2001-2019: iTunes 18 Years Evolution History

If you have had a chance to watch the WWDC 2019 event, you would know that Apple has finally let go of iTunes. Instead of just one application to manage your digital media contents, Apple has broken down iTunes into three separate parts - Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Podcasts. With your all time favorite app iTunes now going away, it is time to take a look at what Apple did to the app in its 18 years of history. The following infographic shows you just that.

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iPhone is not the firstly supported mobile phone by iTunes - If you believe that the iPhone was the first and the only device to be supported by iTunes, you are wrong as iTunes initially had support for phones from other manufacturers. When Apple added the support for mobile phone connections in iTunes on the 28th June, 2005 (about 13 years ago), the first two phones to get this support were actually from Motorola. These phones were Motorola ROKR E1 and Motorola SLVR. It was only after three years, on the 10th July 2008, that Apple added support for the iPhone 3G to the iTunes application. So if you own a Motorola phone, you now have something to brag about to your iPhone friends as their iPhones were not the first phones to be supported by the iTunes app.

iTunes started a windows version from the fourth generation - Since Apple wanted to attract people to buy their products, the first release of the iTunes app was only supported on the Macs. There was no Windows version available at that point of time and so the Windows users really could not use this great music management tool on their computers. It did not take too long for the app to become available on the Windows platform, though. On the 16th October 2003, Apple released a Windows compatible version of their iTunes app. From this day onwards, Windows users were able to install and use the app on their computers. Initially, the app ran on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. With the recent news telling that the Mac version of the app will be gone soon, it seems the Windows version will continue to exist for at least a while.

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived iTunes version - Although Apple pushes new updates for the iTunes app every now and then, this was not the case years ago. Sometimes, there would be a huge gap between two updates while sometimes there would only be a few days difference between two updates. iTunes 5 is the shortest-lived version of the app as it only existed for 34 days. After 34 days, Apple came up with the next version of the app and the version 5 was no longer the latest. iTunes 12, on the other hand, was the longest-lived version in the history of the app. It had a lifespan of 4 years, 7 months, and 12 days. It was one of the few versions of the app that had over 47 small to large updatings happening to it.

iTunes continued to be launched around the world - When Apple came up with the iTunes app for the first time, the app was not available worldwide. Only a select few countries were able to use the application. It was only in 2012 that Apple expanded the iTunes app and made it available to other regions including places in Asia like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. December 2012 saw iTunes expanding to another 56 countries that included Russia, Turkey, India, and South Africa. iTunes contains many features and the full set of features is available in over 119 countries in the world.

As you can see, iTunes has a really long history of changes and expansions and it is really sad to see it going away. However, Apple promises the equal amount of features from the newly introduced services which is yet to see. And as the best iTunes alternative, AnyTrans still offers a one-stop solution to help you manage, back up, sync, and restore all your iOS content in an easy and convenient way. You can give AnyTrans a free shot here >