It shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone, but alongside the new iOS 4 (formerly iPhone OS 4) software launching on June 21, Apple will be releasing a new version of iTunes. I was told as much by an Apple employee during the hands-on time following the keynote at WWDC today when asking how certain new features would work.
Specifically, the employee told me that iTunes 9.2 would be unveiled in the coming weeks (and probably the same time as iOS 4) to allow for PDF syncing in the new iBooks for iPhone. The ability to read PDFs is the latest addition to the iBooks app, and isn’t currently available in the iPad version. According to the employee, people will be able to email PDFs to one another and open them in this reader — or they can simply sync them with their computer and this new iTunes 9.2.
You can bet the new version will have other features to help marry it with the new iOS, such as folder support, as well.
More proof of the impending launch of iTunes 9.2 came today as Apple has apparently released a beta version of the software for developers alongside the Gold Master version of iOS 4 (and the new version of Safari). This new beta build is apparently Mac-only for the time being.
One interesting thing to note is that while Apple has tidied up the new of iPhone OS by dropping the “phone” part, they have yet to do that with iTunes. Apple undoubtedly did this with the iPhone OS because it’s expanding beyond the iPhone itself — but iTunes has long been about much more than “tunes.” Still, that’s a brand that would be hard for Apple to kill as it’s well known in the mainstream. iPhone OS (the name), on the other hand, is mostly unknown to users.
Maybe Apple will take the opportunity to rebrand iTunes when it launches the cloud-based version. That was rumored to be happening at WWDC as well, but that seems very unlikely now as it would certainly be worthy of a mention at the keynote.
[photo via pdparticle]