Rumors About iTunes 9 Heat Up

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on August 11, 2009

If it’s August, it must be the high season for Apple rumors. With the annual September refresh of Apple’s iPod line expected now within only a few weeks, the rumor rumblings are starting to build around other products. Today it’s all about iTunes 9. As The Boy Genius Report tells it, complete with reputed screenshots, (though by his own admission, it should be treated as “superduperultramegaturbo rumor/skeptical status” ) iTunes 9 will be much more social than previous versions, integrating sharing features for Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. The idea would be to broadcast to your Web friends, what you’re listening to or watching in iTunes, via a new separate desktop app that would integrate with it.

Interesting, but aren’t there already third-party apps that do that, or something similar?

This came on top of BGR’s report yesterday that support for Blu-Ray content will be forthcoming in the new iTunes as well. This would coincide with the addition of Blu-Ray capable drives on the new iMac. It’s a bit soon for an iMac upgrade. It might seem a little early to upgrade the iMac, last refreshed on March 3, or 161 days ago, and as the MacRumors Buyers Guide shows, the average time between upgrades on the iMac is 220 days. But I wouldn’t expect Apple to make this move before Sept. 15, which would be be the 196-day mark, much closer to the average.

One thing that caught my eye in the alleged screenshots, which I grant could easily be faked, was the integrated icon in the sidebar for Last.fm. I’m more of a Pandora fan myself (and really really like PandoraJam on the Mac by the way) but could see Apple and CBS collaborating in some interesting way.

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