Apple has greatly expanded the number of countries mentioned under the Parental Preferences pane in iTunes 10.6. The newly added countries include Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and South Korea. However, the “Parental Preferences” list isn’t restricted to these.
The new settings allow users to limit the viewing of content based on age restrictions and localized parental controls, including TV shows, movies, apps, explicit music and podcasts. The change is noteworthy, since the iTunes Store hasn’t yet arrived in the countries indicated above. iTunes content is only available on the iOS App Store in many countries across the globe, as well as iTunes U and podcasts.
The expansion of parental controls designed specifically for those regions may signal that Apple will soon launch its iTunes Store in major countries such as Indonesia, continuing to expand its digital storefront. iTunes movie and music stores launched in 16 Latin American countries last December, while 12 European countries gained access to the service in September.
Apple may have also added new iTunes 10.6 parental controls simply to restrict mature App Store content as well as explicit podcasts. However, the fact that the company has added movie age ratings tailored specifically to each country while leaving TV show ratings grayed out suggests Apple could be gearing up to offer content in a number of new countries.
The new parental controls are another silent addition to the updated iTunes service. Version 10.6 also reportedly enables users to opt for higher quality conversion bitrates of 192kbps and 256kbps when syncing music files to an iDevice.
I wonder if the government in these countries will ask to be the parent of all accounts.
I love the unannounced changes Apple keeps making to its software updates. I downloaded the new Apple Remote and noticed it now allows you to control your music from your iPad without viewing the Apple TV screen. These ‘little’ changes make all the difference over time
More related, the rollout to more countries per above is huge. If I were Tim, I’d make the GEO rollout of content services one of my top five priorities. This is wonderful news. I hope iTunes Match is not far behind
To this part of the world (Asia), this is definitely a great news and I am sure there are plenty of consumers out there feeling very excited about it.
In fact, some of the countries in Asia are now silently “upgraded” to first tier new product launch countries – eg. Hong Kong and Singapore. Though the official sales figure for each of these countries is not released, I am sure that it is significant enough for Apple to upgrade them to first tier. In fact, Hong Kong now has an Apple Store (open recently) while Singapore still does not.
Who knows what Apple has up its sleeves for Singapore in the near future.
I doubt Apple will suddenly have content available in all of these countries. I think these countries were just added as a precaution, in case a deal goes through.
Please fix the battery issues for the 4S users. Oh, and better performance in the music app when using iTunes Match.
I followed on Engadget. Other than Japanese Siri, did they get into iOS 5.1 at all?
I think that’s all
Yup except for support for the new iPad and Siri Japan there is nothing more in iOS 5.1 for current users.
For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE tell me they finally fixed the music app on iPad. So much broken and missing functionality (not even getting into bad design decisions) and no improvements for months. Let’s hope a new hardware device was incentive for them to fix that app.
I hope iTunes 10.6 fixes the horrible smart playlist bug. I have to keep remaking them and copying the whole list into a regular playlist every time I rate a song. “Live updating” my bottom!
Fixing the fact that safari crashes incessantly on the original ipad (even on macrumors) is a must also.
This better get fixed. It’s become embarrassing to use my iPad 1 because of this issue. Partly because of the issue itself, but mostly because of my visible displays of frustration!
Anyone have any guesses (wild-ass or educated guesses are welcomed) as to whether iTunes 10.6 will run on WinXP and OS X 10.6 machines?
Installing as I type this.
Release notes say battery life issues fixed, and Genius Mixes and Genius Playlists available for iTunes Match.
No mention of fixing the crippling Invalid SIM bug though
This better get fixed. It’s become embarrassing to use my iPad 1 because of this issue. Partly because of the issue itself, but mostly because of my visible displays of frustration!
If you look at the diagnostic logs, the crashes are always attributed to a lack of RAM. it may never get fixed. Even if it does, in the mean time, I would recommend using the Atomic Web Browser. It very rarely crashes for me, and has far more features then even the desktop version of safari. The frustrating issue of all of the tabs frequently reloading in safari is also not a problem with Atomic Web.
I really hope they also fix the DISASTER taking place between iPhone 4S iOS 5.0.1 and AirPlay causing speakers to malfunction and needing to fully reset them.
Glad for this. I’ve been wanting to use the feature for a while, but always wanted to use 192kbps (small enough it saves space, but high enough quality that I don’t get hissing or flatness). Glad they added it.
I’ve been wanting the 256 option for years. Thank you Apple.
I sync Apple lossless on my iPhone and iPad so that’s not really an option for me to downgrade it to any less than lossless.
I have been waiting for 24/96 for years though.
Oh, I will try this when a bug fix for 10.6 is out. iTunes seems to fall into a circle of constant crashes in certain configurations
. Not having the latest iPhoto may have to do with it.
Some claim it’s your rooted iPhone – but I only have an iPod nano 7th gen. But I never bothered to pay for an upgrade of my iLife Suite (’09, came bundled with my machine. Since they did not improve on the SD-video import bug in iMovie, and kicked iDVD, I skipped that upgrade to iLife ’11).
iTunes 10.6 works fine for me and I don’t have the latest iLife. I’m running 10.5.8 and iLife ’08. Have you tried the usual first step of trouble-shooting problems like this by creating a new user, logging in as that new user, and seeing if the problem persists?
If I choose one of these, will it help even out the volume for different songs? Some songs I bought from iTunes have low volume, which gets annoying.
I think you’re looking for “sound check”. It normalizes volume across all songs. Look for it in preferences.
Great. Now why are iTunes Match/iTunes in the Cloud users still stuck with just one unnecessarily high-bitrate option for syncing to mobile devices from the cloud (256kbps)? It should work the same way whether you’re doing it through iTunes or Apple’s servers.
Excellent scientific breakdown of why anything above 16/44.1 isn’t necessary for music downloads. Useful for those doing audio mastering/editing, yes, but for purely listening to music, no.
No 320? Why? It’s like 1/4 line of code.
I didn’t understand this article. So if you’ve ripped your CDs into iTunes at 320 you don’t need to manually convert them to 256 before syncing them with your iPod? Is that what they are saying? Who does that. If you’re going to rip a CD you would do it at 256 or lossless surely.
What if you’ve ripped everything in lossless? We still have to convert manually and keep two copies on our hard drive?
C’mon Apple if you can sell HD movies there is no reason you can’t sell ALAC music.
My understanding is that iTunes will convert the audio file on-the-fly when copying it to your iPod, it will not store two versions of the song in iTunes. So one should rip their CD to a lossless format, and depending on the amount of storage available on your device, select the appropriate codec to conserve space on your device. Nothing else manual to do. I imagine it will take longer to sync (the first time?) depending on the number of songs and your computer’s processing speed, but if you got the time it will save you space.
t’s great to finally see this option, but it is flawed. There should be an option to only transcode files, when necessary. It makes no sense to transcode lossy files. This is something RealPlayer (of all apps) has offered for nearly 10 years. If I only have a handful of purchased tracks, I don’t want them transcoded to 192Kbps; that will only make them sound worse! Transcoding lossless files to a lossy format is the same as if you are importing the files from the original CD.
It doesn’t reconvert files unless their bitrate is higher than the preferred bitrate. Smaller files go right on in original form.
You misunderstand what Galley was saying. He was saying that it should only downconvert lossless files, not lossy files that happen to have a higher bitrate than the conversion setting.
It’s been some time since I did it, but I’ve knocked a few 320kps files down to 256kps and they sounded equal to those natively converted from the original CDs. I understand the principles at work here, and I know that with some software there is some real mangling occurring but I’ve not experienced this personally within iTunes (at least not lately). Then again, I never go below to 256, and don’t keep anything smaller in my library, so maybe I never tested it as suggested either.
Apple’s AAC encoder is widely regarded as the best there is. I’ve never tried it myself but I can certainly believe that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a file that had gone from CD source -> 320 kbps -> 256 kpbs and one that had gone directly from CD source -> 256 kbps.