You can now control iTunes Radio via Remote app

After refreshing its free Remote app for the iPhone and iPad with some radical redesign to match the overall iOS 7 aesthetics, Apple has just put out a minor update adding a nicely done ability to control iTunes Radio from your iOS device.

But rather than stream iTunes Radio songs directly (and what would the point be in doing so knowing iTunes Radio is available within the stock iOS 7 Music app), the application simply controls the feature running in iTunes for Mac or Windows.

Previously, you could only control playback of music and other media kept locally in your iTunes library. If anything, this update will go down in history as a handy little enhancement that makes it ridiculously easy to control your iTunes Radio stations, skip songs and more, right across the room…

As long as your Mac or Windows PC running iTunes is on the same Wi-Fi network as your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad device running the new Remote 4.1, you’ll be able to access the new iTunes Radio tab at the bottom (see the images top of post).

The Now Playing screen for iTunes Radio in Remote 4.1 for iPhone and iPad.

Hitting the More… button lets you star a song like you would on a computer (or in the stock iOS 7 Music app), create a new station from the currently playing song, choose to never play this song again, play more songs like this or start the iTunes visualizer.

One caveat: you can’t use Remote to control iTunes Radio on your Apple TV.

In other Apple app updates today, iTunes Movie Trailers has been refreshed with performance improvements and bug fixes. And in a similar vein, the iTunes U app has resolved an issue where the playback speed button would not work as expected.

Ashton Kutcher’s ‘Jobs’ biopic now available in iTunes

For those of you who were unable to see it in theaters, Ashton Kutcher’s much talked about ‘Jobs’ film is now available for purchase. You can either buy it or rent it in iTunes, and then of course it’s available in Blu-Ray and DVD as well.

After months of rumors and a lengthy delay, ‘Jobs’ opened to mixed reviews on August 16. It stayed in theaters for just 7 weeks, and only pulled $35 million worldwide. It was considered by many to be a flop, but now you can be the critic…

Here’s a quick excerpt from our review of the film:

“At the heart of the Jobs film is the story of how Apple was founded, which is a great one no matter how you tell it. It’s crazy to think that the world’s largest company (by market cap) started in a garage with a group of kids soldering circuit boards.

Speaking of which, all of the main cast members gave solid performances. While Kutcher probably won’t win an Oscar for this role, he was good, as was Josh Gad, who played Steve Wozniak, Dermot Mulroney, who played Mike Markkula, and the rest of the early Apple gang.”

And here’s the movie trailer for those who missed it:

If you’re interested, you can find Jobs in iTunes. It’s $19.99 to buy it and $4.99 to rent it in HD, and $14.99 and $3.99 to rent it in SD. And for those looking for discs, it looks like most retailers have the DVD at $17.99 and the Blu-Ray at $22.99.

Apple releases iTunes 11.1.3 with performance improvements

Apple has released an update for iTunes this afternoon, bringing the software to version 11.1.3. Don’t get too excited though, it appears to just be a maintenance release with a handful of improvements.

Those improvements include a fix for a known issue where the equalizer may not work as expected, as well as enhanced performance when switching views in large iTunes libraries and other bug fixes…

Here are the release notes for iTunes 11.1.3:

This version of iTunes resolves an issue where the equalizer may not work as expected and improves performance when switching views in large iTunes libraries. This update also includes additional minor bug fixes. 

Note: If you are using OS X Mavericks, your book library can now be found in iBooks for Mac.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit:support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

Folks looking to grab the newest version of iTunes can find it either via the Mac App Store’s ‘Updates’ tab, or as a direct download on our Downloads page.