Apple has delivered as promised. A little while back they promised to open up TuneKit and iTunes LP and iTunes Extras development to indie bands. They have just posted a comprehensive guide online along with downloads, testing information, templates, documentation; basically everything you need to get started.

So where does that leave this website?

Well there are still many things that are not explained in Apple's documentation. For example how can you add extra animations through css, to handle fonts and even how to create real visualizers instead of simple animated backgrounds.

This does mean though, that over the next few week a lot will probably change here. There will be new tutorials about how to use Apple's toolkits, and guides on how to go beyond the tools provided by Apple. I also have some ideas for framework extensions that would be useful.

Another important tool remains the iTunes Emulator. Apple now provides a way to debug inside of iTunes, however there are still a couple of major problems with doing so (having to remove and re-add the .itlp every time you make a change), which make developing and testing in Safari much more convenient. Also I still have some future ideas planned for the emulator which will go beyond the scope of what Apple provides.

Long story short, iTunesLP.net will stay relevant, so stay tuned for many great updates. In the mean time check out Apple's iTunes LP and iTunes Extras developer documentation.

Finally have gotten around to finishing another iTunes LP tutorial about fonts. About quirks with Windows Cleartype, AppleTV, how Apple deals with these issues themselves and an even better way to get around it. You can also see some of the results of the research for this tutorial on the website. All the headings now have much nicer fonts using the techniques described in the tutorial.

There have only been a few updates the last few weeks. Mainly related to updates for AppleTV. And this past week has been particularly hectic. A lack of updates doesn't mean that there hasn't been any progress though. People following the Twitter-feed have already seen some mention of a new playback engine for the emulator. I've made a few screenshots of the current progress:


Playback controls when playing music


Playback controls when playing video

In the first screenshot you'll see basic playback controls that I'm implementing right now. These will allow you to more easily test code that listens for track-changes for example, and testing of certain playlist features.

The second I think is perhaps even more interesting since it shows the work that's being done now on a full video engine in the emulator, which will be used to create support for iTunes Extras soon, allowing me to finally finish that tutorial.

Added a new tutorial explaining how to create iTunes LPs that correctly sync to the AppleTV, and how to implement navigation using the remote control, and even how to generate that familiar audio-feedback that you're used to from your AppleTV.

Apple released AppleTV 3.0.1. This small update fixes a bug which caused library content to disappear from the AppleTV at random. It should not have any effect on iTunes LPs functioning correctly. If anyone experiences problems though, please let me know in the comments.

Justin Bianco's Kingdom Crumble is now also available for re-download. The updated album is now compatible with AppleTV 3.0. It also uses the new navigation stuff which I'm creating a new tutorial for, so if you can't wait, download it and look inside the index.html. Basically navigation on AppleTV is done by simulated keypresses which are linked to the buttons on the remote. There are however some special cases. This weekend all will be revealed in the new tutorial.

I'll also be working on the other LPs, which will hopefully also be ready this weekend. Especially Kieronononon's may take a little while, because it needs a partial rewrite as well due to some bugs that happen with the windows version of iTunes.

Since a lot has just changed for iTunes LPs; because of the new iTunes release and AppleTV 3.0 upgrade; there is a bit of inconsistency in compatibility. Most will work fine on iTunes 9.0.2, while a few still have problems. Almost none have AppleTV 3.0 support yet. To take away a bit of the confusion I've added compatibility badges to every download. Now you can immediately see if a download is compatible with your version of iTunes and whether you can use the LP on your AppleTV.