iTunes

iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the Windows (and formerly macOS) operating systems, and can be used to rip songs from CDs as well as to play content from dynamic playlists. It includes options for sound optimization and wireless sharing. iTunes was announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 9, 2001. Its original and main focus was music, with a library offering organization and storage of Mac users' music collections. With the addition in 2003 of the iTunes Store for purchasing and downloading digital music and a Windows version of the program, it became an ubiquitous tool for managing music and configuring other features on Apple's line of iPod media players, which extended to the iPhone and iPad upon their introduction. From 2005 on, Apple expanded its core music features with support for digital video, podcasts, e-books, and mobile apps purchased from the iOS App Store. The release of iOS 5 in 2011 made these devices less dependent on iTunes, though it could still be used to back up their contents. Though well received in its Early Years, iTunes received increasing criticism for a bloated user experience with the incorporation of non-music features. In October 2019, beginning with Macs running macOS Catalina, iTunes was replaced by separate apps, namely Music, Podcasts, and TV, with Finder taking over device management capabilities. In February 2024, most features of iTunes for Windows were split into the Apple TV, Music, and Apple Devices apps, while iTunes is still used for podcasts and audiobooks as there is currently no Windows version of Apple Podcasts. These changes did not affect older macOS versions (macOS Mojave and earlier), or users who prefer not to switch to the UWP-based apps on Windows; the iTunes program remains accessible for Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Audiobooks on these platforms.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "iTunes", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.