Apple to Launch iTunes for Windows

An anonymous reader writes "According to this AppleInsider.com article published earlier this morning, Apple has planned an event for next Thursday to formally introduce their iTunes player and online music store for the Windows platform."

Comments

Re:What about Linux

[Phroggy]

I know Windows has the larger market share, but what about Linux? Surely, it cannot be that difficult to port from OSX (BSD-based) to Linux.

This is a common myth. The command-line user-space environment is FreeBSD-based, but the GUI is proprietary. iTunes is written with the Carbon APIs, which do not exist anywhere but Mac OS X, classic Mac OS, and a partial implementation in QuickTime for Windows.

No, the QuickTime movie players for Linux don't count; QuickTime is far more than a movie player.

If it were written with Cocoa instead, it might be possible to port it to GNUstep with some work.

By the way, I specifically said user-space; the kernel is also completely different which means hardware drivers are completely different. Don't expect that porting Linux or FreeBSD drivers to Mac OS X should be trivial either.

Re:Why?

[Graff]

Files *created* by iTunes when you rip your CDs are standard AAC files. However, files downloaded from the music store are NOT standard AAC files, and the DRM is most definitely NOT "volutarily enforced" by itunes. They are encrypted and keyed to the computer which you license with Apple.

There is no such thing as a standard AAC file. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a codec, not a file format. The AAC files created by iTunes are actually .m4a files and the files that come from the iTunes Music Store are .m4p files. Basically the m4a and m4p files are Quicktime files that use AAC encoding to store music. The m4a data is unencrypted and the m4p data is encrypted.

Other players could definitely play the m4a files if they worked out the file format. Knowing Apple the file format is probably readily available to developers. The m4p files, by nature of the encryption, would require either cracking the encryption or partnering with Apple in order to play on a 3rd party music player.

Here are the notes for the MPEG-2 AAC Standard and the MPEG-4 AAC Standard

Re:Why?

[Aqua OS X]

AAC only applies to downloaded music. You can transfer it to 3 machines, send it to an portable player, burn it to your hearts content, or convert it into a different format without DRM.

Moreover, iTunes has setting to rip to MP3, AAC, and AIFF by default. You never have to use AAC if you don't want to. (actually I think music ripped to AAC doesn't have password protection)