Category: Music

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple addresses iTunes concerns

Apple has announced that they’re addressing the privacy concerns over the MiniStore feature introduced with iTunes 6.0.2, that I reported on earlier.

According to the BBC article above, this is amongst the changes:

The changes include a pop-up warning about MiniStore that gives users a chance at installation to turn off the feature so no recommendations are made and no data is passed back to Apple.

So far I haven’t seen a new version in my software updates.

But Apple has definitely done the right thing.

Like I predicted in a previous post, Apple has come under fire because of privacy concerns regarding the new MiniStore feature introduced with iTunes 6.0.2.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Snooping fears plague new iTunes

The comments made by the critics are indeed valid, and Apple has to be criticised for launching such a fundamentally new feature, without any mention, and with a minor point release, going from version 6.0.1 to 6.0.2.

Apple has released information on how to turn the MiniStore off, and it has been confirmed by independent sources, that there is no communication with the iTunes servers if you turn the MiniStore off.

A new version, 6.0.2, of iTunes has been released. The new point release of iTunes wasn’t mentioned in the keynote by Steve Jobs earlier on tuesday. So far I’ve only noticed one major change, and it’s the addition of a feature called MiniStore. This feature is turned on by default, and it adds a sub-window to the Library browser window, where Featured Artists, Main Categories, New Releases, Top Songs and Top Albums from the iTunes Music Store are displayed in a condensed Music Store view, thus the name MiniStore.

But the MiniStore goes beyond this, showing context sensitive information about the artists from the Music Store, as you browse your music library.