Summer is winding to a close, and we just received our invitation to Apple’s annual music-oriented event. New iPod touches are almost certainly on the menu--possibly with a front-facing camera for FaceTime and maybe even a Retina Display thrown in for good measure.

A new version of iTunes--which we suspect will probably be called iTunes 10--is also expected next month, which got us thinking about all the cool stuff that we might get to see from the ubiquitous media player’s ninth anniversary.

First launched in January 2001 at the Macworld Expo, iTunes reached version nine at last year’s September music-centric event (and currently sits at 9.2.1 as of July 19). Apple has essentially released a new version of iTunes every year, with the exception of 2005, when it released iTunes 5 in September and then jumped ahead a full version number to iTunes 6 the following month. That makes predicting the arrival iTunes 10 for September of this year a pretty safe bet.

So what goodies might we expect from a new version, especially since the version number will likely hit double digits for the first time?

1. Rewrite it from the ground up for speed

For all of its media savvy, iTunes has become an old horse that needs to be put out to pasture when it comes to speed and performance. That’s because the code base at its core is built on top of the aging SoundJam MP, the third-party Mac music player from Casady & Greene which Apple purchased and rechristened as iTunes. Over the years, iTunes has become a bit like Microsoft trying to build older versions of Windows on top of MS-DOS--it clearly was never intended to do all of the things they were asking it to.

Despite Apple touting the 64-bit processing power of its current Macs and the Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 operating system that runs on them, iTunes is shamelessly still flaunting not only last-generation, 32-bit speed but also a ton of legacy code that’s no doubt contributing to its frequently sluggish performance. Most shockingly, the Windows version is often faster than the Mac version at most tasks--mostly due to the fact that Apple had to start from scratch on that platform for iTunes 4.1, the first Windows version released in October 2003.

We’ve waited (im)patiently for a faster iTunes for a few years now, but Apple seems content to keep adding mostly useless new features to the same old code base such as Genius and iTunes DJ, rather than giving the people what they really want: A zippy iTunes that truly excels at managing your media. We figure they can’t get away with it for much longer, so why not use iTunes 10 to introduce a completely rewritten version that will be so buttery smooth, that people will quickly forget every edition that came before?

2. Wireless syncing, please

There’s an ongoing debate about the positives and negatives of syncing your iOS Device sans wires, but let’s face it: For most purposes--except maybe syncing large HD movies or starting from scratch following a restore--wireless syncing via iTunes is pathetically overdue by this point.

It comes as no surprise that it is indeed technically possible--one enterprising developer even tried to submit his Wi-Fi Sync app to the App Store but was soundly rejected and had to turn to the jailbreak community and Cydia to get it in the hands of users instead. If a third-party developer can make it work pretty seamlessly, what the heck is Apple waiting for?

Not to mention that the Apple TV has been wirelessly syncing via iTunes for years now, and that box doesn’t even offer 802.11n to help speed things along. Both the Apple TV and Macs can even update their software via wireless, so why can’t iOS devices?

3. Better library management

By default, files added to your iTunes Library are copied to a consolidated spot in the Music folder of your Home folder--and that’s just fine for the average non-savvy computer user who probably doesn’t have much media to begin with. But now that we’ve gone beyond strictly music winding up in our iTunes Library, something simply must be done to help us manage it all--and preferably, an option to store at least the bigger files in a separate location. (And really, why is all that non-musical media being stored in a folder called Music, anyway?)

Sure, you can do this right now to a degree by turning off the “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” option in the Advanced tab of the iTunes preferences. That means you can keep large movie files on a network server or external hard drive, but still have them available to sync to your iOS device or Apple TV as needed. But it’s somewhat unwieldy, and easy to forget to turn the option back on when you actually want to copy a file to your main iTunes Library.

Perhaps Apple should allow iTunes to set default locations for different types of media, much in the same way that Final Cut Pro already does. Apps could go here, Audio files there and Video somewhere else, should you choose to do so. The perfect place would ideally be some kind of “iTunes Server” box--something simple, like a Pogoplug with a built-in hard drive that syncs to your iTunes Library and keeps your media available on every system in your home, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And once we have that in place, of course we’ll want all of that iTunes media available from anywhere...

4. More cloud integration

Although recent Apple rumors claim that a cloud-based iTunes may still be in the distant future, let’s remember that Cupertino likes to surprise us sometimes by under-promising and over-delivering (case in point, iPhone 4 preorders being delivered a day earlier than the general release). It seems like that Lala.com acquisition was an eternity ago now in tech years, but you can bet that behind the scenes, a lot of smarter minds than us are trying to figure out how it will all work.

Even though the music labels may not want to cave in to Apple’s iTunes dominance and allow you to stream your music library from anywhere you’d like, at least part of the cloud promise may fall into place next month. Hollywood seems ready to embrace a “buy here, stream anywhere” philosophy now that Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Video on Demand have shown that it’s lucrative. After all, consumers are clearly bored with collecting DVDs and Blu-ray discs, and nobody wants to download huge HD movies and have to store them locally -- although we’re hoping that Apple continues to offer that option for those times when you’re traveling and don’t have wireless access.

5. A home for home movies

While we’re talking about movies, raise your hand if you’re ready for iTunes to also take on your home movie collection--you know, all the cool 720p HD video you’re shooting with your new iPhone 4, for instance. Sure, you can import that stuff into iPhoto along with your pictures, but that app is hardly efficient for movies--in fact, once they’re imported, you can’t even play them without a trip to QuickTime Player! The desktop iMovie is great if you want to edit, but it’s another unwieldy and sluggish Apple creation that’s overkill for simple media management.

Apple is really missing out on a good media manager aimed at your home movies, which even competitor Flip Video has finally clued into with recent versions of their free FlipShare software. We’re talking about something to catalog, play and export your movies without a lot of bells and whistles--especially since we can now use iMovie for iPhone 4 to actually edit together the clips in the first place.

Now we just need a good place to store (and share) them that syncs to our iOS devices and Apple TV, but keeps them separate from the existing Movies section of iTunes. The whole thing could be cloud-based if Apple makes good on those “free MobileMe” rumors, but even if they just increase the storage for their current service, we could see a lot more people using it to share home movies than YouTube (which is frankly lacking for videos that you want to share with only friends & family).

6. Death to the iPod photo cache folder

You may not know it, but your hard drive is hiding a deep, ugly secret within your Pictures folder. Inside the iPhoto Library (which you can access by holding down the Control key and selecting “Show package contents”) lurks a folder chock full of duplicate JPEG images which iTunes has created for the various iOS devices you own -- and in some cases, you may have multiple versions of those duplicate images at different sizes.

“iPod Photo Cache” is the folder in question, and it’s where iTunes stores the photos that you sync to your iOS device when you see it “Optimizing photos” prior to actually syncing them. (This dastardly folder has been doing its business since the introduction of the iPod Photo back in October, 2004.) What iTunes is really doing is creating new images that have been sized according to whatever device you have. An older iPod might create something comparable to a thumbnail, where the iPad or the Retina Display-equipped iPhone 4 will create new images that are much larger.

The problem is, if you have multiple devices -- say an iPhone 4, an iPad and an iPod -- then you’ll wind up with no less than three different versions of the same image, which probably adds up to more hard drive space than the original image in the first place! For instance, our iPhone 4 has just over 2,000 images in its library and yet our iPod Photo Cache folder is over 3GB in size. Seriously, Apple… there must be a better way, including at least the option to just sync the full-resolution picture to our device, should we want it.

(Image courtesy of SimpleHelp.net)

7. Pump up the Sound Enhancer and Sound Check, pump it up!

Sure, iTunes has had Sound Enhancer and Sound Check features for what seems like forever, but let’s face it: They (mostly) stink. We’ve always been partial to plug-ins like Volume Logic, the discontinued audio enhancement software first released in 2004 by Octiv Inc. and later picked up by Plantronics. Sadly left to die after the release of iTunes 7 and Mac OS X Leopard 10.5, the good news for users is that a small tweak has kept the plug-in alive, even through the current iTunes 9.2.1 update (amazing, considering one of the “features” of that update was to disable older versions of “incompatible third-party plug-ins”).

Volume Logic improves the listening experience with iTunes by dynamically leveling the outgoing sound on the fly -- increasing the loudness of softer passages as well as controlling loud passages without audible distortion -- not to mention boosting bass and much more. Trust us when we say we couldn’t live with stock iTunes after using it for so long -- but we may have to soon, since the Volume Logic plug-in has already been on life support for several versions now. (The minute iTunes goes 64-bit, Volume Logic is likely dead for good.)

We say, build that technology right into the app itself -- and while we’re at it, same goes for the iPod family and all of the iOS devices as well. This is one that Apple has ignored for far too long now.



8. Bug-free app updates--pretty please?

As if we need more proof that iTunes wasn’t really intended to do all the amazing stuff that Apple has built into it, look no further than the process of updating Apps. It’s often plagued with bizarre and random bugs -- for instance, when you click “Check for Updates” and are presented with apps available to update, you might click “Download All Free Updates” only to get the warning: “The information on this page is outdated” -- even though you just loaded it! A second attempt will generally work correctly and all of the apps will get updated, yet if you had clicked on each separate app update in the first place, it would have downloaded them all, one after another.

iTunes is also not very good about alerting you to updates -- sometimes you’ll see a number in the sidebar corresponding to the amount of apps with updates available, without you having to do a thing. Other times, you won’t see anything available until you manually click on “Check for Updates.” (To be fair, iOS devices suffer from the same random issue as well.)

We guess it’s still better than Google’s Android, where you have to select each update one at a time -- there’s not even an option to download them all at once. (Bizarre!) But there’s still a lot of room for improvement here.

9. Teach Home Sharing some new tricks

Apple did a good thing when they added Home Sharing to iTunes 9 last year, but we think they can take it one further. For instance, the Apple TV can already stream media directly from an iTunes Library on your home network (rather than having to sync the media to your ATV hard drive), but why not to our iPhone, iPod touch or iPad? There have been third-party apps to add this functionality, but they all require additional computer-side programs running and most of us have enough of those already.

For that matter, why should Home Sharing only allow importing from one computer’s iTunes Library to another? As part of Apple’s wireless sync initiative, they could easily allow an iOS device to copy files right from your computer -- perfect for those times when you’re leaving the house but want to grab the latest Lady Gaga jam your spouse purchased on your own iPhone, so you can indulge in the comfort and (relative) safety of your automobile without copying the track over the network and then waiting 10 minutes for iTunes to do a backup and sync.

10. Read iBooks on your Mac

We can already listen to music, podcasts, audiobooks or radio and watch movies or TV shows via iTunes, so why not read books too? All, of course, wirelessly synced up with our iOS devices so we can pick right up where we left off on the bus, for instance.

Build a Mac version of iBooks right into iTunes 10 itself, for those times when you don’t feel like pulling out the iPad or squinting to read a few passages of a book you’re reading on the iPhone. Amazon already has a Kindle for Mac available, so it’s certainly feasible -- and while you’re at it, Apple, let’s add the ability to browse & buy those books  from within iTunes, too. It’s sort of odd that it’s a walled garden within iOS devices, separate from other types of media.

Bonus Round: Activation, Deactivate Thyself

Hey, we’ll be the first ones to admit that buying an original iPhone in 2007 and bringing it home to activate was the cat’s meow. No more standing around while an AT&T sales rep fumbles with your new toy to get it activated, then promptly tries to sell you on overpriced accessories.

But with each passing year, the iPhone activation has become more and more of a drag. Yeah, we know: You have to activate the phone to get service. But Apple didn’t really need to go one step further by having iTunes “call home” to verify iOS updates with home base, preventing downgrades and complicating the type of custom firmwares that jailbreakers love.

It’s all just another effort on Apple’s part to be the cat in the “cat and mouse” game with the hackers, but it’s gotten sort of old. Let us plug in our device, activate it and then do whatever we want with it after that, m’kay?

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We’re sure that Apple has at least a few of these tricks up their sleeves, and probably a few cool things that we haven’t dreamed of yet. So what would you like to see in iTunes 10?

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter