iTunes allows users to rate songs on a 1 star to 5 star basis, song rating data can then be used for a variety of purposes, either for your own reference or for creating custom play lists that only include songs rated over a certain star value. But what if a song is somewhere in the middle of the rating scale, not quite worthy of 4 stars but not a 3 star song either? For more precise personal ratings, enable the half-star rating option in iTunes.

Launch the Terminal, found within the /Applications/Utilities/ directory, and enter the following defaults write command:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE

Quit and relaunch iTunes for changes to take effect. To give something a half star, click and slide the star rating scale until the 1/2 value shows.

To remove the half-star rating option use the following defaults command and then relaunch iTunes again:

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars

Removing the half stars moves the song rating to the star below it, so a 3 1/2 star song would turn into a 3 star song, and so on.

Need to refresh the App Store or iTunes Store? Hit Command+R at any screen in the iTunes, iOS, or Mac App Store, and the page will reload with whatever new data awaits, whether it’s a revised Top Charts listing or just to see the latest Featured apps. You can refresh any screen in any of the Apple iTunes or App Stores with this method,

Reloading an App Store page is also an easy way to resolve quite a few common issues, like when the App Store claims to be inaccessible, new app updates aren’t displaying, or when recently purchased items are missing from the Purchased list. If something is still not appearing in the purchases list after a refresh, it could be hidden, here’s how to unhide it.

Note this is for the desktop versions of the App Store, on the iOS side you can typically just quit and relaunch iTunes or App Store to resolve any problems. If that doesn’t work, you may need to manually force quit the App Store itself or even reboot the device to fix stalled downloads and force updates to the page.

Signing up to use the App Store requires a credit card, right? Wrong. We showed you how to use iTunes without a credit card, and it turns out you can do the same thing with the iOS and Mac App Store. This is a perfect solution for setting up an iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Mac for a kid or for use in a public space, when you want to provide access to the free downloads and updates in the App Stores without the ability to make purchases through it. Even without a credit card attached to the Apple ID, you can add gift certificates and redeem codes through this account, making for an easy budgeting system should you wish to provide limited access to App Store purchases down the road.

How to Setup and Use iOS & Mac App Store With No Credit Card

• Open the iOS App Store or Mac App Store and click on “Account” from the right-hand side
• If currently logged into an Apple account, click on “Sign Out” otherwise click the “Create Apple ID” button (alternatively, you can sign up on the web directly from Apple)
• Agree to the Terms and Conditions and fill out the Apple ID creation page, set this up for a new email address than your primary app store account
• At the “Provide a Payment Method” screen, select “None” as the payment option
• Optionally, add a gift certificate to pad the account with an app purchase budget
• Click “Create Apple ID” and verify the email address you provided earlier, your credit card free Mac App Store login is now active

Now log into the App Store with the newly created Apple ID and the user will be able to download any free apps or download updates to existing apps. The credit card free account can also redeem promo codes and add gift cards to their account should they need to make purchases.

iTunes 10.6.1 has been released, the minor update includes a variety of bug fixes but otherwise provides no new features. The official list of changes is as follows:

• Fixes several issues that may cause iTunes to unexpectedly quit while playing videos, changing artwork size in Grid view, and syncing photos to devices.
• Addresses an issue where some iTunes interface elements are incorrectly described by VoiceOver and WindowEyes.
• Fixes a problem where iTunes may become unresponsive while syncing iPod nano or iPod shuffle.
• Resolves an ordering problem while browsing TV episodes in your iTunes library on Apple TV.

The update is recommended for all users of iTunes software, even if the aforementioned issues have not been encountered.

Users can download iTunes 10.6.1 through Software Update, from iTunes, or directly from Apple.

Using a little known folder buried within the iTunes directory, you can automatically add any compatible media to iTunes, be it songs, music, movies, just by placing files into the directory. This gets even better when you point downloads to that directory, because all downloaded media is then immediately synced to iTunes with no user interaction. It’s extremely easy to set up, here is how in two simple steps:

1. Navigate to your home folder ~/iTunes/iTunes Media/ and find the “Automatically Add to iTunes” folder
2. Select “Automatically Add to iTunes” and hit Command+L to make an alias of it, drag that alias to either the desktop or to the downloads folder

Anything dropped into that folder imports into iTunes immediately.

Next you will want to point downloads to that aliased folder, so open your torrent clients, SoundCloud, web browsers, or where ever else you are getting media files from, and change their respective download directories. You can also change the name of the user ~/Downloads directory and move the aliased “Automatically Add” folder in it’s place, but that isn’t the best idea if you download other files too.

Once you have apps pointed at the folder, all completed media files will now go directly to iTunes with no user involvement, copying, clicking, nothing, everything is automatic. This is an excellent way to have files downloaded from the web, newsgroups, torrents, etc, synced directly to your iTunes library, which can then go right to iOS devices.

This should work with nearly all versions of iTunes and all versions of Mac OS X. While the guide is geared towards Mac users, the folder probably exists and works the same in Windows too, though you’ll have to make a shortcut instead of an alias. Enjoy!

Thanks to Kilian for the tip

iTunes now lets you specify a preference for 1080p high definition video content from anything downloaded through the iTunes Store. The default video setting prefers 720p though, here is how to change that to true 1080p HD:

1. Open iTunes and pull down the iTunes menu to “Preferences”
2. Click on the “Store” tab
3. Click the submenu next to “When downloading high definition videos, prefer:” and set to “1080p”
4. Close out of iTunes Preferences

You will need iTunes 10.6 or later to find this option in preferences.

Most people can’t tell the difference between a 720p and 1080p video when shown on a distant television, but with the new iPad’s Retina display, the 1080p capable Apple TV 3, and whatever other upcoming high definition displays come from Apple, you’ll almost certainly notice the improved clarity and resolution fo 1080p. Just be aware that 1080p content takes up much more disk space, so you may want to keep 720p as the default if you are concerned with available storage.

This is the second media compression/quality choice that comes with the new version of iTunes, which also lets users set song bit rate from 128kbps to 256kbps on their iOS devices.

iTunes now allows you to convert higher bit rate songs to three options: 128 kbps, 192 kbps, and 256 kbps. Enabling this option lets you save storage space on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad by compressing the music stored on the device. Here’s how to do this:

1. Connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to the computer and launch iTunes
2. Select the iOS device from the list in iTunes, click the “Summary” tab, and scroll down to “Options”
3. Check the box next to “Convert higher bit rate songs to ___ AAC”
4. Click the “Apply” button in iTunes to have changes take effect

Depending on how much music you have on the iPhone/iPod the conversion process may take a while. If you want decent compression while maintaing music quality, 192 kbps is a happy medium.

This option is available only to those using iTunes 10.6 or later. Prior to iTunes 10.6, users only had a single option, which was to convert the bit rate to 128 kbps. You will definitely save a lot of space with 128kbps compression, but audio quality does suffer slightly, though how much that is noticeable to you probably depends on your hearing and the quality of speakers or headphones you are listening to music with.

Nice find by MacStories

iTunes 10.6 has been released alongside iOS 5.1. The update includes 1080P support for movies and TV shows downloaded from iTunes Store, but otherwise is fairly minor and includes several bug fixes and improves song matching and how album art is handled.

You can grab the 10.6 update directly from Apple at the link below, through Software Update, or through iTunes itself.

• Download iTunes from Apple

If you intend on performing a manual iOS 5.1 installation through firmware, you’ll want to download iTunes 10.6 beforehand as well.

You probably know by now that you can get album art from iTunes via the Advanced menu. That will fill in most missing album covers, but bands that don’t sell their music through iTunes or music downloaded from Soundcloud and blogs often don’t have any artwork attached. In this case you can manually add artwork yourself to either an album or group of songs:

1. Find the intended artwork using Google Images or Bing Images search, generally adding an ‘album’ suffix to the search will find what you’re looking for instantly, save it somewhere like the desktop so it’s easy to retrieve
2. Launch iTunes and select the album or group of songs you want to add artwork for, right-click on that group and choose “Get Info”



3. Mark the checkbox next to “Artwork” and drag and drop the album artwork image you found earlier onto the box



4. Click “OK” to process the songs album artwork

To add a single piece of artwork to a large group of songs or albums, it’s helpful to use the iTunes search feature and then selecting all. You can always unselect certain songs in a large group by holding down the Command key and clicking on them manually, anything not selected won’t be updated. Remember to check Apple’s album cover art servers before going alone, simply because it’s easier.

Any artwork added will sync to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch the next time such a device is connected, and will also appear as the Dock icon if you replaced it with DockArt.

By far the easiest way to sync an iPhone to a new Mac or Windows PC is to transfer all iPhone files and backups from the old computer to the new one. The necessary data is stored in several different locations, and we’ll cover what files and where they go for both Mac OS X and Windows.

A few quick notes:

• If you only want to sync and not worry about content, the /MobileSync/Backup/ directory is all you need to copy over
• If you want to painlessly sync music and video, you will need to transfer over the potentially large iTunes folder
• Using a local network is the generally quickest way to move the necessary files over, but copying them to a USB drive, DVD, hard drive, etc, is fine too

This guide is aimed for iPhone users, but this would work with an iPad or iPod touch too.

Syncing an iPhone with a New Mac by Copying Sync Data

1. Quit iTunes on both Macs and disconnect the iPhone from both Macs
2. Open the Home folder and copy the iTunes directory from the old computer to the new one, located at:

~/Music/iTunes

3. Now open the user library directory and copy the backups from the old computer to the new one, located at:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/

4. To be certain everything is in order, copy over iTunes Preferences files as well:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist

5. Now connect the iPhone to the new Mac, launch iTunes, confirm that everything is in order, and authorize the new computer

You should be able to even sync from an old PC or a Mac to a new PC/Mac if you use sharing between Mac and Windows to copy the iTunes and Backup folders and put them in their appropriate places.

Syncing an iPhone with a New Windows PC

The instructions are basically the same as above, but the files and folders you are looking to copy are in different locations. For Windows 7 users, you’ll want to copy the following directories and their contents from the old PC to the new PC:

C:\Users\USERNAME\Music\iTunes
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Preferences\

Replace “USERNAME” with the users account name, obviously. Older versions of Windows have iPhone backups located at the following location instead:

C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

Now launch iTunes and connect the iPhone and it should sync as normal. Go ahead and authorize iTunes with the new computer as well.

Why is this necessary?
To put it simply, because data is meant to go from the computer to the iPhone, not from the iPhone to a computer with iTunes. All of this is made a bit better for iCloud users, but you will still need these directories copied over before you can use Wi-Fi sync and sync flawlessly to a new machine without losing data.

As mentioned before, if you just want to quickly sync a new iPhone, all you need to do is copy the backup, but in order to preserve all other iTunes content, music, and preferences, you’ll want to copy everything over.