The new iTunes U app allows educators at universities, colleges, and K-12 schools to design and deliver full courses directly to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Free to everyone, the courses cover everything from astronomy to business skills to the knife skills of a professional chef and more. In addition to access to the more than 500,000 free lectures, videos, books, and other resources already available via iTunes U in the iTunes Store, the iTunes U app supports new features that let you view the course assignment list, track your progress, make notes as you go, see notes and highlights from linked materials, and see the complete list of materials the instructor is using or recommends. For good examples of courses that include support for these enhanced features, get a free subscription to American Revolution from Yale, iPad and iPhone App Development (Fall 2011) from Stanford, Open University's Communicating Through Music, or Core Concepts in Chemistry from Duke.

The iTunes U app keeps a library of the courses you subscribe to just as iBooks keeps a library of the books you buy. To navigate between the catalog and your courses, use the buttons on the top left on iPad and the top right on iPhone and iPod touch. In your course library the covers for courses that support the new features display a spiral binding on the left. Use the tabs on the right on iPad or the buttons across the bottom on iPhone and iPod touch to explore the assignments (Posts) and the note taking capability and materials lists.

iBooks 2 supports a whole new level of Multi-Touch interactivity, and textbook authors and publishers are already taking advantage of it to display more engaging and informative books. Once you've upgraded iBooks, get E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth (free) in the iBookstore, and explore the examples of interactivity within it. The Introduction to Ecology chapter in particular makes use of several different techniques now possible--single images become galleries you can swipe through for a more complete illustration of the point; data maps become movies that show how the data changes over time, some under fingertip control; tappable images are linked to regions on a map; and the creators are just getting started.

Free samples are available for the other textbooks already in the iBookstore Textbooks category, and also for a set of four books from DK Publishing which are not categorized as textbooks, but which also take advantage of the new possibilities. If you're also interested in creating Multi-Touch books yourself, explore the free iBooks Author app for the Mac, available in the Mac App Store. (If you don't have iBooks on your iPad, download it from the App Store. If you already do, use the Update button to upgrade to iBooks 2. You must have iTunes version 10.5.3 or later on your computer to sync actions you take there with your iPad.)

iTunes in the Cloud stores your purchased music in iCloud for free. Subscribing to iTunes Match adds the music you've imported from CDs or bought elsewhere to the library of music in the cloud. It then gives you direct access to your whole music library via the Music app on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Play a song that's not stored on the device you're using and it will begin playing immediately while it downloads. If there's particular music you always want on a particular device--even if you don't have an Internet connection--use the cloud icons and Download All buttons in the Music app to add them. As you learn to trust your cloud access to your whole library wherever you're connected, you'll discover that you worry less and less about how much storage space you need on a device for your music.

Once you're a subscriber, the switch to turn on iTunes Match on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch is in the Music section of the Settings app. When you turn it on, another switch will appear below it that lets you move between seeing your whole library or just the music on the device you're holding.

Thanks to the free iTunes in the Cloud service, you can download your past iTunes Store purchases (music, apps, books, and TV shows) to your devices anytime, anyplace. On iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, tap iTunes, and you'll see a Purchased button second from the right on the bottom. Tap it, and you can easily see what you've purchased. Select the Not on this Device tab at the top, and you can see what's not on your device. Tap the cloud icons for individual songs or Download All buttons for album, artists, and so forth, to download content to your device.

You can also automatically send your purchases to multiple devices. On iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, select Store in the Settings app, and turn on Automatic Downloads for music, apps, and books to ensure that the things you buy will be on all your devices immediately.

With the new Complete My Season feature in the iTunes Store, when you've bought individual episodes of a TV show, the amount you've already spent on episodes is deducted from the overall price of the season or Season Pass. When you select a season that you've bought one or more episodes from, you'll see a Complete My Season area just below the series image on the upper left. The button below displays the purchase price--the regular season price minus whatever you've paid for the episodes you already have. For comparison, the full regular season price is listed below the button. (Complete My Album offers this feature for music albums. The price to you is the regular album price minus whatever you've already paid for individual tracks.)

iBooks 1.5 includes new fonts and ways to customize your reading experience, including a night theme which switches the display to white text on a black background. Besides providing you with excellent readability in low light, it also significantly reduces glare than might distract your "ready to go to sleep" companion if you're reading in bed. To activate it, tap the Font icon in the controls at the top of the page, then the Themes button, and then Night (if the controls at the top aren't visible, tap the page. Tapping it again will hide them). On the iPad there's also a Full Screen switch at the bottom of the Themes list which hides the graphical elements that frame the text within a virtual book and gives you a few more words to the page.

With iTunes gift cards and certificates your friends and family can pick from a huge selection of music, apps, movies, TV shows, books, and more. The top two Quick Links on the right hand side of the main iTunes Store page on your computer let you buy gifts for others and redeem gifts others have bought for you. The Buy iTunes Gifts link takes you to a page from which you can buy and email or print gift certificates, and also buy gift cards you can have sent directly to yourself or others. You'll also find a link there to a page that tells you how to give specific music, apps, TV shows, movies and audiobooks by using the downward pointing triangle next to the buy buttons throughout the store and choosing the Gift option.

If you've received an iTunes Gift Certificate or Gift Card, use the Redeem link to go to a page where you can enter your code and credit the amount to your account. If you don't already have one, you'll be given a chance to create an account, with or without a credit card number. You can also redeem the codes directly on the iPhone and iPod touch in iTunes with the buttons at the bottom of the New Releases page in Music, and the Movies and TV Shows pages in Videos, and on the bottom of the Featured pages in the App Store and iBookstore. On the iPad, there are redeem buttons at the bottom of the Music, Movies, TV Shows and Audiobooks pages in iTunes and at the bottom of the Featured page in the App Store and iBookstore.

iTunes in the Cloud now gives you Internet access to all the music, apps, and books you've acquired from the iTunes Store, plus the ability to automatically download new store purchases to your devices without syncing, no matter which one you use to make the purchase. To download your purchases to devices they're not on yet, use the Purchased link on iTunes' main page on your computer, or at the bottom of the iTunes Store on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. To turn on automatic downloads on your iOS device, go to Settings and select Store.

A subscription to iTunes Match ($24.99 a year) adds everywhere access to the music you've imported from CDs and bought elsewhere. Match first determines which of those songs are for sale in the store and automatically adds them to your iCloud library, no uploading required. It then uploads any music it didn't find a match for. The result is your complete library in the cloud, playlists and all, with a minimum amount of upload time required to get it there. You can keep up to 25,000 songs in your library--songs purchased from iTunes don't count against that number. To activate the service use Turn on iTunes Match in the iTunes Store menu on your computer.

iOS 5 includes a new built-in folder on your Home screen to contain apps for magazines and newspapers you subscribe to. It's called Newsstand and you can browse magazine and newspaper subscriptions from within it by using the Store button on the upper right. The apps are generally free, allowing you to download and install them to look at sample contents and the available subscription plans before buying. If you decide to subscribe you can do so within the app and then launch new issues in the Newsstand folder when they're delivered; you'll be alerted when new issues for you are available. To manage your subscriptions, go to Store in Settings.

On iPad to see all the subscriptions currently being offered, tap the Release Date tab at the top of the Newsstand category page. If you download an app from the Newsstand category on any iOS 5 device, it will automatically be placed in the built-in Newsstand folder.

If you forget your Apple ID password or simply want to change to a new one, use Safari on your computer or any of your devices to go to iforgot.apple.com where you can enter your Apple ID and begin the process. You'll be asked to choose whether you want to confirm your identity via an email to the account associated with your Apple ID or by answering the security question you put in place when you first created it. As you create your new password, you'll see an indication of its relative strength in the area below the form. You can keep entering and editing until you achieve your ideal password strength. When you're satisfied, confirm your password and tap or click the Reset button.

You can use your Apple ID in iTunes, iChat, iCloud, the Apple Online Store, Apple Retail Stores and at Apple.com Support. If you don't have an Apple ID and want to create one, go to appleid.apple.com.

With iOS 5, iTunes now includes the Tone Store, which gives you access to many different types of ringtones and sound effects for your iOS devices. From iTunes on your iPhone or iPod touch, tap the More button in the lower right, then tap Tones to reach the Tone Store. On each page Ringtones appear at the top and Alert tones at the bottom (scroll down to reach them). Tap the images on the left to sample the sounds. You can also reach the Tone Store through the Sounds section in the Settings app where you can browse by use -- Ringtone, Text Tone, New Voicemail, New Mail, etc -- and select from among the sounds that came with your device and ones you've already bought. To shop for more from the Tone Store, scroll up to the top of the pages and tap Buy More Tones.

On iPad, to go directly to the Tone Store in iTunes tap the Music tab on the bottom left and the Genres button on the top left and pick Tones from the list that will appear. And as with iPhone and iPod touch, go to Sounds under General in the Settings app where you can browse and pick from your sound library by use and find a Buy More Tones button at the top of each page.

From the Purchased section in iTunes, the App Store, and iBookstore in iOS 5, and in iTunes 10.5 on your computers, you can hide past music, TV show, app, and book purchases in your purchase history, as well as download them again to your computers or devices. Think of it as the digital equivalent of packing away stuff you don't want to see when you're looking around but don't want to throw away either. On iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, swipe across items in the purchase history to produce touchable Hide buttons. On the computer screen, move the pointer over items to produce a clickable "X" to the right of the entry if you're viewing a list (for example, Songs in Music) or in the upper left of the image if you're viewing albums, TV shows, apps, or books. To find items you've previously hidden, go to your Account Information page and look in the iTunes in the Cloud section.

On iPhone and iPod touch, the Purchased tab appears on the lower right in iTunes and the iBookstore. In the App Store, tap Updates on the lower right and then Purchased at the top. On Pad the Purchased tab is on the lower right in all of the stores. The Apple ID button that will take you to your Account page is at the bottom of most of the main pages. On the computer, links for both Purchased and Account are in the Quick Links section on the upper right of the main iTunes Store page.

Whether you shop on your computer, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can use Tell a Friend and Gift This App to share your enthusiasm with friends. On an app's page in the App Store on the computer, click the downward pointing triangle next to the Buy App or Free App button to see the options--Tell a Friend, which lets you send an email link, and Gift this App, which lets you buy the app for someone else. On the iPhone and iPod touch, scroll down to the bottom of an app's page to find the buttons for those options. On the iPad, use the links on the upper right of an app's page. In all cases, you'll be asked to sign in with your Apple ID if you haven't already, before you complete your intended action.

Closed captioning for the hearing impaired is now available in iTunes for new TV episodes as well as thousands of movies and iTunes U video episodes. As you browse the store you can determine whether the particular content you're looking at has closed caption support by looking for the small cc icon in the info on the left side of their pages. The cc icon also appears in lists of TV episodes and in iTunes U offerings with multiple episodes (e.g. Developing Apps for iOS, from Stanford). To find all the content with closed captioning in Movies, TV or iTunes U, click the Power Search link in Quick LInks in the iTunes store, select the category you want to search within from the Results popup, and check the option to search only for closed captioning before you use the Search button.

If you're watching the video on your computer, you can turn closed captioning on and off via the speech bubble icon near the right of the controls that appear across the bottom of the window when you point there. On iPhone and iPod touch, Select iPod in General Settings and scroll down to the Video section. On iPad look for the switch in Video in General Settings.

All of the podcast and iTunes U content is free, as are many of the apps in the App Store. In addition, open iTunes on your computer and click Free on iTunes in Quick Links each week to see which music and TV episodes are available in addition to featurettes from the movies section, plus a gateway to the free apps in the App Store, and a listing of new and notable podcasts. There's also a Free Music on iTunes link in Quick Links in the Music section and a Free TV Episodes link in Quick Links in the TV section (and at the bottom of the Featured page in TV Shows in iTunes on the iPad).