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Popular media player software from Apple for Mac and Windows. iTunes is widely used by millions of people to organize the music they play on the computer as well as all the content they download to their iPods, iPhones and iPads. It integrates Apple's online store for purchasing songs, videos and applications, and it administers the copy protection that was formerly applied to purchased songs.
Introduced in 2001 for the Mac, a Windows version was added in 2003. Due to Windows' dominance, more people use iTunes on Windows than they do on Mac computers.
Restrictions
Apple copy protects the TV shows and movies sold on the iTunes Store, and it previously protected its music. Therefore, there are certain restrictions. For more details, see FairPlay.
Designed for Sharing
A feature of iTunes is that users can open their playlists to any other iTunes user on the network, and titles can be streamed from one user's computer to another for playing. Over the years, hackers found ways to circumvent this "share-but-not-save" feature, and in 2009, the Home Sharing function in iTunes 9 finally enabled users to copy files across the network, not just play them. See Ping, iPod, iTunes Match, iTunes U, media player and playlist.
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