Apple to Launch iTunes for Windows

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Apple to Launch iTunes for Windows

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday October 9, 2003 @06:41AM from the bracing-for-impact dept.

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."

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Re:I fear this is too late by Zebbers · 2003-10-09 06:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

umm
apple is launching this *now*, the others arent even close to ready.

apple has an existing library and successful delivery mechanism already. a windows client was all that was needed.

i fear you are clueless
Re:Why? by Eponymous+Coward · 2003-10-09 06:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

Because Apple's scheme has a better balance between consumer and producer rights. Maybe not ideal, but better than many of their competitors.
Re:Why? by imadork · 2003-10-09 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why do people seem to tolerate DRM and crippled formats when Apple's peddling them?
It's the RIAA that's the problem: they likely would not consent to distribution on the wide scale that Apple is engaged in without some type of restrictions. I'd rather use Apple's DRM (which is much more consumer-friendly) than Microsoft's.
Re:Why? by pctainto · 2003-10-09 06:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why do people seem to tolerate DRM and crippled formats when Apple's peddling them?

Probably because you know what you are getting into, and its only $.99 for a track. I wouldn't want to spend $16 on a CD that I can only listen to in certain CD players.

--
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
Re:Why? by kwerle · 2003-10-09 06:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

It turns out that everyone has some level of comfort with DRM and "broken formats." Do you use DVD's? Cable? Satellite? All those are DRM'd to some extent. Just like Apple's DRM, the hope is that consumers (which may not include you, in which case producers don't much care) will find them acceptible.

Being able to burn music CDs from apple's downloads seems pretty reasonable. Certainly that covers most user's needs. What's more, you can share music on your LAN.

What more could a reasonable consumer want?
what I want in a music service by gonar · 2003-10-09 06:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

when I pay my buck, I don't mind DRM (as long as up front I know it's there) but what I _do_ mind is a crappy 128bps recording.

what I want is for my $.99 is:
a: 1 (drm restricted) full CD quality track (that I can write to CD a limited number of times using their tool)
b: 1 high bit-rate drm restricted mp3/ogg/wma equivalent for i-pod type devices
c: 1 128bps (drm or no drm) mp3 equivalent for flash based mp3 players.

that way they can be happy about controlling my access and I can still get decent quality sound..

--
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
1. Re:what I want in a music service by gsfprez · 2003-10-09 08:11 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  an thusly, you're not part of Apple's target market.
  
  Sorry. They had to draw a line somewhere. Feel free to purchase the music in other places.
  
  I honestly don't understand how audiophiles and audiophile wanna-bees don't get this. This is a MASS MARKET targeted service. Its not targeted to audiophiles. Its not complicated or hidden or even confusing.
  
  What I think you're upset about is that you'll have to buy $18 cds to get the quality you want.
  
  That's part of higher quality - it often costs more than average mass market-level quality...
  
  Just like my PowerBook G4 12" cost me more than a Dell piece of shit laptop. The difference is that I don't bitch about it costing more - I know that i got a better product than the average consumer.
  
  Pick and choose what you want to spend money on - and buy what fulfills your need. And for the 897,592nd time - iTMS is not for audiophiles with $25,000 stereo systems.
  
  --
  guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Because the damn thing just plain works. by jpellino · 2003-10-09 07:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

In the words of Woody Flowers, "The most important thing is to make sure that the most important thing remains the most important thing."
At some point you have to look around the absolutes of file format particulars and the 'principles' of DRM.
Why? Because the pros far outway the cons.
I can play the music on three computers.
I can carry it all around on my iPod.
I can burn CDs all day long.
For all practical purposes, it sounds great.
The artists get paid.
I don't get subpoenaed.
Maybe I'm missing something but I'd really like to know the answe to this: what exactly is the untenable downside here?
All I can see "bad" is that (1) I can't play the music on one computer when I'm miles away from the other (but that's what the iPod's for) and (2) I can't hand the files to everyone in the world just because i feel like it.

--
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Re:I fear this is too late by levik · 2003-10-09 08:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

The problem is that apple tend to get cokcy about usability. They believe to have what is the be-all-end-all of UI systtems the hallowed OS X, and release applications as though they are wrighting Mac software.
Look at Quicktime for PC. It duplicates a lot of Mac's UI concepts instead of trying to blend in like a windows app. As a result it's confusing - there are no OK buttons on its property sheets for one, so the user has to close the props window to save, something that generally discards the changes in the windows world.
Whatever you wanna say about MS, they did a great job of following Mac conventions in designing MacIE and Office for OS X. I just wish Apple could do as good a job when making windows apps.
Did anyone see the horrible software that they shipped with iPod? I'm not too enthusiastic about the windows incarnation of iTunes.

--
Ñ'
The Big Picture by sloth+jr · 2003-10-09 08:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

Apple wants to make money. Here's what I think they hope will happen with the release of iTunes Windows:
Sell more music
Sell more iPods on which to play iTunes downloaded music. Integration will probably be seamless.
Get general consumers less afraid of Apple the company, and more willing to consider buying Macs
Sell more Macs, with aims to pull 10% market share in a year.
sloth jr
1. Re:The Big Picture by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-09 08:49 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Sell more Macs, with aims to pull 10% market share in a year.
  
  No, no, a thousand times no. Apple is ALREADY selling Macs faster than they can make them. Haven't you heard all the bitching about how it was taking a long time for people to get their new G5's and PowerBooks? That ain't because Apple doesn't want you to have them, man. It's because Apple is literally selling them faster than they can deliver them. And that's true even WITHOUT major universities buying new machines by the thousands.
  
  Apple doesn't give a FLYING SHIT about market share. They care about making products that are so good that a certain number of people are compelled to own them, and doing it in a way that allows them to invest heavily in R&D and still make a tidy profit.
  
  In a down-market, Apple has posted a profit in 20 out of the last 22 quarters WHILE STILL releasing entirely new products (like the G4 iMac, the iPod, the iTunes Music Store, and the G5) and continuing to enhance their existing products on an aggressive timeline. That's FUCKING AMAZING, man. If you know anything at all about business, that's absolutely amazing.
iTunes by blackmonday · 2003-10-09 08:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

iTunes is great because it's really a smart database application. There's even a tool that lets you do SQL queries against it. The DB smarts are what make iTunes so great - smart playlists - play only 80's songs without having to actually create the playlist. One smart playlist continually tracks the 25 most listened-to songs.

The real beauty is the iPod integration. Every time I plug in the iPod it does 2 things: It starts charging and it completely syncs to the iTunes database. My iPod is an identical copy in every way, including MP3 metadata, playlists, EQ settings for every song, etc. Buy a song from the iTunes music store, boom its on your iPod too.

The Windows version, if it remains consistent with the Mac version will blow Winamp out of the water. I can't wait. I'll finally have my music DB's synced at work too.
Windows iPod users and the youth market by Infonaut · 2003-10-09 08:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

My guess is that Windows iPod users will be among the first guinea pigs. I have a friend who is an avowed Mac-hater. She recently received an iPod for her birthday and was absolutely giddy. She has stayed away from online music stores because she sees them all as inferior to spending hours on P2P systems hunting for the stuff she wants. I wouldn't be surprised if she tried out the Windows version of the Apple Music Store shortly after roll-out.
Just before rolling out the dual-platform iPods, Apple was reporting that the Windows version of the iPod was selling at the same rate as the Mac version. With those rough numbers in hand, if you count on a similar conversion rate for the Music Store (I know, it's a wild ass guess), it seems that the Windows version should get at least as many customers as the Mac version.
Those who argue that Mac users are zealots are ignoring a few things. For one, Apple is slowly convincing Windows users that Apple can make great non-Mac products. Second, Apple's brand image in the youth market is extraordinarily strong. If there was ever a market dominated by youth tastes, music is it.
Reports of Apple arriving in the Windows music game too late ignore the fact that nobody else has been able to implement a Windows music service that consumers actually like. I don't think we'll see the Windows Music Store getting 20x the volume of the Mac version, but I do think it will be immediately profitable.

--
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Apple encryption: mp4 vs m4a vs m4p by frankie · 2003-10-09 08:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

I copy the file over to my windows computer, change the name from .m4p to .m4a, and QT for windows glady plays the file.
Incorrect. You are confusing m4p with mp4. mp4 is the ISO suffix for general mpeg-4 files (audio and/or video). m4p is the (arbitrary) suffix that Apple uses for encrypted mpeg-4 audio files (aka Apple Music). And then there's m4a, which is plain mpeg-4 audio.
QuickTime on Mac can create m4a files when you rip CDs. QuickTime for Windows currently doesn't recognize that suffix, but will accept mp4 instead. NOT THE SAME AS M4P