Happy Birthday, iTunes
January 9, 2013
On Jan. 9, 2001, 12 years ago, iTunes was born. When it arrived at Macworld San Francisco, iTunes included no store and was basically SoundJam with an easier to use interface. However, what was unveiled on that winter morning would lead to big things for Apple, the music industry, developers, and of course, users.
Here are just a few of iTunes' many milestones.
Jan. 9, 2001
When iTunes debuted, it was only available on computers running Mac OS 9. Apple wouldn’t add Windows support until version 4.1 in October 2003.
Sept. 25, 2001
The latest version of iTunes came bundled with Mac OS X 10.1.
July 17, 2002
Say hello to Smart playlists and Audible.com audiobook support.
April 28, 2003
While iTunes was cool, the iTunes Store was even cooler. So began a wonderful experiment that soon took over the entire music industry. Instead of simply being a place to burn CDs, iTunes was now where you could buy the music and ditch the physical media altogether.
Sept. 12, 2006
Cover Flow and gapless playback are introduced as is the ability to sync purchased content from an iPod to computer.
June 29, 2007
The iPhone arrives.
Jan. 15, 2008
Forget music, now users could rent movies from the iTunes Store. TV shows would eventually be added.
July 10, 2008
The App Store officially opens.
Sept. 9, 2009
Genius playlists arrive as well as a new default visualizer. Also new: Home Sharing, iTunes LPs, and iTunes Extras.
June 16, 2010
Folks can now read books on their iOS devices thanks to iBooks 1.0.
Sept. 1, 2010
Ping arrives. Fortunately, Apple would kill their underperforming social music network two years later.
June 6, 2011
Apple releases the first beta for iTunes in the Cloud. This allows automatic downloading of purchased content between iTunes and iOS devices.
Nov. 29, 2012
Cupertino unveils iTunes 11 which drops Cover Flow and includes a redesigned grid layout. Also new: an improved MiniPlayer, and tighter iCloud integration.
What feature do you still use the most with iTunes?
