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.

It's been a few hectic days. Apple released a new version of iTunes (9.0.2) and an revamped version of it's AppleTV software. To get the current selection of iTunes LPs working with both of them required quite a bit of reverse engineering. The most significant thing they added is support for the AppleTV's remote controls to interact with the LPs. This is basically done by detecting keypresses which are mapped to remote control keys. I've gotten the first iTunes LP converted and working on AppleTV 3.0. You can now download an updated version of the iTunes LP: Rabbit Hole by Tuesday Spoils.

I'm also working on creating a tutorial to show you how you can do this yourself, and am working on updating the iTunes Emulator so you can better test this new platform for iTunes LPs. Tutorials for all this stuff should be up somewhere this weekend. There are a few interesting things about to happen (which I can't say too much about yet) which are taking up more time than I'd hoped. Stay tuned!

Most of the community created iTunes LPs don't work on AppleTV 3.0. This is related to the problem I detailed earlier with the manifest.xml. To fix getting them into iTunes 9.0.2 I suggested you add an almost empty manifest.xml; however it seems that isn't enought for the AppleTV support to work. User phenom posted a comment with some hints to a possible fix. Now I've been able to get something working consistently (thanks to some help by user rob by adding a requirements XML section to the manifest.xml and updating the version identifiers in that manifest, which would result in something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<manifest xmlns="http://apple.com/itunes/media_archive/manifest" version="1.0" media_archive_version="2.0">
    <requirements>
        <supported_platforms>
            <platform name="iTunes" minimum_version="9.0"/>
            <platform name="AppleTV" minimum_version="3.0"/>
        </supported_platforms>
    </requirements>
</manifest>

Note that this will only enable syncing and NOT navigating those LPs on the AppleTV. I'm still working out some things about how to get navigation working properly, but I should have something ready for that soon. I'll update the tutorials soon. And I'll try to get to work with the developers of the iTunes LPs on the website now to get those updated and working as well.

The first version of the iTunes Emulator has been released on github. There are still a few problems with it, but for the most part it should be fully usable for iTunes LPs.

There are a few features missing though which you may or may not run in to:

• No video support
• No waveform support
• No chapter support
• No XID support; which means you can't use this emulator to run your purchased LPs in a browser (yet!).

Apart from that most things should work just fine. You can even test against your actual music library by supplying the emulator with the location of your iTunes Music Library export XML file. This file however does not contain XIDs or cnIDs so your purchased iTunes LPs won't quite work yet. And since there is no Video support yet some other things may not function correctly either.

Plans for the (near) future:

• Implement missing features
• Create support for XIDs by clever use of the manifest.xml and a secondary mapping file.
• Implement music playback controls similar to those in iTunes when showing iTunes LPs fullscreen
• Document code and iTunes features

So get started by downloading the package. If you find any bugs please just let me know in the comments.

iTunes 9.0.2 changed some things about how iTunes LPs work. Because of this many community created LPs can't be imported into iTunes anymore. If you downloaded an iTunes LP from another website, or one that isn't available on this website anymore (for various reasons), and it has that problem; You can still get them to work by simply adding one missing file to the .itlp. Here's how you do it:

First download this .zip file. It contains a file named manifest.xml which is missing from the iTunes LPs that don't work anymore. All you need to do is copy that manifest.xml into your iTunes LP. To do so open the .itlp folder. If you are on a Windows machine you can just double-click the .itlp folder and copy the manifest.xml into the same location as the iTunesMetadata.plist, index.html and iTunesArtwork files. If you are using a Mac OS X machine right-click or ctrl+click the .itlp file and select Show Package Contents. A new finder window will open containing among other things an iTunesMetadata.plist, index.html and iTunesArtwork file. Copy the manifest.xml into this folder.

When you've added the manifest.xml you can add your iTunes LP to iTunes by dragging it into your music library. iTunes should now recognize and accept the iTunes LP again.