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Microsoft's Take on iTunes for Windows
Skruffy writes "The Register has an amusing article about Microsoft's reaction to the launch of Apple's iTunes software on Windows. It seems that Microsoft is very keen to warn its users of the dangers of using a service that would restrict them from accessing music from other sources... Oh the irony."
You're misunderstanding Microsoft's claim. They're saying that by using iTunes to rip CDs [to AAC] or the Apple Music Store [to purchase AAC files] you are limiting your ability to use those files [since they not only contain DRM, but cannot be played in some software or on some MP3 portable devices].
The logical fallacy is that iTunes can of course play AAC [negating the concern about playing the files on your computer], and that iTunes is actually a sales-device for the iPod which of course can play AAC.
What's more ironic, and is being stated by several people already, is that all of Microsoft's efforts at distributing music [i.e. as partners with music distributing sites] involve the use of WMA format and DRM. Those files, of course, are no more useable than AAC, not to mention the particular point that WMA is not compatible with the iPod.
What it comes down to is this: there is a true dividing line between the Apple music scene [i.e. AAC/iPod/iTunes] and the Microsoft music scene [i.e. WMA/Napster 2.0/Media Player], and Microsoft isn't happy that the Apple side is beating them.
That said, I'm still using windows...just also using iTunes with my iPod, and purchasing AAC music.
"Stumble before you crawl"
But Ripped AAC don't contain DRM, only downloaded AAC from the Apple music store..., and Itunes can Rip MP3 as well...
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Huh? iTunes is not limited to Apple Music downloads, it also plays mp3s, audio CDs, and pretty much anything other un-DRMed audio you have. The iPod has always played mp3s. What's Apple supposed to do, preemptively invent DRM solutions that profit other companies and put those into iTunes? And iTunes does allow you to burn to an audio CD. MS WMP would do no different than Apple here.
Granted, Apple Music downloads are useless to anyone without iTunes (on Windows or Mac) or an iPod. Until I can play them in linux, they're useless to me. And don't tell me to burn everything to a CD and then rip it. Apple Music is also useless if you want to listen on a non-apple portable. Once again, Apple has chosen to support "everyone" by offering a choice of proprietary systems, rather than a single open system. "Windows or Mac" is just as bad as "Mac only" or "Windows only".
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
I can't believe no one looked this up yet. Anyway, this link goes to the Microsoft "Q&A about iTunes" that the Register article refers to.
Why do I h8 apple?
If Apple hits the 10 million mark by Christmas I will be impressed...
I think I heard that Unca Steve and company have stated that their goal is 100 million songs sold by the end of this year. Considering that they sold 13 million to approximately 5% of the market (Apple users), and have since sold 1 million in the first 3.5 days of iTMS for Windows and Mac, that's pretty impressive. I don't know if 100 million is gonna happen, but hey, everybody needs to aspire to something.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Actually it's by the end of the first year of iTMS's existence, so by late April of next year. I suspect that Pepsi promotion is going to help pad Apple's numbers if it looks like they're going to be a little short. ;)
-sam
I was just here, where did I go?
iTunes plays, rips and burns MP3s as well as AAC. AAC is employed for the DRM, making possible distribution deals with the major labels. The iPod plays both MP3s and AACs.
Microsoft is disconcerted because Apple is not using WMA.
And you don't necessarily need to recompress to a lossy format. For instance, AAC -> WAV -> Ogg FLAC would retain as much quality as you purchased. The Apple DRM is essentially non-existent.
It appears the only real problem with the service is that you can't buy a higher-quality song that would be better for ripping to your own lossy format (or that Apple doesn't simply supply Vorbis/MP3 in the first place). But this is a problem of quality, not DRM.
Apple has just put out a help document for musicians looking to sell songs through the iTMS: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=931 91
Nope, they don't have any web version of their catalog available. I suppose iTunesMS is a bit of a download, but the entire store really is contained within the application.
:P
Haha, not quite. The iTunes music store is actually just regular web pages. If you use a tool like netstat (or better yet, TCPView from www.sysinternals.com) you can watch iTunes make a bunch of HTTP requests to Apple's servers when you browse each page in the store. If you use something like Process Explorer (this is turning into a Sysinternals commercial!) you can see that iTunes references the standard Internet Explorer HTML rendering engine to render the pages.
Apple presumably has something in place on the pages to ensure that only iTunes can access them. iTunes probably just sends some encrypted header doo-dad along with the normal HTTP request headers so that their webservers know that it's iTunes who's requesting the pages and not another web browser. If I wasn't lazy I'd fire up Etherreal and see exactly what's going on.
I'm sure with a little effort and header spoofing you could fairly easily access those pages with the web browser of your choice, although I can't think of any possible benefit to doing so.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
iTunes restricts what you can do with what you buy
Can we please get our terminology straight so people like me at least have a chance of understanding the arguments?
iTunes is a program used for listening to and organizing music on a computer.
The iTunes Music Store or iTMS is a service which sells music in an standards compliant format (AAC) wrapped up with a proprietary (FairPlay) DRM scheme.
Thus iTunes does not restrict anything and can be used with several different audio formats and transcode between many of them. The iTMS sells music with some restrictions that are easily worked-around.