Rumor: iTunes 4, Revved iPods Due March-April?


Precious little iTunes information is forthcoming from Cupertino. As MacGeneration notes, many expected Apple to intro a revampled iTunes to debut at MWSF in January. Jobs did his 'two MacWorlds' material, but iTunes wasn't on the guest list.

Now MacOSX Rumors claims that iTunes 4 is set to go prime time, with "full MP4 support (encode/decode)", which will also reportedly find its way onto the firmware of the revised iPods. As MacOS X Rumors' article notes, Jobs demo'd Rendezvous support for iTunes playlists long, long ago.

The article also make the -correct in our view - connection between iTunes 4, iPod and Apple's much-discussed music service, expected to operate via .mac, but also expected to work with all - probably OS X-only - Macs running iTunes.

iTunes 4 could be launched as early as end of March, or April, failing that. iPod news is much thinner on the ground. Clearly, Apple, that most secretive of companies, keeps its iPod cards particularly close to its chest. But given that the 5GB model has been unavailable for some time - seemingly EOL - it's reasonable to expect some feature upgrades for iPod. MP4 is an obvious one. But there are also 40GB 1.8" hard drives available from Toshiba now, which would not only make the iPod an almost-ludicrously large portable music container, but also a pretty good-sized FireWire hard drive.