February 28, 2011
Thanks to the Complete My Album feature in the iTunes Store, you can buy most songs individually and know that if you later wish you'd taken advantage of the album price to buy them all, you can still do so without paying extra. The feature is available via iTunes on iOS devices as well as on your computer. Wherever you navigate to an album you're eligible to complete, you'll see the available price--the regular album price minus what you've spent for the songs you've already bought--and can act on it on the spot. To see a complete list of all the albums you're eligible to complete, use the Complete My Album link that you'll find in the Quick Links section on the main page of the iTunes Store on your computer, at the bottom of the New Releases list in Music on the iPhone and iPod touch, and at the bottom of the Featured page in Music on the iPad. Albums remain eligible for Complete My Album for six months after you've first bought a song from them, and sometimes longer.
February 21, 2011
There's a new feature in Ping that automatically sends you an email when people interact with your Ping activity. In addition to emails about people beginning to follow you or asking permission to do so, you'll also be alerted anytime someone comments on your posts or responds to them, or contributes to your published Ping playlists. If you don't want to receive the emails, go to Ping in iTunes on your computer and select My Profile, then Edit Profile, and remove the check in the Email Notifications area near the bottom of the page. If you change your mind, you can always turn email notifications back on in the same place.
February 14, 2011
Your iTunes Library contains both your media -- music, videos, and more -- and the information iTunes keeps about it to make browsing, searching and managing what you have easy and powerful. If the size of your library is outgrowing the space you want to allot to it on your hard drive and you want to move it to another drive in your system, begin by using the Advanced tab in iTunes Preferences and make sure you have the Keep iTunes Media folder organized option checked. This will ensure that all the organizing information gets moved along with the media. You can then use the Change... button located there to choose a new location for your library. To copy everything to the new location, use the Organize Library command under Library in the File menu, check Consolidate files and then OK. Finally, when the copying is done, delete the files from their original location. (If you'd like a step-by-step walkthrough, go here for the Mac and here for Windows.)
February 7, 2011
New App Store controls on iPad let you fluidly refocus and fine-tune your searching experience as you go. They appear across the top of the page whenever you use the search box and you can then use them to tune your search by Release Date, Customer Rating, Price (Free or Paid), and Device (iPad, iPhone, All), and choose whether the results will be sorted by Relevance (the default), Most Popular, Release Date, or Customer Rating. You can also change categories, and if you select the Game category a Subcategory tab will appear so you can choose among 19 different game types ranging from Action to Word. You can change the filters on the fly, and use the Clear All button to reset them all and start over.
