I just updated itunes on my windows 7 x64 computer to 12.1 64-bit. I have a graph on my desktop that shows network traffic. When opening itunes, before playing anything, the traffic jumps to 40-60kbit/s upload and double that value for download. Opened up resource monitor and there are dozens of connections being made by APSDaemon.exe (apple push service). Uninstalled and went back to 12.0.1 and it's quiet again. There was an icloud for windows update the same time I did 12.1 update and although I had to reinstall it (before installing older version I uninstalled anything related to apple and itunes and icloud) that is still at the most recent version so it was something with 12.1 install. Has anyone else noticed this? Haven't checked my mac yet. It may have been a botched upgrade and perhaps would have been fixed by uninstalling 12.1 and reinstall it.