interview from BBC.

New British Mac podcast is out!

Steve Jobs makes his thought known about DRM - Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players." [VIA] As ever, John Gruber has an insightful (inciteful?) and interesting take on the whole thing. Brian Ford on Newsvine also has an interesting take.

I'm sure all MacFanatics are well aware what's going on today.

It is of course 'His Steveness" keynote speech at Apple's MacWorld Expo 2007

More news on the iTV? Will the much rumoured formerly-known-as-iPhone surface? What of the much vaunted but recently ignored full-screen touch-screen iPod? New iLife? New iWorks? Updated iTunes?

How about "one more thing"?

Either way, keep up to date at MacRumors, Engadget or World of Apple Live (and a list here). Also remember to keep an eye out for the Apple keynote stream some time after the event. Watch the keynote here.

So basically it's iPhone, Apple TV and new Airport base station. Whilst the iPhone does look great, its not due out here in the UK until year end and will be prohibitively expensive (for me). The Apple TV also looks like a great piece of equipment and something I would most surely be interested in at some point (Xbox 360 first maybe). Im not in the market for the Airport base station, but stack a Mac Mini and an Apple TV on to of it and .. oh wow!

I wonder, will the Apple TV play my AVI files?

Disappointments - no iPod of course. I can see the iPhone being the form-factor for a new iPod though and whilst it's unlikely will be Apple announcing one at MacWorld there's always "special events". No Mac updates at all, odd. No .mac or software updates at all. No Leopard information!

All these lack of updates leads me to guess that they devoted this keynote not iPhone and Apple TV and will be having another show some time later.

Oh yes, and it's no longer Apple Computer, Inc - it's just Apple, Inc. I wonder how that went down in discussions with Apple Corps.

My Home on iLike™. hey, check out this cool music thing I signed up for. it helps you find music with friends. try it, it's pretty easy :-)