Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Devices have officially been launched on Windows. These standalone apps were first previewed by the company in January 2023. After remaining in the testing phase for a year, the Cupertino-based tech giant has now removed the Preview tags from these apps and is letting users download them for their PCs. This move was reportedly made to reduce the reliance of users on iTunes, which previously acted as a one-stop shop for the combined functionalities of these apps, bar the streaming services.
A Support page of Apple now highlights that users with Windows 10 or later can now access these dedicated apps. Apple Music allows users to listen to and manage their iTunes library, access iTunes purchases, and get access to Apple's streaming service. Similarly, Apple TV enables people to watch movies, documentaries, and TV series from their iTunes library, as well as offers the Apple TV+ streaming service. Apple Devices, on the other hand, helps update, back up, restore, and manage their iPhone and iPad devices, as well as let them sync content from PC.
The Apple apps for Windows support x86-based PCs running on Windows 10 or Windows 11. However, if users do not have the required operating system, they can continue to use iTunes. Further, those downloading the dedicated apps must download all three of them, as downloading just one or two will prompt a message to download the remaining apps first. Once all the apps have been downloaded, iTunes will only offer access to audiobooks and podcasts. The iPhone maker has also urged users to not delete their iTunes app as both Apple Music and Apple TV apps read the content of the iTunes library.
As per reports, Apple decided to split iTunes to mirror how the apps work on Mac. The dedicated apps also offer a more streamlined interface and recently added features that might be missing in the older app. Further, this also allows the tech giant to expand its streaming services to Windows users.
Separately, Apple researchers recently released an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered image editing tool called MGIE (MLLM Guided Image Editing), which is capable of editing images using simple text prompts. As per the preprint paper, it is capable of making Photoshop-style edits, global optimisation, and local edits.
