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Microsoft Dismisses Apple's iTunes for Windows
fewnorms writes "Microsoft's general manager for the Windows Digital Media division, Dave Fester, yesterday dismissed the new iTunes for Windows version, saying it was too limited for the average Windows users. Choice quote: "[Apple's music store] ... is a drawback for Windows users, who expect choice in music services, choice in devices, and choice in music from a wide-variety of music services to burn to a CD or put on a portable device." Of course Apple doesn't feel to worried about this, simply stating their products will (and have) lived up to the hype." The points made are all valid- but contradictory to standard Apple product design where simplicity always takes priority over flexibility. Besides, iPod is growing market share, and iTunes will be the best choice for windows users who own it.
There's no scripting required for smart playlists, just pick what you want from a couple lists. It's all pointy clicky.
be sure to check out your QT settings in the control panel. If the audio out is set to DirectSound, you will probably experience muddy audio clarity. Change it to waveOut and the clarity should be just as good as it is in Winamp.
That is probably a hardware/OS problem. Your sound card IRQ is being shared with your video card's IRQ. You can check this by running MSINFO32 --> hardware resources --> conflicts/sharing. IRQ sharing occurs with Windows 2k/XP on older computers (older than P4/Athlon XP) with ACPI enabled. This problem is discussed on the WinAmp tech support boards in topics linked from here under the heading "RE: Skipping / freezing / distortion, clicking & popping during playback".
Centralization breaks the internet.
With only the Mac market so far, Apple captured, what, 30% of paid downloads. Now the other 90% can use their service, so watch out Microsoft.
No, with only the Mac market, iTMS has 70% of the paid music downloads. Imagine what they'll have after Pepsi will have given 100 000 000 songs for free!
30% is the iPod market share, and they have 50% of the revenues for portable digital players.
The death of the MP3 is upon us.
Microsoft's main complaint is that AAC is a closed format, which is only useful with iTunes, the iPod, Apple's Music Store, and QuickTime, and throwing the stone that the Windows Media Player format is compatible with 40 devices and several download sites... but let's face it, WMA is a closed system to. The WMA system has a few more choices, but not an unlimited number.
What I really see is a future where you're about to lock yourself into the music network you pick today. If you buy your music by AAC, then you're stuck in the Apple products universe, if you buy your music by WMA you'll get stuck in the Windows Media products universe. If you want to stay with MP3s, you'll either have to buy CDs or risk the P2P cops finding you...
Yeah, there are you options. How would you like to pay today?
IIRC, the Maximize/minimize buttons don't work the same as regular Windows UI buttons do. On the Mac, the "Maximize" button effectively toggles between mini-mode and full size mode. Try that.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
It's a bit un-Windows like, but press the 'maximise' button on the main window and it becomes the compact mode. I love it :)
...but of course it'll run even better on the Mac you buy next year... ;)
When will I finally have a good user interface to play music under linux?
When the linux developers start caring about interface design as much as they care about kernels.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
iTunes for Windows requires Quicktime 6.4 to be installed for it to work (or 6.3 for the Mac version).
Why?
Because all the decoding of the AAC files - both DRM'd and non-DRM'd - is completed through the QuickTime libraries (NOTE: this is also a way to get iTunes to play ogg/vorbis encoded tracks). ANY application that makes the appropriate calls to the QuickTime API can decode and play tracks ripped by iTunes into AAC and tracks downloaded from the iTMS (assuming the computer is authorized to play them).
So, in theory, it's possible to get WinAMP to play files downloaded from the store if you don't want to use iTunes as your player software. Toast for Mac already can burn tracks ripped by iTunes and/or downloaded from the iTMS onto an audio CD.
The only problem is audio device support, but Apple likes it's iPod sales and Hell already froze over, so we probably won't be seeing WMA support on the iPod or iTMS compatibility on 3rd party devices ever - or at least not until iPod sales start slipping in a major way.
Surprise, surprise.
Oh, and where exactly are you finding all this Dolby 5.1 music? Or do you just spin movie soundtracks at parties?