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iTunes for Windows Reviews
The iTunes stores provides one of the most liberal usage policies of any of the Internet music download services, matched by some of the best prices. Most individual tracks are 99 cents, most albums under $10. There is no subscription fee, so once you've downloaded it, you can listen to it forever. You can also burn CDs with the music you've purchases, provided you don't burn the same playlist more than 10 times.
These terms are a testament to the weight Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, pulls in the media industry. The fact that he was able to single-handedly negotiate such liberal licensing terms is simply amazing given the comparatively restrictive policies we've seen from other online music download services. Jobs clearly gets it, and he's dragging the music industry, kicking and screaming, into an entirely new way of thinking about online music distribution.
And now it's all available on the lowly Windows PC. We'll talk about the implications of Apple writing Windows software later, but for now, on to the review.
Installation
You start at apple.com and click the download link for the Windows version of iTunes. I thought perhaps I'd experience some sort of clunky installation experience - after all, Apple has never written any Windows software, let alone had to deal with the vagries of the Windows installation process. But the installation went off without a hitch, requiring one reboot.
Atfer the reboot, you launch iTunes, it asks you a few questions, and you are ready to go.
The iTunes Music Store
To download music, you must first create a user account. This is a fairly simple process. You provide an email address, credit card number and verification information. It's quick and painless, and when complete you are immediately logged onto the iTunes Music Store (iTMS from now on).
First, a little bit about the interface layout in iTunes. iTMS is presented as a browser pane within the iTunes software. A hierarchical "Source" sidebar on the left hand side of the screen allows you to switch between the Music Store, your own music libraries, shared libaries, CDs, Internet radio, and the iPod (though I don't have one, so I can't test this).
All of the various content choices are displayed in some way in the main browser pane. Along the top of the iTunes window you'll find a search box that works as well for the iTMS as it does for your own music libraries.
The iTMS is attractively laid out with quicklinks on the home page to top songs, top albums, featured artists, and celebrity play lists (what does Shaq listen to?). A drop down allows you to browse a particular genre (what, no separate genre for Heavy Metal?)
Click on an album you like and you are taken to an album details page. Here Apple takes advantage of the fact that iTunes is more than a simple web browser. The top of the browser pane shows cover artwork, top downloads from the album, and a "People who liked this, also bought" list (didn't Amazon patent that?).
The bottom of the browser pane shows a sortable list of all the tracks in a grid format. You can add and remove columns, chosing from Album, Artist, Comment, Composer, Disk Number, Genre, Time, Track Number, and Year. Double clicking on the track plays a short, 20 second sample of the music. The Artist and Genre columns provide little arrow icons that serve as links to display more music from that artist or genre.
At the top of the page you click "Add Album" to purchase all of the tracks, or click "Add Song" in the grid to purchase a single track. Some album's don't allow you to purchase the entire album, you have to buy all the tracks individually. Some tracks are available only when purchasing the entire album (these are marked "Album Only" and are usually longer tracks).
Buying and downloading music
Apple provides two options for purchasing music, a "1-click" option, and the traditional Shopping cart/checkout. I prefer the shopping cart. It helps keep down the impulse buys and the cart itself is pretty slick. When you select the shopping cart, the main browser pane shows a list of all the tracks you've selected for purchase. Tracks from a whole album purchase are nested under their album title. Almost all of the same functions (preview, links to other works/genres) are available in the shopping cart. At the top of the pane a list of "Recommendations based on the items in your cart" is shown. Ah, blessed be the up-sell...
After you click "Buy Now" you will be asked to provide your iTunes password. You can optionally tell iTunes to remember you password for music downloads, and you will not be prompted. After a final confirmation, the download begins. You can continue to browse the music store, listen to other music in your library, or rip CDs while the download continues. The status window at the top of the screen continues to show the download progress. You can also check up on the status of a download by looking on your "Purchased Music" folder, a sub folder of the Music Store folder.
iTMS Music Selection
I found plenty of variety in just about every genre I like. Apple claims 400,000 tracks from 5 major labels are available. If you like audio books, they've got 5,000 online. And no, Metallica, that fun loving band of music sharing nay-sayers, isn't available.
Burning CDs
The easiest way to burn a CD is to create a playlist with the tracks you want to burn. If the playlist contains any music you've purchased from the iTMS, you will only be able to burn that particular playlist 10 times. Not much of a restriction in my book.
Burning is as simple as selecting the play list, selecting the songs in the playlist you want to burn, then clicking the "burn disk" icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This confused me at first, because the icon is grayish before activation, it looks disabled to this long-time Windows user. But once clicked, it comes to life, turning into a little radioactivity icon that throbs and spins as the burn progresses.
The progress of the burn is displayed in the same place that the download status is displayed, the oval status window at the top of the screen. A little icon in the status window allows you to switch between "Now playing", download status, an equalizer, ripping status, and burning status. Another little 'X' icon in the status window allows you to cancel a download, rip, or burn.
I have to say that this layout is a marvelously efficient use of screen real-estate, and avoids the dialog box hell many similar programs suffer, but at first I found it a bit confusing, especially since it's not immediately obvious how to get the status window to display the status of the various tasks iTunes has initiated.
I burned several CDs and had no problem playing them on other PCs. There are only a few options to set for burning. You can explicitly specify the burn speed, and the format, picking between Audio CD, MP3 CD, and Data CD (I am assuming this is just a direct burn of the music files, in whatever format).
Music burning just works, and works well. In fact I burned a disc at the same time I was ripping another, and playing some downloaded music. Everything worked without a hitch, though CPU utilization was high enough that it slowed down other things on my machine.
iTunes also supports burning to DVDs but I believe this is still available on the Mac only. As I don't have a DVD burner handy, I can't test this.
Organizing your music
Even without the iTMS, Windows users should want iTunes for it music library management/jukebox features alone. iTunes blows away the competition in so many ways it's hard to catalogue them all.
Playlists
Let's start with the play lists. Playlists are added to the Source pane, along the left hand side of the screen. You can create a play list and add songs manually. You also have the ability to check and uncheck songs within a playlist, to disable and enable their playing after you've created the list.
The "Smart Playlist" feature allows you to build dynamic song selection criteria based on the meta tags (song attributes - artist, album, rating, genre etc...) For example I created an "Ella" play list for Ella Fitzgerald. This included three rules: "Album contains 'Ella'", "Artist contains 'Ella'", and "Song Name contains 'Ella'". These playlists can optionally update dynamically as new music is added.
You can tell the Smart Playlist to match 'Any' or 'All' of your criteria. Criteria include "contains", "does not contain", "is", "is not", "starts with" and "ends with". Criteria can be applied to any of the meta tags. The number of songs in the playlist can be limited to a specific number of songs, minutes, hours, or total file size.
The Library
Selecting the "Library" icon from the Source pane displays your entire music library in all of its glory. The bottom of the screen shows the total number of songs, number of days of music, and total size in Gigabytes. The default view is a sortable grid displaying all of the meta tags as columns. You can sort on each column. The columns can also be rearranged. Every column but the "Song Name" can be enabled and disabled.
All of the usual meta tags are present, along with some new ones (at least to me) "My Rating", "Play count" and "Last Played", and "Equalizer". That last one lets you specify an equalizer preset for that track only. You can also specify a volume preset when you view the track's Info page (this is not available in the grid view).
Most of the fields are editable in the grid display, just click on the text and wait a second, an edit box will appear, allowing you to type over the information. You can also perform bulk updates by selecting multiple songs then viewing the "Info" page for those songs. A "Multiple Song Information" dialog appears that allows you to update selected tag fields for all of those songs.
I found this to be very handy for my ratty old MP3 library. It was poorly catagorized, with many fields missing. The bulk update feature made for quick cleanup.
As in the music store, double clicking the track in the grid plays it. By default, when finished with a track, the player plays the next track in the list, based on the current sort order. You can select a "Shuffle" mode that plays random tracks. Repeat options include "Repeat Playlist", and "Repeat song". I'd like to have seen a "Repeat album" feature.
The Browse feature
When viewing the Library, or any playlist, you can click the "Browse" button in the upper right hand of the screen (minor nit, the "Browse" button looks like a large, poorly rendered eye). This toggles the browse pane, taking some real-estate away from the song list grid at the top of the screen.
The browse pane itself is broken into three panes, Genre, Artist, Album. Selecting a genre limits the artist pane to only those artists in that genre. Selecting an artist limits the album pane to only that artist's albums. As you are doing this selecting, the grid below dynamically updates to show only those tracks that meet the catagories selected above. It's a very quick way to see what you have at a glance, and to find a particular track, album or performer in a large library. Very cool.
Overall iTunes does an excellent job of allowing you to flexibly organize and find your music. The interface is clean and simple, but powerful.
Ripping
Simple. Stick a CD in, select it from the "Source" sidebar on the left hand side of the screen, and the click the "Import" icon. I was not impressed with the ripping speed, which seemed to vary between 2x and 4x. There doesn't appear to be anywhere to set or tune the ripping speed.
There are only a few configuration options for importing. You can set the import format, choosing between AAC (MPEG-4), AIFF (mac uncompressed), MP3, and WAV. For each of the formats you can pick the sample rate and stereo/mono. For AAC and MP3 you can select the bit rate (VBR is an option for MP3s).
iTunes uses CDDB to look-up album and track information. In my usage this performed flawlessly, recognizing all the albums I threw at it.
More on the AAC format
AAC is the default music encoding format (codec) for the iTunes player. Apple claims that 128kbps AAC encoding provides quality almost indistiguishable from the original, much better than a 128kbps MP3. To my ears it all sounds great. The AAC files I downloaded at 128kbps sound great. I rarely encode MP3s at that low a bit rate, so I really can't do a comparison.
The full name for the AAC standard is actually MPEG-4 AAC. Music purchased from the iTMS is downloaded in an encrypted version of this format (.m4p) which is presumedly proprietary to Apple. However, you can rip music into an unencrypted AAC format (.m4a).
AAC is not an open standard, but was developed by the MPEG group, which includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia. As a result any software or hardware that uses AAC has to pay a license fee. As AAC is realtively new, support may be sporadic for the format in other players.
As a test I ripped some CD tracks to AAC format and then tried them out in other players. The Real One player didn't recognize the .m4a file extension. After renaming the files with .mp4 file extension, Real One downloaded a decoder, but then failed to import the ripped tracks. Note that these should not be encrypted tracks, as I ripped them, they weren't purchased from iTMS.
Windows Media Player didn't know what to do with either file extension (and I have the fully up to date version 9). There supposedly exists a winamp plugin for MP4/AAC, but I did not test it. There also appears to be a burgeoning gray market in unlicensed MP4/ACC de/encoders.
Even if your other audio players can read the audio format, they may not be able to read the meta tags you've created in the iTunes software, as Apple apparently uses its own tag format. So, if you rip to AAC, expect that iTunes will be the only platform that is going to provide full access to your music, until other players fully support the format. Also, don't expect to play the purchased music in native AAC format anywhere but in the iTunes player because of the built in encryption/DRM (though you can certainly burn a disc, then rip to MP3 format, you will lose some of the native quality).
If any of this is a problem for you, just rip directly to MP3 format and be done with it.
Importing your existing library
When you install iTunes, it will ask you if you want to search for existing music. I passed on this option, preferring to tell it exactly where to look. Importing older libraries of MP3s is simple. Just use the "Add Folder to Library" feature in the "File" menu.
I pointed iTunes to the root folder of my entire MP3 collection, and it figured everything out, flawlessly importing all of the albums, along with all of the meta tags. By default it leaves the tracks in their current location (which is what I wanted). You can choose to consolidate your music library at a later point. This copies everything into you iTunes music directory.
The iTunes music library directory is configurable. By default in Windows it's under My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music. If you want to change it (as will many with large secondary drives used for music storage), make sure you do so before you start downloading, otherwise you might end up with music files in multiple locations.
Sharing your music
No, iTunes won't let you get in trouble with the Recording Industry by sharing your music with everyone else on the Internet. What it will do is allow you to export your full music library, or various playlists, to up to five other people on your local network. I didn't test this feature extensively, but it worked flawlessly between my desktop machine and my laptop over a Wi-Fi network. Apple calls this feature "Rendezvous", and it's been available on the Mac for a while now.
It just works. I fired up iTunes on the laptop, and the shared library, with all its playlist was immediately available in the Source pane. I'd suggest Microsoft take a page from this playbook. Anyone who has ever messed around with Microsoft's supposedly 'plug and play' home networking knows what I am talking about.
You can't do much with a remote music library, other than play it, and it's play lists. You cannot edit the meta tags, or create/edit play lists. Not a biggie, I am not sure I'd want that much flexibility anyway.
Sharing between users on the same machine
iTunes makes sharing music with other PCs on the network a snap, but it's a bit harder to share music between users of the same PC. At home I've set up my computer with an account for myself, and one for my fiancee. I installed iTunes in my account, and downloaded some music.
We wanted to see if my fiancee could use this music as well. The iTunes icon was on her desktop, but when we launched it, there was no music available in her Library. We changed her music libary to point to the music library iTunes had created for my user account, but still, nothing showed up in the play list.
We did mange to get it to work by exporting my Library using the "Export Library" option on the "File" menu. This allows you to save all of your playlists and track information to a massive XML file. We then imported this into iTunes when logged into her user account. It worked. This is a bit clunky though, and I doubt any meta tag updates she does will be reflected in my Library, and vice versa.
I imagine we could have manually added the music to her iTunes Library using the import functionality. The larger problem is that as we buy or rip more music we will constantly have to worry about keeping both account's Libraries and playlists in sync.
One cool way to work around this would be to use Windows XP's fast user switching. I haven't tried this (I run Windows 2000), but in theory with fast user switching you should be able to use Rendezvous between two users on the same machine.
Digital Rights Management
Digital Rights Management, or DRM, has become a dirty word in some technology circles. Many other music download services use DRM to lock you into their music player, force you to pay a subscription to keep listening to your music, and to tightly control what you can do with the music once you've downloaded it.
With iTunes, what's most noticable is how unobtrusive Apple has made the DRM. In fact, it's almost not present. Here are a list of things you can't do:
- Burn a play list with purchased music more than ten times
- Share music with more than 5 other computers on your local network
- Share music over the Internet
- Access your purchased music at full quality outside of iTunes
- Re-download music once you've successfully downloaded it once (remember to make backups!)
Internet Radio
iTunes provides a comprehensive list of Internet radio stations. I don't believe that Apple provides the content for any of these stations, but it does dynamically update the lists for each genre when you access them to ensure that the list remains fresh and defunct stations are removed.
I didn't exercise this feature too extensively, as I quickly found one of my favorite di.fm trance stations and spent the entire day at work listening to it - so I can't vouch for the quality or availability of the other stations. But there appears to be a wide selection, within a good variety of genres.
User Interface
If there is one thing I don't like about iTunes is the way it plays fast and loose with the various user interface metaphors. The iTunes player is a strange mixture between a "Brushed Metal" look, the native Mac OS X "Aqua" interface, and the boring old Windows native interface. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to what's used where.
The menus and most drop down lists are windows native, even if the controls that access them are the Aqua look alikes. For example, in the iTMS there is a drop down list labeled "Select Genre". It's rendered with the translucent Aqua look and feel, but clicking it displays a drab Windows native drop down list. Just weird.
Also, what's up with this brushed metal obsession of Apple's? Why should computer software look and feel like a 1970's stereo component? I don't know. Do you?
The interface overall is sluggish. Presumably because of whatever software Apple used to port the Aqua eye candy to Windows. I'd prefer to give up some of the eye candy for a bit more speed.
All things considered, the interface potpourri doesn't get in the way too much, and though sluggish it's still usable. So these are all minor quibbles. Apple did such an outstanding job in making iTunes a simple yet powerful way to organize your music, that a few minor interface issues can easily be overlooked. At least until the next release.
Stability
One might think that as a first attempt at Windows software that iTunes might be buggy or prone to crashes. It didn't crash once in my usage, and handled some heavy workloads without incident. In fact I had it burning, ripping, and playing all at once. I'll bet you could add downloading to that list without a hiccough. There have been some reports of iTunes locking up after install - Apple is currently investigating. I did not experienced that particular issue.
I did find some minor display issues where sometimes the screen didn't update properly. Particularly when ripping, the little check mark sometimes didn't appear next to the track after it was ripped. This didn't seem to affect functionality in any way, and the songs played fine after the entire CD was ripped.
Wider implications for Apple
For years, Apple has been writing superior software, but only for the Mac. This has been a way for Apple to draw users to the Mac platform. Apple's tight control of the both the software and hardware environment allowed them to provide a superior user experience. For Apple to produce Windows software represents a sea-change in this philosophy.
First of all it represents a huge risk to the Apple brand. If it doesn't work well, or crashes due to the weird hardware/OS combinations that are all too prevalent in the Windows world, they will tarnish that hard won reputation for quaility and ease of use.
Secondly, they are giving up one of the drivers that pushes people to purchase that high margin Mac hardware - the superior software, that used to be available only on the Mac. There are people who bought Macs simply because of the media software that came bundled. Now, there is one less reason to get a Mac. Will Apple port more of these goodies to the PC? Is Steve Jobs crazy?
Like a fox. Note that Jobs has no plans to port OS X to commodity PC hardware, nor has he made any moves to port any of the other software in his suite of media productivity tools to the PC. The reason he ported iTunes is because it's the best way to access the iTunes Music Store. Apple makes money selling music on the iTunes music store. Probably not much money yet, but certainly they will make considerably more money if they don't restrict users to the Mac platform. With the advent of iTunes for Windows, the iTunes Music Store became the largest distributor of online music overnight.
Remember also that Steve jobs is in the process of re-conceptualizing the Mac as a media hub, de-emphasizing the computer itself, for media accessories. The iPod is an outgrowth of this process. With iTunes on my PC, guess what's now on my Christmas list? An iPod. I've played with other MP3 players and they software they use to manage MP3 libraries. They sucked - hard. iTunes shows me that it can be easy - it should be easy. In a single stroke Jobs has vastly increased the market for the iPod.
So what Jobs has done is managed to increase the market for two of his newest alternative revenue streams (iPod and iTMS) without singificantly compromising the revenue stream that's funding everything (Mac sales). Brilliant, and very pragmatic, so unlike Jobs.
Summary
Steve Jobs claims that iTunes is the best software ever written for Windows. It's certainly the best music player/Jukebox ever written for Windows. I don't know that any of the others can match it, feature for feature.
With iTunes and the iTunes Music Store, I honestly can't see myself returning to buying CDs. It's just so much more convenient, and significantly cheaper to download and burn - and I don't care about the minor quality differences or the lack of cover art. This is what I've been waiting for. YMMV of course, but it's definitely worth a try.
I love the fact that the sharing under an OS X box can now be accesses without any other software on the host computer. iTunes for Macintosh Rocks & now with the advent of iTunes for windows, it rocks as well!
"I'd be smart if I didn't let thinking get in the way."
QuickTime for Windows?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It just works. I fired up iTunes on the laptop, and the shared library, with all its playlist was immediately available in the Source pane. I'd suggest Microsoft take a page from this playbook. Anyone who has ever messed around with Microsoft's supposedly 'plug and play' home networking knows what I am talking about.
Not quite so quick. Know why it 'just works'? BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE A HOME NETWORK. You've already spent the time to setup your windows machine and mac machines on the network. You suggest plug & play isn't so easy, but have ended up getting networking working.
It's that effort you've used to get the 2 itunes setups working. Without having done that, the 2 iTunes would not have a clue each other exists
"It just works" because you've already put the effort into setting up your network, NOT because of some fad named "rendezvous"
When there is KaZaA and Bittorrent? Unless the RIAA bucks up I don't feel like purchasing legal music, online or not.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Next time she walks past your room topless, please take a pic and post it please so that we can better participate in your sorrow. TIA.
And the iDisk utility for Windows.
I downloaded it on to my 800Mhz Sony VAIO laptop, it took about 10 minutes to install and needed a reboot (Don't remember Linux making me do that). After installing it loaded it up. First of all its dectection of music files is not that great, as it listed many mpeg and avi files as "music". It also installed QuickSlime on my computer which explained some of the bloat. It used the ugly brushed metal interface instead of Aqua and it didn't look right at all. Its nothing like the Mac version of itunes (I tried it on a G5 at pc world, it the Mac version rocks). Not only that, but the lack of support for .wma, .wav, .ogg. and .gcx files made it useless for my needs. I tried the Music store, but since I live in the UK, I could only listen to shitty bit rate 10 second previews of the songs. The visualisation sucked too, especially compared to the goom visualiser on Linux!
In conclusion, Slow, Ugly, Dosen't support my music. If you have a Mac and Live in the USA, then its probably right for you, but for everyone else its Windows Media Player or Rhythmbox for Linux/BSD users
I can confirm that hell has not in fact frozen over because Natalie Portman is still refusing to date me.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
You can also burn CDs with the music you've purchases, provided you don't burn the same playlist more than 10 times.
I wonder if they included this restriction just to please the music studios. This is quite possibly the easiest thing to get around - burn the CD once and then just copy that CD instead of burning the files again. Unlimited copies!
It doesn't even seem like it would be worth coding that in there unless the studios required it...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The previews are 30 seconds for a song, 90 seconds for an audio book. If you have one-click ordering on, then all the "Add Song"/"Add Album" buttons become "Buy Song"/"Buy Album". Apple have licensed Amazon's patents for one-click and "people who bought this also bought..." etc. (I believe they are the only other online store owner who have.)
Apple claim that the DVD burning works on Windows. As a Mac user I can say that iPod synching is effortless - I would assume that the Windows software operates the same (the iPod supports Firewire and USB 2). Apple have admitted that the iTMS makes no money at the moment and mainly exists to sell iPods.
The 5 computers thing is a restriction on the number of machines you can authorize to play DRMed music. You can share your own rips with as many on the local network as you like. You can also authorize a machine at work and copy your music there to play, but that's one less machine at home obviously. Rendezvous is very cool - it's basically plug-n-play IP (using wacky multicast DNS).
Various people have found ways to share a library between different users on Mac OS X, I would assume that similar hacks can be used with the Windows version - Google may turn up something helpful.
"Hell has frozen over" proclaims the front page of Apple.com.
Maybe they mean: "I'll pay for music when I can download it for free, when....."
-- IANAL, BIPOOTV
iTunes 4.0 could originally share with anyone on the Internet (I still have this version on my Macs, am sharing radio shows recordings this way, legally).
Soon came the 4.01 update, which would just block sharing to non-local (routable) IPs. And quickly after that came iCommune / 401ok, an utility that diverts the sharing service from port 3689 to port 4689, effectively making it accessible from routable IP addresses.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I'm not sure if Quicktime for Windows deserves the title "software". It's not quite as bad as RealPlayer, but ugh. Everytime I try to play a QT file now, it searches through my CD drive for something. If there's not a disc in there, it tells me there was an error reading the disc. Reinstalling didn't help at all. What on earth is it doing? Not much I can do about it, either, since a lot of things are released in QT format... (movie trailers especially)
I'd much rather have mpeg/avi. Hell, I'd even take asf.
I think it's a plot to get us to buy Apples.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
From the review;
"...after all, Apple has never written any Windows software, let alone had to deal with the vagries of the Windows installation process..."
Erm, QuickTime?
[)amien
I don't know where Steve gets the idea it would take hell freezing over before iTune$ would run on windows, that seemed obvious.
What will take hell freezing over is when OS X runs on intel (officially), not just one app.
Wax on, wax off baby!
iTunes will install quicktime without asking.
Nothing bugs me more than that silly Q sitting in my taskbar doing nothing but wasting memory. Yes, I know I can turn it off, but why should it do this in the first place?
What, exactly, does quicktime have to do with playing music? Am I wrong in thinking it's mainly meant to play movies?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
With the right mix of cooperation with Windows and competition, Apple could be on a major comeback trajectory. I just downloaded and tried the itunes store for Windows and it's great! Now, all Apple has to do is come out with a kickass line of sub-$1000 systems with big hard drives, Superdrives and the Panther OS, and they have a chance at swiping some Windows mindspace as Microsoft dawdles away with their ever-shifting release of Longhorn.
Has anyone else noticed that there are a lot less +5 comments recently? Did the powers that be change the amount of moderation points that they hand out or is the quality of comments going down?
whats gonna happen when Apple computers lose the lawsuit ? "but they wont lose" you say, seeing as AAPL have lost every single time for the last 25years they have been sued by ACL i very much doubt they will win, so then what ?
"buy ACL off" you say, do you really think Paul Mcartney needs the cash ? he is already one of the richest people on the planet and if that was the case where they would be bought off they would of done it years ago.
i cant help feeling the world is gonna come crashing down round AAPL's ears in the next couple of years which is rather a risk to take seeing as the odds are stacked way against them, irresponsible comes to mind not that jobs cares he can walk away a billionaire regardless
Maybe if they had chosen an original name 25years ago they wouldnt have the shit they are just about to jump into
The main oversight I've noticed in reviews of iTunes is performance/efficiency, and it just so happens that performance is my major gripe with iTunes, and actually the main reason why I don't plan to use it.
iTunes uses around 40 MB of RAM on my WinXP SP1 machine, with no music files in my library and nothing playing. Add in the iPod driver and the iTunesHelper app that it runs in the background, and you've probably got around ~60MB of RAM usage on average. Winamp uses 8-10 megs in comparison.
Resizing the iTunes window is insanely slow - 100% CPU usage, and it takes a quarter to half second just for the screen to update while resizing the window. Oh yes, and if the Music Store is open? It takes, I kid you not, more than a second for the screen to update while resizing. The resizing performance seems to increase a little when the window gets small, which implies that the entire iTunes window is being buffered offscreen (which probably explains some of the RAM usage too.) I also noticed that dragging the volume slider would peg my CPU at 100%. I don't have a low-end machine, and I can only imagine how horribly slow iTunes must be on older machines. On one hand, though, iTunes didn't seem to lag when playing music and things like that. Switching playlists/views on the Source sidebar usually took between a half second and two seconds. Playing a 96KBPS MP3 radio stream used an average of ~8-12% CPU usage, which while not terrible is a lot more than Winamp uses to do the equivalent on my system. The iTunes visualizer averages a decent framerate of around 30FPS, so it looks smooth, but it obviously pegs the CPU.
iTunes's setup is also around 20 megs, which is a bit hefty for a music player. But since you get CD burning, iPod support, and online music purchasing in the deal, it's not too bad, but it probably is a little painful for modem users.
The iTunes executable is nearly 8 megabytes. I can't imagine that this does anything to help the ~6 second load times for iTunes that I experienced on my system (which has 768MB of DDR233 RAM, and an Athlon XP 1800+, FYI.) In comparison, Winamp loads in under a second. It seems to me almost that every single library and component iTunes uses is static-linked in, which is a bit bizarre.
Just to weigh in on the rest of iTunes:
The GUI is, overall, acceptable. I've never cared much for the Apple 'steel/silver/whatever' look, and while it's not bad, I can't say that it looks terribly attractive. One peculiar thing is that the titlebar looks very strange and is neither the titlebar that you see in OS X, or the standard Windows one - I can't say I understand their choice to roll their own titlebar, as the iTunes one lacks a few usability features of the Windows titlebar that I've come to rely on (context menu, icon, etc).
In comparison, the iTunes preferences dialogs are very well designed and use Windows XP themes when available, so they look mostly pleasing to the eye and are easy to navigate for someone who is comfortable with Windows.
iTunes adds a simple but useful system tray icon that lets you change tracks and turn shuffle/repeat on and off. Good feature, I'm glad they didn't leave it out.
One strange GUI quirk is that there are two options for Exit on the iTunes File menu - Exit, and Close Window. One would assume that Close Window would just close the window and leave iTunes running, like on the Mac, but no such luck - it exits, with no confirmation dialog. Strange.
You can't resize the iTunes window unless you grab the bottom-left corner. I've never liked this aspect of Mac GUIs at all, but I'm sure there are some people who do like it.
The music store is very polished and easy to navigate, and my guess is that it uses a subset of Safari for rendering (but of course, I could be wrong.) The front page presents lots of content in a very organized manner, and it's easy to navigate back to wherever you came from while looking around. I didn't get around to buying any songs, so I can't say how well th
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
After 12 years, the Linux zealot's ancient 386 machine gives up up the ghost! The machine went through alot, going through DOS 5.0, 6.0, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Debian gnu/Linux. It even had a Geforce 4 on it using a AGP to ISA conveter.
But now the machine was dead. So the Linux zealot decided to go to the local PC world to get a new machine.
He decided to get a Athlon 3500+ Packard Bell, when all of a sudden he heard a giant DUNNNNNNNNNN! And behind him, was the largest cheese greater in the world! Behind him was this fat bearded geek with an Apple logo on his chest. He was an Apple zealot. Suddenly Linux zealot had a weired feeling as a Giant Titatainum X appeared on a huge LCD display.
[ to be continued ]
I sure was missing Old Ike.
I can now go to any other Mac computer in the house and say I want to mount Freddie's harddrive. A dialog appears and it automatically sees Freddie. I enter the name and password and its mounted.
If I have turned on the sharing music option for iTunes on Freddie, I can open iTunes on another computer and it will see Freddie's shared music.
It doesn't get any simplier than this.
eJukebox (audiosoft.net) is a pretty sweet Win jukebox. It trumps iTunes in at least one area: Imported album cover art is built into a large, browsable visual CD collection. This has helped me pick tunes and break the constricted habit one often gets when choosing from an alphabetized list. And it's great for parties... The app offers a 'kiosk' or 'party' fullscreen mode, where the rest of your machine is locked away under a password. The app is still rough (In terms of interface consistency, Bill Gates will love it, because it is a mess.) The user community is strong, the programmers responsive and positive, and the app is being bettered day by day.
Now is the winter of our disco tent
In my laptop itunes messes with my volume, somehow it tries to control it superficially, because my controls that normally work don't work anymore. For example, volume adjustment buttons, mute button, etc... Also if they do change, itunes doesn't react accordingly. For example, if the volume is not mute, I have to close itunes and reopen it to listen the music.
Also you can adjust the ripping speed from the options. It normally matches to the maximum.
Overall, it is a good software, but certainly it is not the best software for Windows. It doesn't conform to the UI guidelines of windows. Also scrollbars are a little weird to use. For example, on windows when you press on a scrollbar the scrollbar changes its color to reflect the fact that you pressed and that you can drag it. On itunes this is not the case, which feels awkard. Also resizing the window is extremely slow compared to other windows apps. Since itunes use aqua interface for some components and windows interface for some others (mostly menus), it is not a nice mixture. For example, although combobox (list) look like aqua, when you press it, a popup menu opens.
Also buying from the music store is way too easy. The default setting is 1-click, which I changed it to shopping cart. I also wish that there was a wish list type of list which I can review the songs for purchase later . You can't buy some of the songs in the shopping cart and leave the rest there. You have the buy them all at the same time.
Visualizations is significantly better than windows media player, which is my default player for music. Although windows media player is not a direct competitor to itunes, I think Microsoft could do much better with a simpler to use interface. itunes is intelligently designed. Smart playlists, pure playlists, all of them are great.
You will not stop buying CDs though, because not all songs are available on the music store, although Apple and the reviewer doesn't tell you. Some albums are partial, which means it doesn't include all the songs. I wasn't able to find some of the songs which I was dying for.
Overall itunes is a good software. Forget about the music store, even the software itself is good enough to consider usage. Music store is a plus but you don't have to buy from Apple, there are other services, which you may like better. But buying from itunes music store is a superior experience. One problem with music store is that, you can not select text and copy it. You can type it, but not being able to select text is not good.
Obviously no-one remembers AppleWorks for Windows. Whilst you can contend that Apple did not write AppleWorks it did (maybe even does) exist for Windows.
In fact there is an update available for the windows version as mentioned here
Quicktime is Apple's multimedia framework. It's what iTunes uses to en/decode MP3 and AAC.
Worst thing is that you'll be having to live with that guy around you for a considerable while afterwards and hate him. I have a roommate who is female so I don't fear her fucking my girlfriend... It seems to be a working solution, some of our friends don't get how we can be roommates... weird people... I'd suggest bitch to her, bitch to him, and move into another place... They're not worth it.
Your first problem is that, with a PowerMac 8600/300, you're likely running OS 8.x or 9.x. These operating systems were, indeed, far inferior to WinNT in that they did not multitask well (yes, you could have multiple programs open at a time, but they wouldn't share CPU time) and had rather simplistic memory management. Mind you, Windows isn't much better in the memory management category, but it's no surprise that your PPro outran your PowerMac 8600 on similar tasks. If you were to run, say, Linux on the same CPU, it would likely keep pace or even outpace your PPro/WinNT setup. In addition, OS X (which your PowerMac will not likely run without a G3/4 daughtercard and quite a bit of non-Apple supported tinkering) supports preemptive multitasking like any other modern OS, and while I'm not exactly a Mac-head, I feel it's far superior to any other previos MacOS edition. You may want to stop by your local Apple Store or CompUSA (*shudder*) to try it out. Ya gotta think about these things before bashing any particular setup, pal.
"Life in every breath... that is bushido"
iTunes consistently crashes for me when I try to import songs with cyrillic language titles/id3 tags. Winamp handles these without issue. That being said I'm still switching to iTunes.
Hmm, that seems strange, are you sure it's not separate disks or separate partitions. On the same partition only the reference to the file would have to be changed, no actual data moved. Or is the mac fs done somehow stupidly. About netscape not working, I observed the same on my dad's XP laptop last time I visited to copy a movie from him. Copying the 700 meg movie from a cd to the HD took about 17 minutes at 100% cpu use and all the other programs ground to a screeching halt for the duration of the copy. Burning the same file to a cd took 7 minutes. Repeating the process when I got home on my linux box took about 4 minutes and used almost no cpu... strange...
Seems you encounter some problems with a 6 years old Mac (from one the worst period of Apple, they don't always do the best;-) running on Os9.
May I recommend you to, well, upgrade to a new model (their are some at really reasonable prices on the AppleStore, less than $1000). They run on OsX (which is really fast, stable and improving with Panther)
I you can't/don't want, perhaps you could try some "autumn cleanup" on your machine. After 6 years, perhaps the disks are a bit full of fragmented files, the System Folder full of old unused preferences. There was/are some great tools to do that.
You can also check your system, because the latest version sometimes helps if you forgot to "auto-update".
If what you really need is fast-cheap-stable system comparable to actual PCs, I may recommend you some G5 (top level but not really useful if you don't need that much power), cheaper than equivalent brand-PCs. Or iBook/eMac if you need just that horse-power needed to surf and play music & videos and do some development.
I think a lot of people like me are out there and can help you avoid such strange problems and help you to see a Mac running fast.
ClaudeBBG
> I don't care about the...lack of cover art.
Errrr. Two steps:
1 - Toggle 'iTunes > Edit > Show Artwork' on.
2 - Select a purchased track.
Alternatively,
1 - Select a purchased track.
2 - Visit 'File > Get Info > Artwork'.
--- Fox
Something remarkably similar happened to this A.C. just recently too. I sympathize.
She's not worth it.
Dude, You are off topic and complaining about a machine that is like 8 years old (and running OS 9). I will be the first to admit that the Mac has some speed issues when compared to similar Wintel boxes, but come on. Sit in front of a Mac that was produced since the turn of the century before you trash the platform.
----------------------------------
I'd rather not take sides until I hear the monkey's version - PHB
Just go to the QuickTime Components Project.
It's not as elegant as having Ogg support out of the box, and the open-source component is beta right now, but it works. I just tested it.
And hell, Windows Media Player? Clearly, you're either a troll or you haven't begun to look at the tag editing functionality of iTunes. I'd delete this post if the information about Ogg weren't useful.
I've been looking for a new media player, as I've been growing dissatisfied with my primary player, Winamp 2.x. I've tried a few others which I wasn't happy with, so I eagerly downloaded iTunes. With all the hype around the Mac version, my expectations were high.
To cut to the case, I was pretty dissapointed. Yes, it's a good media player, but that's all it is IMHO, not a *great* media player.
Things I liked:
Easy to use
Scanned my collection quickly and fairly accurately
Things I didn't like:
The installer was very slow and made my machine unusable for the duration (1.3GHz Pentium M)
A non standard windows UI. It's a windows program, so why break the windows UI standards? Let me maximise it!!
No support for WMA, some of my media collection is WMA, so that's a big problem.
Nice program, but I'm still looking.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
I have used the Windows version of iTunes and wanted to compare the experience to the Mac method. I went to a handful of Mac sites that have user forums with comments about Quicktime/iTunes vs WMP and it really seems that objectivity has gone out the window for most of these folks. Specifically when users make comments like "windows media format is inferior to AAC and MP3", in order to rally the fellow lemmings to cry out against the terrible M$ product. Makes me not want to buy anything Mac platform tho I know better. No, not all Mac users are idiots. It's just that the ones that are seem to be extra annoying.
.ogg format on your Linux box of course), try out iTunes and see why it is the trendy thing to do. You won't find a great variety of competitors to choose from if you don't want to go the iTunes route. Until there are significant AND popular alternatives, it's likely to be an enjoyable experience for the majority of users.
Fact is that with digital technology, if you don't have the ability to integrate your various softwares and devices because people are trying to force usage of only their product, everyone loses except for a minority of users.
Seeing as I can digitally play any file and capture it to disk in any format I like, there is nothing that can be done to prevent this. NOTHING. Their business model is for the interim as is most of the corporate world. Always has to change because they cant continually cash in for long periods of time without constant adjustments.
iTunes for Windows has a handful of great interface elements and functions. It satisfies most users desires who are looking to purchase music online for whatever reason (I personally don't buy anything that I can't inspect if I haven't heard it before, and no I dont want just snippets because people have a knack for making potentially great songs suck). I personally think it is great and good progress for the online community is being made by enabling normal common people to easily interact in a way that most can relate to. If I didn't have a completely digital sound system and multiple audio busses to let me do nearly anything I want (minus native program functions that do it for me), I might feel limited but probably it is more a state of mind than a state of being.
I highly recommend that if you are frequently online with a high speed connect, want easy to access media on your Windows or Mac system (to save in
(Disclaimer: Poster just woke up from a late party night hence the long format and is not in flame proof mode.)
Funny, it was 4am on Friday as well when this comment was last posted...
I have all my music stored on a Linux server running samba. This is convenient since I can easily access music from my other client (windows) computers.
BUT... running iTunes with mp3's on a networked drive is intolerable slow!
Sync'ing my ipod with a library of networked files takes ~30 minutes while it takes just a few minutes with a library of local files. (sync'ing the same amount of data of course..)
I don't expect network performance to rival local performance but iTunes network performance is somehow crippled.
Anyone else have had this experience?
I don't understand why people say that iTunes is buggy and problematic because it's Apple's software. Please... I installed it on 30+ Windows computers this Friday and not a single one of them had any problems what so ever till this day.
I didn't even restart them after the installation, which proves that I like to live my life on the edge!
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Over the next week, start giving indications that your junk either hurts or itches. Itching can be easier to simulate, just reach down and scratch yourself every now and then. Make sure your roommate sees it, but don't make it obvious. Gradually increase the frequency. You may also want to buy a bottle of Gold Bond powder.
For bonus points, pretend to be using the phone (or actually call somebody up) and mention within earshot of your roommate that you've got a doctor's appointment in a week. If you've gone for "hurt" instead of "itch," wait until you and the roomie are sitting around watching TV some night and you have to take a leak. Get up, go into the bathroom, start leaking, and immediately pinch off the flow giving an audible, painful noise. Finish your leak in noticeable spurts.
Your roommate will eventually put 2 and 2 together. Your genitals itch/hurt and you've got a doctor's appointment, he's sleeping with the girl you slept with a week ago, and your symptoms started just after you hooked up with her...
Guaranteed mental agony for both of them. It's like being the BOFH, but better!
It's my default mp3 player now. I've uninstalled Music Match (or Match Music...I had this for years and STILL don't know what to call the thing, but don't go by that, I'm an idiot).
I like the way iTunes filters work, I like the way it looks, I like the way the buying works...and I've had zero problems in burning disks.
All around, I like this!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I agree that Quicktime is terrible. Every time I install it, it blathers about wanting to know what kind of internet connection I have. Then, it goes and configures itself as the viewer for PNGs and JPEGs in my web browsers (even Opera!). My web browsers could view PNGs and JPEGs just fine without Quicktime. Then as I uninstall it, I just get a mess of broken mime-application associations. Blegh.
samrolken
One of the features touted by Apple is that when you buy from iTMS, you can copy that file to an unlimited number of iPods and unlimited number of times and it will always play on those iPods no matter what.
How exactly are the iPods getting around the DRM and what's to stop someone from making any of the iTMS files think they're actually being played on an iPod and not on a computer?
Sure. Shall we start from the top?
Forget the easy to use interface, its tiny footprint, the effortlessness in syncing it, its notes, calendars, games, contacts, etc. Lets focus on the big things.
Apple have designed it from the ground up based on the user rather than the techonology. Take the front panel buttons, they do not have moving parts. This is because a normal use will use it in environments that have dirt and other irritants.
The scroll wheel makes moving through menus so eas y it is not funny. It makes second nature in minutes and no other device, not a PC, nor a Mac nor even a microwave oven has anything like it in terms of perfect interfacing.
The sound outlet is put on the top...not the side. Most players I know have it wherever they feel like. The iPod is placed where you need it when it sits in your pocket (again, unlike most mp3 players).
This is a big deal to me...the scroll wheel when playing songs functions to skip through it, change the volume and change the rating. Everything so nicely placed and so perfectly executed.
Anyways, I am going to go to bed listening to these 5 new songs I downloaded and synced without a button click. Go grab your Wal-Mart mp3 player, but enjoy setting it up, and using it day to day. As for me, I will continue to buy and recommend the iPod to everyone I know. 7 other friends agree with me.
Which $80 Wal-Mart device, exactly, is the equivalent of an iPod?
I don't have one, I don't want one. But the advantages are clear. You can fit as much music as you could ever want to listen to in your jeans pocket. You can listen to the tracks you want all day without recharging or refilling the player. You never have to ask, "What do I want to listen to tomorrow?" because the thing contains your entire collection.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
First, let me state that I own an iPod, which is why I like iTunes to some degree. It works incredibly well with the iPod.
However, it's not without it's faults, both major and minor. Most of them are because they shoved it out the door too early, I grant you. The next release may fix most of the problems.
Minor ones:
- Speed. It's slow. Not excessively so, but Apple made a massively huge mistake in porting large chunks of the iTunes interface to Windows using some kind of emulation trick. Resizing a column width isn't fluid and smooth like it should be. Even moving the window around is clunky because of all the custom interface code. Memorywise I have no complaints, unlike many others, but it's slow because it's trying to use nonstandard interfaces. Quicktime suffers the same problems. Hey guys, this is Windows. Use the freakin' Windows standard interfaces already. You're only pissing off Windows users. Ease of use? Ease of use always boils down to what you're used to, and that's it. I'm not used to using a Mac. If I actually had a mac, then maybe I'd be used to it. This is piss poor design and sloppy coding. If you're really determined to stick with the mac like interface, then actually rewrite the damn thing instead of slapping a slow emulation layer underneath it and shoving it out the door.
- Interface is totally wacky. There's no way to maximize the thing to get the most out of the screen real estate. NONE WHATSOEVER. You can drag the thing larger, but you absolutely, positively, cannot fill the screen. This is damn annoying. The maximize button even makes the damn thing go into compact mode. Talk about unintuitive. Again, USE THE STANDARD INTERFACES.
-It has a real problem playing one playlist while I do things to other songs. I start playing something in a list, then go elsewhere in the interface to edit tags or something, and when that song stops, the damn thing stops playing because I'm no longer on the playlist that I was on when I started playing. WTF? Why can't I have it continue to play songs in the background while I'm doing other shit in the foreground? This is clumsy and stupid. When I start the thing playing a list of songs, it should play until I tell it to stop, no matter what the heck I do. Unless I go in and remove songs from that list, don't freakin' stop. I hate having to go back to the list to start the next song every 4 minutes. It's so annoying that I've started using Winamp in the background to actually play songs while I'm modifying tags and adding album art and such.
- Oh, when I manually add album art to a file, if I do it more than once, it adds multiple pictures to that file (in the ID3 tag). This shouldn't happen, it should remove the old one first or overwrite it or something.
-Quicktime installation without asking. Make the initial install more clear that quicktime is going to be installed, and then install it in such a way that it doesn't: a) leave an icon in the taskbar by default, b) leave an icon in the Quick Launch bar by default, c) leave an icon on the desktop by default. In fact, why not detect if QT is installed, and if so, upgrade and then use it, but if it's not installed, just install the minimum crap needed to use iTunes, like DLL's and code and such. Maybe I don't want the damn QT player, but I still want to use iTunes... Forcing customers to have to clean up the shit you're spewing everywhere is not a way to make friends.
Major things:
- I cannot believe that an advanced media player program has no capability to retrieve tags and cover art and such for random files using available information. This is totally unacceptable in a modern music organizer program. Hell, even WMP9, as crappy as it does it, can do that. Why am I entering tags and cover art and such shit manually? WTF?
- Support other devices. Not massive support, you don't need to do smart playlists on them and such, but if you want to use iTunes as an interface to the store, then you need to be able to support devices other t
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Try QuickTime Alternative. It is "customized" release of QuickTime Player. Very nice and fast (without GUI bulk). It also includes Media Player Classic - free player similar to Windows Media Player 6.4, but original one and sooooo fast - it's unbelievable. P.S. These guys also have RealPlayer Alternative. It even includes DirectShow filter, so you'll be able to play RealMedia shit using for example Microsoft's Media Player.
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
Wow, it's not buggy, limited, nagware like the QuickTime player on Windows? Maybe I'll give it a try. As others have said this is not the first bit of software Apple has released for Windows and they are going to have to work hard to get over the impression dealing with QT has given me.
Now, I realize that it's my own darn fault for running an OS from the last century, but why is iTunes only available for Win2000 and WinXP? It seems odd to me that something as simple as a media player/music store portal wouldn't be backwards compatible to Windows 98.
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
Clutter is a novel OS X app that provides a "Browse through your pile of CD's" interface instead of the alphabetized artist/genre list provided by most MP3 players.
It's also handy for grabbing cover art from Amazon or Google Images, and copying it into iTunes.
No Kiosk mode that I know of, though - that sounds like a neat feature.
-Andy
You know Im right.
Sorry to hear that. I don't think your friend is much of a friend if at least he can't afford a hotel room. But that would be sneaking around behind your back.
There is an interesting episode of "Just Shoot Me" where this exact thing happens between the characters Enrico and Dennis. The woman in this episode is quite attractive. But to save their friendship Enrico must tell this woman to get lost, in which he does (with much difficulty).
Obviously you are going to have to rely heavily on any available coping mechanisms you may have. Also, I would recommend that you dump your shallow and cheap (for not getting the hotel room) friends.
As much as it is a costly hassle, I would own up to the fact that you are going to have to move. You don't even have to give your so-called friends an explanation. Just do it. Besides, talking with them will do little (i.e. nothing) in stopping them from poking each other.
There is nothing more distracting than people you know who are banging each other in the next room. Especially if you have an emotional link to the woman. It just doesn't work. Trust me.
Anyway, use your innate geek powers to overcome this. Let go and move (if not in that order). I know you can.
My biggest beef with iTunes is iTMS - You can only buy music if you live in the US and have an american creditcard. Sucks. Any word on when they'll let the world buy too?
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
M-m-m-m... cool design... yeah... Then again 50 cent in video for "P.I.M.P." used iPod - and since I have rap, so no iPods for me ;-)
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
Those performance problems though... Apple really needs to step back make iTunes 5 nothing but an optimization project (similar to MSIE4->5!), on both platforms now.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
It seems it is unavailable outside of the US. I'm in the UK, and normally I can make purchases from the US with my credit card but iTunes won't let me.
They're losing a customer, I was looking forward to this service coming out on Windows, but alas its not for the likes of me.
There's 2 (or 3 if you will) different reviews of this software - my review, and then some clarifications by another reviewer - on my site:
The Void...
Be sure to read the lowest review on the page first....
what $80 MP3 player is the equivilent of the iPod?
can your $80 MP3 player also be a media card reader?
Can it also function as voice recorder?
Can your $80 MP3 player also function as a bootable external firewire Hard Drive?
I like microcars
A great feature not mentioned in the review is the ablility to drag any album or song from the Music Store to create a URI shortcut.
It's great if you want to find a particular piece of music again, or send a recommendation to a friend.
J
You called that shiny (ooh!) piece of geek orgasm-inducing goodness a `grossly overpriced mp3 player'? Philistine. You're probably one of teh lozers who surf AOL on their Windoze 98 boxes.
Go somewhere random
A lot of people commenting on or reviewing iTunes keep neglecting to mention this rather important little bit of information.
So Europeans, don't waste you're time downloading it, unless you just want another ripper/player/library (albeit one with a rather nice UI, but at the expense of an awful lot of system resources!)
>What about QuickTime?
Hell, what about Apple Works/Claris Works?
I used to run it on my PC. Pretty nice little office package.
>Specifically when users make comments like "windows >media format is inferior to AAC and MP3", in order to rally >the fellow lemmings to cry out against the terrible M$ >product. The version of Media Player for the Mac is really, really bad. I think most Mac users assume that it is the same for Windows, and just trash it. So, it don think it a lack of objectivity, but a lack of comparison on both platforms.
The answer is that you can copy it to an iPod using iTunes and perhaps nothing else.
.MAC username, might as well encrypt the data too.
Apple's DRM works, basically, as follows:
1) Every iTMS user has an account. This account gets a key.
2) When you "authorize" a copy of iTunes, basically you're downloading a copy of that key somewhere onto that computer. Apple will let you authorize 3 copies of iTunes per account. You can "deauthorize" a computer too, telling apple that the key has been removed from that computer.
3) Every file you download from iTMS has some DRM in it. The M4P file (MPEG4 Protected) has a note in it saying which account downloaded it. In other words, it has your ".MAC" username inside.
4) When you play the file with iTunes, it sees the username and checks it's big list of keys to see if there's a key for that user on the computer. If so then it plays the file. If not, it doesn't.
The key can work a few different ways. Which way it really does work, I haven't fully worked out yet.
Method a) The M4P also contains a signature that decrypts with your key. iTunes then simply checks the signature using your key and plays if it's good.
Method b) The M4P's actual audio data is encrypted using your key. This is possible, since they're already modifying every downloaded M4P file to stick in a
Method c) A combinaton of both a and b. This seems most likely, but again, I haven't totally worked it out yet.
Now, when you stick the M4P onto the iPod, a few different things can happen:
a) iTunes can remove the DRM, decode the file into a normal unprotected one, and stick it on the iPod. Unlikely, as the iPod has basically zero protection for taking music back off of it. Just a bit of obfuscation, nothing seriously hard to overcome.
b) iTunes transfers the key to the iPod, which can then decrypt the file and play it as needed. This means that you must use iTunes to transfer the M4P to the iPod, and therefore this seems to be the most likely method.
The reason I call this whole mess DRM-lite is that everything you need to play the song is on one computer. This is easily proven, in fact, as you can authorize a computer, unplug the ethernet cable, and it still plays just fine. Reboot it, it still plays great. Whatever, the key is on the computer somewhere.
The crack that will eventually come up is that someone will find the key on the hard drive, figure out how it decodes the M4P, and write a quick and easy program that converts the M4P to an M4A (unprotected MPEG4 Audio). That'll be the way the conversion is done without decoding and encoding again.
Now that the other (and let's face it, a bit more technical and hackerish) 90% of the world has real solid access to the format, it'll be cracked in a couple weeks or so.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's like Saab, Volvo, Rover, and Bang & Olufssen.
Either you keep on raving about how good, comfortable, and well-designed the computer/car/stereo is, or you keep on raving about how idiots with too much money keep falling for the same con job again and again.
Put another way: with products like this, you also buy a piece of art. Some people see that as an excellent way to make life more enjoyable, others see it as an embarrasing waste of money.
Maybe the problem is that you post this same bitch rant everyday on every other forum. BOO F%^$@& HOO
Anyone tried it under Linux yet (presumably with WineX or a similar setup)?
This is the common, typical response of any Mac user to the "why does't iTunes support OGG?" question.
And it's bullshit.
The Quicktime Components project does NOT solve the ogg problem. It marginally lets you play OGG back with itunes, but that is IT. You CANNOT encode OGG through iTunes and more importantly, you cannot burn CDs through iTunes from ogg files.
Hell, you can't even create and play back MP3 CDs using the components stuff. Even if you try to manually put an MP3 CD together using ogg files, it still doesn't work with iTunes. Nor does playing ogg files off a non-local medium.
In short, the "Just use QT Components!" argument is bullshit. Until apple (or someone else) puts out some real support for Ogg, iTunes support of this format will always be marginal at best. And don't even get me started on Apple's ignoring of the huge petition on their forums for Ogg support on the iPod..there is a reason I have a Neuros (and am very happy with it, thanks) and not an iPod.
And this comes from one pissed-off "switcher" who has all of his music in Ogg format. Know what I use for a media player...still? XMMS. Thanks for nothing Apple.
Is this really so revolutionary that it would warrent me to create a windows partition? I have to admit that the last Windows I ran was Windows 95 and have managed to "get by" with Linux since 1998. Yet, this is the first Windows application that has been hyped so much that I feel like it may be worth a try.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Apple claims that 128kbps AAC encoding provides quality almost indistiguishable from the original, much better than a 128kbps MP3. To my ears it all sounds great. The AAC files I downloaded at 128kbps sound great. I rarely encode MP3s at that low a bit rate, so I really can't do a comparison.
Are you deaf or what???
128kbps MP3 sound crap.
128kbps AAC sound great!
It's like comparing cassetes with CDs
how long until
Could you perhaps provide a URL to which $80 device can store 20 gigs of music, has a battery that lasts 5 hours +, lets me load it up really fast with firewire, and fits in my pocket?
Sorry, Itunes isn't about making me feel better about my ipod.. though I will say that the way the mac deals with itunes and music by default made it a more painless experience.
It's obvious that iTMS has the best deals with the major studios. Better than anything else available online by far. I can't help chuckling when I think that for all the fat cat, big bidness music studio executives thinking they're all that... they finally met their match with Steve Jobs. It sure appears like they gave up a lot of their DRM nonsense with iTunes and the liberal rights that it gives you to burn and share your music library.
Think what you will about Steve Jobs, but it sure looks to me like he showed up and wowed the music studios with his trademark attitude and sold them on this whole deal. Bravo!
FileMaker Pro. Actually there's four versions of FileMaker Pro (all or which run on Windows).
FileMaker Pro is arguably the most substantial application Apple puts out for the PC. It has a high level of integration with the Windows filesystem, exposes a good deal of its functionality through active x/com. And the "Unlimited" version integrates with IIS through an ISAPI plugin. FileMaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc.
Rendezvous is an Apple trade name for ZeroConf, or Zero Configuration, a new IETF standard that Apple had a leading role in.
The whole point is, you do _not_ have to have a network setup - it figures out what's out there, and makes the necessary adjustments.
You don't even have to be running DHCP (although it recognizes it and works with it).
Or any well?
I read some of the other replys to this post and some of them said about how Quicktime was poor. And I'd have to agree.
While I don't know if I'd rate Quicktime as terrable or anything worse than poor, but it def was not written with anything in mind other than trying to show Windows users how much better Mac apps can be.
But I think this actually is a departure for Apple. They *want* people to use this software and not have to clickthough "Upgrade to Quicktime Pro Now!" Rather use it and maybe buy the iPod, then maybe think about a Mac.
I think it's a good move for Apple as they have really improved the quality of their OS and hardware over time whereas MS and it's coharts at the x86 factorys still seem to still be in "blob" mode.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Your roommate is a total scumbag for jumping your best friend. Even if he didn't know you recently got together with her, he should have checked with you first before making any moves with her - it is the "man" code - especially if you're living in the same appt!
/. readers have been raked over the coals by their best friends too. I too know how that feels. Sorry to hear about it, hang in there.
As for your best friend, sleeping with your roommate is pretty skanky. If she wanted "out" with you she should of been up front and talk with you first. Her choice of banging your roommate is really REALLY low. True best friends would not act the way she did.
You don't need to put up with shit from either of them for longer than you have to. Find a new place, pack up and leave. It is easy to get hung up and dwell on such a situation. At least this happened now, and not when you've been dating her for a couple of months. Realize your "best friend" is no longer that, and move forward.
I am sure in different situations some
Ok, I have karma to burn, so I'll see your troll and call it.
Bowie, you find its equivalent at WalMart for $80 and I'll buy you one. But remember - it has to be it's equivalent - You said $350 - actually they make a 10GB for $299 or 20 GB for $399 - but here's your challenge find one at WalMart for $80 that has 10 GB, under 6 oz, firewire or usb2 sync, 8 hours on a rechargeable battery, Mac/Windows compatible, contact and calendar management, mountable as a hard drive, and since it's Sunday, I'll give you a pass on the photo storage/sync, on-the-go playlists and built-in games.
Knock yerself out, boy-o.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Damm. IHBT IHL.
Apart from some minor annoyances, I think iTunes works really really well. The only major feature I'd like to see is the ability to minimize it so only the icon in the systray remains visible. I like to listen to music when I'm working and if I have a lot of programs open, I don't my music program taking up space in the taskbar.
Oh, it would also be nice to be able to remove cover art once you've added it. The way it is now, if you make a mistake, you're stuck with the wrong cover art.
LOL
that joke hits the spot every time.
Sorry, QT is an all in one- the thing will handle just about ny type of image and media file you throw at it. It started as a combi image and audio applet and expanded into a vid player / encoder / decoder / editor.
QT's AAC (which is nothing more than MPEG4 minus the video, and is somtimes referred to as MP4) is far superior to Window's proprietary format in terms of sonic quality. This has been proven many times. I have a recording studio and have listened to all of the audio formats- AAC ranks at the top, close to CD 44.1/16 while the Windows format is closer to Realaudio, which is worse than a cassette.
What amazes me the most about iTunes for PC is the responses and gripes I read. Supposedly computer savvy PC users whine about some of the most trivial stuff, use double standards, and complain about things that RTFM would answer- gripes that are simply wrong, unresearched, and misinformed. The kind of gripes that makes me wonder if they really know what they are doing on their PCs. I have two Macs and a PC, so I am not a blind Mac addict, BTW.
Ok, sorry about that - had a massive brain fart.
-josh
That and the UI seemed slow. Apply has this thing about looking good over functionality -- no, don't make things slide open if all I'm going to do is bitch that your going to do it slowly.
Oh well, it was interesting while I was trying it, but I'm going to be uninstalling it soon.
No support for WMA, some of my media collection is WMA, so that's a big problem.
I think the expectation is that you will re-purchase all of your old songs (because if you have a ripped copy of your song is must be there illegally).
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Steve Jobs said Apple is almost break-even on iTMS, but the lose money and expect to continue that way.
The revenue is in the best MP3 player on the market, the Apple iPod. Its design, size and user interface gives it no competition. iRiver has made a new unit approx the same size, and at the same prize, with more features trying to see if they have chance to even get to the knees of Apple.
Which from the complaint's I'v been hearing is an absolute bitch. Apparently, it likes to install buggy core windows components, provided helpfully by microsoft, to administer the DRM and when it's uninstalled, leaves them behind with a large number of (as it appears, but it could be something microsoft breaking them) broken, modified drivers; most people can't burn CD's of any kind anymore. In short, if you're going to completly uninstall Itunes, prepare to completly reinstall windows if you want to get all the functionality back.
AS for the DRM, this is how they get you with it; first with the "it's ALMOST non existant" then it's "Slightly constrictive but most people can deal with it" then it turns into "I don't burn cd's and nobody needs to anyway" then on with the glowing review.
And of course, I have to add in the obglitoary part about them needing more and more and more control over users machines becuase users have been converting their Itunes to a format which isn't policed by their program. So, when it installs, it'll just uninstall any recording software on your computer of any kind it finds.
Ya know and then they just say "well, our application is installed on so many computers, why can't we just say all recording applications are illegal for non-corperate use?".
I'm still waiting for the listeners lisence; The listeners lisence works like this; the recording companies offer you really cheap media, cd's that were $20 are now $1, but, the catch is you have to have a liseners lisence which the corperation uses to impose a contract on you which restricts your ability to do anything. This is put on all their media, so when you go down to the store, everything is $1-$5 USD but has a listeners lisence attached. Everyone flocks to the store, buys the media, then the RIAA/MPAA says about 10 years later "ok, we have these sales numbers here, and they say that just about everyone in a given country has a listeners lisence, so, we'll just get the goverment to pass a law outlawing any media not ours". Boom, recorders are illegal, if you so much as blab into a microphone, record it, and throw it onto the internet you're violating your listeners lisence, which is promptly revoked, and you're access to all the media the big 5 produce, that's books, television, music, radio, etc is revoked.
So, if you're so much caught with as much as reading a textbook on say, calclulus you're put in jail for a federal crime. It's a doublewhammy; they wipe out their competition and all of a sudden unregulated information is pornagraphy.
Goto www.theafternow.com , download and listen, about 1 gig of free mp3's (free as in beer, copyable as in everyone is free to copy it) about a guy wandering in a post-apoptyliptic future where corperations have won and you get to hear about the way they got their. It's a very interesting and enlightening listen if you're bored, otherwise, light your candles and sit back, and enjoy.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I think the article was well thought out and honest.
I think that Apple believes that the iTunes music store for Windows will be extremely successful because Windows has more market share and it just seems logical that: more users = more purchases.
There was a market research study by Nielsen/NetRatings, that stated Apple users are more likely to buy stuff off the web or buy into webservices-- which really just stems from macs being pricier machines and hence most of the people buying them can afford to waste some cash. I think that we will see the implications of that study with the Windows iTMS.
Combined with some of the points in the article, and the fact Mac users are willing to throw their cash at almost anything Apple asks them to.... Ultimately, WiTMS music sales will less than stellar. I for one will not be surprised to hear that they sell more music to Mac heads.
appleworks for windows is still around, but afaik you can't get it unless you are an educational buyer... perhaps part of apple's tightrope dance not to do too many things in key microsoft markets (office software) that in turn, might seriously piss off microsoft...
You cannot directly change the sound out mechanism in iTunes. You have to go to Control Panel->Quicktime to do that, not very intuitive.
You also cannot do the simple things found in winamp in regards to keeping the program on the desktop, namely - keep it as an icon in the system tray, keep the program always on top (for the small version)
You cannot change the first column of the database display, it is ALWAYS the track name.
You also cannot have multiple sorts of the database display (at least I have yet to figure it out)
Cannot copy playlists off your iPod to the iTunes db, and I could not get it to copy those from MusicMatch (might be user error on last part)
At least they did not totally abscond with Windows UI rules like MusicMatch did, MM was a source of annoyance throughout my use of it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Hang on. Taco didn't post the troll, but he still got something he'd enjoy? What the fuck?!?!!??
AAC is the default music encoding format (codec) for the iTunes player. Apple claims that 128kbps AAC encoding provides quality almost indistiguishable from the original, much better than a 128kbps MP3. To my ears it all sounds great. The AAC files I downloaded at 128kbps sound great. I rarely encode MP3s at that low a bit rate, so I really can't do a comparison.
I'm sure that there are instances of where AAC is a super format, but the first things I downloaded were some of Evgeny Kissin's performances on solo piano and it sounds as if you're standing outside the concert hall and the sound is filtering through.
That said, I've encoded solo piano from CD at 192 and it sounds much better. But I suppose...
there's been several. they commonly declare terrorism as yOUR #1 enemIE, regardless of whois really threatening the well being of the planet/population, & despite their own array of ongoing felonious greed/fear based behaviours.
anyone who questions the corepirate nazi life0cide/real estate/monIE scams, is, of course, quite conveniently, labeled a terrorist/unpatriotic themselves.
so, whois really the biggest threat to US/our way of life?
eye gas we'll have to stay tuned, to find doubt.
As said you cannot blame Apple, the reason I could not purchase 99c tracks is that the music industry is slowly destroying itself by ignoring market forces. Australia may be a small market but it is statistically significant. I remember writing something at Uni on how monopolies are good, cannot for the life of me remember how I made a logical argument. I give the music industry anther 3 years (if that) before it "deregulates" itself.
But guy, I just did. I'm using the windows version. I downloaded an ogg file, added it to my library, clicked on burn disc, and got a fine audio disc with the correct recording on it.
I'm not about to create an entire Ogg library and waste CDs testing out every one of your assertions. Most of them sound like reasonable limitations on software that is certainly being expanded to be the most ambitious music player yet, what with the iTMS and Rendesvous and all.
As for petitions, come on... when does a petition work? People sign those things all the time. I know they recalled the Governor, sure, but mostly petitions don't tell the company anything they don't know. Market research already tells them that there may be, say, a hundred thousand people using Ogg. Why would they change their minds just because those people clicked on "Submit" somewhere?
I really wish people would do their research before assuming something can't be done.
iTunes for windows *can* burn DVDs
You can "Access your purchased music at full quality outside of iTunes". Any app that supports quicktime files can play them, there aren't as many such apps on windows as there ought to be (and as there are on mac), but that will change if there's any real demand for this feature.
Plus you can burn your music to CD with no quality loss.
"Apple uses it's own tag format" is technically true, but misleading because Apple's metadata fromat from quicktime was adopted as an open standard for MPEG-4. Any app that properly supports the MPEG-4 file format should be able to read those tags.
Also, AAC *is* an open standard, it's just pattented, the same as MP3. All the documentation is available, any you can make a MPEG-4 AAC codec and legally sell it up to 50,000 times without paying any liscencing fees.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
It wont install under the latest version of WineX - generates an error and stops the installation.
..........FULL STOP.
I've tried using this and it doesn't work. Configured as per ReadMe and my router w/ port forwarding. Any ideas?
Bottom line, as of a few days ago, Windows users have another choice. It's far more than Mac users have. So why the bitching? Mac users seem perfectly happy. If you don't want any of this, don't use Apple's products. Use the others.
I found the review of iTunes for Windows to be pretty thorough and I enjoyed reading everyone's praises and complaints that they're experiencing so far. One thing to keep in mind though is what people will be using iTunes for.
Some people won't care about ripping everything. The average consumer (ie, not a power user) will love how it ties in with their iPod. Some people may want a simple way to organize their library. I'm not sure how many people will want to use each and every feature of iTunes, including the music store.
I for one downloaded it at work (Win2000) simply because I'm used to the iTunes radio stations I listen to at home and was a bit tired of listening to Launch on Yahoo. I find iTunes to be much faster, more reliable, better selection of music, and just more enjoyable.
Apple is truly proving itself to be a company that can change with the times. Their bottom line will be increasing from their excellent APPLE products with the Mac supporting those efforts.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
- As many people have pointed out, Apple has indeed written software for the PC, not a lot, but some. Brain fart on my part. Quicktime is the obvious one. Some people suggested Filemaker pro - the company that makes it is a subsidiary of Apple, so I imagine that counts.
- iTunes does not, repeat does not, leave your music where it was when you import it. It re-arranges song locations based on Author - not too big a deal unless you have a lot of compilations. A friend of my found his compliation CDs split into multiple directories based on author, and then album. I don't have many compilations, so this is not an issue for me. There is no obvious way of getting the files back together in the same directories. Strangely, when you rip a compilation CD using iTunes, it puts it into a 'Compilations' directory, storing all of the tracks together. Not sure why the import functionality can't do the same thing.
- Previews on iTMS are 30 seconds, not 20 seconds.
- DVD burning is supposed to work on Windows according to Apple.
- Many people seemed to find the performance of iTunes much less acceptable than I did. My impressions of performance may be a bit skewed, as I have a dual processor box with a lot of memory and a fast harddrive. A friend of mine just installed it on a newer uniprocessor Dell, and it seemed to perform well. YMMV.
You can rather quickly filter out all the songs in a certain album, either by the fast "Search" field up-right, or by browsing the albums using the "Browse" button.
Once you have these songs, just select "Repeat". OK, it's not "One-click", but an acceptable "No-more-than-three-click".
Something other than...
iTunes For Windows sucks because...
A) It doesn't play OGG
B) Why pay for music when you can get it for free
C) It doesn't play WMA
D) It doesn't feel like a Windows program
E) All of the Above
I think what the majority of people overlook is that this is a first release, there are bound to be improvements in later versions (just look at the first release of the Windows Media Player).
While it might not be the best solution for those of us who are more technically-inclined, for the great unwashed masses it's the best option for *free* ripping/organizing/burning out there.
Is it the best overall, well I think it's a step in the right direction. I still wish that I had WMA capability for my iPod. Then again, I do think that AAC is the best format around between the three (MP3, WMA, AAC) - at least at the bitrate I encode at and the music I listen to.
I think we shoudl applaud Apple for the time and effor they took exporting this app to the Windows platform. Although not completely altruistic (they want people to buy music and iPods), it was certainly going beyond what was required. If they just wanted to sell music, a little app to browse the store and sync your music with your iPod was all that was needed. Making iTunes for Windows completely undistinguishable from iTunes 4.x was going above and beyond, and they seem to have pulled it off.
It's not perfect, but it's definitely for the majority of users, the best music app out there.
Dr. Wu
"Yes, There's Gas In The Car"
I'm lovin' the iTunes, but I have 3 complaints.
1. If you're previewing a song and click anywhere else in the iTMS your preview stops playing. Very annoying.
2. I can't get iTunes to work at work, probably due to my firewall. It claims to get the proxy information from IE but I don't think its working yet.
3. Half of the bands that I look for aren't on iTMS. Most of them refused to participate. Again, very annoying.
Apple has writtent other software for Windows too. Through Claris and now FileMaker, the FileMaker and FileMaker Pro databases are available on Windows.
Also, before Apple canned it, they (as Apple and before that, NeXT Software) have written plenty Windows Apps, like WebObjects, Enterprise Objects Framework and all the devs tools that have now become XCode (aka, Project Builder and Interface Builder).
Don't be fooled. Those who wrote iTunes are those same folks that worked at NeXT before that.
evil is expecting an onslaught of permanently disempowered tenants, whose reservations have been pre-arranged based on their self-serving, greed/fear/ego based crimes against humankind.
Those who wrote iTunes are those same folks that worked at NeXT before that.
Really? Didn't Apple put the call out that they needed programmers for a secret project? I heard the person who wrote Soundjam (from Casady & Greene) also wrote the first version of iTunes...who then also ported iTunes for Windows.
Nice troll, but no cookie.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Does anyone know if the windows itunes will work with the MAC 5gb ipod?
I would just try it, but I don't have a firewire card.
Thanks.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
what? this old chestnut again? hahahahahaha. i'm trying to remember the last slashdot story where this troll got dusted off and posted... it wasn't so very long ago...
Now just tell me why it crashes every time I add a folder to my library like he did. I tried moving out the files crashing the program, but with a total size of over 6000 files, I stopped when I moved seperated over 1000 files. I also know I'm not the only one having this problem.
40 MB of RAM without music library and nothing is playing????
Is iTunes accessing iTunes Music Store. That's when it's using 35-40 MB of RAM.
iTunes setup is 20 MB because it includes Quicktime 6.4
As for as Winamp launching really fast, do you have Winamp running in the system tray by default? It makes it "launch" in a second because it's actually launched when windows starts.
Someone will sue them for the "click.." copyright or something. I will resist for now as I want DRM and 100% standards based as I don't want to re-rip the CDs I have purchased. I have already done this three times and t is tiresome.
I was having difficulty understanding what you were saying to begin with. Then I started reading your post again in the squeaky, tearful voice that Windows users generally adopt when something isn't working and it made more sense. I'm sure iTunes' performance _is_ terrible on Windows but fortunately there are two solutions. DON'T USE IT! Or you could reformat your drive and install a proper OS. Your choice.
"This is crazy, you realise we could all go to jail for this?" - my manager, somewhere I used to work.
Do they think you won't do it? No. But burning the CD once and copying it arbitrarily many times is something you would with or without iTunes. And maybe, just maybe, you will buy more stuff through the iTunes distribution channel than other channels.
I don't think DRM is the purpose of iTunes.
I can't agree that the Apple music store is the best... I use rhapsody (listen.com) and I gladly pay my 9.95 /month and can for free listen to any of the songs in their database (it's only when you burn it costs money). Using apples music store I would have to download pay alot more!
I agree that Quicktime is terrible. Every time I install it, it blathers about wanting to know what kind of internet connection I have. Then, it goes and configures itself as the viewer for PNGs and JPEGs in my web browsers (even Opera!). My web browsers could view PNGs and JPEGs just fine without Quicktime. Then as I uninstall it, I just get a mess of broken mime-application associations. Blegh.
Itunes is like everything you hate about quicktime plus some other stuff.
What about Quicktime, AppleWorks, FileMaker, WebObjects....
Part of writing an informative article is getting your information straight beforehand...
I don't suppose there are any plans to allow users to put songs on MP3 players other than the iPod. Because I used to have an iPod, but then there was some problem with the battery (it wouldn't hold a charge), and I had to send the iPod to Apple to replace a fricken battery. I sold the iPod and bought a Zen. I will not buy another iPod, or any other piece of Apple hardware, until Apple changes their draconian support policies (these issues aren't limited to just the iPod, see http://www.igeek.com/articles/Opinion/PowerBookRep air.txt).
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
Are you absolutely sure about what you are saying? Because if yes, this is freaking hilarious - breaking the DRM without actually decoding / descrambling anything... Wow!
VI is the shit, you idiots.
Emacs is bloated.
Yay, we officially have another zealot war on our hands, thanks to iTMS.
Why oh why can't people just accept that not every single piece of software they use is 100% perfect, and move on? It doesn't make you any less of a man if someone can find a slight flaw in your favourite piece of software, if it still works just fine for you.
*sigh*
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I think iTunes is great an all but I have a beef with it. It crashes every single time I try and add my music library. Granted, I havd 29,000 songs but I assume the program can handle that. They are all on a write only drive so maybe that is irritating it. And 3 drives of music are mapped from computer A to computer B which has a 4th drive and all 4 drives are mapped from B to C which is where itunes is installed, but I don't see why that should be a problem either, (just a bery poor network design decision). I really want to take advantage of iTunes but it's hard to do it when it refuses my music.
I do security
that would explain everything
The biggest disappointment is the total lack of visualizers to go with my music. I know there are some out there, believe me, I've found some decent ones (and some that were total crap) but I'd really like to see Apple spend a little money to have some proffessional graphics pros add some exciting new visuals go with the music.
I'd even be willing to pay a quarter per screensaver, so think about that Stevie J!
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
its apparently been witnessed by quite a few people, as reported on news.com, that installing it can cause windows not to boot on a handful of systems. this probably has something to do with the drivers and such it installs for ripping and burning. I thought the interface looked nice and was pretty simple, but way to fucking sluggish on this Athlon. Maybe apple only optimized against Athlons ;) overall it was ok but as a music player i prefer the new winamp and its music library. fast and simple, even with thousdands of mps3s.
iTunes is a very nice application. But what everyone else has is id3 tags from the internet. Click an mp3, and the app should retrieve album cover, info, all from the net.
WHY CAN'T ITUNES DO THIS?????
it was crap too.
There is no god
You could always use Media player classic + quicktime alternative codec.
try this
There is no god
Apple makes money selling music on the iTunes music store. Probably not much money yet, but certainly they will make considerably more money if they don't restrict users to the Mac platform.
Actually they make no money on the iTMS at the moment. It exists primarily to sell iPods, which do make money.
With the advent of iTunes for Windows, the iTunes Music Store became the largest distributor of online music overnight.
Wrong. According to Jobs, citing Nielsen I think, it was already the largest distributor of online music, with 70% market share, before the advent of iTunes for Windows.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
So far the only major problems i've found with iTunes are when I try to swap CDs...iTunes refuses to aknowlege that the old CD has been removed and a new one inserted...wont play new tracks, won't hit CDDB for new information. Nor will it shut down gracefully, I have to use task manager to kill it.
second bug: If iTunes encoutners an mp3 with a header that says it is zero-length, it crashes without any sort of warning, and without saving whatever importing was done up to that point.
Aside from that, I'm satisfied with it. On the other hand, I read ahead enough to know not to let it tinker with my music library ahead of time...numerous windows users have been burned by the thing trying to 'reorganize' and ending up with near useless mp3 names.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Slashdot has the weirdest view system. Either I see dozens of trolls if I view at -1 or comments appear to be replying to a different parent than they really are.
I've been using an iPod on Windows for about 4 months now and I love it. The only part I could not stand was the dreadful MusicMatch software package. Lots of people love it, I know, but it wasn't for me.
One thing the review does not mention is that for Windows iPod owners, iTunes completely replaces MusicMatch.
I find that my computer recognizes and synchronizes with my iPod much faster now on iTunes than with MusicMatch. (Warning: I connect over FireWire, I cannot say what USB users will experience.) Frankly, even without the music store, I'd recommend iTunes for any Windows iPod users because of the more seamless support for the device in iTunes.
Once I set up my options, I plug in my iPod and it syncs right away and I'm done in a few seconds. (Usually I'm only updating a few songs I just purchased.) The MusicMatch software used to take 15-20 seconds just to recognize the iPod device.
Of course, my number one complaint is similar to other users. When previewing a song, if you click just about anywhere else, the preview cuts off, even if you are just browsing. I hate that.
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
Ars Technica also has a review of the service.
From the Ars article: "Please note: this is not a review of iTunes for Windows or of the iTunes Music Store"
*screams and throws a brick in michael's general direction*
- I am made of meat.
It's also worth noting that iTunes for Windows has the same intelligent data treatment that the Apple version does. Highlight a song and press Ctrl+C to copy all the tags from that song. You can paste them onto another song or you can paste them directly into Word, Excel, whatever.
That means that, to make a list of all your songs, just press Ctrl=A, Ctrl-C, and paste into Excel. The tags will appear in separate fields. This makes printing inserts for cutom CDs very easy.
You post this stupid whine on every damned mac topic. Take your antiquated Mac, throw it out by the curb, and get yourself a new Mac.
Just shut the hell up for once and all, stop being a troll, and let those of us who actually want to read valid technology questions/issues see some actual content for a change.
Go away little man, you are a pain here.
It's pretty sad when even the submitter doesn't RTFA. It clearly states at the top of the Ars page:
"Please note: this is not a review of iTunes for Windows or of the iTunes Music Store. Rather, this is an editorial on some of the challenges facing Apple now that iTunes has come to Windows."
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Sharing music with users on the same computer is trivial: just tell everyone to set the "iTunes music folder" (in preferences->advanced) to the same location, and copy all of your existing music there.
Everytime someone else rips new music the other users will need to run file->"add music to library" and then select either the entire iTunes music folder, or just the songs of interest.
Works great for my wife and I. The only issue we've run into so far deals with file permissions (on OS X). We've created a new user group (using NetInfo), and run chown and "chmod -R g+rw". Unfortunately, when iTunes rips a CD by a new artist it creates the new folder with only read permissions for the group. Guess I need to mess around with umask or somesuch.
Actually, that should have been Foobar2000. Sorry about that; I must have put my contacts in wrong.
*meow!*
- It should be storing metadata in its own DB as opposed to relying on ID3 or other types of tags. I don't want it rewriting my ID3 tags in order to be able to organise the music. This is something that the arstechnica article complains about as well.
- There's no OGG or FLAC support! I rip a lot of my tracks to FLAC beacuse it's 100% lossless. If not FLAC, then I rip to OGG because it still sounds damn good and it's totally open/Free. Furthermore, if they had kept the metadata in the DB as opposed to the tags of the files, there would be no problem including FLAC files which don't really support embedded metadata as much as OGG or MP3.
- No unicode support. That means that songs with foreign charactersets in their metadata show up as random garbage text in iTunes for windows when they actually do show up properly on the mac. Not that other windows audio player applications have handled this very nicely either.
Because of these restrictions, I'm gonna stick to WinAMP for now.
For one thing, the reason that iTunes GUI is so slow on Windows is because they didn't use the standard controls that are built into the OS.
If you had 10 programs that used 10 different platform metaphors for the GUI, I don't think you'd be too happy. A big reason that makes it easy to learn how new programs work is because you don't/shouldn't have to re-learn the GUI each time.
Don't steal the music.
As far as the interface, what's wrong with a little variety?
I'm sure you eat out at least once a week or do always eat that canned dog food of Windows everyday?
Quicktime for Windows is not actually windows software.
It is Quicktime for the Mac recompiled for x86 and running on top of a translation layer that has just enough of the Mac "toolbox" (Cocoa?) API to let quicktime run.
It does not integrate or take advantage of any windows services, like DirectShow, WinMM, etc. It doesn't even use standard windows message passing.
So in reality Apple wrote a translation layer for windows (or paid someone else to do it), and just runs the mac version of quicktime on top of that layer.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
iTunes uses around 40 MB of RAM on my WinXP SP1 machine, with no music files in my library and nothing playing. Add in the iPod driver and the iTunesHelper app that it runs in the background, and you've probably got around ~60MB of RAM usage on average.
Minimize and restore the app to get a better idea of it. Overall, do not use task manager to measure memory usage because the "memory usage" column should actually read "working set size." In reality the programmer can't do as much as you think they can about it, this number includes DLLs mapped onto the address space, and memory allocations.
Google groups post on the subject. Note the following sentence:
"Windows does not aggressively release memory once allocated, since the application may reuse the memory soon."
So you don't waste your time as I did... after you download the Quicktime plugin oggvorbis.qtx, you must place it in
c:\windows\system32\quicktime
not in
c:\program files\quicktime\plugins
I'd like to decrypt the files without recompression too, but WHY would I want to put in the time?
Simple, I can do anything I want with my 3 computers! The DRM is non-existant for me, so its simple not WORTH MY TIME TO HACK IT!
Just because I'd feel a little better, is not enough to invest the time to hack it. If I want to get it out at ANY TIME I can just use dozens of decode-encode methods to get it out.
The lack of motivation, and the abundance of easier alternatives with know percevable loss in quality means that hardly anyone will want to invest the time to hack it.
The worse the DRM, the more people are motivated to break it. This is the best DRM I've ever seen. I'm not even bothering 2 transcode to mp3 or ogg!
So they won me over....And for ONLY $1 I can get my fix NOW without hours spent trying to find a complete valid download and then the RIAA suing me. My time is worth something.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
and post your problem under the iTunes/Windows
These are all well-and-good point-taken comments and should be considered constructive criticism. So - How About Playing Good Citizen and Submit This To Apple Using The ITUNES FEEDBACK Feature? Too Easy? Gives Competitive Advantage To Apple? Or just needing to vent to your peers, shrug off iTunes and return to MusicMatch - or whatever.
No, I don't expect them to port iTunes to Linux, but hear me out. Will iTunes run in Wine? And if so, is there a way in Wine to capture tracks a Windows program tries to burn into .wav files? Although I really wish such hacks weren't necessary, it could make the system usable for even more people.
Litigious bastards
"What? I see load times of around 1.5 seconds. Again, you're either lying or there's something seriously wrong with your machine. "
Sorry but of the three machines I've tried it on (PIII900,XP1900,Duron 1GHz all w/512MB) ITunes doesn't come close to launching in 1.5 seconds.
Hey I mostly like ITunes, but you're really in denial about slow it can be. Initial startup takes well over 10 seconds and second launches take just about 4 seconds on my fastest PC. Good for you if it starts up so fast, but rest assured a large percentage of its users don't experience that. And contrary to your accusations were all not a bunch of liars.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
iTunes is *supposed* to leave your music where it is when you add a folder to the library. However, this is not always what actually happens. When I pointed iTunes to the root dir of my MP3 collection (as the reviewer did), I was horrified to discover that iTunes MOVED all of my already-sorted MP3s into various folders based on the artist/album information in the ID3 tag. How many of your MP3s have complete ID3 tags? I thought as much.
The end result is that, in addition to having much of my music resorted according to iTunes' own style, I now have a folder called "Untitled Artist - Untitled Album" which contains several thousand unsorted mp3s. These were previously well-sorted into "artist - album" directories. But because they didn't have ID3 tags, iTunes lumped them all together.
I can only assume that the aforementioned behavior is a bug. But it's a pretty heinous bug. Downloader beware.
4-star general in a one-man army.
What about my Newton Connection Kit for windows?
Altho, that was an awful piece of software. Not that different from Quicktime actually.
WebObjects for Windows hasn't been canned, it's available for Windows 2000 Professional (development) and Windows 2000 Server (Deployment).
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I was talking of the original iTunes. Of course, the win version was made with Win developers. But the concept and code behind it is still from the original Mac version.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually use Enterprised Objects Framework for that.
For those wanting to know, EOF is basically a subset of Mac OS X's Cocoa API.
Might be a tacky solution, but if you have friends in the US just get them to send you a gift certificate, then just pay them back. Use that to buy your music.
:)
Don't know if it'd work, but worth a shot
What's your point?
iTunes is the same thing.. ok so if quicktime isn't windows software, than neither is iTunes.
I've run itunes on 2 computers so far, a 3ghz p4 w/ 2 gig of ram, and an amd 2.2ghz with 1 gig of ram, and the itunes program is VERY slow. Trying to resize the window panes suffers from 2-3+ second delay before the window starts to move. Both computers run winxp. I'm glad someone else pointed this out -- as it's the major drawback to the program for me.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
You can create a playlist with Winamp/CDex as such?
Smart playlist composed of:
Songs not played in the last 2 days
Songs played less than 4 times
Songs in the genre 'country'
Songs not with the artist 'Garth Brooks'
Or do a live search for 'Floyd' against your library?
Maybe you don't find value in a central and queryable database?
GPL Deconstructed
Apple claims that 128kbps AAC encoding provides quality almost indistiguishable from the original, much better than a 128kbps MP3. To my ears it all sounds great
If that were true I would love iTunes, but I just can't bring myself to pay for any of the songs after hearing how poor the quality of AAC is on iTunes previews.
To me MP3 sounds like hell, OGG is barely listenable, and I had assumed (via hype) that ACC was just about CD qulity. Nope, it's almost as bad as MP3.
Is it just me? Listen to some jazz tunes, the ride symbol and hi-hat sound like hell.
Or filemaker pro. And wasn't the claris suite once available on Windows?
I think when you add album art it doesn't delete the old one because it is still viewable. I think you can click on the picture to change to the next piece of art.
Thus inserting the extra art doesn't seem so strange.
I tried out ITunes, but overall I still prefer dbpoweramp as a music player.
It's playlist functionality is kinda weak, but the Music Collection works out quite well, more than covering the flaws. (Apart from the not-very-random 'selective play'). Much less footprint too (5 megs RAM player, 8 megs for jukebox, 0% CPU usage for both on WinXP here; Athlon 1800+).
It's also got better codec support (quite a lot there) - notably ogg and several non-lossy codecs (though I haven't tried the non-lossy). I'd suggest getting the beta version(s) - (seperate player and ripper/converter), they've worked just as well for me and have some minor additional features.
Apple claims that 128kbps AAC encoding provides quality almost indistiguishable from the original, much better than a 128kbps MP3.
I went into an Apple Store recently, and I sampled the difference in the two formats. 128k AAC sounded about as lossless as a 192k MP3 of the same song. I wonder how my CD's will sound in 192k AAC...
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
Since when did Slashdotters support DRM and other closed protocols and file formats? I find this entire situation comical. The pot (Microsoft) calls the kettle (Apple) black (closed), and Slashdotters are actually choosing sides in this entire conflict!
Give me Linux or a free and open BSD, if that is what it takes to maintain my electronic freedom. Both OS's are still capable of playing all of the music that I care to listen to. Please tell me why I need to a closed service with its closed file formats, closed protocols, and DRM advertised to me on Slashdot?
Sure Apple has done some cool stuff, but this is not one of them.
If you have a Macintosh involved, you don't even need the crossover. The interfaces autodetect and cross over for you.
.local.
Of course, with MacOS and Rendezvous, you don't need to run any "network wizard" either. You plug the machines in. They're "just there" as
Thats a nice review, but it doesn't address the fact that we shouldn't reward the RIAA members for their assholery by paying for (or listening to, of course) their music.
as Apple apparently uses its own tag format
Apple uses ID3 v2.4 (which added album artwork support).
Your other media players are written by companies that apparently don't care about standards.
Vonal Declosion
I thought this was quite funny: If you look closely at the image of iTunes open on the Windows desktop on the front page of apple.com, you can see the windows update icon in the system tray. :) Kick 'em while they're down...
There is one side-effect in iTunes that has come in very handy, giving it its one advantage over MusicMatch Jukebox that I generally use.
I have a Creative Nomad Jukebox, which in its artists list would list the same artist a few times. Why? Because if the ID3 tag said "50 Cent" vs. "50 Cent " vs. "50 Cent " (padded spaces on the right, if you are confused - oh and Slahsdot removed the spaces...) the Nomad thought of them as different artists. MusicMatch and others were "smart" enough to not pay attention to trailing spaces (were they written in fortran or something?) So there was no real easy way to track down artists with extra spaces.
In iTunes, on the artist list I will see "50 Cent" 3 times which makes it really easy to visually identify the ones that got extra spaces and fix those. Unfortunately once I see an artist name like that, I need to click into it, select all songs, then fix the Info. In MusicMatch you can right click on the artist itself and it will apply the changes to all selected songs.
Another useful bug...
When Nomad encounters missing/bad frames in the MP3 file, it breaks out into bit-farf. Winamp skips them over, so it's harder to detect broken songs. iTunes also breaks out into annoying barf-bit, which is terrible for your listening pleasure, but is useful to help you spot files that are gonna screw up the Nomad.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
so what? are you making a joke or something? i don't get it...
OK, I love iTunes and have since installing version 2 on my iMac. However the windows version has a couple glitches for me.
1. Streaming - I seem to be having latency issues with the "Radio" function. Even with the buffer set to Large, music streams are choppy and garbled. I dont know if it's my hardware (Toshiba Sattelite Pro 6100, Windows XP, Orinoco 802.11b WiFi card, Netgear Wireless router) or what but I can't seem to hold an ungarbled stream for longer than 2 seconds. I've tried disabling my firewall, reinstalling iTunes, etc. But it's just not working.
2. Visualizer stalls in full screen mode - Now, it worked for a while, mind you, but I can't seem to get the visualizer to run in full screen mode. I click the button, the screen goes black for about 3 seconds, then voila! Goes back to my desktop...
aside from those errors, I love iTunes and was giddy to hear that it came out for windows. Now my laptop recieves as much love as my iMac! Hopefully there's a linux version in the works?
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
Also, AppleWorks for Windows. Although, to be honest, I've never actually seen a copy in person. I heard that someone bought a copy once...
--
$tar -xvf
Apple makes money selling music on the iTunes music store. Probably not much money yet, but certainly they will make considerably more money if they don't restrict users to the Mac platform.
Actually, according to Apple's Senior Vice President Phil Schiller:
"The iPod makes money. The iTunes Music Store doesn't,"
In fact, Apple doesn't even see iTMS as ever being very profitable. They really just want to sell more iPods and I think they've come up with a compelling way to accomplish that.
I've found that sometimes the info pulled from cddb isn't accurate regarding compilations.
For instance, I ripped Sting's new cd "Sacred Love" [not his best work, btw], and iTunes put it in the Compilation folder.
There were a few albums that I had to go through and remove the 'compilation' bit for.
But overall I've been happy with iTunes. Now if only it would let me log into the Music Store. I tried to start a new account, and it says the Music Store is busy. Then I created an account on Apple's website. When I try to log in with that, iTunes says I need to review the information, but when I click on "Review" it just drops me back at either my Library, or the main Music Store page. Very annoying.
I didn't want to wait, so I went ahead and bought the new Jonny Lang on CD. That's $10 that Apple lost to this bug...
Ender - hoping it works soon.
Nothing to see here
And it certainly shows. I've always had wondered why it was so sluggish and know I know. The same seems to issue with iTunes. I've tried the radio feature and if I move the window the music will skip.
And oh yeah, really great program with the "You're not american. Your exchanged american dollars is not good enough for us." Jeesh, I thought this was the INTERnet... Guess they figured since their main market of selling is in the US they shouldn't bother with the rest.
Just change the order and you'll be able to use the same files over and over and over again.
This is a bit clunky though, and I doubt any meta tag updates she does will be reflected in my Library, and vice versa.
Clunky or not, the meta tags WOULD update -- they are stored in the mp3 itself, not the Library file. This is the sort of thing you could have actually checked in five minutes rather than accidently misleading Slashdot's 350,000 readers.
Yeah, and Quicktime decided to associate itself with all my PSD files even though I said not to (Quicktime is installed with iTunes even if it's already installed and apparently takes over all file associations anyway)... FFS, why would I open PSDs in quicktime..
...and that's all there is to it.
Apple never made software for Windows? Uh how about Quicktime? Clairsworks? Filemaker Pro? Homepage? or do those not count because you suck at doing research?
You can burn these files more than ten times...again just change the order of the songs......presto!, Steve said so himself.
Yes, it can be a bit sluggish at times, but I think we all have to admit that for essentially a version 1.0 application (on the windows side that is) they did a fantastic job.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
There is too unicode support. I have a lot of Japanese MP3s, and I can go back and forth between Windows and Mac iTunes and update files and they look the same on both ends... I don't get garbage characters.
A quick tip for \.'ers. There appears to be a bug that can cause iTunes to freeze frequently, usually whenever the app loses and regains focus. A post on the Apple forum helped solve this. The problem apparently has to do with disconnected network drives. So if you're using a laptop from home, and you have network drives that aren't connected, go the My Computer window, right-click, and choose disconnect. (At least that's what I did on Win XP). I'm speculating that it tries to scan the drives periodically and freezes until it hits a timeout. After I removed the drives it worked fine for me.
WO5 is a total rewrite in Java. IB is not included any more.
to run on that copy of MS Bob they bought at the same time . . . . .
"It has been eagerly awaited on the PC, ever since Apple launched it as a Mac only service in the spring of 2003"
I don't know anyone who's been waiting for this service. Everyone I know is perfectly happy with Kazaa/Limewire (mostly because the price is unbeatable, not because of better features).
Has anyone considered that there's an EXTREMELY good chance that the Music Store portions of iTunes are backed by Safari/KHTML? Which means that it wouldn't take that much for Apple to make a Windows version of Safari available, too? Would make a nice alterative to IE, since with its built-in (ie. easy) user agent switching, it can become more compatible with restrictive sites than gecko-based browsers.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
From the article :
"...Please note: this is not a review of iTunes for Windows or of the iTunes Music Store. Rather, this is an editorial on some of the challenges facing Apple now that iTunes has come to Windows."
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
The offending character that I've found is the ":" - presumably because this is an illegal character in MacOS (it's the directory separator character - equivalent to / in *nix or \ in Windows). Quite annoying.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
I tried it, and it kind of sucks. This would be the exceptionally high quality software that mac users enjoy? Come on.
1) You can barely resize that window. 2) No skin support 3) Preview a song in the music store and change to your library: the music stops, you basically can't do anything while previewing a song in the music store 3) Incomplete context menues 4) can't maximize window, no fullscreen option for the visualizer. And I have been using it 5 minutes!!
I wish they'd released an API and left it to the open source community to build it. Now that's a great idea
Nope, iTunes was basically a revamped version of Casady & Greene's Sound Jam MP3 player. Apple acquired the SoundJam code to create iTunes, and Jeff Robbin, who created SoundJam, works (or worked) for Apple.
Check here for a little more info.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
One would be input formats. iTunes seems to play MP3, AAC and nothing else. No method for expanding that. My copy of Winamp currently plays MP3, AAC, AC3, OGG, MIDI, XM, IT, S3M, MOD, SPC, APE, FLAC, WMA and several others I can't think of off the top of my head. IT can be expanded to play even more.
Along those lines the output and DSP is limited and fixed in iTunes. It only outputs via the windows default output, and it has a limited amount of processing. Well Winamp, again, is expandable. I can specify any sound output my system has, I can do it in MME, KS, DS, ASIO, and so on. I can also have a whole range of DSPs loaded if I like. There's even an adapter to adapt my professional audio DirectShow (same thing as CoreAudio plugins) filters for use.
This is all not even to mention video playback, which Winamp will also do if I like.
Now, of course, iTunes has features Winamp doesn't, the store being the most notable. However to try and say Winamp is the universally less functional product is silly. In the area it is intended to perate (a player) it is awesome and hugely expandable.
Has anyone checked out Audio Galaxy's Rhapsody? I've been using it for quite some time now and am very pleased with it. You can't download MP3s, which may be a factor if you primarily listen on a portable device or in a car, but if you like to listen to music near your computer and want access to thousands of CDs worth of material (even some really obscure stuff and they are constantly adding new stuff) then check it out. It is only ten bucks a month.
--
George
I am a supporter of free/open software when that is the choice of the creator, but what exactly is wrong with rights management when the creators want to protect their creation and actually see a return on their investment of time and creativity? Music is not open source software. It is wrong for you to decide the scope of someone elses rights regarding their creations.
Nearly all music is created with the express condition of ownership being controlled by the creator -- whether they chose to trade those rights to a label/distributor for money is their choice, but that still does not give you the right to run roughshod over their express wishes.
That is what is wrong with consumers today. I know you want free music, but I think that most 'open source music' frankly sucks, and if you wan't to enjoy music composed by mainstream artists whose works are under copyright restrictions, it is only right to compensate the holder of that copyright -- whether you agree with the fact that the artist sold out those rights to a big. bad, evil, corporation or not. Otherwise, I'd like to 'open-source' your paychecks...see how long you want to keep working while your checks get smaller and smaller -- and this is not in defense of 'existing business models needing to stay the same". I agree that 'middlemen' and distributors who double the costs of existing music distribution channels are rightfully fucked, but that is where our savings should be found.
The internet is a great mechanism for streamlining delivery of media, but we have to get past the belief that creators and those who represent their creations(or who rightfully have aquired them) don't deserve fair compensation for their work or risk/investment.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
I'm surprised that more people aren't crowing about iTunes music sharing. I have a Mac laptop with 2000 songs on it. I bring it to work every day. I told the people in my office to download iTunes so they could listen to my music. Within a day, I not only had people linking to my machine but also had 10 people sharing their music too. The fact that Windows finally has reasonable and dead-simple community music sharing shouldn't get lost in the discussion over ITMS, whether iTunes supports XYZ player, or whether it has feature Z from Winamp.
It works the same way on the Winderz version AFAIK. But I would definitely prefer to have an extra 1-sec silent track at the end of my disc than tracks that arent in the order I wanted, so the parent poster's suggestion is actually a great one (one I hadn't heard before).
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Why are people saying "this is the first software Apple has written for Windows?" I've read this in two iTMS reviews now. Lest we forget that QuickTime (Player and QTML/VRML plug-ins, etc.) has been around on Windows for ages. I've been a registered QuickTime user since version 3.
Considering what QuickTime Player has to do I've found it to be surprisingly stable, although Player has several not-nice issues which Apple has never gotten around to fixing. Two of which are:
- Pressing Ctrl+F to play a movie full-screen gives you a dialog with a drop-down list containing: "Normal", "Double", "Half", "Full Screen", and "Current" as selections, "Normal" being the default. This drop-down isn't focused either so you've either got to tab around or use the mouse to select "Full Screen" before clicking the Play button or pressing Enter to get things happening. This is brain-dead UI to my way of thinking - you've already got Ctrl+0, Ctrl+1 and Ctrl+2 to play movies at Half, Normal and Double resolutions, so at least make "Full Screen" the default selection so you can just press Enter to play!
- The movie(-to-AVI) Export option only allows you to choose from a limited set of QuickTime-specific CODECs: "BMP" (Raw frames), "Cinepak", "DV-PAL", "DV-NTSC", "Indeo 4.4" and "None" (another raw frames). QT6 added DVPRO CODECs as well. Forget about all the other CODECs a user may have installed on their system that could be used. I'm sure Apple could stand to take a lesson in this regard from other video software like VirtualDub.
As a paying user I've raised these really-simple-to-fix concerns with Apple before, still with no action on their part.
The QuickTime "BMP" and "None" CODECs both have real bugs in that they don't pad rows out to DWORD boundaries. This means that any movies you export with a (width mod 4) of 1, 2 or 3 will suffer tearing when played back in any software except QuickTime Player. (Try this at home kids with the 190x240 Sample.mov that gets installed with QuickTime.) Apple has also been notified of this, again with no response.
I hear you saying, "Big deal! What has this got to do with iTMS?"
Nothing, except that it shows Apple consistently treats Windows users, even paying ones, as second-class citizens. This is perhaps understandable considering their prime business is selling hardware and software to high-margin Mac users, but if they are truly interested in market penetration of iTMS into the Windows world then they will need to act a little more responsively to issues with their Windows client softwares.
Come on, a review of iTunes for Windows, and there is absolutely no mention of the how the iPod works with it?
It's not Cocoa. QuickTime for Windows predates Cocoa on Mac. (Cocoa came from NeXT.)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Is there a list of participating labels for iTMS? The closest I could find was this sentence from the front page: " The iTunes Music Store features hundreds of thousands of songs from major music companies including BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros. -- plus over 100,000 new tracks from independent artists and record labels." There are a few independent labels that I care a lot about, but I can't find any way of finding out if they're included or not. Anyone know?
Alternately, is there some way of searching the store without having an account?
(and on a different note, has anyone gotten iTunes working under Wine yet?)
[TMB]
Rendezvous works with or without DHCP. It does not require any central server like DHCP.
Most home networks are connected to the Internet. Most home network routers already serve DHCP.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually use Enterprised Objects Framework for that.
No, they used WinCarbon. The iTunes app is a Carbon app, not a Cocoa app. Apple originally produced WinCarbon to make something to run QuickTime on top of, and the knowledge of what is portable and what isn't shaped the Mac OS X implementation of Carbon.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why would you re-rip the files, encode to mp3
For one thing, to be able to play the recordings on a handheld player other than an Apple iPod brand player.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Not to mention 4 out of 5 dentists!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
really great program with the "You're not american. Your exchanged american dollars is not good enough for us."
Bitch at the music publishers and record labels, who gave permission for their copyrighted works to be distributed and performed only on U.S. soil.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The Apple homepage said "hell forze over"
not "hell has forzen over" So much for journalistic integrity.
A minor note in response to something small you said:
:)
While I have no doubt there are a lot of uninformed mac-zealot idiots out there, you have to understand where the opinion mac users have of WMP is coming from. If you had used WMP for macintosh, you would know that it really is just truly awful. It is massive, buggy, it's as un-mac-like as it could be, it's a resource hog, early versions were kind of difficult to install, it does wierd things, and it is just overall incredibly unpleasant to use.
No one I know who has a macintosh uses it, usually not even to play WMVs. The Mac users I know who actually want to play WMVs or DiVXes tend to either use wierd QT codec tricks, or use the not-always-effective but vastly superior VideoLAN Client. And this isn't just anti-Microsoft sentiment. Mac users flock to and often praise Microsoft products when they are acceptable; witness the huge success of Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer on the Mac, both of which are excellent groups of software. But I've used several different versions of it, and Windows Media Player for mac really is just a horrible piece of software.
So what you have to understand is that when you hear massive whining from the mac camp about WM, this isn't just the standard "ooh someone threatened mommy" knee-jerk apple protectionism. What you are seeing mostly is some kind of primal, feral fear, in which the mac users realize that if Windows Media gains any more of a foothold they'll have to use that horrid program. As a result, even mac users who would ordianarily be reasonable attack WM in a rabid manner, just because they're afraid they're going to be at some point forced to use it and they just want it to die.
I don't know if WMA/WMV is a better codec/format than anything else out there. All I know is that the lock-in implications of it imposed by Microsoft make it unacceptable from my view. (And, from the one time I successfully used it on a windows machine, I think I can safely say the DRM system is wonky as all hell. But that's another argument.) Anyway, I'm sorry that you had a run-in with the zealotous-idiot crowd
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Go to your control panel > Administrative Tools > Open Services > Find iPodService.exe and right click on it. Stop the service and set it from Auto or manual whichever its on to Disabled. This will keep it from starting and attacking CPUs and killing god or whatever it does.
OK, I don't believe that either, but I thought it would be amusing.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Also, how is this in ANY way a Troll? I said I don't want to steal music and I personally want to pay for music? How is this a troll?
Unless the moderator was reading the Italic wording from the post before which I was commenting on.
Again, how is this a fricken troll?
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I'd like to decrypt the files without recompression too, but WHY would I want to put in the time?
Simple, I can do anything I want with my 3 computers! The DRM is non-existant for me, so its simple not WORTH MY TIME TO HACK IT!
Well, one very good reason would be if you don't have an iPod, but have something else that can't play M4P's, perhaps? Then you'd have a valid reason to be able to transcode your legally purchased music into another format, and you'd ideally want to do it without having to burn a CD for it.
It may not be worth your time, but it will be worth somebody's time. How many Mac users with portable MP3 player's don't have iPod's? There's been little or no incentive for them to do this sort of thing, because the iPod can play the protected file just fine. Now that Windows users, with a large variety of portable devices, have access to the protected format, they'll definitely want to be able to take it with them.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
omfg lol linux linux hualaagaahgaha I AM MASTURBATING!!!
Ahhhhh, so that's why it did it. This is definitely information that Apple should supply up-front. It seemed logical to just have iTunes use my current root mp3 folder as the iTunes Music Folder, and hey, why would I not want a music organizer to keep the Music Folder organized?
In retrospect, I really should have let iTunes choose its own Music Folder rather than asking it to put things where I wanted them. But thankfully others can learn from my mistakes.
4-star general in a one-man army.
If you have problems with iTunes, tell Apple. While they may or may not agree with your comment, they do read and consider comments. Many of the features in OS X 10.2 and 10.3 are the result of user feedback.
Oh, crap. Missed again.
Um... I get just under 20x when ripping CD tracks to 192kb/sec MP3s. I don't know why you're getting such slow speeds, joshv. The only problem is that iTunes doesn't recognize some CDs, apparently. I just now put in The Strokes and theres nothing I can do to get iTunes to show the CD under the 'Source' pane and play or import it. So I took it out, put in a different CD and that one worked fine. I don't know what the hell this is all about but I would certainly call this a bug. The Strokes CD isn't an enhanced CD, nor is it scratched or anything else that would cause it not to work. In fact, it works in every program except iTunes. >:-(
Da Blog
What you need to do is download the Resource Kit Tools for Windows XP/2k3, install it, then from a command prompt CD to your "My Music" folder, then type linkd iTunes path-to-shared-iTunes-folder. For example, I use D:\My Music\iTunes, with the music files under D:\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music.
Do this for every user you have, and hey presto. It works :) Yes, I know Microsoft's linkd takes its arguments in reverse order from the Unix link command. The tool won't let you create a dangling link though, so it does not really matter if you accidentally mistype the command.
I would post the link to the Win2k resource kit but I could not find any mention of linkd on the page I found.. anyone?
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Mr. Jobs will see you now. He's eagerly awaiting your blowjob.
"As for Winamp, it actually has assloads of functionality that iTunes doesn't - they share a fairly small subset of "playing music files", but thats about it."
Such as...?
You can double-click on a playlist to open it in a new window. Close Window then becomes useful.
What the...
"This confused me at first, because the icon is grayish before activation, it looks disabled to this long-time Windows user." -michael, suspected Slashdot open-source zealot
The Slashdot editors have made fools of us, making us think that they were eleet Linux users, when they are all actually lame Windows users!
It needs it just to work.
I cannot believe the majority of the reviews I am reading here. I thought this was Slashdot. Home of the cynics.
What I got reading through fifty percent of the comments was "Oh, what a great piece of code Apple has crafted"
Well. I am here to tell you the real truth.
FU. You Apple elegance lovers.
I was cynical from the start and was not dissapointed loading this buggy DRM filled chunk of code from Apple trying to run a secure service on my creaky win2k box.
Apple insists that you update to the latest Quicktime build. Ok I don't have a problem updating the latest build of spyware. I do this and discover that not only does Itunes have a poor security policy but it actually changes your policy behind your back like enabling shares to the fullest extent you have ever allowed. After a security audit I uninstalled the software and am just waiting for the security alerts to roll in. Apple has never had much of a friend in Microsoft. This axiom is very evident in this software. I trust Apple OK, but trusting Microsoft to treat Apple fairly is a big Issue. Don't be surprised if you see major hacks within I-tunes within the next ten days or so.
I found I-tunes to be a creaky tower built on a creaky platform, and I predict no good will come of it.
All technical comments aside, what are thoughts on the first legit online music store that could compete with the Napsters of the world?
My biggest gripe was always having to pay $18 for a CD to listen to the one song I liked. I always felt that $1 per song was much more reasonable. Is Steve Jobs the only one to get this? Is the RIAA so bloated from profits that $18/song is what they consider reasonable? (Well, I guess it's about the same cost as their double decaf grande mocha lattes...)
While it may not be technically perfect, it sounds like iTMS takes alot of the hassle that comes with file swapping, out of the mix. Two of the biggest advantages of iTunes may just be the time saved searching/ripping/burning/catagorizing songs, and a guilt free conscience.
Besides, I'd much rather spend my day listening to my music as I jogged in the park instead of trying to find the best quality mp3 of Britney's latest good-girl-gone-bad, Madonna-wanna-be song.
Hmmm.... Thanks for the info. I'm surprised that the dialog box was not more informative.
t'nera semordnilap
Except of course for the fact that all you have to do to transcode it is tell iTunes you want to rip in MP3 and then to do it or to burn to a CD and reimport. Add a single CD-RW and it seems to me that you could convert M4P to your hearts content if you really needed to...
True, but that entails a re-encoding of the waveform and a theoretical quality loss. It's not good enough for some people. Besides, it's a silly workaround. The data is there. It's already encoded. Evidence suggests it's not even encrypted, just in a thin DRM wrapper. I really don't expect it to take long before someone works it out.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Filemaker was the number one home use and number two overall database (in sales) on windows as of July 2003
[Text of the article in case it gets Slashdotted. Posting AC so I can't be accused of karma whoring.]
/.! You think /. is going to /. itself?
Can I accuse you of being an idiot instead?
"The article" is entirely hosted on
Here's a clue: if you're going to repost an article, repost them only if they're on another site, such as the Ars Technica review.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
All I wanted to do was see what music they have available. They clutter up my system with several unnecessary pieces of bloated software, then REQUIRE a credit card # to simply browse what is available?
n ).
WHY iTunes is NO GOOD:
_____________________
(1) They require a valid credit card # before you can even begin to browse the "store." How about I give you that number when/if I find something I want to buy?
This would be like The GAP requiring you to hand over your credit card when you cross the threhold of their B&M store. When you give it to them, they swipe the card and copy all the info from it. When you leave, they keep the info but give the card back.
BLECH!
(2) Apple installs a bunch of stuff that is unnecessary on my system:
(2a) "iPod Service" appears in my services list, with an executable within \Program Files\iPod\bin.
I don't have an iPod, I don't need one. I certainly don't want this "service" running. So I nuke it.
(2b) a "qttask.exe" appears in my QuickTime folder and is set to run at startup (with a registry entry in HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\ru
I don't need that crap, so I nuke it as well.
(2c) Another app set to auto-run at startup (same location in the registry tree) is "iTunesHelper.exe" in the iTunes install folder. Why do I need this _always_ running even when I'm not using iTunes?
So I nuke it as well.
Ah things are a bit more comfy now.
So I run the iTunes application again.
(3) It re-installs all this stuff I just disabled, puts back the registry keys, re-installs iPod Service, iTunesHelper, and qttask.exe.
So I nuke them all, and set the NTFS permissions on all files involved to read-only (I nuke the fuckers permanently).
(Oh yeah, they "upgraded" my version of QuickTime without even asking me. I wonder what this will break down the road...)
I run iTunes yet again. No weirdo apps/services any more, and the iTunes app runs just fine, connecting to the Apple site without any problems. (Why did they need all that other cruft running in the background I wonder?)
So now maybe I can use this thing without all the clutter. ALAS! They still want my credit card info before they will let me browse the store!
This sucks.
So I nuke the entire freaking iTunes installation, and burn the installer. I will not use software that is this intrusive; I certainly will not hand over credit card info until I find something I want to purchase...
Uh. Mmm. Yeah.
See, here's the deal. I fire up Windows Media Player, I can't create an MP3 from my CDs. All I can create are WMAs, which can't be read on any portable music player that's actually worth owning (note: This doesn't just include the iPod, no shortage of units that don't support WMA).
Can I hack in an MP3 encoder? Sure. Would you like to bet that the encoder is going to break with the next service pack or version increase or whatever other way MS finds to placate the MP3-unfriendly record labels? No, wait a minute, you don't SERIOUSLY think they're going to let you get away with that, do you?
WMA is a joke. WMP's DRM system is a joke and yet still manages to be ungodly intrusive. Only a fool couldn't see that Microsoft is going to make it more and more intrusive until your "capture it to disk in any format I like" comment is no longer true.
Media companies have a dream. They have a dream where every time you listen to a song, they get paid. Maybe not a lot, but they still want to get that pay-for-play method there. Everything else is a baby step toward that goal.
And if you continue to be a good little sheep and blindly support Microsoft, they're going to let them. Because Microsoft wants a couple pennies every time you play a song too... at least to start...
Feel free to email me, i'll give you an address where you can ship the iPod.
bpoag@comcast.net
Be sure the subject of the email says "The iPod I lost on a bet, Bowie, because i'm a fucking idiot Mac user."
Bowie J. Poag
It seems to me almost that every single library and component iTunes uses is static-linked in, which is a bit bizarre.
It never ceases to amaze me the things people will say without having any actual knowledge of the subject. Loading up ITUNES.EXE in Dependency Walker (a tool that comes with Visual C/C++) shows that iTunes is indeed dynamically linked to a number of DLLs. Shall I enumerate them for Ye? Okay...
advapi32, comctl32, gdi32, kernel32, oleaut32, shell32, shlwapi, user32, wininet, winmm, comdlg32, ole32. I've even left a few uncommon ones out. The ones displayed here are the same ones that just about every other Windows application with it's kind of functionality is linked to.
Please, stop the FUD!
ROFL. Of course, those are all built-in Win32 libraries, which have nothing to do with playing MP3s. Thanks, troll.