As the executives and marketroids did their thing in San Francisco, Apple’s network engineers and software update team were hard at work posting several new packages to the SWU servers.
The brand new software update packages include:
- iTunes 7.6 (44.7MB 10.5/Intel) — Support for the new HD movie rental service, many changes to the iTunes Store, and support for AppleTV firmware 2.0
- QuickTime 7.4 (57.9MB 10.5/Intel) — “Numerous bug fixes,” support for AppleTV 2.0
- Front Row 2.1.2 (17.4MB 10.5/Intel) — Bug fixes, “improved iTunes compatibility,” presumably for the new v.7.6.
All in all, this has been a very exciting start to a Macworld which has also seen far more vibrant third-party offerings and attendance by major players in countless segments of the Mac economy — including, most particularly, many companies who just last year didn’t consider themselves part of the Apple/Macintosh economy at all. Read more
No rentals for 5G video iPods?
In the Macworld keynote, Steve Jobs did say that “current generation iPods” would be able to utilize rented movies, but notice he did not say ALL video capable iPods, so there may be some truth to the idea that this is intentional. Perhaps Apple simply hasn’t updated the firmware on these iPods to support the rental functionality, they could be readying an update right now to allow 5G video iPods to playback rented movies.
However, it would seem unlikely that Apple would let this sort of incompatibility slip through the cracks. It may also be possible that these rented movies are protected to a further degree than other iTunes content, which may have caused compatibility problems if the older video iPods are incapable of supporting the tougher protection. Read more