About
iTunes is a digital media player application developed by Apple Inc. It is used to play, download, and organize digital audio and video files on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems. The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. It offers over 45 million songs, 2 million apps, 100,000 TV shows, and 25,000 movies to purchase or rent.
iTunes was first released on January 9, 2001, as a Mac-only application. A Windows version was released in October of the same year. On April 28, 2003, iTunes was updated to support the iPod. The following year, on April 28, 2004, iTunes was updated to include support for the iPhone, which was then released on June 29, 2007.
On January 9, 2001, Steve Jobs announced that iTunes would be released as a free download for Mac OS X at Macworld San Francisco. Jobs also announced that the first thousand people to download the player would receive a free T-shirt. Upon release, it became an unexpected success. In its first week of availability, over 250,000 copies of the player were downloaded from Apple's website.
In 2003 and 2004 respectively, versions of iTunes were released that included support for the iPod and iPhone respectively. These releases were met with widespread success as well; by July 2008, 1 billion podcasts had been subscribed to on iTunes.
iTunes has over 1 billion active users worldwide.
