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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
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
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 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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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!
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'
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).
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.
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 M4PYes, 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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