Wake the kids and phone the neighbors: faithful viewer rabow informs us that there's a new iTunes riding into town. Apparently everyone's favorite digital music application is now at version 2.0.3, available via a quick trip to Software Update in Mac OS X or the iTunes download page for either the X or 9 version. Those of you who haven't been rendered completely paranoid ever since that whole "iTunes 2 Ate My Hard Drive" brouhaha have probably already raced on over and snagged the update. (Personally, we'll wait a day or two just in case.)

So far there are no reports of dramatic data loss suffered by reckless iTunes junkies over at MacFixIt, so that's a good sign, at least. And MacFixit also clues us in to 2.0.3's new features: along with the ever-popular "improved stability and performance," this latest version can fix "improperly encoded Unicode tags" and adds support for SONICblue's Rio One MP3 device. On a side note, not that we're implying causality, here, but the Rio One's design reminds us just a little bit of the iPod's. (Our favorite part of the description, though, is that it "now comes with a fast USB connection." Then again, with a maximum storage capacity of 160 MB, we suppose that USB is plenty fast enough.)

But it's those of you with an honest-to-goodness iPod that are really going to dig iTunes 2.0.3-- especially if your digital music collections exceed the iPod's 5 GB hard drive. Previously that fact would mean you'd have to update the songs on your iPod manually, because the automatic synchronization feature bailed if iTunes couldn't fit all your songs on the iPod at once. Now, though, iTunes 2.0.3 apparently comes with a new option to transfer "only the checked songs in your library and playlists to your iPod." So those of you with 80 GB of MP3s, rejoice; managing your iPod just got a little bit easier.

For what it's worth, we'd be remiss not to mention that at least a couple of readers over at MacNN have reported scary weirdness after trying to update to 2.0.3, including kernel panics and unbootable Macs. On the plus side, the vast majority of people seem to have zero troubles, and call 2.0.3's performance "snappier," especially when it comes to the Visuals. So back up your data, summon that courage, and do what you gotta do.