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

Why?

[seanadams.com]

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

Re:Why?

[Eponymous Coward]

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?

[imadork]

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?

[pctainto]

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.

Re:Why?

[Wilersh]

I guess I personally don't feel crippled by Apple's DRM system. I can buy my music there if they have what I want, burn it to as many CD's as I want, copy it to as many backup disks as I want, actively play the music on up to three computers at a time, and carry it around on my iPod wherever I go. The audio format is totally acceptable to my tastes.

So far I haven't felt screwed by any means and I'm happy it is an option to get some of my music. Granted it is not for everyone but no one forces anyone to use it.

Maybe I'm missing something?

Re:Why?

[Lord_Dweomer]

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

Because they have a good marketing department.

Re:Why?

[fupeg]

It's part of this amazing thing called a free market: people find that the product in question has enough value (put it on multiple Macs, unlimited burning, unlimited iPods, high quality mpeg4 format) to justify the price of 99 cents per song. Sorry that is so difficult for you to understand.

Re:Why?

[kwerle]

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?

Re:Why?

[Perl-Pusher]

Exactly! I love the new service, it allows me to download only the songs I want and burn them to cd. And play it anywhere! I'm not sure if could take the resulting wav files off the cd and then make an ogg file therby removing any DRM. I've never tried it, the resultant copy would most like be inferior to the source anyway.

Re:Why?

[11223]

Any other product could certainly play the files; they're MPEG 4 AAC. The DRM part of it is voluntarily observed by iTunes (and by the iPod, I guess), but AIUI not necessary.

MPEG 4 is an ISO standard. If other player manufacturers don't want to use standard formats and instead use WMA, that's not Apple's fault.

Re:Why?

[-tji]

Because it works well.

I have no problem with the DRM concept. I think that musicians, writers, and coders should be paid a fair price for their works.

If someone can implement a good model of usability while protecting the content's creator, I'm all for it.

For me, iTunes and my iPod work seamlessly, and offer great advantages in terms of accessibility. The Apple Music Store is always the first place I look when I want music. As their catalog increases, it will become the only place I look.

Re:Why?

[znu]

Because Apple appears to be doing the minimum necessary to keep record companies happy, while certain other companies (that shall remain nameless) seem to really like the idea of DRM, and want to implement it as extensively as possible, probably because they view it as another as another way to create vendor lock-in.

Re:Why?

[pyros]

Apparently you've never wanted to play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size, and then possibly having to re-compress them to another format.

I know I've cursed not having an apple product around to listen to my music on a stupid redbook audio CD created with iTunes. Those Apple pirates need to learn we won't tolerate that kind of vendor lock-in.

Re:Why?

[seanadams.com]

No, that is absolutely 100% wrong!!! 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.

MPEG 4 is an ISO standard. If other player manufacturers don't want to use standard formats and instead use WMA, that's not Apple's fault.

What a load of B.S. - who told you that?

Re:Why?

[Papa Romeo]

I understand you can rip CD on mp3 or aiff formats also. About mpeg4 being an ISO standard, these guys seem to agree. http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4aac/stan dard.html

Re:Why?

[Wilersh]

Apparently you've never wanted to play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size, and then possibly having to re-compress them to another format.

Nope. CD's and my iPod seem to cover all bases so far.

I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over.

If people can't backup data safely and redundantly then that is a problem that has nothing to do with a DRM. Copying files from a backup disk is no big deal and would be a process independent of where my music came from. Re-licensing them takes less than a minute and is behind the scenes once I authenticate my account in iTunes.

Certainly though, you've drunk Apple's cool-aid with respect to AAC having acceptable sound quality, despite strong evidence that it's only *marginally* better than MP3 at low bit rates (which ITMS files are).

I have not drank any cool-aid and am very critical of Apple when appropriate. Your comment is a subjective argument and as I said the quality works great for me. If you aren't happy with the quality don't buy it, and that again isn't a DRM argument.

But that's okay, you keep racking up those charges on your credit card, while the rest of us will continue our boycott of the RIAA until they begin distributing a good product for a fair price.

Apparently some of us feel this is a good product. I'd be happy to hear of a better method that gives this much flexibilty and can work. I would note that I feel the theft of music is not an option and is against the law. Please present an alternative that you would find acceptable. I would be interested in it. Change my mind...

Re:Why?

[Have Blue]

Apple allows, and even encourages, you to back up your music files. The page refers only to CD burning, but the files can be freely copied around the hard disk and between computers with the Finder. You can still play any of the copies on authorized computers, all the DRM data is internal.

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?

[falcon5768]

not entirely true I had no problem copying my music over to my new computer, not a problem at all playing them.

Re:Why?

[hawkbug]

Because their DRM is a joke. You can burn a CD with their app from the music you bought. Then, you can easily rip the CD to any format you wish, including MP3 or OGG. This scheme keeps the music labels relatively happy, and the consumers happy knowing they can end up doing whatever they choose with the CDs they can burn. I think this is awesome, and the way it should be. I can't wait for a windows release so I can get in on the the cheap music party.

Re:Why?

[Laur]

I know I've cursed not having an apple product around to listen to my music on a stupid redbook audio CD created with iTunes.

Apparently you missed the part of the OP's post about "play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size." Having to burn a CD just to listen to a ~5 MB digital file on non-Apple approved hardware is hardly convenient.

Re:Why?

[banky]

I call bullshit on you.

Apparently you've never wanted to play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size, and then possibly having to re-compress them to another format.

Burning an audio CD from AAC is hardly a chore in iTunes. I trust you've used it?

I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over.

I call bullshit again. First of all, keeping regular backups is part of commonly accepted good computing practices. If you can't do that, it's hardly apple's fault. In this KB article - here - they tell you outright to backup your stuff.

Moreover: "redownload"? That's odd. In the same KB article, it says:

if your hard disk becomes damaged or you lose any of the music you've purchased, you'll have to buy any purchased music again to rebuild your library.

(emphasis mine)

Has Apple given you special dispensation for a hard drive crash, or are you just lying?

Second, I'm not sure what version of iTunes you're using, but when I relicensed my songs, it was as easy as entering my iTMS info in the little dialog. Boom, the machine is now licensed.

I won't debate on sound quality; people who have decided AAC sucks simply won't change their minds. My feeling it, it could be better, and eventually it will be. I will also ignore the implicit accusation that I'm somehow stupid, because my ear finds AAC acceptable.

Lastly, "the rest of us"? Provide solid numbers on this boycott, please.

Re:Why?

[AstroDrabb]

Does Apple let you burn those songs to standard CD Audio? If so, you can then rip them to non-DRMed ogg/mp3 files with no problems. Does the iPod let you play regular mp3/ogg files? Or only DRMed ones?

Re:Why?

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Re-licensing them takes less than a minute and is behind the scenes once I authenticate my account in iTunes.

Isn't it possible just to back up all the iTunes DRM data, restore it when you need it and have it just work? What is "re-licensing"?

Re:Why?

[seanadams.com]

There is no such thing as a standard AAC file. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a codec, not a file format.

Right.

The AAC files created by iTunes are actually .m4a files and the files that come from the iTunes Music Store are .m4p files.

Right

Basically the m4a and m4p files are Quicktime files that use AAC encoding to store music.

Actually m4a files are just MPEG bitsreams presented as a file - they're not a special format. You can extract the AAC component using a tool such as mp4UI (which is based on the MPEG4IP tools).

The m4a data is unencrypted and the m4p data is encrypted.

Yes. And I don't think there is a published spec for the file format OR the encryption. I'm sure it won't be long before someone finds a workaround to extract the original AAC bitstream by leveraging Apple's own software (peeking at memory).

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.

Yes... well, actually there's nothing to work out. Just grab MPEG4IP and you can extract them yourself.

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.

I have no doubt that the first will happen if/when ITMS becomes very popular (in spite of the second probably not happening any time soon).

Re:Why?

[Laur]

You can burn a CD with their app from the music you bought. Then, you can easily rip the CD to any format you wish, including MP3 or OGG.

Re-encoding will be lossy,and the files aren't that high quality to begin with. Besides, re-coding without the DRM violates the ITMS Terms of Service, a legal agreement between the user and Apple. If you're going to violate a legal agreement to get non-DRMed files, why don't you just use Kazaa in the first place and save a lot of effort?

Re:Why?

[seanadams.com]

Obviously it is "volutarily enforced" by iTunes, as iTunes could just as easily authenticate any DRM AAC file it encounters.

Where are you getting this information? The files are E N C R Y P T E D S P E C I F I C A L L Y F O R E A C H C L I E N T.

I don't know about the parent poster, but I learned it from the Moving Pictures Expert Group (ie. MPEG)

Please tell me where in that document it describes the DRM that apple is using and how anyone can decode the files.

Re:Why?

[MoneyT]

Apparently you've never wanted to play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size, and then possibly having to re-compress them to another format

When I want to do that, I copy the file over to my windows computer, change the name from .m4p to .m4a, and QT for windows glady plays the file.

click for more info

Or I could likewise use a program like Audio Hijack and take the digital sound from my computer and rencode it as m4a

I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over.


As opposed to say, having to repurchase all of your CDs if your house burns down? I thought we were all past the point where we never made backups of our systems.

Certainly though, you've drunk Apple's cool-aid with respect to AAC having acceptable sound quality, despite strong evidence that it's only *marginally* better than MP3 at low bit rates (which ITMS files are).


Relevant to DRM because....?

Re:Why?

[xenoandroid]

"Apparently you've never wanted to play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size, and then possibly having to re-compress them to another format" Mac OS X and Windows are going to be able to play it. And I'm sure if other companies were willing Apple would be happy to allow other music players capable of playing iTMS files. If you hate the music store that much just don't use it. "I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over." authorized machines are identified by their hardware, not data on the hard drive. "Certainly though, you've drunk Apple's cool-aid with respect to AAC having acceptable sound quality, despite strong evidence that it's only *marginally* better than MP3 at low bit rates (which ITMS files are)." They're more than "marginally better" than the average MP3. And if you're talking about professionally encoded MP3s then tell me where I can buy those. The encoders themselves cost money. I don't understand how stupidity, ignorance, and the inability to see why certain problems exist which are more the fault of other companies than Apple can be modded as insightful...

Re:Why?

[nullard]

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.

Actually any program that uses QuickTime for MPEG reading can read them if you are logged in to the computer. It seems to be automatic. This is how the m4p -> AIFF converters work.

Re:Why?

[hawkbug]

Why would the encoding be lossy? It should be no different than any other mp3 I have encoded - it's just that the file is starting from a compresses state, being expanded, and then compressed again. As long as the file is originally encoded at 128 kbps or higher, I'm happy.

"Besides, re-coding without the DRM violates the ITMS Terms of Service, a legal agreement between the user and Apple."

Well, for starters, there is no law stating that I can't reencode music into any format that I choose if I have legally purchased this music. It's called Fair Use. So, even if Apple's agreement prohibits it, so what. That makes their agreement legally void then, and I'd like to see them try to enforce it.

Re:Why?

[mosch]

Yes, you can burn them to standard CD audio.
Yes, the ipod plays regular mp3 files.
No, the ipod does not play ogg files, only wav, aiff, mp3 and mp4.

Re:Why?

[jdreed1024]

No, that is absolutely 100% wrong!!! Files *created* by iTunes when you rip your CDs are standard AAC files.

Only if you tell iTunes you want AAC. My iTunes rips to MP3. The MP3s it creates can be played anywhere, including WinAMP, mpg123, and any number of portable players, such as my Zaurus PDA. There's a setting in the preferences pane.

>MPEG 4 is an ISO standard. If other player
>manufacturers don't want to use standard formats
>and instead use WMA, that's not Apple's fault.

What a load of B.S. - who told you that?

Uh, you're kidding right? MPEG-4 is very much an ISO standard, as were MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. Perhaps you should go take a look at the MPEG site at http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/index.htm, specifically this page.

Re:Why?

[seanadams.com]

Actually any program that uses QuickTime for MPEG reading can read them if you are logged in to the computer.

Well, yes and no. You can get PCM data, but not the original AAC. Quicktime does not allow an application to extract the original ISO-compliant bitstream, and this is what currently prevents not only file sharing of m4p files, but also the playback of said files on non-Apple products. The only way is to re-encode.

Re:Why?

[be-fan]

I have encoded - it's just that the file is starting from a compresses state, being expanded, and then compressed again.
>>>>>>>>>
That's the problem. You're chopping twice. Each chop doesn't cut the same data, but subtly different data. Thus, there is an overallall loss. 128kbs is pretty low quality to begin with. I can easily hear a pretty big difference, and my setup (iPod piped to Klipsch 4.1's) is certainly not high-end, even by consumer standards.

Re:Why?

[Blondie-Wan]

I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over.

You're right, I haven't, and neither have you. If you want to "relicense" them for your new machine, you do just copy them over, and authorize the machine to play them, and there you go. You can have up to three machines authorized at any time, and you can deauthorize older computers whenever you like to accomodate authorizing new ones. And each authorized machine has full usage rights (can burn to CDs, can transfer to iPods, can stream to other computers on a local network); there's none of that mucking about with "primary" and "secondary" machines like there is with BuyMusic.com, with which I suspect you've confused the iTMS. The two are very different in what they'll allow you to do with music, and what you've written here applies to BM.com a lot more than the iTMS.

If you're worried about losing a hard disk full of songs, do the same thing with it you'd do with any vulnerable disk full of valuable data, and back it up. Apple explicitly encourages you to do this, and makes it easy to boot; you can even make DVD archives right from within iTunes if you like.

Apple's Kool-Aid? Just what we need to wash down all that freshly baked, anti-Apple FUD you're trying to feed people...

Re:Why?

[Thorkytel Ant-Head]

I agree completely! I don't understand why Apple couldn't just make every standard CD player able to play compressed audio formats. Damn you Apple!

Face it: Having to expand your files to 12x their original size is a result of standard CD players not being able to read compressed audio, not a result of anything that Apple has done. If you download a pirated MP3 file off of Kazaa, you're still going to need to burn it to CD to play it on a standard CD player. Your criticisms apply that it's Apple's fault, where it's not.

Re:Why?

[cens0r]

When did microsoft start distributing content? As far as I know you can lock down a file just as much in using apples software as you can media player.

Re:Why?

[cubicledrone]

But that's okay, you keep racking up those charges on your credit card, while the rest of us will continue our boycott of the RIAA until they begin distributing a good product for a fair price.

Like what? Free?

iTunes is proof that a fair price is possible. For $.99 people can get just about any song they want, and everyone gets paid. Everybody wins. It's a brilliant solution. Absolutely brilliant.

Re:Why?

[Laur]

Why would the encoding be lossy? It should be no different than any other mp3 I have encoded - it's just that the file is starting from a compresses state, being expanded, and then compressed again. As long as the file is originally encoded at 128 kbps or higher, I'm happy.

AAC is a lossy codec. When you expand this onto a CD you don't magically get the extra quality back. If you expand a 128 kbps AAC to a CD, then rip and encode to 128 kbps mp3 or ogg (both of which are lossy codecs as well) you will definetily lose quality. I hear that encoding back to un-DRMed AAC format loses the least quality.

Well, for starters, there is no law stating that I can't reencode music into any format that I choose if I have legally purchased this music. It's called Fair Use. So, even if Apple's agreement prohibits it, so what. That makes their agreement legally void then, and I'd like to see them try to enforce it.

Did you miss the first line of the ITMS Terms of Service, " THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APPLE COMPUTER, INC. ("APPLE") STATING THE TERMS THAT GOVERN YOUR USE OF THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE SERVICE." If you wish to use the Service you must agree to these terms, including waiving your fair use rights, which is all perfectly legal. This is a legal contract between you and Apple and they can enforce it if they choose. Just because they probably won't prosecute doesn't mean you aren't breaking the law, just as it is statistically unlikely that you will be sued by the RIAA for using Kazaa.

Re:Why?

[cens0r]

But they distribute the songs in a lossy compression format. Therefore if I do this, I'm combining the lossy nature of mpeg-4 with the lossy nature of mpeg-1. This leaves me with an unacceptable file. I want my music uncompressed. That way I can store it in any format that strikes my current fancy without loosing quality everytime I decide on a new format.

Re:Why?

[Laur]

Face it: Having to expand your files to 12x their original size is a result of standard CD players not being able to read compressed audio, not a result of anything that Apple has done. If you download a pirated MP3 file off of Kazaa, you're still going to need to burn it to CD to play it on a standard CD player. Your criticisms apply that it's Apple's fault, where it's not.

It is Apple's fault for using DRM crippled files. I was mostly referring to playing the files on other non-Apple computers, not standard CD players. Having to burn a CD to listen to a downloaded, digital music file on your Windows computer is inconvienient and most certainly is Apple's fault.

Re:Why?

[hawkbug]

"Did you miss the first line of the ITMS Terms of Service, " THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APPLE COMPUTER, INC. ("APPLE") STATING THE TERMS THAT GOVERN YOUR USE OF THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE SERVICE." If you wish to use the Service you must agree to these terms, including waiving your fair use rights, which is all perfectly legal. This is a legal contract between you and Apple and they can enforce it if they choose. Just because they probably won't prosecute doesn't mean you aren't breaking the law, just as it is statistically unlikely that you will be sued by the RIAA for using Kazaa."

I disagree with you - I'm not a lawyer, but I think that if a citizen is afforded specific rights by the U.S. constituion, no contract in this country can take away any of those. It's like Microsoft's EULA for front page stating that you can't use front page to create pages containing negative comments about M$. It's retarded, and it would certainly not be illegal to use front page to trash M$. If M$ tried to sue somebody in court over it, they would lose. When you say Apple can "enforce" this contract if I reencode files, you're sort of right - they can void the contract and kick me off their service, that's it. They can't sue me or have legal charges brought against me. My fair use is protected in the U.S., and Apple can't change that, simple as that.

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)

Re:Why?

[zpok]

For the same reason people tolerate paying for good software.

The DRM is implemented not as a big thorny stick in your ass, but as something nearly invisible that actually gives you more legal leeway than a *real* CD.

Re:Why?

[silicon not in the v]

Re-encoding does NOT violate the ITMS terms of service. I just read through it from your link, and it is not trying to circumvent or reversen engineer their security system. I did notice something weird in their terms of service, though. On the main page, there is a section under Usage Rules that says "You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use." However, section 5 under the heading Policies and Rules has a link that goes to a page called Terms of Sale that tells stuff about taxes, prices, etc. It also has a section called Content Usage Rules that repeats much of the earlier description. This one, however, contains this line "You shall be entitled to burn and export Products solely for personal, non-commercial use." Do you think there's a reason they didn't just copy the text from one page to another? I'm not just asking to be a nitpicker, but because I think export and copy are the applicable terms when you talk about ripping to mp3. I believe this statement in their Terms of Use specifically allows any form of format conversion you want to do. When people complain about it being a lossy or bad quality format when extracted that way, I think I would have to say that you are given two options if you want to comply with copyright law. Go buy the CD so you can make your own high quality rips, or get the songs cheaper and tolerate a little lower quality. Why is it so hard to understand that choices involve weighing pros and cons? Life is not about getting everything you want with no sacrifice, and that should be applied to a lot more than just music. Think of the huge number of bankruptcies in this country due to credit card debt.

Re:Why?

[MachineShedFred]

Apparently you didn't bother to even read the synopsis of the article, much less the actual article:

This is going to announce the availability of iTunes for WINDOWS

Re:Why?

[gte910h]

I disagree with you - I'm not a lawyer, but I think that if a citizen is afforded specific rights by the U.S. constituion, no contract in this country can take away any of those. It's like Microsoft's EULA for front page stating that you can't use front page to create pages containing negative comments about M$. It's retarded, and it would certainly not be illegal to use front page to trash M$. If M$ tried to sue somebody in court over it, they would lose. When you say Apple can "enforce" this contract if I reencode files, you're sort of right - they can void the contract and kick me off their service, that's it. They can't sue me or have legal charges brought against me. My fair use is protected in the U.S., and Apple can't change that, simple as that.

IANAL, however fair use comes from a copyright act, not the constitution. And you CAN sign away rights granted to you by the constitution. For instance, a Non-Disclosure agreement removes your free speech rights on that topic.

Re:Why?

[Laur]

I disagree with you - I'm not a lawyer, but I think that if a citizen is afforded specific rights by the U.S. constituion, no contract in this country can take away any of those.

You seem to be a bit confused, fair use rights are not in the Constitution, they are in Title 17 of the US Code (Chapter 1, Sect. 107 I believe). Also, contracts most certainly can limit your rights, that's one of the things that they are expressely designed to do. For example, an NDA prohibits you from speaking about certain information, even if this is protected under Free Speech. Contracts can't make you do anything illegal and there are certain rights you can't give up (such as the right to sue) but fair use is not protected in this manner. IANALBIPOOS.

Re:Why?

[Laur]

How about:

Use of Products. You acknowledge that Products contain security technology that limits your usage of Products to the following Usage Rules.
I.e. these songs are protected by DRM.

You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
I.e. you can't circumvent the DRM.

The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.
I.e. don't take out the DRM.

Granted, IANAL so my "legalese-to-english" conversion may not be 100% correct, but that's certainly how it reads to me.

Re:Why?

[Simon (S2)]

I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over.

yeah. like if you buy a new phone and it gets broken because it fellt off your desk. do you get a new one for free? no. so if you screw up your hd why should they give you the songs again for free? you can make backups on 3 different comupers, and it costs .99 a song. what's wrong with that?

Re:Why?

[Laur]

This is going to announce the availability of iTunes for WINDOWS

But as of today, you are allowed to play your songs only on "three Apple-authorized computers at any time" (for the Terms of Service), which is what I was discussing. Besides, I run Linux at home, so the recent announcement doesn't change things for me much.

Re:Why?

[zieroh]

But that's okay, you keep racking up those charges on your credit card, while the rest of us will continue our boycott of the RIAA until they begin distributing a good product for a fair price.

But that's okay, you keep raging against the machine until you're blue in the face, while the rest of us will be listening to music we did purchase at a fair price whilst getting on with our lives.

There are so many more important things for me to focus my anger on than whether or not the products of one little company (namely Apple) are suitable for my consumption or not. I swear, geeks get their panties in such a wad sometimes over the silliest things.

Re:Why?

[kwerle]

full, unrestricted permissions to their own property.

So, what I'm saying is this:
For most consumers, there are no restrictions.
They can burn CDs.
They can go portable on iPods.
They can play the tunes on multiple machines.

Consumers (including you, I'd guess) use products with restrictions all the time. The important thing is that they don't get in the way.

Re: Why?

[gidds]

You never have to use AAC if you don't want to. (actually I think music ripped to AAC doesn't have password protection)

Yes, and more. AAC is just another audio format; you can convert to and from it freely, just as with MP3.

What the iTunes Music Store is selling is protected AAC files; they use the same audio coding, but have a slightly different wrapper format, and have a different file extension (.M4P I think). It's those files which are restricted - you can only play them on your up to 3 authorised machines, &c.

(I don't speak from experience here - as a non-USian, I don't have access, grump grump grump.)

Re:Why?

[msaavedra]

It's part of this amazing thing called a free market

I can understand what you're saying, but this is not a free market, in the pure sense of the term. In a free market, anyone would be able to distribute any particular piece of music that they wanted for whatever price they wanted. Likewise, anyone else would be able to buy from any supplier who has the right price. Copyrights are a government intervention in this process which gives a particular entity sole distribution rights, in effect a monopoly.

This has lots of effects on the market, though not as bad as people normally assume. Whether this is a justified government intervention is open to debate, but this does not meet the criteria to be called a free market.

Re:Why?

[fr0dicus]

Apple wouldn't be able to distribute the music without DRM, they simply wouldn't get the license to do so from the RIAA.

Re:Why?

[laddhebert]

As someone posted in an earlier /. post...

1 dollar per song. 6000 sounds on an iPod. 6000 dollar iPod. Freaky.

-L

Re:Why?

[uid8472]

I'm sure it won't be long before someone finds a workaround to extract the original AAC bitstream by leveraging Apple's own software (peeking at memory).

If you just wanted to transcode to another format for which a QuickTime export component exists (e.g. raw AIFF, Ogg/Vorbis, ...), that can be done just with Apple's published APIs; there's even a convnient little GUI provided for selecting and configuring the export component. Of course, while one can reencode as AAC that way, the encoder that ships with QT is distinctly worse than the one they use for the iTMS originals, even with a higher bitrate, so that's not quite what you're looking for.

Re:Why?

[laddhebert]

s/sounds/songs

Re:Why?

[jasonbw]

you'd have to do the same thing if you use almost any other commercial music download service. Hell, some of them won't let you play music unless you are on your own primary PC (or an 'approved' music player)

If you are going to buy music electronicly, you are going to have to deal with some type of DRM. Thats not the fault of the reseller, thats the fault of the labels and the RIAA. at least give credit where it's due.

Re:Why?

[hondo77]

Certainly though, you've drunk Apple's cool-aid with respect to AAC having acceptable sound quality, despite strong evidence that it's only *marginally* better than MP3 at low bit rates (which ITMS files are).

Sorry but as far as ripping CDs with iTunes is concerned, 128AAC beats the crap out of 192MP3. I'm sure there is other software where that is not the case but as far as just using iTunes, which the vast majority of Mac users use, that is the case.

Re:Why?

[Wilersh]

I think it may be possible to backup this info. I haven't had to do that. I did one re-install since buying music and all I did was copy my iTunes directories from my backup disk to the proper location on my re-install machine. Then under one of the menues in iTunes is an option to Authorize this computer to play purchased songs. I guess that is what I meant by re-license. I have no idea what the original poster had in mind. To me is sounds like that person has never used a product that they are complaining about.

Re:Why?

[Durandal64]

Um ... no, you can't. Apple's iTunes doesn't even generate protected MP4's, nor is there an option for it to. It makes MP4's which can be played on any OS capable of playing them.

Re:Why?

[Durandal64]

Apple are releasing iTunes for Windows very soon. So Windows users will be able to play .m4p's, and I assume that you'll be able to authorize both Macs and PC's for the same file.

And as for it being Apple's "fault" for using DRM, please learn something about how business is done. Apple are a company, and they need permission from the RIAA to distribute their shit for a fee. The RIAA wouldn't give them that permission if Apple didn't use DRM.

Re:Why?

[gamgee5273]

Having to burn a CD to listen to a downloaded, digital music file on your Windows computer is inconvienient and most certainly is Apple's fault.

Hmmm...It's Apple's fault for making a product available for the users of their OS and application? It's Apple's fault for not making it immediately available to a competitor's OS?

You sound like you need a good ride on the clue train, my boy. You might have had a point if you had stuck with the non-Apple player point, but you completely lost it when you are blaming Apple for making these things available to their customers first.

Re:Why?

[JonathanBoyd]

Apparently you've never wanted to play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size, and then possibly having to re-compress them to another format.

iTunes can stream music. Or you could just burn a CD.

I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over.

What gave you the idea that you can't make backups?

But that's okay, you keep racking up those charges on your credit card, while the rest of us will continue our boycott of the RIAA until they begin distributing a good product for a fair price.

What's wrong with $0.99? Do you think $0.00 is a fair price? Or are you honest enough to not download pirated music? If it is a genuine boycott, then fair play to you, I can respect that stance. Anyone who says they want a fair price, claims the moral high ground, then goes and downloads tracks for free, however, is a hypocrite without a leg to stand on.

Re:Why?

[kwerle]

Why give your money to RIAA members...

Because I want to hear Hendrix and Static-X.

Re:Why?

[aastanna]

But if you assume that to get the licences to the music they needed some form of protection the mechanism they chose was excellent.

When the Windows iTunes launches I bet you'll be able to transfer/play the m4p files on a windows computer, but if you are really bent on getting past the encryption you can do it with a CDRW and 2 clicks in iTunes (hit the burn button, hit the rip button (with it set to rip to mp3))

Re:Why?

[CableModemSniper]

My friend wrote some Java that interfaced with QuickTime's API that takes the m4p files and spits out mp3s.

Re:Why?

[LetterJ]

If burn->rip->encode is "circumventing", then burn by itself would be as well, even though the whole setup explicitly allows burning. After all, if you burn *using their software*, you end up with an un-DRM-ed, plain CD.

Re:Why?

[numark]

Go into iTunes, go to the Advanced menu, and click "Check for Purchased Music". If you've lost the original music file for any reason, iTunes will redownload it and authorize your computer again. In effect, they're doing the work of backing up the DRM and the music file itself. There's no need for the user to manually do any of it.

Re:Why?

[EelBait]

Almost. The Check for Purchased music option is for resuming interrupted downloads. Once a file has been successfully downloaded, you cannot download it again.

Here is the Apple KB article iTunes Music Store: Purchased Songs Can Be Downloaded Only Once.

Re:Why?

[laddhebert]

Here's what I like better:

I get to sample all the music I want (nntp) , and when I hit upon something good, I donate 20 bucks to the band's Paypal link on their website... Same goes for OSS. When I hit upon something I really dig, I donate cash to the movement.

-L

Re:Why?

[cens0r]

You can if you want. That's how DRM is generated on the files sold at the iTMS.

Re:Why?

[Blondie-Wan]

Besides, re-coding without the DRM violates the ITMS Terms of Service, a legal agreement between the user and Apple.

Again, wrong, wrong, wrong. The ToS says you can't disassemble the files to crack the DRM; it doesn't say anything about how you use CDs you burn with the files. Once you burn CDs, they're just like audio CDs you'd get from some other source; they're not the files you buy, after all, but new things the files permit you to make. The ToS don't say squat about what you can do with your own audio CDs that you rip into iTunes, and I believe the point is that once you burn a CD from iTMS purchases, it's considered a legal audio CD just like others you'd get elsewhere.

If Apple seriously didn't want people reencoding their music, they'd state very clearly the limitations on what one can do with the burned copies.

Re:Why?

[Blondie-Wan]

Right, but the mandates not to mess with the DRM very clearly apply to the AAC files you buy and download from Apple, not to burned CDs you make from those files. All the language concerning what you can do with the DRMed files is specific to those, not to CDs; as far as Apple is concerned, CDs you burn with the files are like any other CD - the DRM protects the AAC files and affords just enough of a limited protection to make it difficult to be bad with them without specifically cracking the DRM, which is both forbidden and difficult; once you have audio CDs, though, it's incumbent upon the buyer to stay within the same legal boundaries he/she would have to with any other audio CD of copyrighted material. If making rips from CDs burned from the files weren't allowed, you can be sure the ToS would be quite specific about it.

Re:Why?

[Durandal64]

How? There's nothing like that in the prefs.

Re:Why?

[djtripp]

Do you complain when they cut you off at the bar too? The fact is that in the pirateous digital society we live in today, people with no morals will take what they want, when they want. If there were no rules built into iTMS, there would be no iTMS. In this capitalistic society, everyone wants to make money. iTMS is both profitable to the labels, and to Apple. To go back to your car analogy, buy a car, yes, oh, yeah, pay and sign for a license. Oh, don't forget insurance (which is pretty much required with the car and the license).

Re:Why?

[sh00z]

No, the ipod does not play ogg files, only wav, aiff, mp3 and mp4.

and Audible.com.

Ephpod

[jevring]

Honestly, I hadly think that iTunes will beat Ephpod on Windows. Ephpod has all I ever wished for my iPod-syncing needs in it, and I'd be hard pressed to switch.

Re:Ephpod

[Mikey-San]

Right, a buggy third-party app with an underthought UI is going to be MUCH better than iTunes. You know, the software they designed the iPod to work with.

Re:Ephpod

[hillbilly1980]

Two words an apostephy and a question mark sum up why itunes will beat ephpod.

"What's Ephpd?"

Re:Ephpod

[jevring]

I'd recommend you use LAME to encode mp3, no matter what general tool you use. Ofcourse I'd never let any general-purpose tool take care of my encoding. What with the crappyness that most tools deliver, and how well lame does the job, I wouldn't think of using anything else. As for the crashes, Ephpod has yet to crash even once one me. Never has it happened, so there might be something else wrong with your system.

Re:Ephpod

[jevring]

Look, you're free to NOT use Ephpod if you don't want to, but don't ASSUME iTunes will be better, just because you think Ephpod sucks. I don't promote it, I just use it. It works beautifully for me, never had a problem, so I really don't know what the rest of you are doing with your systems, maybe it's not the application thats at fault here, ne?

Re:Ephpod

[jevring]

Hmm, I don't recall purchasing music ever being part of Ephpods features, do you? That's because it isn't, and never was and probably never will. Ephpods aim is to HANDLE your music on the way to and from youd iPod, nothing more. It never claimed to be able to purchase music online. Try not to compare apples to oranges, and our collective mental health will be alot better off.

Re:Ephpod

[jevring]

Right, that's the way forward, if it's not painfully obvious and right in front of you, it doesn't exist... "Syns inte, finns inte, a-ha-ha-ha!" And your attempt at poetry, or whatever the hell that was, cleverness perhaps, failed misserably, since you do not know how to spell. Good night.

Re:I fear this is too late

[Zebbers]

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:I fear this is too late

[Sir Haxalot]

Already, microsoft and a slew of other compeditors have jumpped on the same bandwagon (pun not intended)
How could you have typed it and not intended to?

Typical

[bastardsquadmuzz]

I get a Mac, then find out that the iTunes Music Store (iMS) is US-only. And now they're bringing it out on the PC anyway. Typical! Oh well, at least there's a decent media player for Windows now (other than Winamp, that's cool), and hopefully I can play all my .m4a files on my Win machine without having to rename them all.

Re:Typical

[Phroggy]

I get a Mac, then find out that the iTunes Music Store (iMS) is US-only.

The usual abbreviation is iTMS.

and hopefully I can play all my .m4a files on my Win machine without having to rename them all.

Rename them? That's a really bad idea - the extension suggests what format the file is, and changing it leads to confusion. If your media player is capable of playing them, you should simply associate that file extension with your preferred player. If that doesn't work, renaming probably won't either.

Re:Typical

[bastardsquadmuzz]

That's it, iTMS. Close tho, cheers.

As for renaming the files, iTunes gives them the extension .m4a, meaning MPEG 4 Audio. However, most windows media players (even Quicktime for Windows, which seems kind of odd) doesn't recognise the .m4a extension. If you rename them to .mp4 however (exactly the same file and format, just a different name) most of the players will play them. .m4a is iTunes' name for .mp4.

Re:Typical

[vonFinkelstien]

You can ship that new Mac to me.

Moving on Other's Turf

[chadlnx]

I'm very happy to see Apple taking an aggressive step towards the Windows consumer base. Many of these users are "stuck", so to say, to this platform and will appreciate this move. Both systems interoperating will also be a benefit for hardcore apple users who are stuck with windoze during work. I'm really rooting for Apple on this one. They will come to market before Microsoft. This will be interesting to see how Microsoft users react to someone actually coming forward (first, no less) with a product of Apple standards.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[Izago909]

How are Mac users any less "stuck" than windows users? From my understanding Apple has a monopoly on Mac hardware and software while Microsoft has a monopoly on software. That sounds like a "double stuck" to me.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[the_2nd_coming]

Apple makes the computer...that is not a monopoly.

MS makes an OS that 100% of the x86 makeers use...that is a monopoly.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[cens0r]

MS makes an OS that 90% of the x86 users use. Apple makes an OS which 99% of the apple pc users use. They are both a monopoly. You just feel the effects of MS more because there are alot more x86 machines floating around.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[zpok]

Yeah, but we like it like that :-)

serious:
I don't give a hoot about market share, all this proprietary crap (when I buy a car, I hope the engine they put in has some relation to the rest of the machine) and the OS someone prefers.

But the use of the word monopoly on apple hardware and software is a bit over the top.

If you choose to use OS X (instead of installing some very competent *nix distro) you know your hardware is supported, since it will only boot on a mac. In my book that's a feature, not a bug.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[Izago909]

So exactly how many PPC manufacturers can you choose to buy motherboards or processors from when you build you own Mac? x86 people have many such as asus, abit, aopen, epox, gigabyte, msi, fic, chaintech, soltek, dfi, shuttle, intel, and soyo (just to name a few). Then you can chooses between intel, amd, cyrix, or via for processors. For OS's you have the single greatest x86 monopoly of MS Windows, or Be, Linux, and still OS/2. There may be one monopoly in the PC market, but you still have a choice to not be a part of it if you wish. If you have a Mac, because of the closed and protected nature of its hardware, you have only Apple to buy new hardware from or maybe a handful of after market add-ons from licensed vendors. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can only install Mac OS or OSX or yellow dog.

But I digress; if Apple is the only company that makes Macs, how is that NOT a monopoly? Would it be a monopoly if you could buy new PC hardware from IBM? Microsoft may be THE monopoly in the PC market, but you can erase your hard drive and pick another OS. What's the solution if you don't want a monopoly dominating your Mac hardware the way MS dominates the desktop OS market? Easy, don't buy a Mac.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[Izago909]

That's very true. For the longest time that was the one greatest advantage Mac had over PC. If you bought a peice of hardware or software and your setup met its requirements, you could be assured that it will most likely work. Anyone who suffered through the days when PnP truly meant plug and pray and jumpers, [E]ISA, and VL-Bus made you want to scream, would have thought a Mac was a childs toy because it was so easy to add on to.

These days its beginning to mean less and less though. PnP is finally comming of age and standardized hardware protocols are helping to ease much of the old tension. If you build a new computer and don't cut corners by using old, used, or off-name hardware you are much safer to assume there won't be conflicts. Sometimes people build Frankenboxen by using hardware from the dead along with some new stuff. Their computing days are filled with frustration because they have yet to learn that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean you should. Now, the one major advantage Mac has over any other type of consumer level hardware is its protection and support plan.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[zpok]

Well, I think the Mac still has the clear advantage. No Hassle.

My wife's toshiba (2 months old) is as standard as can be - except for the security updates. We bought a wireless mouse last week and it worked out of the box. Until the next day... Suddenly no mouse, no sir.

Plug it in my Cube, hello mouse, no problems at all...

It seems - same as with other hardware and software experiences I have had - Windows is getting better at making things work sooner, but still can't keep it all working for more than a few months.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[the_2nd_coming]

oh...so Sony is a monopoly on Sony DVD players?

do you know how fucking stupid you sound?

they are a monoploy on a machine they make!!

I dare you to make an argument to an economist that Apple is a monopoly and he will look at you like you are a moron.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[ahacop@wmuc.umd.edu]

From my understanding Apple has a monopoly on Mac hardware...

From my understanding Ford has a monopoly on Ford automobiles.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[kingLatency]

How are Mac users any less "stuck" than windows users? From my understanding Apple has a monopoly on Mac hardware and software while Microsoft has a monopoly on software. That sounds like a "double stuck" to me.

How insightful. We only read this in every single article relating to Apple. This guy is simply not talking about not having a choice of hardware. He's talking about not having iTunes Music Service! People want the service but aren't going to go to the trouble of switching platforms for it. That's all he meant. It has nothing to do with hardware.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[Izago909]

I know it's hard for Mac fanatics to make a reply without insults, but please calm the hell down. The DVD player analogy is flawed because you can buy many brands of DVD players that all play at least a standard DVD and will interface through one or more standard connectors. While Apple may not be a monopoly by traditional definition, they are not PART of a market like PC hardware manufacturers. They ARE the market for Apple and Mac hardware. With a few historic exceptions, Apple holds and enforces all copyrights and patents on their hardware and anything that interfaces with it; which is the opposite of the x86 architecture that IBM and Intel allowed others to clone freely. I haven't heard the word thrown around much, but that's what PCs were referred to as in specifications; PC XT or clone. I remember working in a repair shop years ago when one of the Apple technicians spent almost a week fixing a non-Apple dual G2. The same thing happened with the PC market too. Non-standard configurations lead to problems with hardware and software. That's one reason they like to remain the exclusive manufacturers hardware.

I can't help but say that if people would read between the lines they might realize the point of the topic instead of simply what was stated. I do not like writing shot essays to explain myself nor do I like writing disclaimers at the end of all posts. Everything I stated can be found in books about the evolution of the personal computer. You can debate opinion, and you can debate fact, but you can't debate history.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[the_2nd_coming]

I BM did not allow clones you fool. the BIOS was reverse engineered by compaq. there was nothing they could do about it.

and there is competition with Apple...it is called the windows OEMs.

I am not a Mac fanboy, I run all kinds of OSs including 2 windows boxes.

what I have problems with are people like you who speak foolishness about something.

ford has a monopoly on ford cars? you can only use parts made for to fit the ford!! ther eis no industry standard!!

the only thing keeping you from running OS X on a generic PPC box is the fact that they use OpenFirmware to impliment a configuration that you would have to hack their OFC to get the way they configured it, then program your own chip and put it on the mobo.

everythign else is standard hardware, though the quality of the hardware is better than a no name PBC board.

Re:Moving on Other's Turf

[Izago909]

There's more to cloning a PC than reverse engineering a BIOS. I know Intel didn't RE the x86 processor. They were contacted by IBM to produce them and then they got too many orders and Intel contracted AMD which lead to AMDs clones of the 386 and 486 processers. The ISA an PCI buses weren't patented like IBM did MCA on the PS2. If the processor and architecture are not patented or not enforced then cloning the BIOS is relatively easy since most of the work is already done.
I also know that windows OEMs compete with Apple, but I was talking specifically about competion in the PPC market (ie. a specific market). As far as I know there is none, at least in comparison to the x86 market.
Ford WOULD have a monopoly in the car market if, say, they were the exclusive makers of SUVs or internal combustion engines. But again, my point is missed. In the PC market, for example, Dell is PART of the PC market. In the PPC market, Apple IS the market. That's my point, nothing more.

Re:This article also on

[SweetAndSourJesus]

This article is lots of places.

Way to use google news, karma whore.

real service?

[dilvie]

Here's what I think is needed for a service like this to gain any real wide-spread market share:

1) NO DRM
2) Unlimitted downloads
3) Wide selection (including indie music)
4) At least some top40 music
5) An easy way to find browse for music you're not familiar with (perhaps integrating a user rating system)

Who will be the first to offer this?

Re:real service?

[crass751]

That existed... until today. Emusic offered pretty much all of that, minus the top 40, and it just announced today that it was suspending unlimited downloads and moving to a horribly limited pricing scheme.

Re:real service?

[chadlnx]

Let's see. No DRM, Unlimited downloads... Who will be the first to offer this? Well, I think that was Hotline, then Napster, many others after, and now kazaa is the hot app these days.

This is not much of a business model. There is no way one, no less all 5 major labels will license their catalogue to a service such as this.

I would totally pay 20 - 50 dollars a month for something like that, but I don't think it is realistic given the entities who hold the keys to the content.

Re:real service?

[Phroggy]

1) NO DRM

The RIAA won't let them. They couldn't offer the selection they do if they didn't use DRM. However, read the terms of service - once you download the DRM-restricted file, you can burn it to an unrestricted audio CD. Or several audio CDs. In addition to copying it to one or two other Macs, or streaming it across the LAN, or copying it to an iPod, etc. Compare this to other DRM schemes.

2) Unlimitted downloads

You can download as many as you want, for $0.99/track. Or play 30-second previews for free (I don't even have an account, and I do this all the time, to see whether I like something before placing a hold at the public library). There are no subscription fees.

3) Wide selection (including indie music)

They have something like a quarter of a million tracks, with more being added, and they want to add as much indie music as possible (Apple will only deal with record labels, but cdbaby.com is a record label and will accept just about anybody). Building their selection takes time.

4) At least some top40 music

They've got that.

5) An easy way to find browse for music you're not familiar with (perhaps integrating a user rating system)

They've definitely got that. Look at an album, and get links to other albums that people who've bought this album have also bought. Plenty of stuff on the home page, all chosen by Apple's staff, not placed there by advertising dollars. Navigation is excellent - better, in fact, than browsing your own MP3 collection (I hope they implement the little arrow buttons next to Artist & Album in iTunes 5...).

Today's Top Songs:

Stacy's Mom - Fountains of Wayne
Hey Ya! - OutKast
White Flag - Dido
Fallen - Sarah McLachlan
The First Cut Is the Deepest - Sheryl Crow
Where Is The Love? - Black Eyed Peas & Justin Timberlake
Baby Boy - Beonce & Sean Paul
Hey Ya! (Radio Mix) - OutKast
Fallen - Sarah McLachlan
Bad Day (Amended Album Version) - R.E.M.

Can someone explain to me what the difference is between the two versions of "Fallen"? One is 3:51 and the other is 3:47, and the previews sound the same to me.

Re:real service?

[vmxeo]

well, up until today I would have recommended emusic for all but point 4, however, even that's over now. :(

Re:real service?

[pixelgeek]

-- NO DRM

N0 DRM == no service

There is no way the RIAA is going to allow a system to exist that does not have some form of DRM.

Re:real service?

[dilvie]

DRM = fewer customers.

People like to do whatever they want with the music they buy.

3 Words

[CrackedButter]

About Fucking Time.

The wait

[chia_monkey]

Great...now we have to wait a whole week just to see what is released. iTunes sounds good, but what else do they have up their sleeve?

The bigger wait though is maybe a month or so...to see just how well it does. iTunes Music Store was a wild success the first day, the time to their milestone song sales, and so forth. All done on machines that command a mere 5% of the market share. So...what happens when the other 95% gets to play?

Re:The wait

[11223]

Answer: not much, at least not the first day/week. Sure, it just might come out ahead on the first day of the Macintosh launch, but nothing by proportion. The reason is that there are hordes of Mac users who download every new thing that Apple puts out, but it will take a while before iTMS for Windows can reach the same market percentage saturation.

Re:The wait

[clifyt]

You are VERY right.

The original poster should edit his post to say 94.5%.

/me puts on his Kreskin hat...

[grub]

iTunes for Windows will be a runaway success while EMusic and their new business model will flop even though it's cheaper.


and you thought I'd say BSD is Dying because I mentioned Kreskin, right?

Creative Nomad compatibility?

[Sean80]

I don't suppose iTunes would be compatible with anything but the iPod? Yeah, my fiancee has one, and they're small and cool and all, but goddamn if they're not expensive. So, I went out and bought myself a Creative Nomad. Does anybody know if there'll be any way to get iTunes songs onto it?

Re:Creative Nomad compatibility?

[__aaevmb228]

There is no reason that you couldn't move your MP3s from iTunes for Windows to your Nomad. They're just files.

The AAC files you'd get from the iTunes Music Service, on the other hand, probably not. Your Nomad would need to know how to play them, deal with the DRM, etc.

I doubt Apple will go to any effort to make synchronizing your Nomad with iTunes easy, either.

Re:Creative Nomad compatibility?

[Phroggy]

I don't suppose iTunes would be compatible with anything but the iPod? Yeah, my fiancee has one, and they're small and cool and all, but goddamn if they're not expensive. So, I went out and bought myself a Creative Nomad. Does anybody know if there'll be any way to get iTunes songs onto it?

I doubt there will be built-in support, so it won't be as easy as working with an iPod, but you can just add your existing MP3 collection to the iTunes Library, and continue using your Nomad as you have been.

However, songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store will not work. They're not MP3s, they use AAC encoding and DRM called Fairplay. If the iTMS becomes hugely successful, it's possible Apple may license Fairplay to Creative and others, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re:Creative Nomad compatibility?

[gsfprez]

The only thing stopping creative from being able to play iTMS songs is Creative's decision to not support.

The AAC format is an OPEN STANDARD.

This is similar to what is stopping Apple from putting Ogg on the iPod... Apple's decision.

Now, on the flip side...

I don't suppose that the new music services using WMA files would be compatible with the iPod.

No - and that is not Apple's fault. WMA files are a closed, proprietary standard.

Re:Creative Nomad compatibility?

[repetty]

"So, I went out and bought myself a Creative Nomad. Does anybody know if there'll be any way to get iTunes songs onto it?"

You get what you pay for, dude. Didn't your dad ever tell you that?

--Richard

Re:Creative Nomad compatibility?

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Yeah, my fiancee has one, and they're small and cool and all, but goddamn if they're not expensive. So, I went out and bought myself a Creative Nomad.

Not that I'm saying iPods are cheap, but did you ever consider buying a used one on eBay? I saw dozens of 10 GB models for $150 Buy It Now. Apple is also selling refurbushed 10 GB models for $179.

ITunes

[PPGMD]

How much people will use the music store is debateable, but any one who has had the iPod for more than a few months has already switched easier software such as Xplay. I highly doubt that anyone that I know will get iTunes for anything but the music store. /Goes back to listening to his iPod.

Re:ITunes

[fupeg]

any one who has had the iPod for more than a few months has already switched easier software such as Xplay

In other words you like Xplay better than iTunes, and so you will make sweeping generalizations. After all, if it is true for you it must be true for everyone, right?

Just so you know, I've had an iPod for two years and amazingly I still use iTunes for managing it.

Re:ITunes

[PPGMD]

You must have a Mac then, because Xplay is for Windows only.

In fact Xplay and it's sister product MacDrive was born out of Apple making in Mac only for a while.

I should have said any Windows user that has had an iPod for more than a few months has already switched to easier software such as XPlay.

Frankly why would I use a piece of software where I have to keep my music organized in a way specified by the software, deal with their DRM, and have to load my music multiple times (move into the main folder, add it to a play list, and finally load in onto the iPod). Where as a Windows user I have a fully drag and drop interface, of which I can even transfer my music from my iPod back to my PC easily.

Apple dropped the ball by including Musicmatch plus (horrible music management software IMO) in the box, even if they included a stripped down version of iTunes they wouldn't have as many people jumping ship to better Windows products for the iPod.

That being said I am going to be downloading iTunes for Windows, but only to try out the music store feature.

Re:iTunes

[koreth]

Media Jukebox has had dynamic query-based playlists (they call them "smartlists") for years. WinAmp has been blown out of the water by MJ for so long I doubt it's even damp any more.

Re:iTunes

[lysium]

Wow. Go out and buy one of them new-fangled Volkswagons now. Hook up your iPod, and then rejoice in the simultaneous consumer organism you receive when your consumption is done in perfect syncronicity!

Not to be overly cynical or anything -- it was the "punk" thing in your sig that did it.

==========

Re:iTunes

[yardbird]

What's the tool for SQL queries?

Excellent..

[sik0fewl]

I can't wait 'til the Linux version. And if that ever happens, then I can't wait 'til they start offering vorbis downloads (or even mp3 would be fine).

Re:Excellent..

[McAddress]

ITMS will never offer ogg vorbis downloads. The only reason they are not offering MP3 downloads is that their own fomat sounds better at 128 than MP3 does. While vorbis might sounds better than AAC, after coming up with there own format, it is absurd to say that they will abandon it in favor of something open source.

Imagine open source with DRM, how sacreligous would that be?

Re:Excellent..

[Phroggy]

I can't wait 'til the Linux version.

That'll be right after Apple releases a Linux version of QuickTime, I'm sure.

And if that ever happens, then I can't wait 'til they start offering vorbis downloads (or even mp3 would be fine).

The iTunes Music Store will never offer Ogg Vorbis or MP3 downloads. Ever.

However, I would really like to see support for playing Ogg Vorbis files in iTunes. Mostly just so Slashdotters will shut up about it, since the rest of the world doesn't care.

Re:Excellent..

[EricWright]

Err... um... there's a drop in QuickTime component that gives ogg support to iTunes. Here is the home page of the Quick Time Components project, and here is a direct link to the Ogg Vorbis decoder plugin. I don't know about an encoder plugin, but I've used the decoder plugin for quite a while now. Also, contrary to some posts I've read at macosxhints.com, you DO NOT have to rename files from .ogg to .mov.

Re:Excellent..

[Phroggy]

Thanks, I'd heard a rumor that such a thing existed but hadn't seen it. It plays, but it seems to skip occasionally, iTunes visualizations don't work, and there's no cute little icon. Besides all that, simply the fact that it's not listed on Apple's web site is enough to get Slashdotters pissed off.

Still, very cool. :-)

I hope its better than Quicktime

[bogie]

Quicktime isn't exactly the best performing multimedia app going on Windows. Its a bit slow and files that play perfectly on low end Macs can play like crap on fairly high-end PC's.

I also hope it themeable because by default the color it pretty ugly. I don't know that much about ITunes, but one thing I do know is that unless it obeys XP themes or like I said is themeable, its going to stick out like a sore thumb.

Either way I still look forward to trying it out when I get a chance and also of course trying out the Music store.

btw how are they handling the whole DRM thing?

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[Phroggy]

I also hope it themeable because by default the color it pretty ugly. I don't know that much about ITunes, but one thing I do know is that unless it obeys XP themes or like I said is themeable, its going to stick out like a sore thumb.

I'm sure it will stick out just as much as QuickTime does. It will not be themable. QuickTime Player is sort of themable in a way (the movie can contain a theme, which of course only works while you're playing that movie), but nobody uses this, and iTunes won't do it.

btw how are they handling the whole DRM thing?

You haven't been paying attention? I won't rehash it here.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[switcha]

...unless it obeys XP themes or like I said is themeable, its going to stick out like a sore thumb.

I'd say more like 'stick out like a normal thumb on a hand full of sore fingers.'

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[pimpinmonk]

Well I doubt they'd be liable to make it theme-able, for several reasons. One, they never themed their Quicktime application, it follows the company's iProgram design. Two, they want to advocate their products and platform, the Mac, so they would not want to deviate from it if they have a choice, which they obviously do here.

I'd wager that it will look identical to Mac iTunes. Theoretically this will make people think something in the direction of "Oh, this would look alot better on a Mac, where it came from. Maybe I should buy one." Realistically that wouldn't happen much, but it's a "brand-image" thing.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[pixelgeek]

-- Its a bit slow and files that play perfectly on low end Macs can play like crap on fairly high-end PC's.

Maybe its Windows?

My PC can't seem to handle any movie files without coughing and gagging like an ashmatic mormoset.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[Blue Lozenge]

Quicktime isn't exactly the best performing multimedia app going on Windows. Its a bit slow and files that play perfectly on low end Macs can play like crap on fairly high-end PC's.

We're only talking about simple audio files here. QuickTime can easily handle audio--no problem. It doesn't start choking until you start feeding it high data-rate video.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[rawg]

One thing that I have noticed is that the Windows Media Player is way crapper than Quicktime. I have yet to see a decent WM video.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[Trepalium]

Are you kidding? Apple is basically violating an equivalent document to the one they hold sacred on their platform. Skinned or owner-draw widgets have got to be the worst thing ever implemented on any platform. And I seriously doubt Apple uses nothing but native widgets on Quicktime for Macintosh, either. Windows Media Player 7+ isn't any better, in fact, it's worse because not only is it skinned, it's also unusable. Linux media players have got to be the worst of the bunch, since most of them insist on having their own skinning method. IMO, if you think you need to use a bitmapped or owner drawn control because there's a limitation in the guidelines, it's because there's a flaw in your GUI design, not generally the guidelines.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[damiam]

Linux media players have got to be the worst of the bunch

Admittedly, xmms, xine, and gmplayer suck gui-wise, but not all Linux players are bad. Look at totem, rhythmbox, and mplayer for some good UI design in Linux players.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[TopShelf]

In my experience, Quicktime under Windows sucks eggs. I've plenty of power (1 GB RAM, 3 Ghz Pentium 4) and Quicktime always seems to chug along, while other players work perfectly...

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[Joe Tie.]

I disagree about the Linux players, soley because they seem relitivly easy to use apart from their native gui. I use kplayer as a gui for mplayer, and used to really like kaffine before moving to debain and finding I can't get it to compile there. Both have, in my opinion, very nicly laid controlls that fit right into KDE.

Re:I hope its better than Quicktime

[Haeleth]

> In my experience, Quicktime under Windows sucks eggs.

Does this require special hardware?

I tend to stay away from these

[Sir Haxalot]

things offering music to download and you have to pay, I either want to buy the CD or download it (although prefer downloading). At least buying the CD you get something you can feel and look at for your cash.

Re:I tend to stay away from these

[__aaanwh8370]

So hearing what you purchased doesn't qualify as tangible?

The HAVE THE MONEY, DON'T HAVE THE MUSIC to HAVE THE MUSIC, DON'T HAVE THE MONEY ANY MORE transition seems pretty concrete to me...

Re:I tend to stay away from these

[angle_slam]

Just burn a CD of the tracks you download. Then you can feel and look at the burned CD all you want.

Re:I fear this is too late

[Godstalk]

Gotta wonder what it's like to be a Windows developer working at Apple. Do they have to come in a odd times so they don't get lynched? Do they feel unclean, sullied? Or does Apple farm the development off site, so as not to worry about such things?

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting someone takes this comment as a troll. The commercial music vendors may indeed be considered as purveyors of selling and whoring music to the masses.

What was once an art shared by cultures is now being exploited and contained within a mob like business culture. Those wishing to share free music are often discouraged, despite the many venues available. The message we are sending to young artists, is if you don't sell your work, you have no place in society.

iPod

[SnowWolf2003]

Finally I can buy music online that is compatible with my Windows iPod.

Re:iPod

[the_2nd_coming]

the iPod plays MP3s you troll.

Re:iPod

[SnowWolf2003]

And AAC. Also most of the sites that I would consider purchasing music off catering for windows platforms sell songs in the .wma format. NOT supported by the iPod.

Re:iPod

[the_2nd_coming]

all the WMA sites sell rent-a-song files.

and your origional statement was very poorly worded

Re:I fear this is too late

[cK-Gunslinger]

True, but some people do prefer quality over quantity. Like Apple or not, iTunes was a rather well-designed, well-planned, and well-implemented venture. The copy-cat Windows clones, to date, have had loads of shortcomings and problems, and were generally met with ho-hum enthusiasm.

Now, whether this was due to the quality of the service, or the general differences between Apple and PC users remains to be seen.

Re:I fear this is too late

[jbellis]

Mac.ars has a much more thoughtful response to this.

Headline: "Should Apple be concerned about the recent launch of MusicMatch Downloads? Will not having first-mover advantage on the Wintel platform hurt Apple?"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

why I tolerate it

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Because Apple got it right. I'm free to transfer my files to as many CDs or iPods as I like. I can play them on three machines. I can quasi-legally sell them if I want.

Yes, there are restrictions, but they're loose enough that I haven't bumped into them. I'm not against DRM the same way I'm not against laws: they're fine by me as long as they're not too restrictive.

Re:why I tolerate it

[Lussarn]

Sure they got it right. I have to use Apples shoes just to walk into their store. Thanks but no thanks. Your shoe don't seem to fit my OS. Even if they did I don't like the color. I take my money elsewhere.

/Happy Linux user.

Market share...

[kukickface]

seems to be what everyone is focused on (or rather Apple's lack of it). I don't think the fact that there were other online music stores available for windows prior to Apple's launch of iTunes for Windows is a big deal. It isn't like once you pick a service you can't use any of the others. Most of them don't have subscriptions.

Since iTunes for Windows will be (presumably) free to download and try why wouldn't someone give it a try for $.99?

If they like the experience, then they will come back. Simple as that. All that anyone can do is hope that Apple's user experience is better than the competition. I have faith that it will be.

No matter which service dominates the online music store it is a good thing for every consumer. This new revolution in legitimate online music will force the record industry to adapt to consumer demand.

Re:Market share...

[johny_qst]

I have some faith that Apple's iTunes store for Windows will attain a fairly significant portion of the available market share for online downloads of music. My problem with all of the current and proposed offerings is the complete and utter lack of any music worth listening to. I enjoy at most 4 bands on major labels and for all of their releases I am not going to an online distribution mechanism as I really want to get my grubby hands on the artwork in the liner notes. Until the music industry gets the idea that everything sounding the same since the early 90's isn't going to advance the industry then they aren't getting my money. I will continue to support those artists that actually make music that I consider worth my time and money. Until iTunes (et al) really has a wealth of independent artists and labels on offer, I will peruse but not buy.

Re:Market share...

[kukickface]

My only comment on this is to say: Independant record labels are still independant because not enough people like or listen to their music. If you look at what happens in the music industry, almost every famous artist is a rags to riches story. Some are manufacture, true, but for the most part the cream rises. The reason everything sounds the same in, oh lets say 10 year blocks, is because the major labels all want to capitalize on that sound before the next new thing comes along. It doesn't serve Apple, or any other online music seller's, adgenda to put a lot of indy music on their servers. Most of it will collect dust and never pay for itself. Anyone that makes the case of "oh, everything should be happy fuzzy and the company should cater to every possible user taste" simply has no idea how business works. All companies are niche companies, some niches are just a lot larger than others.

Re:Market share...

[the_2nd_coming]

umm...iTunes has a lot of indipendant lables available....they are stiull building their library, but they have been approaching indis for about 6 months now.

Re:Market share...

[GlassHeart]

Until iTunes (et al) really has a wealth of independent artists and labels on offer, I will peruse but not buy.

First of all, understand that you have absolute final say on what you do with your money.

Having said that, consider that a for-profit company like Apple needs to be rewarded for what it does right (sell songs with acceptable DRM), so it can continue doing better (sell more varieties of songs). What you are asking for is for Apple to continue investing, before you will reward their initial investment. This may spur Apple into action to fulfill your demand, or it may cause Apple to lose money and withdraw.

Like I said, I'm not telling you how to spend money, but it may be beneficial to you in the long run to support Apple (and other companies doing things you like) even before they achieve perfection in your eyes. That is, to me the point is not whether Apple can do better or should do better, but whether a 128-bit AAC version of a particular music track is worth the $1 Apple is asking for, today.

Re:Market share...

[cens0r]

Did you ever think that the reason alot of indie bands are on indie labels is because they want to be? You might actually make more money selling 50,000 records on an indie label than you would selling 500,000 on a major label.

Re:Market share...

[kukickface]

Way to go math wiz. Lets do some quick calculations:

Record at the iTunes music store: $9.99
Number of Indie records: 50,000
ir = 50,000 * 9.99 = $499,500

Number of major records: 500,000
mr = 500,000 * 9.99 = $4,995,000

WOW! The wonderful power of multiplication allows my ignorant eyes to see that I would make an order of magnitude more money selling an order of magnitude more items that ARE ALL THE SAME PRICE!

Re:Market share...

[johny_qst]

To put it simply, I don't see the 128-bit AAC version of the tracks they have available as worth 1$. Of the tracks they have the only ones that would be worth the 1$, I already own a copy of the CD. If they expand their offering to include more music that I am interested in then perhaps they will get some of my money. Until that happens I will continue to watch their progress and keep giving my money to the local music store that can actually provide the content that I desire.

Re:Market share...

[RestiffBard]

The indie lables are coming. Rounder Records and Matador Records already have their catalog available on iTunes.

Re:I fear this is too late

[themanwhoknowsmostth]

Yeah, others have jumped on, but if Apple creates an experience on Windows that is just like the Mac, people will eat it up.

On my Mac, I don't have to go to a Web page, order music, download it to my music folder, import it into my music app's playlist, load it on my external mp3 player, rinse and repeat.....

I just click the Music Store button within iTunes, order what I want, and it's automagically in my Library.

It's that integration, in my humble opinion, that will help Apple beat the other competitors. Then, all Windows users will soon realize how superior the Macintosh is, the Red Sox/Cubs world series will go 20 innings in the 7th game, scientists will discover self-healing skin, the planets will align, and we'll all live forever in harmony and bliss.

OK, maybe not the last part, but still.........

Heh...

[twifkak]

Just in time to compete with the new Rio, iRiver, and Philips hard drive players.

Re:Heh...

[twifkak]

Oops. RCA, too. (Not to whore; just being completionist...)

Re:Heh...

[phlyingpenguin]

iRiver has my vote. No DRM for me, though I'm starting to wonder if I'll be able to get any legal music to play on it anytime soon with all of the people selling DRM laden music. Hum guess the music industry will force me into pirating.

Re:Heh...

[dbirchall]

I'm not sure how a music store competes with a player.

Maybe you mean that those other players are going to compete with the iPod? Yeah, that's probably what you mean. Hmmm.

iPods are... $299 for 10GB, $399 for 20GB, $499 for 40GB.

(Who the #$%^&#$& has 40 frickin' gigs of MUSIC? I mean, I don't think there are radio stations with playlists that big!)

Rio's Karma 20 is... $399 for 20GB. Comes with a dock and stuff (though it looks like the dock will use up an electrical outlet, since it's not Firewire). Doesn't look like it's anything but a music player, didn't see mention of the extra apps an iPod has. But, well, same capacity, same price, okay, I guess that's competing.

iRiver's HP-100 is... $399 for 10GB. Hey, that's a great idea! "Apple's charging an arm and a leg for the iPod and it's selling like hotcakes covered with blow and naked babes... let's price ours even higher so we can sell even more! Yee-ha!" Uh... no, that's not competing. Even if they'd gotten away from the stale, er, ahem, time-honored "Sony Walkman" look.

Philips' HDD-100 is... well, I couldn't find anywhere selling them, so I'm not sure how much competing it's doing.

The RCA's someone mentioned are cheaper - $199 for 10GB and $249 for 20GB - but they appear to be discontinued and those are closeout prices.

I was talking to an analyst the other day who seemed convinced that the new tiny el-cheapo hard drive from Cornice were going to rule the roost. Well, maybe among the people who only want 1.5GB of storage and are happy that they can get it for significantly less than the cost of 1.5GB of flash RAM... but that's only a few hundred songs. Hardly the sort of thing you'd want to use as the emergency backup for a radio station.

Re:Heh...

[phlyingpenguin]

Well, I see these players going down the tubes. I didn't use the phrasing quite right. iRiver transfers directly as a USB removable drive. This has perks vs many that force you into odd softwares (OpenMG minidiscs anybody?) While I dislike many of these things, a pure transfer is nice. These download media folks are nearly forcing me into pirating since they're distributing AAC/Protected WMA (Yes, it's been cracked) and that's not so great.

Re:Heh...

[Shadow99_1]

Uh you left off Archos which makes tons of really cool HDD based players. Their great advantage (besides price) is recording capability through Minijack and composite audio jacks...

Heck if you want it one model even supports video!

Also one more note... RCA still makes their HDD based Lyra's, I've seen (full price) Lyra's selling at pretty much all my local stores....

Re:Heh...

[dbirchall]

The person I was replying to didn't mention Archos, sorry. Yeah, I'm aware of those. Aren't they kinda bigger/heavier than most of the "competing" ones, though?

As far as RCA... RCA's own site lists the Lyra's being on closeout. And a search for Lyra on their site doesn't find any new models. If your stores are still selling them for full price, oh well, folks in your area must not know to look at RCA's website for a better deal. :)

And so...

[cptgrudge]

I get an iPod. That clinched the deal.

Sorry, Dell. Sorry, Creative. And all the rest. You can't give me the value that Apple can right now.

Re:I fear this is too late

[generic-man]

MusicMatch's service has been out. Big library, 99 cents per song. The only difference is the format used. Apple uses 128kbit AAC, MusicMatch uses 160kbit WMA.

Once you're registered, MusicMatch's system is "two-click;" click once to buy, once again to confirm. No patent infringement.

Re:I fear this is too late

[Ciderx]

And I'm sure that everyone on slashdot would agree, a single company having a dominating market share is what we want!

WooHoo!

[PSaltyDS]

Now I can listen to my... Hey! What's a GPF? Blue screen of who? Where'd my music go?!

Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.

Features I'd like to see

[SpiffyMarc]

It will be interesting to see if Apple integrates a little of their Rendevous technology into iTunes for Windows, and allows people who have Mac/Win32 hybrid LANs at home share protected (or, just any) music between their Mac iTunes libraries and their PC iTunes libraries.

Anybody know?

Re:Features I'd like to see

[Phroggy]

Good question. I haven't heard, but I'd be surprised if they didn't. We'll find out next week.

Re:Features I'd like to see

[mccalli]

I'm also very interested in this, but there is an alternative in the meantime.

Install the SLiMP3 server software on your Mac. It reads the iTunes database, and streams out on port 9000. The other player (Windows, Linux...whatever) opens up the stream on http://:9000/stream.mp3, and then you open a browser window to http://:9000 to control what gets played.

It's not perfect - one hassle I found was that the client machine had often buffered so much that it took a while to respond to my commands on the web interface. But it's free, and it works.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:I fear this is too late

[Izago909]

I don't own a mac, but I have worked with and sold them before. I must say that iTunes is about the best peice of software I've seen bundled with an OS before. It doesn't have a plethora of options like other media players/managers, but it's very adequate. It's the best blend of power, functionality, and ease of use I've seen with that type of program. I can't wait to give it a try on PC. I just hope it's a lot better than quicktime for PC.

Re:I fear this is too late

[tomcio.s]

That might not be so.
So far all the offerings are not only US centric, but do not come close to how flexible iTunes is.

Granted, I have not had a chance to see iTunes store yet, but I have been wowed by iTunes itself. Up untill not I used to use at most xmms/winamp2, none of that other unusable interfaces (real* ms* ***). Yet, with iTunes I can't help but find it convinent.

Another point to the whole discussion is also the fact that current iPod users get a native windows interface for their hardware and a slew of new customers who previously would have waited/opted for other solutions will now be more likely to spend money on Apple warez.

So its not the iTunes store that is so important, but the porting of iTunes themselves that is.

Its all about good exposure to Mac products. Be it on OSX platform or otherwise. This is one way Apple is getting it right. They have the right products, now they need to show a wide audience that in fact they are better than a standard windows box. And for that they need a killer app/hardware to migrate users over duriung the next purchase cycle. ...

Re:This article also on

[inputsprocket]

As per pretty much all AppleInsider's articels, it starts off According to reliable sources.... Plus they have only about a 15-20% success rate on their rumours.

Are they trying to increase their 'success' rate on their predictions by quoting other, a little more reliable, news sources?

More importantly, why is Slashdot becoming part of the rumour mill?

Re:What about Linux

[bogie]

Apple is afraid of Linux and they in No way want to give creedence to it being an acceptable platform for desktop use. Apple's nightmare is 3rd party vendors like Adobe porting their products to Linux. If some of the traditional Apple ISV's started porting to Linux Apple would be totally fucked. Hence Apple is hardly eager to get the ball rolling in that direction.

That's why you'll never see Apple porting any desktop apps to Linux.

Neato, but... What about the children?!! ;)

[Chordonblue]

How will this sort of thing change the industry as it relates to their current target audience ie, kids? Let's face it, most of the music industry today is targeting ages from 13-17.

How are children supposed to get credit cards and go online as easily as popping down to the mall with some extra cash? This means one of two things. Either a way will be found that children will be able to get credit more easily (pay cash by ATM for instance) or the industry will have to move towards a less age-centric approach to their sales.

After all, if I know that I could get some of the obscure Pink Floyd or Supertramp Euro stuff out there online, I'd pay for it. I'm certainly not going to find that sort of thing at your local Circuit City!

Re:What about Linux

[jmcneill]

Applications like iTunes use Apple's own graphics libraries, not standard X libraries, so porting would be a lot more effort than you might think.

It'd be interesting, however, to see if something like iTunes would easily build against GNUstep. It'd be great if the GNUstep libraries were up to snuff -- unfortunately, I can't see Apple going for this. It's just plain too ugly(tm), and would make them look bad releasing a half-assed product.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a port using GNUstep, or even for Apple to port Carbon/Cocoa to Linux. Why would people buy Apple computers if the same applications with all of their lickable eye-candy is available on a free operating system running on commodity hardware?

Re:Sorry Apple...

[geoffspear]

Sorry, but information isn't sentient and doesn't want anything.

Cheap people want their music to be free, not cheap. Feel free to make yourself a musical instrument with your own hands and materials you find laying around, and make your own damn music.

MP3s and AACs

[Henriok]

There are no such ting as "iTunes songs". iTunes is a regular MP3- and AAC-player. The songs that yoy buy from iTunes Music Store is in AAC-format, witch is a part of the MPEG-4 standard. There are no secrets, nor proprietairy formats here. iTunes can rip to AIFF, MP3 and AAC on Macs, and I would guess to WAV aswell in Windows. If your portable music player can play MP3s, WAVs and/or AAC music files then you are OK. iTunes stores its songs automaticly in a very nice directory hierarchy, or if you choose, in the folder hierarchy of your choice.

Re:MP3s and AACs

[byolinux]

I'm guessing that person meant iTunes' Songs, as-in, the songs that iTunes has in it's library.

Re:MP3s and AACs

[plj]

The songs that yoy buy from iTunes Music Store is in AAC-format, witch is a part of the MPEG-4 standard. There are no secrets, nor proprietairy formats here.

This is just plainly wrong. The AAC songs ripped with iTunes are standard MPEG-4, but those bought from iTMS have additional DRM layer wrapped around them - that is, they are proprietary - and they're encrypted, too.

no, they're not

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Apple says

AAC compressed audio at 128 kbps (stereo) has been judged by expert listeners to be "indistinguishable" from the original uncompressed audio source.

Which is total bullshit. I'd say they sound about as good as a 192 kbps mp3 file, much better than the 128 kbps mp3 files littering Kazaa.

Re:no, they're not

[SavoWood]

Sitting in a recording studio, I ripped a track from a CD, using iTunes, and set it to AAC 128. After matching the levels, I set up one stereo fader to have the AAC, the other the CD. They both started at about the same time. Switching between them, the audio quality was indistinguishable.

This method was further used on several different CDs which were all different types of music. We went through alternative, big band, contemporary jazz, disco, electronica, and pretty much the rest of the alphabet through zydeco, and found the same result. The three distinguished engineers in the room couldn't tell the difference.

However, when we took a piece being played directly from the sequencer in the other control room, ripped it to AAC, SD2, and AIFF, then switched between them, we could hear the "live" performance over the other two.

The playback was done through a Neve Capricorn from a Mac playing through Apogee converters for Pro Tools. The monitors used were Meyer HD-1 and X-10. This closely mirrors a test I did back when the AACs first started showing up and we found similar results.

Re:no, they're not

[SavoWood]

Rupert!!! I haven't talked to you in months. Give me a call at home (Amy says "Hi!") so we can set up a time for you to come listen to the console bearing your name, but from a company you no longer have anything to do with. There is an Amek Angela down the road at that basement home recording studio if you want to drop in and take a comparison listen. However, you'll have to use the NS-10 monitors instead of the Meyers.

Moderator, please moderate the parent as funny. Those of us in "The Biz" would find it to be just that.

Re:no, they're not

[cens0r]

That's not quite a valid listening test. The only tests that might show something are double blind tests. I have not personally heard 128kbps AAC. But I can hear losses in 192kbps mp3, high quality vorbis files and 128kbs WMA. I've never done a double blind listening test to see which one sounds better though. The differences stand out the most when listening to the polyphonic spree (which coincidentally is the featured music in the ipod/VW Bug commercial).

Re:no, they're not

[SavoWood]

Although not double-blind, it's a very good listening test. All the faders are held at cut, then allowed, one by one, to auto-match with a 2 second rise to unity one at a time. There's silence between them, and they are switched in a random, but marked order by the assistant engineer (who is ecstatic at just being able to touch the console). So granted, not double-blind as specified by [insert name of audiophile magazine here], but close enough for me.

As for MP3, I still hear a swirling in the upper range especially with a cheering crowd or ride cymbals. Sometimes a woodwind instrument in the higher registers will get the same anomaly. The rate doesn't seem to matter...even as high as 320. As for the WMA and vorbis, I don't like the sound of them either. WMA is worse than mp3. Vorbis is a lot better, and would be my choice if AAC weren't around. However, even with vorbis, I can still hear the "thinness" of the representation not present in PCM files.

Re:no, they're not

[cens0r]

I hear the thinness on pretty much every compressed audio format I've listened to. Even out of my cheap nomad player. Where I really hear the difference is on my home stereo. If I play a CD created from compressed files it just sounds like shit to me, can't be used for much more than background listening.

Re:no, they're not

[SavoWood]

You've apparently never heard an AAC encoded by someone who knows what they're doing. The files I've encoded, the others in the studio have encoded, and the ones available on the iTMS, sound incredible.

If you honestly believe you can hear the difference, then bully for you. I don't believe you. You're just deciding you should be able to hear the difference, and making results to substantiate that end. In our independent tests, we haven't been able to hear a difference.

I'm going to be up in Portland in a few weeks. I'll drop by the gate and have Bob take a listen to them. If you have any idea what I'm talking about, you'll know the ears listening are certainly NOT tin, rather platinum. I'll let you know the results.

Just Trolling.. & Redudant

[kabocox]

Yeah, a major software company is releasing a DRM system on windows next week. They are expecting to actually "sell" music on-line. Apparently the media & software users love this one software company so it must be a "good" thing when they bring it out.

I wish them luck. I think Steve Jobs should run for President, or at least Governor for CA. ;) Nah, he'd need more acting experience.

Re:I fear this is too late

[Phroggy]

Gotta wonder what it's like to be a Windows developer working at Apple. Do they have to come in a odd times so they don't get lynched?

I'm sure this isn't an issue; everybody knows they get paid to do a job.

Do they feel unclean, sullied?

Undoubtedly. Wouldn't you?

Or does Apple farm the development off site, so as not to worry about such things?

No, it's all in-house, as far as I know.

what I want in a music service

[gonar]

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..

Re:what I want in a music service

[47PHA60]

AAC sounds a lot better than MP3; I could not believe it was 128 bit when I did the comparison on my home stereo. When Apple started supporting this with QT6 and iTunes4 on the Mac, I re-ripped most of my CDs.

The iPod supports AAC, and I can hear the difference on the headphones.

I'm not sure if other players can play AAC, but then Creative said nobody would want that format...

Re:what I want in a music service

[kpdvx]

I never really understood the concept of "number of CD burns" restriction. Seems to me that if you could burn the audio tracks once to a CD, then you could just copy the copied CD, or rip the files to mp3 and do whatever you want with them.

The ability to burn DRM'd tracks, no matter what the burn number limitation could be the ultimate loophole in any form of DRM....

Re:what I want in a music service

[Graff]

I never really understood the concept of "number of CD burns" restriction. Seems to me that if you could burn the audio tracks once to a CD, then you could just copy the copied CD, or rip the files to mp3 and do whatever you want with them.

Actually all you need to do is change the order of the songs in the playlist and you can then burn them another 10 times. I believe even adding a 1 second blank track to the end of the playlist would work also.

I think the point is that it is a tiny speed bump to trip up someone who is trying to mass duplicate a downloaded CD. No one who has a legitimate use for the CD is going to realistically need to burn it more than 10 times so most people won't be bothered by this limitation. However, someone mass duplicating the CD would have to fiddle with it every 10 tries and would not create a perfect copy after they moved stuff around.

So yeah it's just a nod towards DRM but it's enough to get the music companies to allow Apple to sell their stuff. Remember that Apple is the first to get a bunch of major labels to agree to selling individual tracks electronically. In order to do this there had to be some roadblocks to mass duplication.

Re:what I want in a music service

[gsfprez]

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.

Re:what I want in a music service

[bill_mcgonigle]

I never really understood the concept of "number of CD burns" restriction. Seems to me that if you could burn the audio tracks once to a CD, then you could just copy the copied CD, or rip the files to mp3 and do whatever you want with them.

Shhh... yes, I know that, you know that, and Apple knows that. Apple's on our side. They think DRM is a waste of time and effort, but they had to make some concessions to Big Music(TM). They've done well for us by making lots of ultimately meaningless concessions so we have a few minor inconvieniences, but most everything works the way it ought to. Remember, Apple's original DRM was "Don't Steal Music".

This is not how a WMF/Palladium music store would have turned out (and now you know the real strategy behind the iTMS).

Re:what I want in a music service

[cens0r]

That would be true if cd's were more expensive than this service. But they're not. The average CD i buy costs 11.99. The last cd I bought was the outkast double album for 17.99. I'm not sure how iTunes charges for double albums, but I'll assume they're both about $2 more than the iTunes version. For that $2 I get the artwork, a physical cd, and the jewel case. In my opinion those alone are worth more than $2, so I don't feel like the iTunes store is offering me a discount for inferior quality. Now if it was only a few cents per track I might feel differently.

Re:what I want in a music service

[ReadParse]

"...decent quality sound," he says, as if to suggest that 128 bps isn't decent. It's very, very decent. Not as high as it could be, but calling it short of even decent is a stretch, I think.

I'm not the audiophile I used to be and I don't pretend to be any more of one than I am, but I've got an ear, dadgummit, and 128 bps makes for very good sound reproduction, certainly worthy of at least the "decent" rank.

By the way, I don't disagree with your post in spirit. I like the idea that you sketched out there and from time to time I feel like I'm not really getting that great a deal buying songs and albums from iTunes (I've bought 1.25 GB worth so far), given that the quality is admittedly below what a CD would be, with no liner notes, no media, limited portability, a DRM format, etc. But as somebody else already replied, that's not very likely, especially doing as well as they're doing so far.

RP

Re:what I want in a music service

[rmarll]

The ability to burn DRM'd tracks, no matter what the burn number limitation could be the ultimate loophole in any form of DRM....
I suppose i should think of something clever to write here, eh?

I know it's just your sig, but it's appropriate.

Clever being a virtual CD-R that copies the data stream back to the HD as a WAV?

Sounds good to me.

Re:what I want in a music service

[rmarll]

I don't know man. I'm paying about a $1.16 for the same songs without any encumberance.

Re:what I want in a music service

[mbourgon]

Not sure if this is what you meant to say...

However, someone mass duplicating the CD would have to fiddle with it every 10 tries and would not create a perfect copy after they moved stuff around.

Actually, no. If you're mass-duplicating CDs, you're either going to use a Disk Duplicator (about $200-$300 now - put in a master, put in one or two blanks, repeat in 5 minutes - heck, they even have robot arms to mass-feed them!), a program that lets you make copies (shouldn't Apple's Disk Copy let you do this?), or have access to a plant and can make thousands on demand.

That being said, I'm surprised the record companies care. A LOT more money is being lost due to professional pirates selling pressed CDs, than to people making 10 copies for their friends. But, as we've seen, the record companies aren't exactly bright. All they're doing is punishing their customers - as usual.

Re:what I want in a music service

[Graff]

If you're mass-duplicating CDs, you're either going to use a Disk Duplicator (about $200-$300 now - put in a master, put in one or two blanks, repeat in 5 minutes - heck, they even have robot arms to mass-feed them!), a program that lets you make copies (shouldn't Apple's Disk Copy let you do this?), or have access to a plant and can make thousands on demand.

Well we were speaking in the context of using iTunes and burning directly from a playlist, not using other tools. Obviously there are other ways to make copies of the stuff you bought from the iTunes Music Store. This just highlights just how minimal Apple's DRM is, it's really just a nod towards copy protection. It's not meant to stop you from doing what you want with the music, it's meant to make the record companies feel warm and fuzzy about Apple's store.

Re:what I want in a music service

[Stigmata669]

"What I _do_ mind is crappy 128bps recording"

Actually, it's 128bps but it's AC3 audio not MP3 which sounds very good to my ear. It sounds much better than an mp3 @ 160bps and probably on par with 192bps recording.

Re:what I want in a music service

[Gogo Dodo]

However, if you want a single track, it costs you .99 through iTunes. Want a single track on CD? Costs you $17.99.

It's the single-track purchasing that makes iTMS enticing.

Re:what I want in a music service

[resprung]

Wanting sound comparable to CDs in your bought MP3s doesn't make you an audiophile.

It's a misstep to put up such a great service, and then offer content encoded at lower quality than what people get when they rip and burn their CD collection on default settings.

You buy MP3s for keeps, so buying 'cassette tape' compression now means that you'll end up reaquiring the material later.

Apple are usually brave enough to push the industrial standards envelope for consumer and mass-market devices and standards (think Firewire, Superdrive etc).

128 kbit AAC is disappointing now. In two years' time it'll really suck. By then the bitrate will have to be upped, and people will be urged to reaquire.

Re:what I want in a music service

[cens0r]

If I only want a single track on a CD, the album is not worth listening. Any album of any quality is one continuous work. If a band only has one good song, chances are you'll tire of that song quickly and there's no need to buy the damn thing.

btw

[bogie]

before any spelling nazi points it out creedence was a mistake it should obviously be credence.

Gimmie a Break

[hondo77]

Ever buy a book?

Re:Gimmie a Break

[Hawthorne01]

No, I just go to the library.

Do you pay your taxes, then? Where do you think the money to buy the books, pay the librarians, keep the lights on, etc. comes from? Overdue fines alone?

Re:Gimmie a Break

[hondo77]

No, I just go to the library.

Yeah, that's likely, troll.

Feel and Look at?

[pheph]

I've heard this argument a lot, and I find the idea of a physical object to be quite overrated. I currently subscribe to Safari InformIT and I would gladly have this subscription to 10 outdated books lying on my bookshelf.

I would gladly have a subscription to eMusic (well, before Nov 8th maybe) than a stack of empty CD cases lying in my closet and whats left of my stolen CDs, scratched in my car.

Re:Feel and Look at?

[cens0r]

But with a tangible CD, I can rip the songs as FLAC, OGG Vorbis, MP3, AAC, or anything I choose. Then if some other superior format comes along next year, I can pull the CD out of the case and do it all over again. With an actual CD I can touch and read the liner notes. With and actual CD I can sell the thing when I get tired of it.

mirror of the invite image

[ydnar]

here

TV ad

[drmike0099]

This answers the question that came into my head last night when I saw a tv ad for the iPod which prominently displayed in the middle of it the phrase "Mac or PC." I haven't followed it that closely, so it didn't strike me too much at the time. The whole ad showed a bunch of shadow people dancing around to a couple of songs, interspersed with little phrases (like the above) on a solid-color background.

ITunes Player

[n-baxley]

Will the iTunes player have the same synchronization features that the apple one does so you can keep your iPod more in sync with your computer collection?

Re:I fear this is too late

[vf123]

The only issue with MusicMatch's system is the fact you have to use MusicMatch at some point. It has one of the worst UI's out there.

Compared to iTunes for ease of use or even Windows Media Player it's almost unusable.

Re:Long-awaited for us PC users

[fupeg]

Depnds on what you call "nowhere near CD-quality". The quality of music compression formats has been frequently discussed on Slashdot.

Re:Sorry Apple...

[Hamhock]

information wants to be free, not cheap

In that case, please send me all of your usernames and passwords, as well as the PIN to your bank account. I'll happily take anything you've ever written in a private journal as well. Your information, after all, wants to be free. Or maybe it's up to the owners of the information, how it gets used. But, if you disagree, please free your information. Thanks!

Finally, a good media player for Windows

[Sutekh-Acolyte]

I've tried a lot of media player programs for Windows: WinAmp2, WinAmp3, Real, RealOne, Windows Media Player, Musicmatch Jukebox, and for iPod use, MMJ, Ephpod, XPlay.

I'll be blunt here and say: They all fuckin' suck compared to iTunes. The short period where I had an iBook was a wonderful one, as I also had an iPod. iTunes is nearly flawless, besides the fact that (I think) it only works with iPods and no other portable music players.

The current non-iTunes media players for Windows have horrible support for iPods. Ephpod, a program designed to be used with the iPods, is a buggy one. And it's the only decent one I've found for Windows.

Why don't any others support playlists without requiring you to have a copy of the song for every playlist it is in?

Forgive me if this is wrong, but my experience has been that when I use a non-iTunes media player program that supports portable players, when I go to create a playlist and transfer it over to the player (iPod, at least), the program copies the files in that playlist over even if they already exist on the player (the exact same file). I've only been able to avoid this using Ephpod, but I've had lots of problems with this program.

I hope iTunes: Windows will mirror iTunes: Mac (the store too, but I'm referring to the program mainly).

There are other reasons for my dislike of all those other media player programs... slowness, bugginess, cool features done completely wrong, terrible media library issues.... the list goes on.

Re:Finally, a good media player for Windows

[weatherbug]

iTunes works with a number of USB MP3 players in addition to the iPod. I personally use it with a Rio. Works like a charm ;-)

Re:Finally, a good media player for Windows

[lumpenprole]

Well, there is Foobar 2000. But I doubt that's going to solve any integration problems. (being about 200 dollars short of an mp3 player I don't know)

Re:Finally, a good media player for Windows

[bdjohns1]

There is one you didn't look at - Media Center 9. In my mind, it's actually better than iTunes (although without the iTunes Music Store). It goes for US$40, with a free 30-day demo to try it out. Follow the Interact link to their forums and download the latest 9.1 beta (9.1.271 as of yesterday).

Here's what it supports on the iPod:
* Volume normalization (without modifying the MP3 file) so you're not juggling volume on every song
* Fully supports iPod Ratings, Play Counts, and Last Played information (none of the other Windows iPod software does)
* Smartlists - I can define a playlist that says - "give me 1 hour of U2 songs I've rated as 4/5 stars but I haven't listened to in the past 2 weeks. Sort it by release date of the album" As I do/don't listen to songs, the list will update itself every time I sync to my computer. It also does BPM analysis, so I can say "give me songs with tempos greater than 120".
* It syncs correctly...you won't have 5 copies of the same song on your hard drive or on your iPod.

And, for the non-iPod users, it'll sync your devices too.

Re:Finally, a good media player for Windows

[tfoss]

I felt the same way about the media player options for windows for a long time. While winamp2 is great for a player, what i really wanted was a reasonable library manager for a large collection. Just yesterday while reading an article on here, I saw someone recommending Virtuosa. Although I've only played with it for an evening, I'm impressed. It is the first one I've tried that has managed to even come close to iTunes' management capabilities (& speed). I don't think it deals with iPods, but at least i can manage a large collection on my windows system now.

And ya know, this is the thing about Apple...they make things that just work well. iTunes (& the even other iLife parts), the iPod, the tibook i'm typing this on, they are all engineered extremely well. Yes i can pick nits, and yes it isn't cheap, but in my mind the quality is well beyond the rest, and completely worth it. Ok, fanboy mode off.

-Ted

Re:Finally, a good media player for Windows

[Zach978]

I've had good luck with Zinf.

Re:Finally, a good media player for Windows

[k31bang]

what about the SONIQUE 2.0 beta?

Re:Finally, a good media player for Windows

[Mr_Silver]

I've tried a lot of media player programs for Windows: WinAmp2, WinAmp3, Real, RealOne, Windows Media Player, Musicmatch Jukebox, and for iPod use, MMJ, Ephpod, XPlay.

Try Anapod. Not sure if it is what you want or whether it is any good (as I haven't used it), however people do seem to rave about it.

Re:I fear this is too late

[jawtheshark]

I have a Mac and a few PC's (and a Sun, but I don't think I'll ever see iTunes for Solaris). Releasing iTunes for Windows isn't my primary concern. I will be happy once they open up their offerings to other countries than just the US and Canada...

I want my Music heroin too! ;-)

Because the damn thing just plain works.

[jpellino]

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.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[Ender Ryan]

I'm just upset because it won't work on anything but Mac, and now Windows PCs.

What's a poor Linux user to do? :(

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[sacrilicious]

(1) I can't play the music on one computer when I'm miles away from the other... and (2) I can't hand the files to everyone in the world

Another implication: if you move outside the US, Apple will not re-authorize the playing of your songs. This may not sound like a big deal to some, but to people who want to have the option of moving someday and are serious music fans I think it is a big deal.

But I do like the fact that Apple is offering this as an alternative. It's miles ahead of anything else.

My crystal ball says that free recorded music will eventually become legit... or that the US will become a police state, one or the other.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[mbessey]

Well, you could either:

1. Move your computer along with your other things (the authorization goes with the computer).

or...

2. Burn all your songs onto CDs, which removes the copy-protection entirely. Then, you can rip them back into iTunes.

-Mark

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[zangdesign]

Suffer.

Frankly, I'm upset that they're coming out with it for Windows, because that's one less reason for people to switch to Macintosh. Yeah, sure it's proprietary hardware and partly proprietary software, but if you haven't used a Mac yet, then you're missing out.

If I could afford a 15" Powerbook, I'd dump my PC entirely and never look back. As it is, my 12" iBook suffices for most portable usage.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[bnenning]

Burn all your songs onto CDs, which removes the copy-protection entirely. Then, you can rip them back into iTunes.

If you're only burning in order to re-rip, it's more convenient to transcode with iMovie or WireTap.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[Blue Lozenge]

what exactly is the untenable downside here?

The untenable downside here is that it's one large step in the wrong direction for the public acceptance of DRM.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[osu-neko]

What's a poor Linux user to do? :(

Dual boot. Yes, I know, then you have to pay the Microsoft tax. But heck, there are a lot more and a lot better games for Windows than X-box (or any other console). The price of a copy of Windows is in the ballpark (actually on the cheap side) for a gaming platform, thus I have Windows on my machine. Oh, the horror. Anyhow, since I already dual boot for gaming purposes, iTunes for Windows will work just fine for me...

Maybe someday the WINE project will produce something useable, and then you won't have to do even that... (but I'm not holding my breath)

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[fr0dicus]

Sell all your chintz and buy an iBook and an iPod ;)

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[Alan]

ERhmmm... Things like office XP are completely usable under wine, I wouldn't doubt that the new win32istore will work fine as well.

If not there will be a linux tool produced soon enough.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[pavon]

The untenable downside is vender lock-in. You can only use iTMS files on Apple products, and products that are allowed to licence the Fairplay DRM. We have yet to see how easy this will be. It could be a non-issue. It could be like DVD, where anyone can licence for large fees, and NDA's required, effectively barring out free software implementations. Or it would be like Microsoft, where they refuse to licence any of their proprietary formats resulting in complete vender lockin, except in this case the full force of the DMCA, not just trade secrets, would "protect" against unauthorized implementations. Apple has been playing it's cards very close to it's chest in this regard, and we simply don't know the answer.

I for one don't feel like investing large amounts of money into a music collection, until I know for certian that I will be able to continue using it far into the future.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[Wylfing]

What's a poor Linux user to do?

So, either:

• You only have one computer
• You don't run multiple OSes

Tut, tut. This isn't the site for you.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[gamgee5273]

Do the Open Source thing and volunteer to write iTunes for Linux? You could use WINE, I suppose...or MOL if it's a Mac running Linux...

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[dbirchall]

Authorization has nothing whatsoever to do with your geographical location, and everything to do with the geographical location of the bank that issued your credit card, and the billing address for that card.

Period. Pure and simple. If you have a credit card issued by a U.S. bank, and you sign up for the iTunes Music Store, you can then proceed to drag your happy Mac-using behind all over the planet, and all your iTunes stuff will still work.

That one guy who had problems and raised a huge fuss? He had either gotten a card from a bank outside the U.S., or changed his billing address to be somewhere else. And then he'd tried to sign back up after nuking all his songs somehow.

Okay, so maybe it's a little bit hard to move without changing your billing address... but then, there are plenty of card companies who're perfectly happy to handle your billing and all that stuff on-line, since it's cheaper for them than using paper. :)

Oh, and for what it's worth, only accepting credit cards issued by U.S. banks is very common in the dot-com space. When I worked for Cheap Tickets years ago, I became aware of this. You have to hook into entirely different systems and stuff if you want to be able to run verification on cards that are drawn in other countries - even neighboring ones like Canada and Mexico. It's a real pain.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[EelBait]

Not quite as large as the DRM on DVD movies, however. Ever try to make a backup copy of a DVD movie? Or play a region 1 DVD in a region 2 player? I suppose you could use DeCSS to decrypt the movie file, just as you can burn-then-rip the music files. Still, for $0.99 I'm okay with it.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[sacrilicious]

Authorization has nothing whatsoever to do with your geographical location, and everything to do with the geographical location of the bank that issued your credit card, and the billing address for that card. Period. Pure and simple. If you have a credit card issued by a U.S. bank, and you sign up for the iTunes Music Store, you can then proceed to drag your happy Mac-using behind all over the planet, and all your iTunes stuff will still work

If Apple's stated policies agreed with the above then I'd consider the matter closed, but they don't:

U.S. SALES ONLY

Purchases from the iTunes Music Store are available only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the service from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance.

(Emphasis mine.) Note that there is no stated exemption for living outside the US while being billed within it. It may or may not be true that the current method they employ for determining location is credit card billing address, but there is no language in their terms of sale which even implies that they won't build software into OSX that maps your ip address, or time zone, or configured ISP dialup number, to a physical location. In fact, they are pretty much putting you on notice that they may well do such a thing; there's no legal requirement that they state that they "may use technology to verify compliance", yet they include explicit clear mention of the possibility. I would consider the chances of it to be better than unlikely.

The larger point here is that DRM gives Apple a continuing way in which to apply pressure, in practically any technological form that they see fit and on an ongoing basis. It would be very different if their DRM resulted in a set of implications that were frozen at the point of purchase, but their DRM combined with their terms leaves the door wide open for them in perpetuity. I don't object so much to not being able to share their music on kazaa; I object to be chained to their policies and enforcement methodologies which can change at a whim.

That one guy who had problems and raised a huge fuss? He had either gotten a card from a bank outside the U.S., or changed his billing address to be somewhere else. Okay, so maybe it's a little bit hard to move without changing your billing address... but then, there are plenty of card companies who're perfectly happy to handle your billing and all that stuff on-line, since it's cheaper for them than using paper.

For people who don't mind having to cloak their new address via the subterfuge of having a third party handle their bills, perhaps this is a solution. I remain in the group of people who believe that, at such a point, DRM has become more trouble than it's worth.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[dbirchall]

but there is no language in their terms of sale which even implies that they won't build software into OSX that maps your ip address, or time zone, or configured ISP dialup number, to a physical location. In fact, they are pretty much putting you on notice that they may well do such a thing; there's no legal requirement that they state that they "may use technology to verify compliance", yet they include explicit clear mention of the possibility. I would consider the chances of it to be better than unlikely.

I'd consider the chances of it to be non-zero, but very, very small. IP addresses don't map well to geographic locations. Time zones don't map well to "outside the U.S." - think about military bases that are U.S. turf but located nowhere near the U.S. in terms of TZ's. Ditto for configured dialup numbers - if you're even using dialup.

More importantly, though, I think Apple's got better things to do. Making sure that your card is issued by a U.S. bank and your billing address passes an AVS check as a U.S. address catches upward of 99% of things, and beyond that, they get significantly diminishing returns for any further efforts at checking stuff.

Re:Because the damn thing just plain works.

[Ender Ryan]

Or perhaps you're a fucking moron. Yeah, that's it.

tough decision.

[ForestGrump]

Where to put my dollar?
iTunes for a song?
or McDonalds for a McChicken?

What Modded This Idiot Up?

[fupeg]

Apple is worried about software being available on other platforms? Are you insane? Look at how much more software is available on Windows, and that includes stuff like Photoshop and Quark. If those were available on Linux, it would make no difference to Apple because Apple's selling point is its ease of use for non-technical people and elegant interface. Linux is far inferior to even Windows when it comes to these aspects, and Windows is far inferior to Apple.

Re:What about Linux

[soft_guy]

iTunes originally started as an OS 9 app.

My (educated) guess was that it is still Carbon based. Plus, it relies on QuickTime. Porting Carbon and QuickTime to Linux would take a long time and a lot of money.

Just to make sure, I used otool to see what see what libraries iTunes links to. Sure enough: Carbon, QuickTime, Core Audio, IOKit, Core Services, OpenGL (and some others).

Considering that Linux is mainly used on servers, not desktops, I don't see the point in spending that kind of money to bring all the enabling technologies over. I know that OpenGL is probably already supported on Linux, but Carbon and QuickTime are not and they would not be easy to port.

What would be the point

[rsilvergun]

of a drm restricted file you could write to a normal CD? You could then rip the track anyway you want. If they water marked it there goes your quality. I guess the could implement the DRM on your cd burner, but frankly I don't want to see that happen just so some prick record exec can be sure he's getting every last penny out of the public he can.

For $.99, I want the bloody cd audio track uncompressed, with no drm, and the right to share it as I see fit. At $.99 a song, I can buy a real CD used ($8-$10 for a real cd with 8-10 tracks). Plus I don't have to use my cd-r to back it up or my bandwidth to download it. The record companies are getting an incredible deal here. I can't wait till the start pushing DRM encumbered p2p on people with a ranking system to figure out what people want. You'll get to pay for all the costs of running the service plus do their marketing research for them. And prices _still_ won't go down.

Great

[rot26]

There goes the neighborhood.

Re:I fear this is too late

[generic-man]

You haven't used iTunes for Windows yet either. How do you know that MusicMatch is worse?

Other countries ?

[Animaether]

I'd be much happier if they launched their service for countries other than the U.S. (and Canada? Not sure).

I guess they have to take one step at a time and there's a lot more to it than just signing a little deal, but as it is albums are a lot more expensive in Europe (specifically, The Netherlands) than they are in the U.S.*

There's a lot of appeal in the Mac platform for me right now, as there are many content authoring applications of high quality on it. But the locking in of hardware and software worse than Microsoft, their pricing of Shake on Linux at 2 times the Mac version, and other odd deals keeps me away.
But if I did get a Mac, I'd be a wee bit miffed (mild statement) that their premium services all appear to be U.S.-centric with little to no alternatives for the non-U.S. customers.

* Dido, Life For Rent
US: $7.22 - $14.23
EU: 21.99 ($25.8350 per XE.net at this moment)

Re:Other countries ?

[Hawthorne01]

There's no doubt that Apple wants to sell in Canada, Europe, wherever. I imagine dealing with the legal hassles is what's holding things up, not any business or technical priorities. Each country has it's own version of the major labels, and each needs to be dealt with to make the experience universal across borders. How much would it suck to get iTMS, but have it only be, say, limited to 10 CD burns in your country versus unlimited in the US, or something else, due to some compromise brought about by legal hassles?

Re:Other countries ?

[sker]

other countries? try http://www.weblisten.com based in Spain...

Get one night of 160kbps nonDRM MP3 downloads for 3 Euros... i can't believe more people don't use this. I guess their english is poor and the purchase plans are complicated.. but it's a great deal.

Yes they have the new Dido..

Re:What about Linux

[iJed]

Surely, it cannot be that difficult to port from OSX (BSD-based) to Linux.

It would in fact be more difficult to port iTunes to Linux than Windows. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. QuickTime already exists on Windows and this handles the AAC playback and DRM.
2. iTunes is written to the Carbon API set. Carbon is a modernised version of the original Mac API and so is neither available on Linux or Windows. iTunes is not a Cocoa application so could not be ported to something like GNUstep easily.

No telling

[222]

If apple can sell 10 million songs on a platform that only has 5-10% of the consumer market share, theres no telling what they can do with the windows market. I wouldnt be suprised if we saw 1 million songs sell on the first day.... Its more than obvious that the record labels dont listen to fans, but they do seem to listen to the almightly dollar, and I really think that this will be the breaking point for digital music distribution. Crisp, easy to obtain music delivered straight to your computer, and at a somewhat reasonable price and tolerable DRM. My only question now is when do we get a linux client? /grin

Re:No telling

[GigsVT]

I think it's going to be less popular than you think.

People that buy Apple don't care about freedom, they are willing to sell out freedom to get something that is convienent and works properly with little hassle. Apple has had "hardware DRM" for years by using proprietary hardware that you can only get from them. That's why Apple users are happily sucking down DRM crippled media from ITMS, they are used to making that tradeoff.

Adept PC users are a different bunch. We want more control, even if it means things are a little harder to set up initially. I think that DRM of any sort isn't going to sit well with the adept PC user population, and probably won't be particularly popular with the less-adept PC population either, since they are used to being free to control their own hardware and software.

Re:No telling

[zpok]

I'm not sure about that. Most windows people I know *never* buy anything. They run their pre-installed OS and copy copy copy copy...

Be it applications, games, music, ... As far as they (the Windows people I know) are concerned it should all be free. The fact that they bought the computer is for them already a great concession...

(and they bitch when their OS falls apart)

Re:No telling

[holy_fire]

though this would be a really nice thing to happen you should take into consideration that almost every Apple user had iTunes installed or was only a mouse click away from installing it.
So it the installed base was there and the iTMS was only an addon to iTunes.
On the PC you first have to get the message to the ppl that iTunes does exist, then to persuade them to install it (since everyone has already at least one player-application installed)and then to sign up with iTMS.
I think that it will take some time for iTunes to penetrate the windows-market if they succeed at all (which but be great)
Just my .02 cent

Re:No telling

[GigsVT]

There are many facts to support the opinion. You give up some freedom when you buy an Apple computer, that's a fact. You are not free to easily buy an off the shelf replacement motherboard from a manufacturer of your choice, you are not free to install more than one externally accesible internal drive in your shiny new G5, you are not free to choose to get an internal floppy drive, etc etc... The list goes on.

Anyone who chooses Apple has judged that those freedoms are less valuable than convienence, and tight easy integration that comes from a single-vendor proprietary solution.

I've used Macs occasionally, and do support for them a little. There are some advantages (the G5 is damn near silent, the fans go maybe 200RPM normally), but there are some definite tradeoffs as well.

Re:No telling

[nagora]

Most windows people I know *never* buy anything. They run their pre-installed OS and copy copy copy copy...

This is true; several Windows users have stated to me that there is no point in switching to Linux since they wouldn't save any money and wouldn't be able to play all the latest games for free either.

TWW

OSX 10.3

[minus_273]

one week before panther.. apple is going for the double wammy!

Re:What about Linux

[znu]

I seriously doubt that Apple has any great fear of Linux on the desktop. Think about it. What's the difference, in the mind of the average consumer, between an x86 box that comes with Windows, and one that comes with Linux? About $50. That's not going to make any difference in the number of people buying Macs. Apple only has to worry about Linux if it starts providing a better desktop user experience than OS X on Apple hardware, and that doesn't seem too likely at the moment, since most of the desktop efforts of Linux are basically attempting to clone the Windows UI, and nobody in the x86 hardware market has shown much interest in competing with Apple's slick industrial design.

I think it's quite easy to make the case that Linux on the desktop would be a very good thing for Apple. Apple's strategy of late is mostly designed around the idea of building really slick proprietary apps for working with open standards -- iPhoto, iDVD, iTunes, iMovie, iCal, etc. all fall into this category. Doesn't that strategy work better in a market where most people are using standards-based Linux, rather than proprietary Windows?

Another point to consider is that the cost of buying new versions of apps right now presents a major barrier that might be keeping some people from switching to the Mac. If Linux makes it big on the desktop, it will probably do it with the help of many free desktop apps -- apps that will be ported to OS X. People will be able to switch to OS X without spending lots of money on new apps.

No, the reason Apple isn't porting iTunes to Linux is probably just that there isn't all that much money to be made in the Linux desktop market at the moment. The market isn't very big, and its fragmentation (across distros, desktop environments, etc.) leads to higher support costs. In the near-term, Linux's gains on the desktop will mostly be in the enterprise market, which is not the market iTunes is aimed at.

How about some parity here?

[Bingo Foo]

iTunes for Windows, huh? Well pony up, Microsoft, let's see Windows Media Player for Mac!

Re:How about some parity here?

[Enrico Pulatzo]

They've got one...it sucks. Use MPlayer instead.

Yes.

[markv242]

I had an old Nomad Jukebox that I tried plugging into my G4 one day, just to see what would happen.

iTunes saw it immediately, and I was able to copy mp3s to it like any other device.

It isn't as easy as the iPod (you can't have it automatically sync on 3rd-party devices) but it will work for you.

Now, whether or not the Nomad supports AAC, I don't know.

Re:Neato, but... What about the children?!! ;)

[i.r.id10t]

They sell pre-paid mastercards in a few convienence stores around here... dunno if you have to be over 18 or whatever (I passed that mark quite some time ago)

Re:Long-awaited for us PC users

[tarzan353]

What I'd really like to see is a format that allows any audio storage format to be used. Then, the user could select any format (OGG! Please!), and the company can still put their DRM in.

Now, I know that the DRM step isn't attractive to us slashdot folks, but it seems a requirement in the age of DCMA.

Hopefully the open source community can come up with an ideal solution to this dilemma. If Linux has taught us anything, a group of hackers just having fun can often trump any "innovations" that closed-source software bring us.

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.

Why not?

[Trinity-Infinity]

It's not crippled the way I see it. I can burn as many copies as I want to CDs, play it on my laptop, my husband's G4, and my iPod. I own the song for as long as the file exists, as I paid to own those bits. I even get a warm fuzzy when I look at the Info window for the song and see my Apple ID and when I bought it.

I'll take DRM if I can get the quality and control over what I buy that I want. Buying per song or per album is great, and I've yet to hear a misplaced blip or skip.

Re:Why not?

[Laur]

It's not crippled the way I see it. I can burn as many copies as I want to CDs, play it on my laptop, my husband's G4, and my iPod. I own the song for as long as the file exists, as I paid to own those bits.

WRONG. You get to listen the music you "purchased" for as long as Apple lets you. Every time you upgrade to a new computer you will have to re-authenticate your purchases with Apple servers. While it is possible to burn to a CD and re-encode, it is lossy and forbidden by the Terms of Service. Also, if Apple ever gets out of the music selling biz you could lose all rights to "your" music. I suggest you read the ITMS Terms of Service a bit more closely:

c. You agree that your purchase of Products constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to use such Products solely in accordance with the Usage Rules, and that any other use of the Products may constitute a copyright infringement. The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products. The Usage Rules shall govern your rights with respect to the Products, in addition to any other terms or rules that may have been established between you and another party. Apple reserves the right to modify the Usage Rules at any time.

d. You acknowledge that some aspects of the Service, Products, and administering of the Usage Rules entails the ongoing involvement of Apple. Accordingly, in the event that Apple changes any part of the Service or discontinues the Service, which Apple may do at its election, you acknowledge that you may no longer be able to use Products to the same extent as prior to such change or discontinuation, and that Apple shall have no liability to you in such case.

(Emphasis added by me.)

Re:Why not?

[SiO2]

The sections you have emphasized sound like standard legal CYA jargon. I wouldn't be too worried about it, unless you happen to be an irretrievably paranoid corporate conspiracy theorist.

SiO2

Re:Why not?

[Blondie-Wan]

None of that means the parent is wrong. She still can do all that stuff she talked about, so it's not crippled, at least not yet. Yeah, it's conceivable Apple will change things one day, but honestly, the sections you highlighted from the terms of use are mostly just typical CYA lingo, and at any rate don't describe the state of things today or, in all probability, any time in the near future.

The biggest worry is that if Apple goes out of business it'll stop authorizing and deauthorizing computers, but that probably won't become an issue; what comps would need to be authorized, after all - all the new Macs people would buy from a company going out of business? (This might be more of an issue for Windows iTMS users, of course, but I still doubt it'll be a serious issue any time soon).

Re:Why not?

[Laur]

Yeah, it's conceivable Apple will change things one day, but honestly, the sections you highlighted from the terms of use are mostly just typical CYA lingo, and at any rate don't describe the state of things today or, in all probability, any time in the near future.

What doesn't apply? You are forbidden to re-encode the files to bypass the DRM and you can only play the DRMed files with authorization from Apple.

The biggest worry is that if Apple goes out of business it'll stop authorizing and deauthorizing computers, but that probably won't become an issue.

Apple doesn't have to go out of business; it just has to close the ITMS, or change the terms significantly. This is a relatively new venture and there are no guarantees that it will continue to be successful or still be around in a few years. I'm not saying this is likely, but it is certainly possible, and highlights who owns "your" music.

Re:Why not?

[krel]

In the extremely unlikely event Apple should go out of business within the next few decades, all your music will still work without needing to re-authenticate so long as you don't move it to another machine. When and if Apple goes out of business, you shrug your shoulders, say "Well, I guess they had a good run" out loud, and burn off all your iTMS music to cds, where it will continue to play in an uncompressed state.

Re:Why not?

[bnenning]

any other use of the Products may constitute a copyright infringement

"may", not "will". This is obviously a CYA; doing just about anything "may" be infringing.

The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.

Considering the "security" technology goes away when you burn CDs, which Apple encourages, it is unclear what if anything this actually means. Apple's actions make it quite clear they don't care if you re-encode, and in my experience the quality loss is imperceptible.

Re:Why not?

[Laur]

This is obviously a CYA; doing just about anything "may" be infringing.

No, Apple makes it quite clear that you are allowed to burn CDs and listen on 3 Apple authorized computers. It is significantly less clear if you are allowed to re-encode the files, especially since the primary purpose of this activity would be to bypass the DRM.

Apple's actions make it quite clear they don't care if you re-encode

How do Apple's actions make this clear? Just because they look the other way doesn't mean that they condone this, nor does it make it "legal."

Re:Why not?

[Blondie-Wan]

What doesn't apply? You are forbidden to re-encode the files to bypass the DRM and you can only play the DRMed files with authorization from Apple.

Mmm... huh? It doesn't say you can't reencode; it does forbid one from "circumventing the security technology," but that's clearly meant to mean hacking the copy protection, not simply using them in a way they specifically permit (burning CDs) and then using those CDs legally like any other audio CDs. Moreover, making non-protected CDs, with the implicit ability to reencode, is a specific ability Apple petitioned the labels pretty hard for, fully recognizant that a major selling point of the iTMS would be the broad user rights. And as far as playing only "with authorization from Apple," the very act of buying the music in the first place grants one authorization; one doesn't need to go to some bizarre lengths to take care of it.

Apple doesn't have to go out of business; it just has to close the ITMS, or change the terms significantly. This is a relatively new venture and there are no guarantees that it will continue to be successful or still be around in a few years. I'm not saying this is likely, but it is certainly possible, and highlights who owns "your" music.

Yeah, but frankly I think their arbitrarily closing the iTMS or significantly changing the terms is even less likely than their going out of business; hence, "the biggest worry is that they go out of business," as I said. No, there are no guarantees, but aside from the fact it's been a success and they're likely to keep it up just because of that, I really don't see them arbitrarily discontinuing service; what could they possibly gain from that? Even if the iTMS stopped selling well and they decided to drop it, they could and probably would continue to do authorizations for all the people who'd already bought music; it'd be relatively trivial to do so, particularly weighed against the enormous backlash guaranteed them if they did anything perceived as cutting back on people's ability to use music they'd already bought.

At any rate, my points in the original post still stand, since I was talking about what Trinity-Infinity can do with her purchases. She's happily bopping along, listening to her tunes, slinging them from one comp to another, loading up her iPod, and generally enjoying her tunes, and you're saying she can't do any of that because at some indeterminate point in the future Apple might change its mind about something. Even if Apple were to completely abandon the iTMS and its existing customer base, it couldn't rescind her ability to use the songs she's already bought as she's using them now.

Re:Why not?

[Esion Modnar]

People seem to shrug this off as something to worry about only if Apple goes out of business. But Apple may discontinue the Service for any number of reasons short of dissolution, most likely being profitability issues or the artists all back out of their agreements with Apple.

And what would/could happen then? The RIAA could send out lawsuits to all the former users of the Apple service, extorting people for a few thousand bucks each to make their legal beagles go away. Why? Because technically, this agreement appears to be leasing the music for an indefinite but finite amount of time. If the Service stops, you now "own" illegal music, no more legal than something downloaded from Kazaa that afternoon.

Don't get me wrong. I like the service, and have used it, but this is one aspect of the service I hadn't thought about until now.

Kinda reminds me of the Divx fiasco a few years back (remember that?) where people thought they were buying DVD's but really weren't. Only in that case your black box had to "phone home" in order to play the movie. When I first heard of that service, I stayed away from it in droves. I knew it was a turkey. But since enforcement of the terms of service was handled at the playback device, and required an A-OK from home-base each and every time the movie was played, termination of the service made for some very angry pissed-off consumers.

At least with iTunes, if the ground swallowed up Apple Corporation tomorrow, everybody from tech support to Steve Jobs, your music would still play, even if it was technically illegal.

Re:Why not?

[bnenning]

It is significantly less clear if you are allowed to re-encode the files

Well, "less clear" is a far cry from your earlier claim that it was definitely prohibited. This portion of the TOS seems to indicate that it is in fact permitted:

You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.

Although I suppose it depends on what "export" means.

How do Apple's actions make this clear?

For starters, continuing to ship iMovie with the ability to import protected AACs and export as any unprotected format you want. My take is that Apple has no desire to use DRM and did the absolute minimum necessary to get the labels to cooperate.

Re:Why not?

[Laur]

Well, "less clear" is a far cry from your earlier claim that it was definitely prohibited.

My point was that Apple clearly spells out certain rights and re-encoding is not among them. This indicates to me that it is not a specificaly granted right.

This portion of the TOS seems to indicate that it is in fact permitted:

You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.

Although I suppose it depends on what "export" means.

Yes, I agree that that MAY let you re-encode, but I think it is very ambiguous. These other parts (from another thread here) seem to indicate to me that you do not have the right to bypass the DRM by re-encoding.

Use of Products. You acknowledge that Products contain security technology that limits your usage of Products to the following Usage Rules.
I.e. these songs are protected by DRM.

You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
I.e. you can't circumvent the DRM.

The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.
I.e. don't take out the DRM.

The very fact that we are having this discussion proves that your rights to re-encode and bypass DRM are anything but clear.

For starters, continuing to ship iMovie with the ability to import protected AACs and export as any unprotected format you want.

I wasn't aware of this, but it's good to know.

My take is that Apple has no desire to use DRM and did the absolute minimum necessary to get the labels to cooperate.

I agree, yet the fact remains that the files are crippled by DRM. Until I am confident that I have the right to eliminate the DRM and do as I wish with my purchases I will not be using ITMS, on Windows, OS X, or otherwise.

Re:Why not?

[bnenning]

Until I am confident that I have the right to eliminate the DRM and do as I wish with my purchases I will not be using ITMS, on Windows, OS X, or otherwise.

Fair enough. My view is that I do have that right; while the legal issues are not entirely clear, I see nothing immoral about doing so, and realistically the chances of Apple taking action against me are zero. But I fully agree that DRM is inherently dangerous, and I don't take issue with anyone who chooses to avoid it even in seemingly benign forms.

Re:I fear this is too late

[ShawnDoc]

There's still one ore thing that Apple needs to do...

Price the songs reasonably.

I'm sorry, but $.99 is too much per song. Especially now that Universal has dropped CD prices to $12.99. At $.50 per song they'd have my attention.

Re:Neato, but... What about the children?!! ;)

[MenTaLguY]

Kids might start using disposable debit cards carrying relatively small balances.

Such cards might be offered at places like drugstores and grocers.

I predict we'll see this become popular in the next three years or so.

Re:What about Linux

[HeghmoH]

I am amazed at how many times I see this assertion when it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

OS X uses BSD as its base. Many BSD programs will compile out of the box and work, and even many graphical programs will work if you first install X11. However, "standard" applications don't use X11. They use either Carbon or Cocoa. If they want to access a file, they probably use Carbon or Cocoa file-access functions. If they want to have threads, they use Carbon or Cocoa thread functions, or they use Mach threads if they need something lower-level. A port to Linux would be roughly as difficult as a port to Windows or any other OS. In other words, "It's the APIs, stupid."

So let's lay this strange myth to rest.

Tinfoil Hat Haiku

[SuperKendall]

In honor of the parent post, I present to the world the Tinfoil Hat Haiku to attach to all such submissions from the paranoid fringe:

Farfetched rant I read
Could signs be any clearer?
Tinfoil hat too tight.

Re:Winamp 2.91

[insomaniac]

Indeed, total control is nice, thats why I run OSS *nix in the first place.
If I want something automated I better well had to tell it to do that.
I don't like it when I don't know what my system is doing.

The only reason I use X is to run multiple terms, xmms and mozzie firebird. For all automation I go for perl. ;)

Re:What about Linux

[triolus]

Why don't we just wait for the windows port to be released and try it out with Wine? I'm sure it'll work just fine.

Ok...

[SuperKendall]

Here you go!

Of course, the real bummer about that is that it doesn't support the range of codes the Windows version does. I don't run into that very often though, since most sites I view media from are smart enough to support Quicktime... Music video sites seem to be the ones stuck in the dark ages.

Another interesting tidbit - it does not support UFS, and has to be installed on an HFS+ filesystem!

Re:I fear this is too late

[Carnildo]

Hockey puck mice notwithstanding, Apple tends to be pretty good about usability.

Re:Winamp 2.91

[Phroggy]

None of these annoying playlists that intrusively store all your MP3 in an obscure /home/lib/songs/mp3/wherami/ directory. None of these grotesque 'features' that copy mp3's from a CD ROM to my hard drive automaticlaly.

The default path is /Users/(username)/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/, and the default behavior is to copy songs into that directory when you open them (and then automatically rename/move the files as you update the ID3 tags), which I also find a bit bizarre. Fortunately you can turn these option off.

I completely agree that playing MP3s on a CD-ROM is very awkward in iTunes, unless the CD was burned in iTunes (so it has a hidden iTunes database file), but then it won't play in my portable MP3 CD player, so that doesn't work for me.

When i want to play an mp3 file, i open it. Not some database pointer that opens a copy of a file i never knew was copied.

Turn off the copying, and you'll get used to the database. It's one of iTunes' best features, although it's certainly not perfect (yet).

Re:Cars, too...

[DavidinAla]

Cars want to be free, too, but I'll still be arrested if I steal one. :-)

Re:What about Linux

[Have Blue]

Yes, it is that difficult. iTunes uses OS X's proprietary APIs, like Carbon, that have no Linux equivalents. It's as hard as porting any Windows or OS9 app to Linux.

Competition!

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

Soon Windows users will be able to choose amongst iTunes, Napster, BuyMusic, and more. I just wish I had even some idea as to how much of my $0.99 a song was going to the artist.

Re:Competition!

[dbirchall]

The 11% number quoted by someone else only applies to musicians who have the extreme misfortune to be locked into contracts with major labels. In fact, they might not be seeing ANY money, since the money presumably goes through the label, which takes out against advances and promotions and everything else.

Since Apple opened the iTunes Music Store to indie labels as well, much better terms have been available. At least one indie label put their terms up on the web publicly (http://www.cdbaby.net/dd).

Given the numbers that came out when the iTunes Music Store launched, you pay 99 cents for a song; Apple gets about 30-35 cents for running the service, the rest goes to the label. So CD Baby (as an example) should be getting 64-69 cents per song sold. They're taking a 9% cut, so that leaves well over 50 cents per song sold that goes to the artist.

As people were saying when the indies first got on board, it's only a matter of time before somebody gets seriously rich as an indie artist this way... ;)

Re:Lovely. Not that I'll use it...

[falcon5768]

you know you could have told your friend to not sync it since its set up to prompt if you want to or not (and thus if you want to delete the iPod. the reason apple set it up the way they did is cause of the RIAA, they where getting crap thanks to the RIP,MIX,BURN add as it was and needed to settle things with the RIAA.

Re:What about Linux

[johram]

well the next question is how to port quicktime to linux.
has this been done?

Re:I fear this is too late

[levik]

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.

Re:Lovely. Not that I'll use it...

[puntloos]

I'm sure you're right, however my friend never touched itunes, nor does he have an ipod, so I doubt he ever turned off a warning before sync. It was configured like that per default.

Btw, Troll? Im the first one to give useful links to alternate software and get modded down? Sigh.

First time apple's on Windows?!

[vs-Tsoonamy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the first time that Apple ports software to Windows?!

Uaahhh, we apple-users lose our... mmh.... elite-like position as being the only ones to use that great stuff of software... :-)

Re:First time apple's on Windows?!

[Sir Haxalot]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the first time that Apple ports software to Windows?!
Does it matter when we have Samba

Re:First time apple's on Windows?!

[Junta]

You're wrong ;)

Quicktime is at least one example...

Re:First time apple's on Windows?!

[Dr. Sp0ng]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the first time that Apple ports software to Windows?!

Uh, Quicktime?

Re:First time apple's on Windows?!

[hawaiian717]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the first time that Apple ports software to Windows?!

AppleWorks for Windows

Virtual CD Driver

[rreyelts]

Does anybody know of a virtual CD driver (for MacOSX or Windows) that could be used to "psych-out" Apple's iTune product (or anything really) into writing to the file system instead of a CD?

Then you could do all sorts of cool things like hook it up to a codec and have iTunes burn straight to a set of FLAC/Ogg/MP3 files instead of a CD.

Re:Virtual CD Driver

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiretap

and

audio hijack pro

Re:Virtual CD Driver

[gsfprez]

i have no fscking idea of how or why you see the need to "psych-out" a computer.

If you'd like to un-DRM your purchased files - because you must absolutely need to... there are two basic ways.

(I like to think i "discovered" this - as I was the first on /. to report it - check with Pudge and he'll confirm...)

1. Burn an audio CD from iTunes
rip the CD.
done. (okay, i didn't discover this)

2. import the iTMS AAC file into iMovie 3.
Save the iMovie project.
Check the media files folder. You'll find your song saved as an uncompressed AIFF file there.
Done.

Un-DRMing your files is 100% legitimate - I bought the files, and i wanted to play them on whatever device i wanted. There are plenty of MP3 players that don't play AAC files - like my Sony MPX-70 in-dash MP3 player in my Jeep - which is why i looked for this solution in the first place.

Of course, now that i bought an iPod, and my Sony has an audio input jack, i no longer bother to do this conversion.

Re:Virtual CD Driver

[rreyelts]

Let's see, I don't run MacOSX, so I don't have iMovie 3. Solution 2 is out.

Solution 1 isn't good, because I don't want to burn a freaking CD. I'd like to just get an "un-DRMd" format of my preference. If I can just rip straight to memory/filesystem, it will be much faster and simpler then burning a CD and performing a rip.

Re:Virtual CD Driver

[user no. 590291]

Warning!

"Song Title" could not be converted
because protected files cannot be converted to other formats.
[ OK ]

Finally...

[bunhed]

Now they just need to port the rest of OS/X to windows and we'd have something!! :)

Re:I fear this is too late

[themanwhoknowsmostth]

I want my Music heroin too! ;-)

Unfortunately, the optional iNeedle exchange is not yet available for Windows yet, but I hear it'll be in a later version.

Too Expensive

[Yawgm8th]

Charging a dollar for a song sounds good but the 10 GB iPod can hold aproximatly 3,000 to 4,000 songs depending on their length. Who in their right mind will pay that much money?
My suggested cost: 25 cents

Re:Too Expensive

[Mr. Sharumpe]

There is no reason you have to purchase every song that is on your iPod via the iTunes Music Store (though you'd be Apple's best buddy if you did). I have a very full 10GB iPod, and most of the music on it (all but about 80 songs) are from CDs that I own.

The benefit is that you CAN play music that you purchased via iTMS, which is the most reasonable music service yet, IMO.

Mr. Sharumpe

Re:Too Expensive

[Hawthorne01]

The buy albums for $9.99 from the store (cheaper than most CD's). Or rip the songs off the CD's you bought. Or put the songs you "share" on it.

My lowly 5GB iPod is almost full after a year of use. On it is a almost even mixture of um, er, "borrowed" tracks, songs ripped from my CD's, and iTMS songs.

Re:Too Expensive

[Yawgm8th]

I never said you HAD to buy songs from apple but I'm willing to bet the cost ratio of $/song wasn't $1 or less. A $15 dollar cd with 12 songs would be more like $1.25. And now, cd's are almost $20.

The Big Picture

[sloth jr]

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

Re:The Big Picture

[gsfprez]

whats sad is that sloth's comment is somwhow not common sense.

It fscking should be. Its a smart play by Apple - and I think it will work as they planned. If anyone has "gotten" what Apple did wrong for the last 20 years - its Apple. What's sad is that no one else can see that Apple gets it. (PCI, AGP, USB, PC-133 and DDR, IDE, Serial-ATA - but Macs are totally proprietary???)

maybe they'll never get to 10%, but definately should keep Apple at their Audi-like 5-7% US marketshare. (if Audi is even that high)

Re:The Big Picture

[Flamerule]

maybe they'll never get to 10%, but definately should keep Apple at their Audi-like 5-7% US marketshare. (if Audi is even that high)

Sorry, I'm not really familiar with Apple, but 5-7% marketshare in the US struck me as rather high; isn't it more like 3-4%?

Re:The Big Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Big Picture

[mblase]

Apple wants to make money

Why do you say that like it's somehow a bad thing? I mean, even Mandrake wants to make money....

Re:The Big Picture

[sloth jr]

Apple's been posting consistently flat growth rates for years. The reason Apple's been having inventory supply problems is that they are being VERY careful about not oversupplying the channel: hot death considering Apple's mercurial product demands.

Apple is most definitely concerned with market share - it's the only way they can keep the platform from further being ghetto-ized. I'm not saying Boo about Apple's innovation - they "get it", already. They need to somehow get everyone ELSE to "get it".

Apple has succeeded in the last two years simply by not offering a commodity product, and that's the balance that Apple has to try and walk: create amazingly cool shit that folks will somehow differentiate from a $600 costco PC, and be willing to spend the difference. The eMac is certainly a great deal, but why can't we buy it in Costco, where I'm certain it would sell? Apple is obviously NOT emphasizing these low-profit models, and it's probably why they're as healthy as they are.

sloth jr

Re:The Big Picture

[Lord_Dweomer]

"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."

Actually, part of the appeal to Apple's target market is the exclusivity of their products. They are playing their small market share to their advantage by pushing their product as quality, uncommon, and unique.

Re:The Big Picture

[G-funk]

Apple doesn't give a FLYING SHIT about market share.

HAHAHAHA right. I bet they don't. And I'm sure apple's shareholders don't either. They're not in it for the money, they're in it for the art, right?

Re:The Big Picture

[Moofie]

Yeah, ghetto-ized. Like a five star hotel is ghetto-ized.

Steve Jobs cares about 1) doing it Steve's way 2) cool design 3) technological excellence.

Market share? Who cares? It's not a factor. Apple is making much money.

Re:The Big Picture

[dr.badass]

Which is why we're THRILLED when we keep getting dividend checks

Congratulations, you've just proved that you're not an Apple shareholder. They don't pay dividends.

Re:What about Linux

[WatertonMan]

Before I start, could I suggest that Slashdot change tags so hitting back and forward doesn't erase the content of ones editing? (grumble, grumble) I've lost text I've been editing while hitting back to see someone else's point far too many times.

Anyway, the above is partially true. It is true that iTunes is a Carbon app. And Carbon isn't available for Windows. However back when Apple ported Quicktime to Windows they did port a lot of the old MacOS toolbox. A lot of that toolbox is in Carbon, albeit in a rewritten way. So the port isn't necessarily as complex to windows as some might suggest.

Of course many people have complained about Quicktime for Windows and a lot of those complaints aren't just about the UI/features of the player. Those complaints probably end up being about the quality of the API that quicktime provides for this pseudo-Carbon-like toolkit.

Now I imagine that the people working on iTunes for Windows and QT for Windows aren't just working on a straight port, but also a better (and more compatible) port of the Carbon libraries for Windows. I don't claim to have any inside information on this. But it seems likely that a lot of the code for iTunes for Windows will be the same as the Mac version. Further porting the underlying library will make other ports easier.

One should point out that with regards to Quicktime, a lot of the development has been to make it better multithreaded and re-entrant. (Or so the word around the campfire goes...) One can't help but suspect that this rewrite would carry over to Windows unless Apple plans on dropping QT for Windows.

Given all this, one suspects that better Windows programs are in the road ahead.

Re:I fear this is too late

[Blondie-Wan]

Some jukeboxes charge 50 cents to play a song once, while others charge half that; if it costs a quarter to listen to a song just one time, is it really outrageous to pay four times that to own it forever?

Re:I fear this is too late

[levik]

Wether the success of iTunes on Mac is due to the mac users' enthusiasm about anything Jobs cares to talk about at MacWorld is not something we'll ever know. However, the success of their venture into windows greatly depends on their ability to make good windows software.

Unfortunately, in the past they have allowed their hubris in UI design get the better of them, by programming applications using the "supperior" UI concepts of the Mac OS. While we can argue without end as to which system is actually better designed, it should be clear to apple that when programming for windows, the windows UI conventions ought to be followed instead of disregarded in favor of the Mac standard.

If you look at quicktime for windows, there are a bunch of places that make it counterintuitive simply because it follows Mac UI conventions. One such place is property sheets that do not have the usual set of "OK"/"Apply"/"Cancel" buttons. Sure they may not be the best idea in UI design, but windows users are used to them, and not having any obvious way to "set" your changes is confusing.

And I won't even go into the horrible software that apple shipped for us lucky windows iPoders.

However much microsoft is reviled on this site, you have to admit, they did a pretty good job of coding to mac standards in macing Mac IE and Office X. If only apple would pick up on their lead.

Re:Winamp 2.91

[byolinux]

er.. on iTunes, you have the choice if it rips the tracks from a CD automatically or not. You also have a choice of formats and where it puts them.

Also it puts them into home/Music/ and that can be changed.

Real nerds probably don't use Windows though, I would argue.

iTunes

[blackmonday]

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.

Save the Best Till Last

[meehawl]

I've tried a lot of media player programs for Windows: WinAmp2, WinAmp3, Real, RealOne, Windows Media Player, Musicmatch Jukebox, and for iPod use, MMJ, Ephpod, XPlay.

Well your biggest mistake right there was not trying JRiver's Media Center. We were only talking about iTunes vs MC9 recently.

converting these files to MP3 or OGG

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Is there a way to convert these AAC files you get off of iTunes to another format, like wav (and then to MP3 or ogg), aside from burning to CD and then ripping the CD you just made or using an analog method?

Re:converting these files to MP3 or OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

on mac, this freeware works great--records anything coming out of soundcard to .wav or aiff file (you can even have it save that recording to iTunes, which will autoconvert it to MP3--but then you have two copies of hte song). i've done longish tracks (5 or so minutes) and nary a problem.
http://versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/m acosx/2016 7

Re:Neato, but... What about the children?!! ;)

[angle_slam]

if I know that I could get some of the obscure Pink Floyd or Supertramp Euro stuff out there online, I'd pay for it.

Assuming you're talking about official releases (I doubt Apple would sell bootlegs), you do realize that you can buy pretty much every Pink Floyd album released? Just try Amazon or Ebay.

Your wish is granted...

[almightyjustin]

Ta-da

Isn't karma whoring fun?

Re:Your wish is granted...

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

$0.15 a song is better than the $0.00 the artist gets when you download their song 'for free' from Kazaa, etc.

Re:Your wish is granted...

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

Also, your linked site wants iTunes to place the "artist's cut" in the song listing -- how does Apple know what the "Artist's Cut" is? That is up to whomever is licensing the song to Apple, not the other way around. Even if Apple wants to demand a value for "Artist's Cut" for all tracks, it naturally wouldn't account for advances, expenses, etc.

YES!

[Captain Splendid]

Finally, a decent player for Windows...about damn time!

Media Center

[meehawl]

Oh well, at least there's a decent media player for Windows now (other than Winamp, that's cool).

Try the JRiver Media Center. It has a "mini me" mode that can use Winamp skins. You'll feel right at home.

Re:What about Linux

[Snocone]

Sorry to burst your whiny little bubbles and all, Linux freakazoids, but you've got it exactly wrong. Apple would *love* to have QuickTime running on Linux, just like on Windows. That would further lock in QuickTime as the API of choice for video editing apps, which is all good for Apple; and Apple just plain can't give a rat's ass about "the Linux Desktop". So take your thumbs out of your mouths and put away the tin hats.

Nope, it's simple as simple can be; nobody in the Linux world is willing to pay for development and QA of a Linux port, and Apple doesn't see that the benefit to them of QuickTime/Linux could conceivably come within orders of magnitude of the resources needed to do it all themselves, especially considering the opportunity costs of everything else they could be working on.

So, Linux whiny boy; put up the cash, or quitcher whining, since you and your whiny little Linux friends being stupid little gits that want everything for free is the only thing stopping a port, it's there for the asking if you pony up.

Apple Corp?

[supun]

I know Apple and Apple Corp have an agreement that stops Apple from getting into the music business. Didn't Apple Corp sue Apple recently? If Apple moves into the Window world, could Apple Corp sue them again?

PIRATES!!

[devphaeton]

[shouting] Just like everything else in the Wintel World, these guys are just copy-catting Appl.. oh.. wait.. nm

[/shouting]

Re:PIRATES!!

[slyborg]

Arrrrrr, matey!

Willfully ignorant now?

[2nd Post!]

The previous poster already said 'making backup copies'

Assuming you have a backup copy, then you don't have to relicense or redownload anything. You just copy them back into iTunes. You *can*, because I've done this in practice multiple times, transferring them from laptop to iPod to desktop and back.

As per 'expanding and recompressing' the parent also said 'burned CDs'. You can burn audio CDs (thus expand 12x) and I suppose the 'recompressing' part is converting said audio CD into mp3?

And don't be so insulting about Apple Kool Aide, it's not becoming of you. Me, I've bought 5 songs to see what the sound quality is like. It's better than the MP3s I rip from CDs I own using iTunes, at the least, and that's the benchmark to which I hew to.

To be clear: 128kbps 48KHz AAC from iTMS sound better than 224kbps 44KHz MP3 from iTunes on exactly the same hardware. Since I listen to my music primarily in MP3 format, or on my iPod, then yes, AAC >> MP3. Everyone needs to decide for themselves of course, since you possibly have a better setup, but on my system, AAC >> MP3.

And the irony is that you boycott the RIAA until they begin distributing a good product at a fair price. That's where the conflict is. *I* believe that a $1 AAC file is a good product at a fair price. I think a copy protected $18 CD is a crappy product at a poor price.

You need to state upfront what your definition of 'good product' and 'fair price' is for any kind of intelligent discussion. We need a baseline from you.

Like AVI, except for audio?

[CarrionBird]

AVI is more like a container than a particular format. The problem would be getting all the required codecs available for all the platforms.

Since the DRM would have to hook in to the player or OS at some point, I have doubts that we will see DRM in an open source environment any time soon. (see the whole DVD/CSS debacle for a prime example).

Digital steganography for tracking lossless piracy

[yerricde]

If they water marked it there goes your quality.

Not necessarily. I just invented an inaudible watermarking scheme for lossless digital audio. It should work for digital copying, but because it isn't resistant to the analog hole, it doesn't introduce any audible noise.

PRIOR ART ALERT!

Digital audio on CDs is typically dithered from 24-bit down to 16-bit using random noise. Modern noise-shaping techniques limit this noise to low levels in the 16-22 kHz band, where it has been shown to be inaudible even to golden ears. I was thinking, if the seller uses a hash of the user's ID to generate the dither pattern embedded in the 16-bit audio, it will be able to prove that the track was generated for that user.

I admit that this scheme will not withstand analog hole or lossy digital compression. However, it should allow for tracing the source of mass duplicators' audio files.

Why, why

[2nd Post!]

Why do you even use a FILESYSTEM then? Go navigate around your hard disk using nodes, tracks, sectors, and cylinders!

Re:Why, why

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Go navigate around your hard disk using nodes, tracks, sectors, and cylinders!

>Sniff!< You bring a tear to my eyes. Those were the days!

Re:Winamp 2.91

[ruiner13]

I know you were trying to be funny, but you may be confusing some users. There is an option in iTunes prefs to have all your music moved to a common directory, or to leave it where it was when you dropped it into the playlist. Also, you don't need to go looking for your file once it is in the playlist, because if you drag a song out of the list and into a folder in the finder, it makes a copy of it and puts it where you want it. Then, you can delete the file fromt he playlist (and it will ask you if you want to delete the source file, too). I'd bet this will carry over to windows iTunes as well, as I'd consider that basic functionality.

Re:Neato, but... What about the children?!! ;)

[jehrler]

As long as the children are thirteen, they can get a Visa Buxx card from a variety of banks (visabuxx.com). It is essentially a credit card where the credit limit is the funds currently deposited. As a parent of a 17 year old and a 13 year old I can attest that it is GREAT. Each month their allowances are automatically added to their cards from my credit card. I also can look at their usage and get monthly statements so I can make sure that there aren't any Joe's Liquor store purchases. And, other people can send B-Day, etc. gifts to the kids by adding to their cards right over the internet. BTW, my daughter has, for the last two months, spent over half her allowance at the iTMS. She LOVES it. Heck, Apple should create a deal with a bank to make an Apple Visa Buxx

I used to have your attitude.

[markv242]

Then I allowed iTunes to consolidate my library. It did the equivalent of an id3ren on my entire (4000+ tracks) library. Imagine my joy, when, instead of having to hunt through ten different directories, trying to figure out which song "01 - Track 1.mp3" really is, I just browsed through the iTunes Library and listened to what I wanted.

Additionally, Winamp, last I checked, didn't automatically normalize all of your music to the same volume level. That's one of the coolest features of iTunes.

Why?

[Jhonny]

Why give windows another program to destroy? Hasent it done enough?

Re:I fear this is too late

[silicon not in the v]

They can't go much(if any) lower than $.99 per song because there are so many hands that need a cut of it, as posted in this Slashdot story. The advantage of the $.99, of course, is that you can get one or two songs from an album that doesn't have anything else good on it. Congratulations, you have now achieved the same enjoyment from $1.98 as you would have from $12.99. Also, that new bargain price of $12.99 still doesn't look as good as the $9.99 for a whole album that iTunes has been offering since the beginning. I, for one, welcome our new Windows iTunes overlords! :)

Re:I fear this is too late

[2nd Post!]

So you'd rather pay $12.99 for 2 good songs, 4 okay songs, and 8 crappy songs, than pay $3.96 for 4 songs you like from the same selection?

I dunno, that sounds reasonable to me... you get songs you like *and* you save money.

Or just buy the whole damn album for $9.99... you get the songs you like, you get crap you don't, and you save $2.

Re:What about Linux

[AstroDrabb]

They wouldn't need to port all of that to Linux. They would have the app use whatever is a counterpart on Linux. Do you think Apple ported Carbon, Core Audio, IOKit, etc to Win32? I doubt it. It is probably using OpenGL, Quicktime and win32 under MS Windows. Apple could release the same thing to Linux and use OpenGL, Alsa, etc. The don't even need to port Qucktime (though that would be best) to Linux. The win32 dll's work under Linux, that is how MPlayer is able to play all kinds of audio/video.

Windows iPod users and the youth market

[Infonaut]

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.

Re:Windows iPod users and the youth market

[ctishman]

Y'know, I'm really sorry about that. Apple should go to immense trouble in order to support an operating system that's five years old, and not listed on the box of your product. USB 2.0 high speed is pretty much required to transfer the sheer volume of files the iPod can hold in a reasonable amount of time.

Let's look at it realistically, and assume you got your drivers to work. USB 1.1 has a theoretical max of 12MBps, and a realistic throughput of less than a quarter of that in my experience. To fill it up would take days of constant copying instead of minutes. Add to that the fact that USB support was somewhat shaky in any version of '98, and I think forgoing support is smart to say the least.

Then again, feel free to complain to the MacOS 8.1 users on their 66MHz PowerMac 6100s about how your perfectly modern computer should be able to run perfectly modern accessories.

Re:Windows iPod users and the youth market

[Kyro]

I'm sorry, you have no one to blame but yourself!

From Apple's iPod tech specs page.

Windows requirements and software: PC with built-in FireWire or USB 2.04, or Windows-certified FireWire or USB 2.0 card; Windows 2000 or Windows XP Home or Professional; CD includes MUSICMATCH Jukebox Plus 7.5 software.

You should have read the requirements before you bought the iPod.

Re:Windows iPod users and the youth market

[Lord_Dweomer]

Actually it was given to me, which is why I'm pissed that I'm now stuck with a wonderful gadget which is now completely worthless.

Re:Windows iPod users and the youth market

[numark]

There are a wide range of USB 2.0 cards you can freely buy on the market. I've seen them as low as $10, and they're an upgrade not only for the iPod but also for your computer in general. Not so completely worthless anymore, eh?

Re:Windows iPod users and the youth market

[Moofie]

HEY! I have a Performa 6115, you insensitive clod! I love that computer!

On all other points, YOU ARE RIGHT.

Re:Windows iPod users and the youth market

[Infonaut]

Heh heh!

That is SO funny! I've NEVER seen that karma whoring comment before!

Re:Windows iPod users and the youth market

[Moosi]

Buy a firewire or USB2 card. And upgrade your OS :)

Of course, you could always upgrade to a Mac :)

How will this fare against the Kitty?

[nautical9]

A related story is that Napster 2.0 is about to be launched by its new owners, Roxio. VERY similar to iTunes ($0.99 per track), but even more flexible re: pricing. $9.99 for an entire album, or $9.99/month for unlimited downloads (hard to believe they're willing to do that when eMusic obviously couldn't support it).

The DRM is Microsoft's WMA 9.0, but they claim you can burn to CD, transfer to "compatible" portable devices, and can have them on up to 3 different computers - all similar to iTunes.

Details are still sketchy on which tunes/bands they'll be offering, just which devices their app will consider "compatible", etc. but it will be interesting to see if/how successful this will be.

Re:What about Linux

[AstroDrabb]

Very easy, you just do it the same way they ported it to win32. Actually, Apple *could* just use the Win32 dll's under Linux. That is how MPLayer an Xine do it. That is why MPLayer and Xine can play just about any audio/vidoe you throw at it after you install the win32-codec package.

~11% to artist? good enough for me!

[endoboy]

that's right in line w/ royalty rates in other industries--books, patents, etc.

Re:Lovely. Not that I'll use it...

[MoneyT]

I suppose it would be too much to ask that you click the button that says manualy update iPod

Re:This article also on

[Anonymous Coward]

>More importantly, why is Slashdot becoming part of the rumour mill?

You must be new here.

Re:Winamp 2.91

[TommyH1000]

Real nerds probably don't use Windows though, I would argue.

Thanks for the compliment, I've never been happier to say that I use Windows at both home and at work.

Re:Winamp 2.91

[zpok]

Real nerds check out their preferences pane and disable any "power-feature" they don't like.

You don't even have to RTFM for that...

Re:What about Linux

[AnonymousCowheart]

for linux users, we already have an choice, we have rhythmbox already damn close to ituns, and ofcourse, free

Re:Sorry Apple...

[zpok]

You want free music? Plug in your fucking guitar and make a song.

I don't say downloading is stealing, I say it's cheap. Trying to hide behind some sort of ideology is cheaper still.

Um, that's all folks...

Timeline change for cracking AAC?

[sacrilicious]

There are a lot more windows programmers than OSX programmers. If AAC is crackable and the likelihood of it being cracked is proportional to the number of people trying to do so, I wonder if we could conclude that the windows release of iTunes moves that day closer.

Re:Timeline change for cracking AAC?

[juuri]

Google around, there are already ways around the AAC protections being used by the iTunes store.

Re:I fear this is too late

[anthropos9]

The real question is what it's like to be a Mac developer at Microsoft? Do they have to enter from the back door or are they the only people that can walk with their head held high? Perhaps they just receive nasty emails telling them they will be assimilated.

Violates the terms of service how?

[mbessey]

"Besides, re-coding without the DRM violates the ITMS Terms of Service, a legal agreement between the user and Apple"

How so? I just scanned the linked document, and I don't see anything that would indicate any problems with burning and re-encoding a track.

-Mark

Apple encryption: mp4 vs m4a vs m4p

[frankie]

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

Re:What about Linux

[Phroggy]

Neat! I'll have to try that.

Re:One minor detail

[Graff]

However, a 5-second blank track would work, but it would probably infringe the Cage estate's copyright as an excerpt from his "4'33'".

Yeah that was a funny case. I gotta say that I support patents, copyrights, and trademarks for reasonable uses but this goes just a bit too far. Copyrighting a large chunk of silence is just yet another example of the blatant abuse of intellectual property laws. Laws that were originally meant to give a creator some control over his works have now been twisted to lock out people from creating new works and using old works in new and innovative ways.

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now. Wait - has that phrase been copyrighted? Ahh damn...

What about buring to CD and ripping to MP3?

[pgrote]

I know I am late on this topic, but I hope someone can answer this.

Can I buy the Itunes songs, burn a CD and rip an MP3? That way I can put the songs on my Creative jukebox.

And when I rip it, since the ACC is only 128 does that mean the MP3 should be 128 as well?

Thanks in advance.

Re:What about buring to CD and ripping to MP3?

[cens0r]

Yes you can, but you're going to get a fairly bad sounding song. Why? because both MPEG-4 and MPEG-1 are lossy compression formats. The problem is that they don't necessairly throw away the same bits. So the iTunes song will have certain bits thrown out and the MP3 will have other bits thrown out. The combination will sound worse than either one of them made from the original source.

No, I'm New Here

[New Here]

No, I'm New Here

Re:What about Linux

[petard]

It'd be interesting, however, to see if something like iTunes would easily build against GNUstep.

No, it wouldn't really be interesting... It obviously simply wouldn't work. iTunes is a Carbon application, while GNUStep is an implementation of the OpenStep framework, which Apple updated and rebadged Cocoa. Even if the GNUStep libraries were up to the current Apple standards, you'd never manage to build a Carbon application against them :-) The only way the two are really even similar is that they're both used on Mac OS X to build GUI applications. It's a lot like saying "It'd be interesting, however, to see if something like KDevelop would build against gtk+."

Depends

[cortez]

On a mac? the first nomad jukebox will work. I have an NJB3 and i can assure you it doesnt.

On windows? probably none... Apple wants you to buy its ipod, not a competing device. Besides, creatives drivers SUCK. if you're anything like me you use Notmad Explorer that makes your nomad basically as easy to use as an external hard drive.

They announced the PC version!

[thefinite]

They announced the PC would come by the end of the year when the Mac version came out. If you *only* bought a Mac for iTMS, then you just weren't paying enough attention. (The same is true for being outside the US.) Like another poster said, I will gladly take the Mac if you don't want it anymore. :)

Re:Who cares

[zpok]

All true, but show me the artist who wants to work for free.

Most artists - most people - are looking for a way to have a fun life while paying the bills.

I personally don't know any artist who wants to do everything for free, or otoh was discouraged doing something for free once in a while - including putting mp3's online. Truth is: everything concerning original work (be it programming or art) is hopelessly complicated, not only the free part of it.

And while I like your mail and share your dislike of that "mob like business culture", I should point out that in western society paying composers and musicians is nothing new. All this suffering and poverty for art is a load of crap. Historically, most artists we now rever were pretty well off, only a minority suffered as they should ;-)

Re:This article also on

[the argonaut]

shouldn't this be shortened to YMBNH by now?

Re:What about Linux

[Trurl's Machine]

Apple is afraid of Linux and they in No way want to give creedence to it being an acceptable platform for desktop use.

Yeah, right. That's why they officially allow Terra Soft to sell their hardware with Linux preinstalled. Apple is a hardware vendor. As long as they can charge you $2999 or more for a computer, they don't really care about which OS you choose to run on it. Apple always supported the PPC Linux efforts - first with MKLinux (mind you, an Apple-branded Linux distro!), now with their blessing for Terra Soft.

itunes format support

[Logicdisorder]

Does anyone know if iTunes will support FLAC? I am going to be ripping all my CDs to FLAC with an OGG wrapper.

You can convert from AAC to mp3 except.....

[acomj]

You can convert from AAC to mp3 except for songs bought from the itunes music store. It doesn't allow you. Its posible to burn to a cp then rerip as mp3 however.

Re:You can convert from AAC to mp3 except.....

[Aqua OS X]

Nah, there are quite few ways to convert protected AAC files.

You could use AudioHyjack, burn them and re-rip them, or try something like mAC3dec (i think that will decode locked AAC files).

There are a few other solutions out there.. you just have to look.

iTunes is what WinAMP 3 should've been

[Aqua OS X]

Dude, this is seriously awesome. I can't wait to have iTunes on my Windows boxes.

No doubt, the music store is cool; however, the iTunes MP3 player is what I'm really excited about. iTunes is what WinAMP 3 should've been (I'm still using 2 like most other folks). iTunes has easily manageable playlists, simple file transfers, lots of cool burning / ripping /sharing options, etc etc.

Of course, iTunes doesn't support skins... however I stopped using those stupid things years ago.

Now, if only we can get a port of the Finder for Windows ;)

Import tunes discounted?

[failedlogic]

I'm wondering if tracks which are considered imports to Canada and the US, are still $1 US (approx) per track or are they priced higher?

I live in Canada, and there are a few Jazz CDs from Europe that I want to buy. The CDs, because they are Dutch imports are over $30 Can (where other CDs average $15 CAN).

Does Itunes get rid of the, IMO artifically inflated import costs? I would defintely sign-up if I could save some cash.

Re:What about Linux

[kitzilla]

Actually, that's what I was thinking. I'd certainly go buy an iPod if i could support it with an iTune/Wine app.

Re:What about Linux

[jcw148psu]

What are you, 4? maybe 6?

Yeah, that works, too

[mbessey]

The advantage of burning them to CD is that then you're making a backup at the same time. And it's moderately more convenient to be able to do it all within iTunes.

-Mark

Re:What about Linux

[triolus]

I have an iPod myself. Once I get my linux box configured, I plan on using gtkpod.

All downhill from here

[garote]

I've been an "Adept PC" user, in any real sense of the word, for at least ten years, and I'll tell you what "we" really want. We want to pop online two days before a product comes out, type "(product name) warez" into google, and get directed to "Doctor Ph43r's 1337 Pr0n and W4R3Z Page", a site created by a fifteen-year-old somewhere in northern Europe, and download a 5k patch utility that will turn our demo version into the full version for free.

THAT is the "freedom" that so-called "Adept" PC users want, and expect. If the Mac community had an army of script kiddies that large, they would be expecting the same thing.

And this is why I predict that, shortly after the iTunes store opens for Windows, it's all going downhill for Apple's DRM. Some 1337 Krew in a basement somewhere is going to write a 5k Windows utility that will strip the DRM out of a file - turning an m4p into an m4a - and we'll all find it in Google - and the honeymoon will be OVER.

Re:All downhill from here

[GigsVT]

Maybe so, that's sort of the chaotic-aligned people's extension of the behavior.

Either way, I don't see it flying, at least not as successfully as some predict.

Re:Have you ever used Windows Media Player on OS X

[curious.corn]

Except that WMP sucks on windows too! ;-)

iTunes for Linux?

[The Asmodeus]

Ok, don't see anyone else asking this but is Apple going to do an iTunes for Linux? Shouldn't be that hard to port from BSD to Linux. Much easier than from Mac to Windows...

So what's up? Are we going to get any love?

But do I have the rights to

[luekj]

Download the one song I want for a video I'm making, burn it to a cd, rip the wav, and then put it in adobe premiere??

Re:One minor detail

[cens0r]

As far as I know he didn't copyright the performance. Only the Sheet Music. Cage is a composer, not a perfomer or a recording artist.

Re:I fear this is too late

[Stinky Cheese Man]

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

Napster, anyone? The beta launched today. I'm an optimist (and own stock in ROXI), but I think I would call that "close to ready".

Re:this is the problem

[Trurl's Machine]

I have records from my grandfather that are 80 years old. I can play them on any record player.

Not true. Shellac records from 1920's require a 78-rpm capable turntable with a stylus (needle) able to read old fashioned groove (different than the so-called microgroove used in all contemporary vinyl records). There are companies that sell specialized equipment able to play both types of records (check for further information here, but it is really far, far away from your "any record player".

I have records from my dad that are 40 years old. I can play them on any record player.

In theory - yes. But unless you took really good precaution in storing them, 1960's vinyls are in fact nothing more than black circular objects. There's no music on them anymore.

Apple's current DRM scheme seems fine... until you start to think really long term. What happens in 80 years or even in 20 years.... are you going to have to dig up ancient authorized hardware in order to get the songs to play.

Come on! You use a specialized 78 rpm turntable to play your granpa's records! If you managed to dig up this sort of equipment, findind a decent Mac emulator for your 2040 supermachine will be a snap.

True I can burn a standard CD but CD-Rs only last 4 or 5 years without showing serious signs of degradation...

Of course, in your opinion vinyl and shellac analog records were eternal? They were showing serious signs of degradation after the first time you played them and it was only getting worse and worse with every play, every dust particle, every month etc. Actually, from what you write I reckon you never had a real vinyl LP in your life. You would remember all the pain and hassle if you had.

Re:this is the problem

[user no. 590291]

Come on! You use a specialized 78 rpm turntable to play your granpa's records! If you managed to dig up this sort of equipment, findind a decent Mac emulator for your 2040 supermachine will be a snap.

That may be true, but finding an authorization server to hand out the DRM keys to play those songs might not be such a snap in 2040.

Re:I fear this is too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't blame apple for MusicMatch's lousy application.

Re:I fear this is too late

[metalligoth]

Actually, I'm programming in VBA for Excel v.X on the Mac right now at work. I can tell you this, there is a ton of Windows code in Office for the Mac. They had to do that in order to get VBA to behave properly. If the UI was copied so well from Windows to Mac, then why is there a "Windows; Cascade" option in Excel on a Macintosh? Don't you dare call it a "feature"!

I'd have to say that since the Mac's UI was there first and Windows is a poor attmept to copy it, all of the ways applications like QuickTime behave are actually "proper" and it's all the other Windows applications that are behaving wrong. But, that would be stupid at this point, as M$ holds dominance in the OS world. So, I will agree that Apple needs to chill in some UI areas on Windows. I don't think it'll be a problem with iTunes like it is in Windows QuickTime, though. That program doesn't really incorporate a lot of aspects of any particular OS into it. It's more like working your home stereo, only easier.

The idea of Microsoft being innocent in this case, though, is laughable. They are just as guilty as Apple, if not moreso, in making applications behave incorrectly in a particular OS.

Re:This article also on

[Blondie-Wan]

The ones to whom it would be addressed are the ones least likely to know what the abbreviation would mean.

That is not true

[FredFnord]

Not, in fact, true.

There was ONE guy who complained that this was the case. He called Apple, and either they or he misinterpreted something and complained about it all over the place. Apple noticed this and contacted him and reauthorized his stuff, and told him that their policy was to reauthorize people in these circumstances, and that there had been a mistake.

-fred

Once it's on CD it's beyond Apple's reach

[snStarter]

Once the music has been burned to a CD it's beyond Apple's reach to make it "not playable."

OT: Spaces in URLs

[PCM2]

Lately I've been noticing a lot of posts that contain URLs with unnecessary spaces in them. The parent of this post is an example. You have to remove the space for it to work. What's going on here? Is this something the Slash code is doing for some reason, or do otherwise intelligent people really randomly hit the space bar when typing in URLs?

Re:OT: Spaces in URLs

[Darren Winsper]

There used to be a big problem with trolls posting massive strings of characters with no space in them, thus forcing the page to become wider than the screen. It's very, very annoying to have to scroll to read each and every line. Thus, Slashcode was patched to ensure there was a space every x characters.

And Safari?

[Chief Typist]

iTunes on the Mac uses the WebCore and some higher level classes to display the music that's available.

One thing that has always made me go "HMMMM...." is that they've probably taken this code and made it compile for Windows. And they've probably taken some of the old NeXT technologies to get parts of Cocoa running on Windows (prior to being acquired by Apple, all of NeXTSTEP worked fine on Win NT.) In particular, the networking & UI classes would be very attractive to an engineering team working on a tight schedule (high level of code re-use.)

So, you have a situation where Apple has a lot of the pieces necessary to build a browser.

One that renders CSS much more reliably, has tabs, blocks pop-ups, and tons of other "user centric" features. Something that can't be said of IE these days...

Apple's in a good position to leverage it's situation. They're going to sell a lot of iPods with iTMS for Windows. They're also going to sell hardware when Windows users see how much easier it is to use Apple software.

Apple could give away a Windows version of Safari and end up selling a lot of Mac hardware. Microsoft wouldn't like it, but that doesn't seem to bother them these days...

-ch

Re:Because the damn thing doesn't work.

[Kazoo the Clown]

It works, eh? Well, the iPod does not meet my definition of "portability." So just what do I have to do to play it on a device like this or this? They allows me to play umpteen hours of digital audio in my existing auto cassette player, which is pretty much the only place I have much opportunity to listen to music. iPod indeed.

Everyone is taking crazy pills!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not have noticed that at 99 cents a song, 10 songs costs 10 bucks. Not much different than a real cd. A real cd you could rip, burn, encode, trade with a friend, resell. Case and Notes, everything. Any way you like. What do I do with these songs I paid to download when they wont work on my Rio (or any other portable player but the overpriced ipod)? Rip and re-encode? Sorry, for all that trouble i'll kazaa, torrent, gnutella, irc, or bum the song off a friend.

On top of that ITunes is a mac lovers dream. A beautiful looking piece of software that is written for the "My Mac saved Christmas" sort of end user. Arguably it's the best player for the mac. But hardly the best player on any platform.

Suggestion:
Offer high bitrate non drm mp3/OGG file:
10-15 cents. Put them on servers that are very fast and easy to find, and I'll buy a song or two.
Or put "Paypal" like accounts up for artists, for funds that go directly to artists with links in the ID3 tags to the site. Your not gonna get everyone to donate, heck you may not even get 10% to donate, but it'll be more than you get from P2P.

Obviously the Record Industy wont allow that, which is unfortunate, because I think it's their only real chance at online sales.

Re:Everyone is taking crazy pills!!

[dbirchall]

10 songs is 10 bucks, yeah.

Of course, there's also per-album pricing, and if you find an album with, say, 15 songs, it might still be 10 bucks.

Also, where have you been buying CD's? I haven't seen them for 10 bucks in most music stores since... er... ever. $14-$18 seems far more common.

I beg to differ

[sacrilicious]

I have indeed heard that Apple is making that particular person happy, but it would appear from the front and center item of their as yet unchanged policy that they reserve the right - and as a matter of policy will exercise that right - to stop any and all customers from playing their purchased music outside the US:

U.S. SALES ONLY

Purchases from the iTunes Music Store are available only in the United States and are not available in any other location. You agree not to use or attempt to use the service from outside of the available territory. Apple may use technologies to verify such compliance.

Seems to me that making one individual happy was simply a PR move, and not a reason for people to let go of their related concerns. In fact, a funny yet true scenario is that Apple could even roll back the capabilities of that one guy; AFAIK they're not contractually or legally obligated to the contrary.

The fact that they have this power is one of my primary problems with DRM, even Apple's flavor of DRM (the other primary problem I have is that their downloads won't play on portables other than the ipod). This kind of power can be easily abused. Tomorrow's stance may not be today's stance:

Apple reserves the right to change the terms and conditions of sale at the iTunes Music Store at any time.

Nowhere do they state that such policy changes need only apply to subsequent sales. Given that they're rather actively blurring the lines between sales and rentals, they might well be able to have changes apply retroactively.

Re:I beg to differ

[jtrascap]

Whoa there a second, kemosabe...Of course you can use your music elsewhere - don't misconstrue the intent of the post or the license to suit your argument!

The poster is talking about buying music and then moving to Romania or somesuch place and not being able to use the songs he bought, which is UNTRUE. You CAN use the songs any way you want, anywhere you want.

The bit in the Apple license you pasted is about **purchasing music via iTMS** outside of the US, where it's not supposed to be available.

For out there who don't read much before replying:
> Songs - YES
> Service - NO

Apple's only licensed for US purchases. If Apple allowed users use false information on out-of-country purchases, they could be named as accomplices to wire fraud and any purchases could be refused payment from the banks or credit card authorities! Heck - even the Apple Stores in each country use the banks in those countries - banking systems do NOT transparent boundaries!

C'mon kids - use your brains. You can't just do whatever you want to because you want something badly - that's the core of the problem. Laws (and more importantly, trust - the core of the system) would be broken and Apple would watch another project die because it never really took the time to mature the product.

This year, goal-one is to get it up and running on a small marketplace, to show that it can work. Next week, they open the marketplace wider, to show it can stand the market diversity. And with Windows users behind us, iTMS might be able to attract those other bands still standing on the sidelines. Next year, when iTMS hits Europe, it'll likely be a healthier, more diverse, more interesting service.

(Cynics need not reply - cynicism destroys and never builds. Cynics know the future. Cynics know the hearts of industry. Cynics, sitting in their dark basements, typing on their 14" VGA screens, are smarter than anyone - You and me included. Why even talk to them?)

Re:I beg to differ

[sacrilicious]

(Cynics need not reply - cynicism destroys and never builds. Cynics know the future. Cynics know the hearts of industry. Cynics, sitting in their dark basements, typing on their 14" VGA screens, are smarter than anyone - You and me included. Why even talk to them?)

You sound cynical about the efficacy of discussion. :)

The poster is talking about buying music and then moving to Romania or somesuch place and not being able to use the songs he bought, which is UNTRUE. You CAN use the songs any way you want, anywhere you want. The bit in the Apple license you pasted is about **purchasing music via iTMS** outside of the US, where it's not supposed to be available. For out there who don't read much before replying: Songs - YES Service - NO

This interpretation had not occurred to me. It would be more acceptable than my described interpretation. I will feel more comfortable with it if Apple defines the term "service" to specifically mean "the download of a song in return for payment", and to specifically exclude "the ongoing usage of purchased music". Right now they make no such explicit distinction. I don't know what they'd say in a press conference, but until it's in their terms (AND those terms prohibit them from changing the terms) the power remains in Apple's hands to do as they please and remain within the law.

I'm not made of stone. Apple can placate me on this point easily. All they need to do is define the term "service" as described (defining terms is a *very* standard thing to do in contracts) and contractually guarantee that no future changes to their terms of sale will retroactively affect previous purchases.

Re:I beg to differ

[jtrascap]

"You sound cynical about the efficacy of discussion. :)"

I'm never cynical about discussion - I always welcome active participation in a good speaking point. I do hate people who merge and confuse issues, then pander or spin their way out if it. I am expecially annoyed with people who start a sentence with "The reality is...", as if they're the only one's with a claim to the facts. It's only a technique for re-framing an argument into something they want to push. People need to listen more to the language in which it's said, and not guess a general sentiment. Later on, it's likely that language is also their escape hatch...

But hey - no offense taken, hopefully none conferred! ;)

The following poster is right-on the mark too: Apple has pointedly been pushing the notion that the music is ALREADY yours. You bought the CD. You have a right to take it with you as you see fit.

We're just trying to seperate the notiions of iTunes and the iTMS. iTMS is a service channel for delivery, iTunes is the vehicle for playback.

iTunes does work with other players besides iPod

[jo_ham]

iTunes on the Mac does work with other players besides the iPod. My friend has a Creative Nomad and it works perfectly with iTunes (although only at usb 1 speeds).

The firewire interface is very nice for rapid syncing of music and information. Obviously it's useful when you first dump your collection to the pod, but it makes life so much slicker when you add a new album to your library or the odd song here or there - updating to the iPod in seconds rather than minutes.

iTunes will no doubt work with usb 2.0 players if you have compatible hardware (a G5 for example).

Re:One minor detail

[Graff]

Wait a second, this is the guy who copyrighted silence right? So how do you write 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence? All rests? That just makes it even more funny.

Amazing, absolutely amazing.

They can make more

[TheInternet]

No, no, a thousand times no. Apple is ALREADY selling Macs faster than they can make them.

If they get more orders, they've buff up manufacturing and shipping. It's not like Apple wouldn't be able to make more Macs, it's just there's a critical mass to move from one tier of production output to the next.

Apple doesn't give a FLYING SHIT about market share.

Well, they do care about market share, of course. It just isn't their sole metric of success ala Dell or Microsoft. No question their overriding priority is creating a great product.

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.

Amen to that. The raw output has been mind blowing, pure and simple.

- Scott

Drivers

[TheInternet]

Don't expect that porting Linux or FreeBSD drivers to Mac OS X should be trivial either

Depends on the type of driver. Mac OS X has used CUPS for printing since Jaguar, and Panther includes Gimp-Print.

- Scott

Re:This is why

[mr100percent]

Troll.

Apple got their temporary partnership with MS. In exchange, MS promised to make Office and IE for the Mac until recently (this years?), and Apple dropped their lawsuit.

MS only purchased 5% of non-voting stock in the deal, which they sold later at profit, so they didn't "beg for crumbs" as you put it.

Mac OS X API services

[TheInternet]

OS X uses BSD as its base

And even that's not perfectly accurate. Mach and BSD work together at the core of the OS. Mach is really in control at the lowest levels, and BSD jumps in at various parts for things like permissions, networking, filesystem support, etc.

If they want to access a file, they probably use Carbon or Cocoa file-access functions

That's true, yes. But both Cocoa and Carbon go down to the C-based CoreFoundation libraries for core functionality. CoreFoundation is part of Darwin.

If they want to have threads, they use Carbon or Cocoa thread functions, or they use Mach threads if they need something lower-level.

It's a little more complicated than that. These pages probably describe it best:

Tasks and Processes
Threading Packages

Not trying to step on toes, just thought I'd fill in some gaps.

- Scott

Re:This article also on

[Disevidence]

Stop being such a stupid karma whore. FOAD.

Some album deals exist on iTunes Music Store

[VeloDrax]

Classic rock bands used to record fewer but longer-than-average songs for each album. Now, many of these Classic Rock albums sell for less than $9.99 at the iTunes Music Store, i.e. complete albums @ $.99 per song (of course, some record labels like Pink Floyd's charge full price and them some regardless the number of songs). Rush Permanent Waves, $5.94. Rush Moving Pictures, $6.93. Yes, $7.92. Boston, $7.92. Van Halen 5150, $8.91. Three Neil Young albums come in at $8.91. And hey, if we have any masochists out there, David Lee Roth Crazy from the Heat is only $3.96.

iTunes? Big deal...

[dokhebi]

I will be impressed with Apple when they announce, and deliver, iTunes support for Linux.

What I will and won't buy on iTMS

[sjonke]

Having had the chance to let iTMS for Mac settle, I find that I'm no longer interested in buying music from iTMS in general. Even though the DRM is relatively light, it none-the-less gets in the way if you don't have an iPod, which I don't. On top of that the bit rate isn't high enough for my tastes and even if it were an iTMS track is still less flexible than a CD and, by design, requires jumping through hoops to get it into another format. To me it's not worth $9.99+/-per CD or there about.

So when would I buy a track from the iTMS? I recently purchased a single track because I needed a clip from a song I didn't have on any CD for use in an iMovie I was creating. I had no desire to have the whole album and nor did I particularly care whether or not I ever heard the track in any other circumstance. For that the iTMS is perfect - I got the track I wanted and only paid 99 cents for it. Yes, anyone can watch the video and listen to the music even though it's protected AAC. That's where iTMS remains valuable to me, but not for purchasing tracks I listen to regularly - for that a CD is still the way to go.

Re:Because the damn thing doesn't work.

[EelBait]

That's pretty cool. Too bad it only holds 1/2 hour of music. Otherwise, the concept is nice.

One other thing I like about the iPod (for Mac anyway) is the ability to display contacts, calendars, and notes (like a PDA). Or use it to shuttle files between home and work.

Personally, I like this carrying case for the iPod.

Re:Neato, but... What about the children?!! ;)

[Chordonblue]

I guess the other point I should've made here is that the more obvious problem is one of convenience. If it's easier to get a friend to burn a copy of that Busta Rhymes CD, or use some Kazaa-like app to get it for free, it can't be near as beneficial for the industry when they had it locked up at the music stores.

Ultimately, the industry will need to appeal to other age groups online as well. There's a good chance that older people will more than make up the difference if it's easy enough to use with not so many stupid restrictions. Time will tell, but in a way, everyone's voting with their feet now.

Fresh air for Canada!

[axxackall]

Wow! That's great for that price! I am buying it now! Screw that America-centric maczealot-oriented Apple store - I am buying it from the Free Europe :)

FairPlay

[Llywelyn]

>btw how are they handling the whole DRM thing?

I really should just say RTFM... Sigh.

Apple's DRM is called FairPlay and it applies as follows:

* You can make as many backups as you like.
* You can play it on up to three of your computers as a time. If you switch computers you can de-authorize your old computer and re-authorize.
* You can have it on as many iPods as you like.
* You can burn it to as many CDs as you like.

My guess is that you will only be able to play them with iTunes, but if iTunes for the PC is anywhere close to iTunes for Mac that won't be a problem.

Re:this is the problem

[angle_mark]

Hey won't we be using quantum computers by then? Just brute force the damn thing! :-P

128 kbps

[Llywelyn]

> but what I _do_ mind is a crappy 128bps recording.

You might want to listen to them before you make that judgment.

While I am not an audiophile, the 128 kbps AAC files, which they rip from the original masters, sound good to my ears and are significantly better than mp3s in headphones. I've been reripping my library from my CDs using 192 kbps, which I wouldn't even have considered with mp3s.

Now, as another poster pointed out, if you want full-CD, i.e. lossless, you are not in Apple's target market. Period, end of story. Full stop.

You also don't seem to get that Apple should only offer one version. The fewer buttons and decisions the average consumer has to make that they don't understand, the better.

MusicMatch already available

[scott37]

I don't recall slashdot mentioning this service. Downloads are $.99 and it seems comparable to what I know iTunes has. They also have nice commercial-free radio stations that let you skip songs you don't like.

Re:This is why

[t0ny]

Ah. I see. So Apple gave MS the honor of making a web browser (for which MS received no profit) and making Office, which turned out to be the best office software on that platform, but most likely didnt generate enough revenue to make it worth the effort.

Seems like a whole lot of largess on Gates part, if you ask me.

Re:this is the problem

[user no. 590291]

LOL

Let's watch it flop

[alienw]

Apple really has a loser here. They are no longer dealing with Mac users, who would rather pay $500 than think 10% harder. Who in their right mind would pay 99 cents for a song encoded at a paltry 128k in some weird format? Only Apple zealots, who already buy hardware that is both slower and more expensive than common PC hardware. PC users are smarter and will simply use KaZaA.

Re:This is why

[mr100percent]

Sure MS made profit for making IE for Mac. They increased their sales of IIS and Frontpage because they told customers that they were compatible with the Mac markets.

Actually, Office for Mac is actually very profitable for them, since they have a higher penetration rate into the market than on the PC side. Plus, Office for mac is better than for windows, the windows release copied bits from the Mac side.

Re:This is why

[tbone1]

Also, the anti-trust trial was a concernthen, so M$ making Office and IE for the Mac made a lot of sense for their legal defense.

I heard that!

[filmsmith]

I'm pissed that I'm now stuck with a wonderful gadget which is now completely worthless.

Yeah, I'd be pretty pissed if I was stuck with a Windows 98 operating system, too. Though calling it 'Wonderful' may be a bit of a stretch...

Re:This article also on

[the argonaut]

and how does that deviate from standard /. operating procedure? :)

Re:Because the damn thing doesn't work.

[Kazoo the Clown]

Get a clue, there are easy adapters available to run the iPod thru your cassette deck (or thru the radio).

Yeah, but the iPod costs twice as much as this thing, doesn't take up extra space and cabling in my car, and (despite what some idiot said about 1/2 hour) can store some 6 hours worth of music as Mp3 files, which is enough to keep in my car at a time.

Re:Because the damn thing doesn't work.

[Kazoo the Clown]

That's pretty cool. Too bad it only holds 1/2 hour of music. Otherwise, the concept is nice.

Check it out again-- 64M of mp3 files is something like 6 hours, not 1/2 hour...

Apple has already answered this, very subtly

[FredFnord]

Apple has already answered this question, but you really had to be paying attention to notice it. When the fellow tried to sell his iTunes-purchased song via eBay, Apple's comment was: we believe that this is legal, but probably not logistically feasible.'

The reason they believed it was legal was because of the dictates of the right of first purchase. However, if the right of first purchase is in fact applicable here (as Apple has said it is), then you are the owner of the song in question, and it can no longer be considered a 'service'. I believe there are also very strict regulations about how a contract you signed when purchasing something can be changed, even if it has a 'we can change this contract any time we feel like it' clause in it.

-fred

Re:This article also on

[Blondie-Wan]

Touche.

Re:This is why

[t0ny]

Please supply the supposed source of your claims. I find them highly unlikely.

I would like to see a statement from a SINGLE person who bought a server for IIS solely because the pages hosted on it would be Mac compatible.

Also, since MS Office is the best office suite on the comparitively TINY Apple market, its hardly surprising they have a greater market penetration. Its very easy to dominate a niche market; you just port your product which is vastly superior to their existing options. However, MS Office for Mac and PC are not different. But if it makes you sleep better at night to think that the Mac version is better, go right ahead. It must be difficult to feed that superiority complex all the time, especially in light of all the contrary evidence.

Just to flip the coin, however, there isnt ONE application made by Apple which is a "best of class" on the PC. In fact, I would rather have my scrotum sawed off with a rust spoon than so much as install even Quicktime on my PC. Apple software is a pretty consistant OS killer.

Re:This is why

[t0ny]

that makes no sense. You are saying that MS became LESS of a monopoly by making Office and IE for the Mac? What Bizzaro-world logical leap leads you to that conclusion?

got 'The wait'?

[danalien]

>So...what happens when the other 95% gets to play?

nothing, nada, zilch, inget, njet'zki, nicht'ski... etc ;-)

Why? do you ask? ... well, we allready found a better, and oooh yes, I mean _better_ sercive (and I mean _a paying service_, not file tradeing..).

there's a saying, "if you want something _done_ properly , turn/go to the russians" ;-) ... www.allofmp3.com

you can even choose your _encoding_ to what sooths your needs/taste to "the bigger biterate, the bigger my balls are!"-moto ;-) . mp3 (up to 384 kbit/sec), wma (up to 320kbit/sec), ogg (up to 320kbit/sec), mpc (up to 270kbit/sec), and *drum rolls* MPEG-4 AAC [mp4] (up to _320_ kbit/sec).

Price?
Traffic subscription:

• No limits to number of files for download
• Your VIP account active till you have at least one cent on it
• No download speed limitations: speed up to 100 mbps
• Support service
• Cost: only $0.01 per 1 megabyte of data. (that's $1 per 100 megabyte..., where a complete album can cost from about ~$0.6 to ~$1.7, depending on quality of encoding and quantity of tracks...)

Monthly subscription:

• Monthly pay
• Download speed up to 256 kbit/sec (3 streams by 10 Kb/sec)
• You can download up to 1000 files monthly
• Support service
• Cost: only $14.95

and there are:
16809 albums of 5463 artists and 200517 compositions
1053 videos of 318 artists
that's over 14167 hours music non-stop! you can choose from!!!


oooh, yeah; *mega _drum rolls_*, the service is platform independent, works for everyone who has a browser ;-) .. so ppl like me *linuxboy*, don't have to run windows software thur winex or even worst, *yrk*, dual-boot Winx'P

Re:I fear this is too late

[Fatmiko1]

You know, I personally think Quicktime for Windows is like one of the nicest Windows application. It's simple enough, yet elegant at the same time. I hope iTunes looks the same on both platforms.

Re:Because the damn thing doesn't work.

[EelBait]

I don't think so. At 128kbps, you get about 1M/minute of decent-sounding music. I had a Rio with 32M and could only get about 1/2 hour out of it. The only way you'd get 6 hours out of 64M is to compress the Hell out of it. Maybe down to 32 kbps. Even then I don't think you could get six hours.

If you read both ads carefully, you'll see they say the battery gives six hours of music and nine hours of spoken content, which is probably true. But you'd have to play your 1/2 hour of music in a loop.

Re:Because the damn thing doesn't work.

[Kazoo the Clown]

The only way you'd get 6 hours out of 64M is to compress the Hell out of it. Maybe down to 32 kbps.

The 64M is on a memory card which you can upgrade to 512M, and since 6 hours is 360 minutes, at 1M/minute that should fit nicely...