Apple may rev up iTunes 11 at tomorrow's iPad Mini event
Already demoed last month, the latest refresh for iTunes may see the light of day courtesy of Apple's media event on Tuesday.
iTunes users waiting for the new version could find their wait over sometime tomorrow.
Reports cited by MacNN and other blog sites say that Apple will officially kick off iTunes 11 at its iPad Mini event tomorrow.
Apple showed off the latest update to iTunes at its iPhone 5 launch event on September 12, promising that the new version would come sometime in October. So tomorrow does seem a likely candidate.
iTunes 11 offers the latest refresh to the now 12-year-old music player. The interface itself has been redesigned, while iCloud support is now built in. And the new mini player offers more controls so you don't have to open the full applications as often.
CNET's live coverage of Apple's event tomorrow
iTunes has a long and sometimes rocky history.
The software started as a basic music player. It then gradually incorporated more features throughout the years, such as iPod synchronization, TV shows and movies, iOS apps, and the Ping social network. But with the new features, iTunes also gained weight.
I run iTunes on my PC and Mac Mini and have watched the software become slower and buggier as it's taken on more features. I had almost come to expect the program to crash or freeze on my PC each time I ran it.
The last few iterations of iTunes have certainly improved performance. The software generally behaves itself now, so crashes and freezes are no longer the rule.
Still, I think iTunes remains slow, bloated, and feature-heavy. I'd like to see Apple truly streamline the software to bring it back to its core purpose of playing and sychronizing music, movies, TV shows, and other items.