Apple is Porting iTunes to Windows

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Apple is indeed porting its new iTunes software to Windows as evidenced by a posting on its job board (No. 1949938) This has interesting implications for Apple trying to sell more expensive hardware when the same apps are available on cheaper Wintel hardware. Is this inevitable? Will this have any effect on P2P networks?" Sure enough, I go there and it says, " Looking for a Senior Software Engineer to desing (sic) and build Apple's newest Consumer Application, iTunes for Windows." Heh.

Comments

woa

[Microsift]

Web Objects Application

Re:iPod Syncing for Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two responses that don't really answer you. I'll try.

Let's say you have a 5 GB iPod and a 4 GB music collection. You can set up iTunes so that the iPod syncs to your music collection every time you plug it in. The first time you plug it in, all of your music and playlists will be downloaded to it. Buzz buzz, the iPod will get hot while the FireWire cable sparkles.

You unplug your iPod. You go do something. You come home, and shop on the iTunes Music Store. You buy three songs. You plug your iPod in, and poof! Quick as can be, those songs are now on your iPod. You make a couple of playlists, and those are on your iPod, too. You rip a new CD, and those songs are on your iPod too.

There's more. When you plug in you iPod, iSync automatically launches and downloads your address book and calendar items (including alarms) to it. So now your iPod is a simple PDA as well as a music player.

All of this happened without your having to actually do anything beyond the initial set-up. It's all automatic as soon as you plug the iPod in. And because we're talking about FireWire here, it's all fast, fast. In fact, the limiting factor on the iPod's transfer speed is the internal hard drive itself, not the connection to the computer.

There's more to it than that. iTunes has support for smart playlists, which means (for example) that you can have a playlist that randomly picks 10 songs you've listened to at least once but haven't heard in a week or more. Very handy.

All in all, the iPod is both the most expensive and the most popular music player on the market, and that ought to tell you something.

Re:Apps aren't all of it

[medeii]

I don't know anyone who bought their Mac just for iTunes

I did.

I bought an iPod when they were still Mac-only, so I ended up buying the eMac to go with it. After using iTunes once on a friend's iBook, I was hooked. Doing ID3 tags on a Windows platform is like looking forward to a root canal when you're talking about 5,000+ songs. Of course, I don't mind a lot of the other features of OS X, but iTunes and the iPod were a killer combination. Frankly, I still prefer Win2K over OS X, not least because a number of programs I use are still Windows-only and have no decent OS X equivalents. It kind of pisses me off that had I waited a year, I could have saved myself a massive ($3000+) investment in Apple hardware. I suppose that's the price for being an early adopter -- but I'm still pissed, and I hope Apple makes the iTunes for Windows client a shadow of the real thing.