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According to close sources, Apple is developing an FM tuner app for iPhone and iPod touch users.

It is believed the app is mostly done at this point, and will likely take cues from the FM tuner interface of the recently introduced fifth-generation iPod nano.

The iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and second-gen iPod touch all use a Broadcom radio chip that combines low-power WiFi, Bluetooth, and FM capabilities.

The newest iPod touch uses the newer chip which also has FM receiving.

The original iPhone and iPod touch used chips from Marvell for WiFi, and the iPhone had a separate chip for Bluetooth, so those devices wouldn’t work with an FM tuner app.

While FM tuners have been features of a wide variety of other media players, they have never featured significantly in the Apple line-up. A separate FM tuner accessory Apple introduced in 2006 never sold in significant numbers and was quietly discontinued.

However, Broadcom’s Chris Bergey said late last year that FM tuning is particularly popular in other areas of the world, such as India; there phones with FM outnumber those with Bluetooth, for instance.

Since the hardware already has the capability, and the software design is most of the way there with work done on the iPod Nano, it would be relatively trivial for Apple to offer up an FM tuner app for the iPhone OS platform.

Integrating iTunes purchasing would also be the sort of compelling value add that should give Apple a good reason to make it happen.

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The major benefit of having your iPhone synched with your computer is the time you will save transferring files and sending them from one device to another.

Once you have your handset and computer compatible with each other, the process is automatic, simple and easy to understand.

Every song, movie, or image purchased on your iPhone in the iTunes Store, or the App Store, is automatically synced back to your iTunes library.

You can also purchase or download content and applications directly from the iTunes Store on your computer, and they will be sent directly back to your iPhone.

On the other hand, if you only wanted some of your library synched, this is possible too. You can set iPhone to work with only a portion of what’s on your computer. For example, you might want to sync only a group of contacts from your address book, or only unwatched video pod casts.

One thing to remember is that for the synchronization to operate successfully, users need to be logged into their own computer user account before connecting their iPhone.

Here is a guide on how to set up iTunes synching:

    Connect iPhone to your computer, and open iTunes (if it doesn’t open automatically).
    In iTunes, select iPhone in the sidebar.
    Configure the sync settings in each of the settings panes.
    Click Apply in the lower-right corner of the screen.

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Most people only listen to a handful of artists regularly, but either have to create separate playlists or manually search through the library to listen to their songs. iTunes doesn’t allow the user to just add favourites to a specified list, so we’ll use the playlist feature instead.

1. Create a new folder. iTunes folders are fantastic for storing different playlists. To do this, press the File menu, and hit New Folder. Give it some name like Artists or Favourites. This where we will store our most-listened to artists.
2. Once you’ve renamed the folder, open the File menu again and this time press New Smart Playlist. In the window that pops up, make sure “Artist contains” is selected. In the empty box, type the artists’s name and hit OK. Drag your newly created playlist into the “Artists” folder. Now you’ve just made a playlist for one of your favourite artists. Repeat this step until all your favourite artists are in the folder.
3. Next we’re going to follow the same process as step one, but instead of calling the folder “Artists” or “Favourites”, we’re going to call it “Genres”.
4. Open the File menu and hit New Smart Playlist again. Change “Artist” to “Genre” and “contains” to “is”. Then type the genre name into the empty box. Press OK and drag your newly created playlist into the “Genre” folder. Repeat until all your favourite genres are in the folder.
5. If you want to separate these playlists from the rest of your library, create a new folder and call it “Playlists” or something similar. Then drag the iTunes-made smart playlists into the folder.
6. Now you’ve organised your music into relevant playlists, it’s time to make browsing the library easier. In each of your artist’s playlists, switch the view from List View to Album View. To do this, simply go to the View menu and click on Album View. This transforms iTunes from a list to show you all of the artist’s albums categorised by album with the art and lists the songs. This is a far easier way to browse your music.

Now that you can easily find your favourite artists in iTunes, it’s time to sort the actual library. Here are some general tips to keep in mind when adding or sorting your music collection:

• Keep basic genres. Instead of “Punk Rock”, stick to “Alternative” or “Rock”. It will give you less genres to search through.
• Avoid the “Featuring” tag in the Artist metadata. If an album has songs that feature other artists, add that in the song name, not the artist. This will make it easier to manage your albums.
• Fix songs without the proper metadata. Your songs should be easy to find and identify. Spend a few minutes each day correcting your existing library and over time you will discover that your library is much simpler and easier to browse.

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Rather than manually clean up your iTunes library, there are some time-saving solutions that will help fix up unsorted iTunes libraries.

Your first port of call would be to track down all the duplicate songs with the same artist and song name. This is easily done by using a built-in iTunes feature. Simply click the View menu and select Show Duplicates. This handy feature does the hard work for you and finds all the tracks with more than one copy. You can then sort through this list manually and delete those you don’t need.

There are also various software packages that can be downloaded to clean up your iTunes library. One such program, TuneUp, is a digital music management application that finds all the unnamed or incorrectly tagged tracks and updates them with their official listings. It claims to fix up to 90 per cent of disorganised and unidentifiable tracks.

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Originally, you could only download tracks through iTunes onto your computer and then copy them across to your iPhone, but with the launch of the iPod Touch in September 2007, Apple introduced the iTunes Wi-Fi Store, a specially designed version of the store for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows users to download tracks directly onto their portable devices. In January 2009, Apple also added the ability to download tracks to the iPhone over 3G.

Downloading
Before you buy tracks to download from the iTunes Store, you need to have an account through your Mac or PC. Setting up the account doesn’t cost anything, although you need to supply credit card details before you can buy anything.

Setting up an account also helps prevent privacy as your details are all stored in the music that you purchase, so if a song you purchased gets downloaded online, the authorities can trace the song back to you and you will cop a huge fine.

Once the account has been set up, buying music is simple. On a Mac or Pc, simply open the iTunes application and click on the iTunes Store link in the left hand column. Browse through the catalogue or search for your favourite music, and when you’ve found something that interests you, you can hear a 30 second preview.

To buy the song, simply click on the “Buy Now” button next to the track name, enter your password and relax as the song is downloaded.

DRM Restrictions
It’s important to remember that some of the tracks downloaded from the iTunes Store are still encoded with DRM and this can restrict the number of devices you can use the tracks on. However, in January 2009, Apple announced that most of the tracks available in iTunes would be DRM free, with the complete catalogue DRM free by April.

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Buying songs from the iPhone’s music store automatically moves the tracks to the “Downloads” area. To check the status of your downloads, click the button on the bottom of the screen. If you leave the Wi-Fi hotspot or 3G coverage area before a download is complete, your download will continue the next time you connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC.

You should also remember that although the iPhone 3G brings Wi-Fi like browsing speeds over your mobile network, the iTunes store only lets you buy music tracks over Wi-Fi and 3G. This is most likely to prevent too much data being used over the carrier networks.

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From the moment your finger touches the iPhone button down the bottom right hand corner of the Home menu’s screen, you’re transported to a world of entertainment where your guide is your favourite movies and music.

The toolbar across the bottom of the iPod menu gives you access to your Playlists, Artists, Songs and Videos, while pressing “More” will bring up the Albums, Audiobooks, Compilations, Composers, Genres and Podcasts options.

Customising the Menu
If you love listening to Podcasts but don’t really care much for video, you aren’t going to want to have to navigate through the “More” option every single time you open up the iPhone’s iPod music player. So instead, make your first port of call to customise the iPod menu screen.

If you want to rearrange the order of the shortcuts, you can do that too, by pressing the icon, holding it down, then dragging it to the most convenient position. Then, when you’re happy with the layout, press the “Done” button at the top of the screen.

Controlling Volume
Parents who want to prevent their children turning music up too loud and causing damage to their hearing will love the iPhone’s volume-limiting feature in the Settings menu.

Not only can you set a maximum volume level for the iPhone, you can also password protect the limit to keep some control over the iPhone user’s listening habits.

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On top of being able to cycle through alphabetical lists of albums, artists, playlists, genres and more, you can turn the iPhone on its side and browse through your music by album artwork.

This clever feature is called Coverflow and it’s directly borrowed from iTunes. It is reminiscent of browsing through your CDs at home to select music. When you turn the iPhone on its side, the inbuilt sensor automatic switches the iPod to Coverflow mode. Simply drag or flick your finger across the album artwork until you find the one you want, then just tap on the album – the cover art will flip over so you can see what songs are available.

Of course, there is also shuffle and repeat options for those who want to mix it up or enjoy repetition.

Copying your Music
The iPhone is designed to sync with iTunes on either your PC or Mac, just like an iPod. But rather than take everything on your iTunes library, you need to create a playlist of what music, videos, podcasts and audiobooks you want. You can’t just drag the songs you want across from your iTunes library to your iPhone like you can do on your iPod.

The upside of this is that it keeps your music collection a lot more organised, making navigation to you chosen song much easier. You can also make multiple playlists to reflect your mood, as well as video, podcast and audiobook playlists.

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Unlike music which has a set playback speed, audiobooks can be played back at different speeds for different people – just as different people read at different speeds.

To adjust the playback speeds for audiobooks, you need to go to the iPhone’s main menu system, which can be accessed from the Settings tab on the home screen. Select the iPod options and you can adjust audiobook speed.

Podcasts
Often called radio programs for the 21st century, Podcasts are made for regular downloading and for listening on an MP3 player like your iPod or iPhone. They are usually free, recorded in a format that can be played back on any player, and don’t have DRM restrictions.

Subscribing to Podcasts is extremely easy – simply find the one you like through the iTunes Store and hit Subscribe.

Podcasts can cover any topic you imagine, and there are generally many choices for each and the individual Podcast will vary in quality and polish. When you subscribe to a Podcast through iTunes, it will automatically download new episodes as they are released.

To access your Podcasts on your iPhone, there’s a dedicated button in the iPod menu. They are organised by title and to listen to a Podcast you simply press the title and choose the episode you want to listen to.

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