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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."
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
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.
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?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
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?
Because Apple's scheme has a better balance between consumer and producer rights. Maybe not ideal, but better than many of their competitors.
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?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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.
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.
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.
Why do people seem to tolerate DRM and crippled formats when Apple's peddling them?
Probably because you know what you are getting into, and its only $.99 for a track. I wouldn't want to spend $16 on a CD that I can only listen to in certain CD players.
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
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?"
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.........
--Sig? Uh, it's in my other pants.
And I'm sure that everyone on slashdot would agree, a single company having a dominating market share is what we want!
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.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
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?
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!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
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?
when I pay my buck, I don't mind DRM (as long as up front I know it's there) but what I _do_ mind is a crappy 128bps recording.
what I want is for my $.99 is:
a: 1 (drm restricted) full CD quality track (that I can write to CD a limited number of times using their tool)
b: 1 high bit-rate drm restricted mp3/ogg/wma equivalent for i-pod type devices
c: 1 128bps (drm or no drm) mp3 equivalent for flash based mp3 players.
that way they can be happy about controlling my access and I can still get decent quality sound..
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
here
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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?
In the words of Woody Flowers, "The most important thing is to make sure that the most important thing remains the most important thing."
At some point you have to look around the absolutes of file format particulars and the 'principles' of DRM.
Why? Because the pros far outway the cons.
I can play the music on three computers.
I can carry it all around on my iPod.
I can burn CDs all day long.
For all practical purposes, it sounds great.
The artists get paid.
I don't get subpoenaed.
Maybe I'm missing something but I'd really like to know the answe to this: what exactly is the untenable downside here?
All I can see "bad" is that (1) I can't play the music on one computer when I'm miles away from the other (but that's what the iPod's for) and (2) I can't hand the files to everyone in the world just because i feel like it.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
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.
It would in fact be more difficult to port iTunes to Linux than Windows. There are a couple of reasons for this:
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
They've got one...it sucks. Use MPlayer instead.
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.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
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.
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
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
Sapere aude!
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.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Look at Quicktime for PC. It duplicates a lot of Mac's UI concepts instead of trying to blend in like a windows app. As a result it's confusing - there are no OK buttons on its property sheets for one, so the user has to close the props window to save, something that generally discards the changes in the windows world.
Whatever you wanna say about MS, they did a great job of following Mac conventions in designing MacIE and Office for OS X. I just wish Apple could do as good a job when making windows apps.
Did anyone see the horrible software that they shipped with iPod? I'm not too enthusiastic about the windows incarnation of iTunes.
Ñ'
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.
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:
(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.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Now they just need to port the rest of OS/X to windows and we'd have something!! :)
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
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:
(Emphasis added by me.)
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
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.
There is no such thing as a standard AAC file. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a codec, not a file format.
.m4a files and the files that come from the iTunes Music Store are .m4p files.
Right.
The AAC files created by iTunes are actually
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).
Da Blog
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
.m4p to .m4a, and QT for windows glady plays the file.
When I want to do that, I copy the file over to my windows computer, change the name from
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....?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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.
t'nera semordnilap
Just before rolling out the dual-platform iPods, Apple was reporting that the Windows version of the iPod was selling at the same rate as the Mac version. With those rough numbers in hand, if you count on a similar conversion rate for the Music Store (I know, it's a wild ass guess), it seems that the Windows version should get at least as many customers as the Mac version.
Those who argue that Mac users are zealots are ignoring a few things. For one, Apple is slowly convincing Windows users that Apple can make great non-Mac products. Second, Apple's brand image in the youth market is extraordinarily strong. If there was ever a market dominated by youth tastes, music is it.
Reports of Apple arriving in the Windows music game too late ignore the fact that nobody else has been able to implement a Windows music service that consumers actually like. I don't think we'll see the Windows Music Store getting 20x the volume of the Mac version, but I do think it will be immediately profitable.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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.
Thanks for the compliment, I've never been happier to say that I use Windows at both home and at work.
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)
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
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 M4PRe-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.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
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.)
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Apple wouldn't be able to distribute the music without DRM, they simply wouldn't get the license to do so from the RIAA.
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.