Apple releases iTunes 12.5.5 with minor performance improvements

Continuing Apple's big day of software releases, the company on Monday issued a minor iTunes update that delivers bug fixes and performance improvements to Mac and Windows users.

According to Apple, iTunes 12.5.5 is a minor update to the company's flagship digital content storefront. Accompanying software release notes fail to mention specific changes, saying only that the download package contains performance enhancements.

The iTunes release arrives just hours after Apple issued point updates for its major platforms, including iOS 10.2.1, macOS 10.12.3, watchOS 3.1.3 and tvOS 10.11. Today's macOS Sierra update incorporates a fix for a Safari bug discovered by Consumer Reports last month that could in some cases lead to severe battery drain.

Apple last updated iTunes in December with a set of fairly substantial feature additions including support for the new TV app, a streaming app hub that serves as a first step toward unifying the over-the-top viewing experience. The December update also brought enhanced Touch Bar support for Apple's latest MacBook Pro.

Apple's iTunes 12.5.5 update comes in at 116MB and can be downloaded for free from the Mac App Store.

23 Comments

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

About 7 years ago

iTunes working perfectly. I strongly disagree with those who claim it is a bloated mess. iTunes does what it was designed is advertised to do. I have no issues with it and I’m probably in the majority. As usual the perpetually dissatisfied crowd constantly bashes it while most us just go about using and enjoying it.

lukifer 1 comment · 7 Years

lkrupp said:

iTunes working perfectly. I strongly disagree with those who claim it is a bloated mess. iTunes does what it was designed is advertised to do. I have no issues with it and I’m probably in the majority. As usual the perpetually dissatisfied crowd constantly bashes it while most us just go about using and enjoying it.

In other news, world hunger is solved, because you had enough to eat today. :tongue:
Alas, just updated, and it still takes upwards of 15-20 seconds of beach-balling to text filter for a specific artist. :frowning: iTunes <10 used to do it near instantaneously, even with a library of 25k tracks. (And this is all-SSD, 16g RAM, blah blah blah.)

razormaid 299 comments · 14 Years

lkrupp said:

iTunes working perfectly. I strongly disagree with those who claim it is a bloated mess. iTunes does what it was designed is advertised to do. I have no issues with it and I’m probably in the majority. As usual the perpetually dissatisfied crowd constantly bashes it while most us just go about using and enjoying it.

I'm right there with ya. I've used It since inception and love it. One thing that happened in iTunes 12 I didn't like was in playlists as a record company who sells music to DJ's was the apparent loss of the info nned d by DJ's. But one call to the beta department and they gave it back in the way of the pulldown.

In your playlist:
hold down Command + J
(Control + J for PC users)
a small window appears
swith from the current setting (playlist) -> SONG
suddenly all the "add" options are back including BPM, Bit Rate, Key, tagged alternating art work, etc exactly as we embedded each track originally when we sold it
Voila!! It's all back

anantksundaram 20390 comments · 18 Years

lkrupp said:

iTunes working perfectly. I strongly disagree with those who claim it is a bloated mess. iTunes does what it was designed is advertised to do. I have no issues with it and I’m probably in the majority. As usual the perpetually dissatisfied crowd constantly bashes it while most us just go about using and enjoying it.

Thanks!

Long, tiring day, and I needed a good laugh. :-D

anome 1545 comments · 16 Years

iTunes as an app to access media, and play stuff back is fine. However, it's now having to manage music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks, and iOS apps. It did have to manage books, but they got moved to their own app, which also manages audiobooks. As well as iTunes managing them.

It also does the management of content for your iOS devices, and synchronisation of iOS devices, backup, iOS updates, and a number of other things I've probably forgotten.

I think Apple do need to split out some of that functionality into a separate app, or a series of separate apps. It looked like they might be going that way when they split out iBooks, and there was talk of allowing other content apps to manage content on iOS, but we're still stuck with iTunes.

I'm not saying it's an easy job to break up iTunes, and shift to a new system. If they only had to worry about macOS, it might be easier, but they have Windows users to support as well, and Windows support for anything is expensive.