Apple releases iTunes 9 [Update: now available.]

Apple has just released the latest version of iTunes at the September 9th event in San Francisco. iTunes 9 has some new welcome features, including the ability to organize your iPhone and iPod touch applications within iTunes to sync across to your device.

Syncing all types of media to your iPhones and iPods is now a lot easier, allowing you to choose selected artists, albums and the like. Movies now show you small thumbnails of each title along with the film’s rating, running time and size. Nothing major here, but great little enhancements to make syncing easier and more convenient.

A new feature called Home Sharing allows you to copy media between up to 5 authorized computers within your home network. So, your iTunes library can be the same anywhere in your house, wherever you want that new dance playlist to be heard. You can either select items to sync with Home Sharing, or simply choose your entire library. Either way, you can get your media on up to five computers with iTunes 9.

So what else is new? Well, along with Home Sharing and improved syncing options, there are also new features in Genius, allowing you to view Genius playlists based on the music you already know. For example, it will show you an artist you have in your library as a comparison to a selected track, rather than a new album from the iTunes Store. Again, it’s not a ground breaking feature, but nice to know what works well with what within your own iTunes library.

The iTunes Store has also seen a little redesign. There’s now a task bar at the top of pages, and the “new music” section is now a horizontal slide window. According to Jeff Robbin, the store is now “… much more spacious and open—it’s a welcome improvement.” We’ll have to see the majority of user interface changes when we get our hands on it a little later today, but from the keynote screen captures, it’s looking a lot more fresh and clean.

Another big feature of iTunes 9, and also the iTunes Store, is something called LP. This gives you liner notes, lyrics, band photographs and more general information about the album. Whereas previous to this feature you occaisionally got bonus video and booklet materials, now it will all work within iTunes in a nice interface designed by the artist, so everything will fit with the album itself. There are almost no limits to what the LP can include, so be on the look out for albums including this feature, as you’ll get some interesting extra’s along with the title itself.

Stay tuned on the Appletell live blog for the latest releases from the September 9th event as it happens.

[Update: Now available for download via Software Update.]