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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.
that music blips and skips A LOT when running on iTunes whenever you do ANYTHING else, even if it's just like opening Explorer or moving windows? When I tried it on my machine, it was very noticable, especially compared to Winamp 3, which hardly blips at all for me. My machine's no slouch, either - it's a P3 1.1 GHz with 512 MB RAM running XP Pro. I had like 3-4 programs open along with iTunes: a FTP client, Visual Studio .NET, and Mozilla, I think.
I was just wondering if anybody else had similar problems. I mean, the interface is great, but if I can't code in VS while listening to music, then it's not very worth it to me.
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ROFL! Talk about naked FUD. Choice, choice, choice. Yeah, that's the Microsoft Way, isn't it? NOT. What hypocrisy!
It's not even accurate. You CAN burn iTunes Store music to a CD. Rip it again to MP3, put it on any device you want. Oh wait, iPods are just about the best device you can use, so I'm just guessing that if you have an iPod you don't have too many other devices you care to have. For that matter, no matter what device you have, you probably don't have too many others. Why would you? Use what works and done with it.
Choice in music? Well, the biggest choice is probably Kazaa, but that's beside the point. We're talking about the pay sites, and iTMS has 400,00 and growing. Not much of a problem, and becoming less so as time goes on.
Apple just signed with Pepsi and AOL to do cross-marketing. That's some big partners to get the word out. But the word is out already. I see so many iPods in use it's amazing. In short, Apple did something right and Microsoft is running scared about it. 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.
Windows media == closed format supported completely over windows and partially on the Mac and *nix. AAC == open format (Mp4) supported completely over all major platforms. DRM rules -- unlimited CD burning over the iTunes music store, three separate computers able to play downloaded tracks, unlimited iPod transfers. I truly don't understand the criticism coming from MS over the iTMS and iTunes music software. Apple has never claimed it's the end-all software jukebox -- but, as others have pointed out, it's very simple and straighforward. Much like iMovie compared to FCP or CakeWalk to ProTools, iTunes is a simple way to manage a library of music and transfer it to a number of different formats. You can easily convert CD's burnt from Mp4 (AAC) tracks over to mp3 by merely ripping the burnt CD. That allows folks to still use Mp3-CD's with their entire collection and to share them with whomever they'd like. All that I feel coming out of Redmond right now is Hot Air....especially after hearing Longhorn ain't arrivin' until '06. Long time to wait, so I'm sure there will be lots of potshots directed at Apple in the meantime.
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
Our users expect flexibility, therefore we will make sure nothing we make talks to ipod or itunes.
Itunes is too limited for our users who are so complex they only want M$.WMA.
Poop on all the closed source DRM gimped up garbage. Zaurus cost $200, plays mp3 and ogg and takes non DRM'd compact flash. Get Open Zaurus and you can mount up a nice ext2 filesystem for all your long filenames, archiving and all that. Get a $100 wifi card and the thing can talk to any music server you would like to set up. Now that is total flexibility, why would anyone settle for less?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My Mac friends told me to download iTunes for the PC. I leap at the chance to badmouth Apple products any chance I can, so I went ahead and downloaded it. I wasn't interested in the store side of things, I just wanted to see how the player stood up against Winamp.
Let me say that over the years, I have tried dozens of MP3 players, only to keep coming back to Winamp. And yes, I'm one of the few that admits to liking version 3 more than 2.x.
Anyways, I've been searching for a long time for an app that will create a good, reliable, playable index of all my songs. I remember when Freeamp came out, its big claim to fame was the ability to build an index of songs according to their ID3 tags. Unfortunately, the app would ALWAYS crash while indexing. I went back to Winamp.
Eventually, the app I found that came the closest to doing what I wanted was MusicMatch jukebox. The problem came in its sorting - it would sort by album/artist/whatever, but I wanted an app that would sub-sort the songs in the order they appeared on the album.
For the record, I have about 300 albums' worth of songs. Each album has its own folder, and the songs are numbered in the order they appear on the album. I'm a big stickler for listening to songs in the order they were intended to be heard.
So I download iTunes. No, I don't want it to be my default audio player. You gotta earn that trust. No, I DO NOT want Quicktime to be the default video player! Why the hell are you asking me this? I tell it to index all my music, and not to copy the songs into the My Music folder (this is just plain dangerous for people that don't know how to organize their local files. I see lots of disks filling up due to copies of their songs living in multiple folders).
I fire it up, and nothing. Go into prefs, tell it where the songs live, and RE-TELL it not to associate Quicktime with my movie files (sigh).
This time it indexes all my songs. Pretty slick, if HUGE, interface. Still doesn't sub-organize songs by order on their album. But wait! Edit - Options - view track number! Huzzah!
Since my MP3 ripper of choice automatically puts the track number into my ID3 tags, suddenly I can see what order the songs are in! And it automatically sub-sorts by track number! This is huge!
The longest I used an MP3 player other than Winamp was probably the 2-day stint I did with Sonique back in 99 or so. But iTunes just might break that record. I'm very happy with it thus far. The only complaint I have is that it doesn't appear to have a 'compact' mode, where I can shrink the player to a reasonable size. Instead I have this huge monstrocity of an app on my desktop. But if it's the price I pay for a reliable, indexing MP3 player, so be it.
This article is ridiculous. Who cares what ANY company's PR group says about a competitor's product? It's always going to be the same: OUR COMPETITOR SUCKS. This article is just trolling for "M$ is stoopid" posts. The story is iTunes, not what any other company says about 'em.
Right. iTunes lets you rip to AAC, MP3, WAV, or AIFF. iTMS purchases are limited to a protected version of AAC, but they can be freely burned to CD, after which there's no protection anymore. Other music players should be able to add the ability to play non-protected AAC files fairly easily. The protections on purchased songs really just keep you from putting them on P2P networks, web sites, or emailing them to other people. The latter can be gotten around if they also have iTunes AND you trust them with your authorization password.
This is just about Microsoft worrying about their licensing revenues for WMA, and their reflex rejection to any standard or protocol they don't fully own. That's why you can't even rip to MP3 with WMP9.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
Its rather interesting to see the issue of choice brought up in this context. While the point is a good one, it misses the mark for a couple of reasons.
First, Apple is the current "innovator" in this market.
All jukebox hardware devices are compared to Apple's iPod. The iPod is clearly the leader in the market and defines the scale by which all others are measured. Apple leads the market with an outstanding combination of features, user interface, and overall design - from the iPods compact size to its pleasing, slick look.
The same same is true of the iTunes Music Store. Apple was the first to deliver a service that offered a decent selection, at an acceptable price, with acceptable DRM restrictions. With this service, one is able to not only get a quality download, but retain some degree of ownership; more if you're willing to jump through the very clear loopholes created by the service. Which isn't to say Apple's service got all all right - more on that later.
Apple does have its competitors - and there are clearly products coming out that are designed to directly compete with the iPod and iTunes Music Store. But if Windows users want to take advantage of the leading products, iTunes is the gateway. In this context, choice is not the issue.
But what if choice is important? Users will need to avoid DRM restrictions. And they'll want to use standard formats like MP3 and (now growing in popularity) Ogg Vorbis that can be played on a wide variety of software and hardware.
The iPod is still an option in this case... if your choice of format is MP3. But you'll have to look elsewhere if you prefer Ogg Vorbis. Some of the iPod competitors offer that choice - a distinction that may cost Apple some sales.
When it comes to music service, neither Apple's offering nor any service featuring Microsoft's technology offers the end user real choice. There are some small label services that manage to deliver a fairly nice catalog of music from non-RIAA affiliated sources. But then, the selection is indeed limited if the end user expects to find their old favorites.
If consumers want true freedom and choice, they will have to continue using the current collection of illegal music swapping systems. And that has been the problem all along. When it comes to the business of music, choice has never been a consideration. It still isn't. The irony of the situation is that this mind set has created an increasing market for "pirated" data - a market industry trade groups become more and more vocal about and have taken more and more drastic actions to curb. What this does to consumer mindshare is fodder for other discussions.
Microsoft is correct to point out choice. But they're wrong in how it applies to the situation at hand.
Oh yeah, the iPod is just as smooth as iTunes and more. It really is a cool as everyone says. It's simple, it works, it gets out of your way, and it does its job perfectly. Not only that but it looks good doing it. The best thing is that just about every software update for the iPod has improved how it works so it's almost like getting a new iPod every couple of months, with new games, functions, features, etc.
I use my iPod for listening to music but I can tell you that's only part of what I like it for. I am constantly using it to store information I need to shuttle from one computer to another. I have contact information on there so I can call up a persons phone number or address in a second. It is great for storing little notes such as directions or shopping lists. The best thing is that all of these features can be displayed without a computer, they appear on the iPod display. So no carrying around address books or little pieces of paper, I shove it all on the iPod. Now you are able to do voice recordings and store digital photographs on the iPod. Very cool additions that I can see a million uses for.
As far as getting a Macintosh I have always said that people should get the computer they feel most comfortable with. I can personally say that for me Macs have the perfect balance between simplicity and complexity. If you want to just stay in the GUI then pretty much is simple and just works, if you want to use the Terminal then everything is as geeky as you want it. It's a great balance and I enjoy both sides of Mac OS X.
Sapere aude!
AND have every AOL user on the planet instantly be abel [sic] to use the ITMS (it uses the credit card from the AOl account)
This is an interesting part of the deal, to be sure. Does anyone know if this means that AOL will ship iTunes for Win on their CDs? Or what? Not being an AOL user, can someone explain how this looks to them? ie Does one find the music they like (listed by AOL), click on the button--which takes the user to the iTMS, purchase the music--and then what? Do you have to download iTunes then? How much clue is given that this is required? Or does the iTMS music play in a AOL media jukebox?
I think that iTunes for Win is especially interesting, because, if I'm not mistaken, to install it a Win user also gets Qucktime installed--which is a trojan to a lot of other media opportunities for Apple. So, if AOL starts shipping iTunes for Win on their CDs, and then by extension, every AOL user has the latest version of QT installed--all of a sudden, QT is a market leader, or damn close.
Will someone who admits to the use of AOL elaborate on the default tools?
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$tar -xvf
Brief correction.
IIRC, AAC is actually an ISO standard and is used in MPEG4 and is significantly better than mp3s which are at much higher bitrates. WMA is wholly owned by Microsoft and doesn't seem to offer appreciable sound benefits over mp3s.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I have not Turned it off in over 6 months, just reset after Dling updates, and rest of the time, shut it and go, then open it back up and within a second or two it powers up and ready to go.
I work as a small business consultant (technology mainly) and I tell every one to spend the extra money on a Mac. So far I've only had 1 out of about 23 clients not like mac, because "it doesn't have solitare". Everyone else likes them because they don't crash, everything works, easy to use, and gets them the basic software they need. Quickbooks, MS Office, and even Point-of-Sale software that is easy to use with an USB hand scanner and cash drawer.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.