Apple to Launch iTunes for Windows

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

Comments

Re: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: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: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: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?

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.