Tunes 9.2 comes with several new features and improvements, including:
– Bullets are Apple’s comments on this release followed by a quick analysis of what it may mean to us.
• Sync with iPhone 4 to enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, books and more on-the-go
– General sync updates, we’re hoping for the file sync/transfer through the iTunes USB conduit like we have with our iPads.
• Sync and read books with iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4 and iBooks 1.1
– Yes, iBooks comes to the iPhone. We hope the library grows a lot, it has had a slow start. With the super screen on the iPhone 4, book text should be readable even on this smaller screen (compared to iBooks on the iPad).
• Organize and sync PDF documents as books. Read PDFs with iBooks 1.1 on iPad and any iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
– Reading PDFs in iBooks will be a nice feature. This wont mean an end of the many PDF reader and notation apps currently available. The bookshelf layout of iBooks is nice, for large quantities of PDFs we will need tagging to better organize what is work and what is fun.
• Organize your apps on your iOS 4 home screens into folders using iTunes
– YEA! Folders of apps that you can assemble in the luxury of your desktop/notebook. Very nice! We have already been grouping our apps into ones that tie together for a process.
• Faster back-ups while syncing an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4
– We can always use faster syncs. We aren’t sure if this is better management of which files get backed up so time isn’t spent backing everything up if it hasn’t changed or the data is assembled differently. More to follow…
• Album artwork improvements make artwork appear more quickly when exploring your library
– Album artwork is a mixed bag of good and bad. We cut our albums down to just the songs we are interested in keeping on our mobiles. So, we end up with image file after image file that is only associated to one or two songs. Sure looks cool though!
For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
Some work appears to have been done on the general iTunes UI too. Buttons are a bit less vibrant if they aren’t usable. Quantity of items in a folder like Apps and Podcasts that need your attention pop a bit more.
It appears that iBooks are still not available for searching and purchasing anywhere except through the app on the iPhone/iPad.