What is iTunes and what does it do?

In January 2001, Apple introduced iTunes, an all-in-one music playing application for Mac OS 9.0.4 and later and Mac OS X. In October 2003, Apple released iTunes for Windows 2000 and XP. You can do a number of things with iTunes, some of which are described below:

* Listen to CDs: iTunes will play your music CDs. You can shuffle and repeat your favorite tracks, just like a regular CD player.

* Buy music online: With the iTunes Music Store, you may purchase songs, albums, and audiobooks that you can play on up to five computers, burn to CD, or export to an iPod.

* Import music from your CDs: iTunes will also import or rip music from your CDs. You can import in AAC (the codec underlying MP4), MP3, AIFF, WAV, or Apple Lossless Encoder formats. The music will then be stored on your hard drive for easy access anytime.

Note: UITS does not condone the importing or trading of music from CDs which you do not personally own. To do so is a violation of the United States copyright law.

* Create your own playlists: Once you have stored your music on your hard drive, you can play it in any order you like by creating a playlist. Searching your music library is easy because iTunes will search your library as you type. Just type a few letters and you will find the song you are looking for. You can organize your music by artist, album, or song.

* Burn CDs or DVDs: iTunes can burn your files to a CD or DVD. Once you have created your playlists, you can create your own CD with a CD-RW drive, or DVD with a DVD-R drive. This used to work only with Apple's internal drives, but the most recent versions of iTunes support some external CD-RW and DVD-R drives. Consult Apple's and the manufacturer's documentation to see if your drive is supported.

* Synchronize with your iPod: Plug in your iPod, and iTunes will synchronize automatically, at high speeds over FireWire or USB 2.0.

* Export to a non-Apple MP3 player: You can export your playlists through USB or USB 2.0 to a non-Apple commercial MP3 player to take with you wherever you go. Simply drag your files to the MP3 player's icon and the files will be uploaded.

* Listen to Internet Radio: iTunes features a built-in Internet Radio Tuner which will find Internet Radio Stations by genre. Browse through the available stations, and select the one you want.

* Listen to Podcasts: Subscribe to free radio shows and audio programs, and the latest episodes will sync to your iPod automatically each time you dock it.

* Visualize your music: Apple has included a music visualizer that plays a light show along with the music.

* Play movie trailers: You can view movie trailers available on Apple's web site through iTunes. Access this option either through the iTunes Music Store from within iTunes, or by selecting the Watch Trailers in iTunes 5 Now option on Apple's Movie Trailers page at: http://www.apple.com/trailers/
* Transcode music to a different format: After you have imported your music files into iTunes, you can transcode them to a different format (e.g., MP3 to AAC or WAV to MP3).

* Listen to music shared across the network: You can choose to make your playlists available to other iTunes users on your local network, and you can likewise access others' iTunes playlists. The available playlists appear in iTunes automatically.