Brief: Apple Struggles To Fix iTunes Stutter Glitch

Apple Computer Inc. on Tuesday updated its iTunes music player and store software to version 7.0.2 in an attempt to answer users' complaints about its predecessor, which some have said stutters during audio or video playback.

The iTunes update for both Mac OS X and Windows was touted by Apple as adding support for the soon-to-be-released second-generation iPod shuffle, and to "address a variety of stability and performance issues found in iTunes 7 and 7.0.1." Other than that, Apple didn't specify what problems the update fixed.

Users on Apple's own discussion forums, however, reported that although some earlier issues with iTunes 7.0.1 had been corrected, others -- including playback stuttering -- remained.

"Still no fix for video playback stuttering in this version," one user identified as "Piscator" wrote. "Wasted Youth" wrote: "It's now manifesting itself on my system as stuttering after the first couple of seconds of almost every song, continuing for a couple of seconds. After that it's OK."

Other users reported that after the update to 7.0.2, iTunes defaulted to the French- or German-language music store.

iTunes 7.0.2 can be downloaded from the Apple Web site.