Highlight of today? The release of Mac OS X Lion. Coupled with that, Apple also released a new public update of iTunes. You can now download iTunes 10.4 for Windows and Mac. Primarily, the changes essentially apply only to the Mac version.
On this day July 20, 2024 Apple finally released the eight major iteration of the Mac operating system. Mac OS X Lion, which was previewed at WWDC 2011 alongside iOS 5 and iCloud brings over 250 new features to supported Macs. Needless to say, dedicated Mac users could not contain their excitement over this 3.5GB download from the Mac App Store which costs $29.99 once and can be installed on all of your personally authorized Mac machines. Our very own resident Mac genius, Saad Hamid aptly summed up everyone's delight when Lion went live:
#Joke! Anyhow, back to serious stuff. So alongside the latest Mac software update, Apple also released a new public version of iTunes. The emphasis on the word public is because of the fact that the most recent iTunes developer beta has leaked and since people are upgrading to it without having the slightest knowledge, they're having all sorts of problems. If you're not a developer, stick with the latest public release, even if its beta, which currently is iTunes 10.4.
Essentially, the changes in new iTunes 10.4 apply on Macs running Lion as iTunes 10.4 now brings Full Screen support. Here's a tidbit from the release notes:
You can now use iTunes with OS X Lion’s new Full-Screen App capability, which allows you to use iTunes and other apps without distractions.
You'll get an amazing user experience when using iTunes in Full Screen on your Mac. Its kind of going to be like the iTunes app on iPad we all love and use. Full Screen just makes it a whole lot better. Amongst other improvements, iOS-like scrolling and other visual tweaks also enhance the iTunes experience on Mac.
One more thing: iTunes 10.4 is a 64bit Cocoa app for Mac. If you're unaware of what that means, basically its a hell lot faster and may render some previous iTunes plug-ins useless. Apple explains:
iTunes is now a 64-bit Cocoa application on OS X Lion and includes a number of important stability and performance improvements. Some iTunes plug-ins may no longer be compatible with this version of iTunes. Please contact the plug-in developer for an updated plug-in compatible with iTunes 10.4.
iTunes 10.4 for Windows comes with general performance, stability and bug fixes. Nothing new here.
Download iTunes 10.4 for both Windows and Mac.