iTunes 9.1 Brings “Books” Category, Better Genius Mixes, 128kbps AAC Conversion to all iPods

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iTunes

With the iPad mere days away, no one’s likely to evacuate their various collection sacks if a new version of iTunes supporting iPad syncing drops this week. It’s a certainty, and MacRumors has a round-up of features to expect.

According to MacRumors’ source, the biggest change will be to add a new “Books” section for managing e-books, which will fuse with the existing “Audiobooks” category. To make everything easy, iTunes will automatically detect whether you’ve got an iPad or iPhone connected, to eliminate confusion as to whether or not books can be synced to the device.

Some big changes are also coming to Genius Mixes, iTunes 9’s auto-generated playlists, and will allow for more nuanced user control including the ability to rename mixes and rearrange them by dragging and dropping, as well as delete any unwanted Genius Mixes.

Another improvement is that all iPods will now have the option to auto-covert the bitrates of digital audio files to 128kbps AAC in order to save space and fit more songs on a device.

Expect the 9.1 update no later than Friday.

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