iTunes

iTunes is a proprietary digital media player application, introduced by Apple Inc. on January 9 2001, at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The latest version, iTunes 8, was announced at the Apple Keynote September 2008 Let’s Rock. The application is used for playing and organizing digital music and video files. The software is also an interface for managing content on the popular Apple iPod digital media players and the iPhone. In addition, iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store via the Internet to buy and download music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audiobooks, podcasts, feature films and rental films (not available in all countries), and ringtones (available only in the U.S.). It is also used to download applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch as long as they are running 2.X firmware.

iTunes is available for free download for Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and from Apple. It also comes with all Macs, and some HP and Dell computers. Older versions are available for Mac OS 9, OS X 10.0-10.2, and Windows 2000. Even if Apple does not iTunes for other operating systems, it can be run on Linux operating systems through wine, a compatibility layer for Windows.

A version of iTunes came with cell phones from Motorola, whose ability to synchronize music from an iTunes library on the phone, and a similar interface between the two platforms. Since the release of the iPhone, Apple has continued to distribute iTunes with other phone manufacturers to concentrate sales to the Apple device.