Since its introduction by Apple on January 9th, 2001, iTunes has become one of the most popular music library organization apps ever. It started off simple and eventually became what it is today, a place not only to organize files, but to shop, learn, and watch. With so much growth, large deals, and new features in the past few years, it makes me wonder where iTune’s place will be in the future. When digital sales take over physical media, will it be because of iTunes? Will iTunes one day start a revolution in how we purchase and handle all of our DVDs, music, and TV shows? Or will iTunes eventually slip away into the past and be replaced by a whole new app or movement?

With the direction iTunes is headed now, it seems like it very well could be the driving force behind moving totally to digital sales for some. It has one of the biggest music selections available anywhere, allows you to rent movies, releases new DVD titles the same day as hard copies, and contains all sort of other media, such as podcasts and TV shows. With only a couple more deals and updates, iTunes could soon be the place to go for all of your media. This would almost completely eliminate the need for physical media. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t think this will happen anytime very soon, but it is possible. But what would seal the deal for moving completely to digital media?

Apple has been granted four new patents today by the US Patent & Trademark Office. The patents cover four inventions that relate to Apple’s multipurpose dock, QuickTime’s transmission of differently formatted media, measuring network bandwidth between two computers, and a communication between media servers and media clients.

Stand invention (US Patent D567800) does not offer a detailed explanation as to why this dock is much different than other docks on the market. Apple only provided a one sentence explanation in the patent filing: “The stand, which can be utilized as a dock, is used to support an electronic device, such as a media player, media storage device, cellular phone, PDA and/or the like.”

Today, Apple celebrates the fifth anniversary of its iTunes store with a look back at “all of the great music, video, and exclusives” that users discovered on iTunes, and highlighting the songs and shows that defined each year of the iTunes store’s life. Apple gives a brief history along with a collection of “best sellers” more »

ITV PLC, the U.K.’s largest free-to-air commercial broadcaster according to sales, announced on Tuesday that a selection of its programming is now available to buy or download from Apple’s U.K. iTunes store. The shows offered cost from £1.89 an episode and may be bought as a complete series, ITV said. The programs offered include Lewis more »

This year, Apple is treating European journalists to watch a live broadcast of the Macworld San Francisco 2008 keynote via satellite. It will be hosted at the BBC TV studios in London, on 15 January 2008. The invitation, given to many respected media representatives around Europe, states the following “Please join us on 15 January more »

At the fifth D: All Things Digital event, Steve Jobs revealed a software upgrade to the Apple TV that would allow customers to access YouTube’s thousands of clips through a wireless internet collection. You would not access the clips directly from YouTube, instead a team would host the videos in an Apple TV format, available more »