Slashdot Mirror
iTunes Use Surges Past QuickTime, RealPlayer
QuatermassX writes "Forget increased sales of Mac computers, think media players. The iPod 'halo effect' shows its true power in recently compiled statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings and Apple. From the report on WebSiteOptimization.com: 'Podcasting is taking off and iPods are seemingly ubiquitous. Unique users of Apple's iTunes player should pass RealPlayer by mid-2006 with nearly 30 million users in the US alone. People are tuning in over twice as long with iTunes than with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. As broadband penetration increases we are spending more time on our computers.'"
I've never heard of the "Halo effect" but apparently it kicks Slashdot's arse
__
Funny Porn videos from Laugh DAILY
...if it has anything to do with the fact that everyone and their dog I see these days owns an ipod. Hmm.
So people are finally realizing that RealPlayer and WMP suck. Good! Now if only this could happen with winblows...
Last I checked, QuickTime was a part of the iTunes installation under Windows. I think they meant to say Windows Media.
:)
But, this has certainly done wonders for the adoption of QuickTime under Windows. It's the iTunes Trojan Horse -- get them hooked on a great music player and a great portable music player. As more installations of iTunes are done, more QuickTime installations as well. Suddenly, it becomes easier to convince the big websites (and small too) to put up QuickTime versions of the media. And to top it off, because of the increased usage of QuickTime, us Mac users get a better web experience as well.
Bravo Apple
dennis
I don't own an MP3 player, but occasionaly listen to 'podcasts' on my computer but I've no idea how representative I am.
How good a solution to general multimedia handling is iTunes? Why might a non-iPod user like me use it?
Simon Hibbs
iTunes is sorely lacking in so many areas too!
'Automatic updates' consists of downloading a 35Mb new iTunes setup package each month or so...
The library doesn't update itself automatically...
There's no concept of 'checking for existing entries on import' - importing the same folder will just give you each track twice...
It doesn't work very well at all with keyboard shortcuts...
No plugin facility...
It's weighty as hell in memory...
but yet, after all these sore points, somehow, it's way cooler than WMP, RealPlayer, and sod it...anything else I've seen.
If Apple were a woman, she'd be a sexy slim figure - and you'd buy anything shite from her, just because she was so damn fine! Not like the fat moose of a wreck a Microsoft woman would be - she could be selling the moon on a stick, and you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole!
And on that note, perhaps I should mingle with real people some more.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Yeah, their Linux client is gre...oh. Wait.
Did you notice that Microsoft is on a linear growth "curve" no doubt due to OS sales. :)
iTunes is growing faster though, so if this trend continues, in a year or two, iTunes will be the No 1 media player on the market. Not bad at all. God bless those iPods
Reminds me of Netscape when they launched version 4 and announced that Windows will become irrelevant as people will spend most of their time in Netscape. Is it possible that iTunes will do that in the near future as people will increasingly use their computers for entertainment (and not TV, radio, DVDs, outdoor activities, etc.)?
A hungry bear does not dance!
As broadband penetration increases we are spending more time on our computers.
Broad penetration, however, has been decreasing as we are spending more time on our computers.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm really eager to ditch MP3s for a couple reasons. First, I understand that AAC sounds at least twice as good at comparable bitrates. Second, I'm no more trusting of the MP3 coalition than I was of the JPG owners, whereas I can't picture apple ever seeking royalty backpayments from podcasters using the AAC format.
An obvious solution is to provide both MP3 and AAC files, but I'm lazy and would prefer to offer only one format. Any thoughts on whether it makes sense for a podcaster to switch entirely to AAC? I'm sure most of my listeners would appreciate the enhanced sound quality. But what percentage of my listeners would be likely to disappear?
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I have to say that I'm very surprised that itunes hasn't long since surpassed real player.
I know plenty of people who use itunes, but none who use realplayer.
Still, both are irritating adware & nagware (along with WMP of course)
We need a firefox for media....
My pics.
If the former is the case, then it is completely bogus. It is very difficult to get Quicktime without the iTunes bundle, first you need to know that they are bundled, then you need to google the link as the standalone Quicktime installer is hidden away on the site. I've never found a link to it on the Apple site.
And everyone has the Quicktime player on their PC. It's in the list of bog-standard things you do when installing e.g. Windows for someone. Quicktime, Firefox, RealPlayer (maybe) and Acrobad Reader. The reason RealPlayer is a maybe is because they have been doing some pretty shoddy tactics to get their marketshare and profits up. Things like hiding the free cut-down version on the site, so that you have to download other nonsense that you don't want.
Sounds like Apple has been reading Real's playbook. Just because someone has iTunes on their PC, it doesn't mean that they are an iTunes user. Especially when they trojaned the iTunes install in via a Quicktime download. The bottom line however is that Apple want to be able to say to the music industry that "we have X million users" when really they are saying "we have X million users running iTunesService.exe, but only a fraction of them actually use iTunes, but we want to omit that detail as the former marketing point is technically correct and way more sexy".
Well, if they bring Quicktime to Linux, they can increase their ipods to another area of the market.
Real player has really wore out the good-will of its users. It is now a pretty good player, but for years they annoyed the hell out of everyone that downloaded from them.
You know...
* having to click through and read 10 webpages to get to the free realplayer whose link was always hidden in a corner somewhere. What were they thinking? That users would accidently click on the non-free version and then give up and just pay for it?
* Nag screens, annoying forms, when installing-- no real player, you will never fucking get my home phone number.
* Remember the instability and the crashes...
Sadly, I see some traits like this in iTunes. Recently, I had wanted to download JUST QUICKTIME. I was rudely surprised that I can't do that anymore. I HAVE TO download iTunes+quicktime-- whether I want iTunes or not. Screw that. It looks like iTunes has failed to learn the hard lessons of Real Player.
an option only if you pay, more offensive to me if they want market penetration- but it is infact available...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It's an interesting thought, certainly. Check this out: http://www.songbirdnest.com/ It has a much better chance of eclipsing the stereotypical desktop experience with its multimedia capabilities than iTunes does.
I dunno.. Drop by a Starbucks or a college campus and there are iPods aplenty. With the 18-25 yr old crowd it seems to be a hit. But that demographic is pretty fickle so who knows what will happen in 6 months or a year.
But Mac users do have that glazed over, SJRDF (*) blankness when it comes to talking about their OS.
Reminds me of that Lovecraft story:
Presently the old man drew back his hood and pointed to the family resemblance in his face, but I only shuddered, because I was sure that the face was merely a devilish waxen mask. The flopping animals were now scratching restlessly at the lichens, and I saw that the old man was nearly as restless himself.
The new iMacs and MacBooks are pretty nice though. It's a perfect size for me, and is otherwise a decent laptop except for the single mouse button which makes it almost unusable with Linux. Hopefully they'll have a two or three button trackpad option.
* SJRDF - Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field
I tend to prefer a big heaping plate of Media Player Classic, with a side order of Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
It's certainly a hefty package. I once noticed itunes added 50+ secs to a fresh windows instalation. You don't have to used iTunes at all, If you have an iPod shuffle - you can use the "rebuild_db.exe" 9k application and simple drag and drop your music onto the player.
Sir, you obviously been living in an refrigerator box or under a rock. I am a long time Apple fan. OSX 10.4.5 ( Tiger ) is my personal choice for my own music and video work. It is extremely stable and is not at risk from virii and spyware and other malware. I am glad to see the World is starting to recognize the technical superiority of Apple products and software. Yeah, it is a closed shop, but they can and do control the hardware and, more importantly, the software. They don't try to be all things to everybody. Let it be known that I make my living repairing, upgrading and cleaning up Windows boxes. I work on both sides of the fence. In the 3 years that I have been in my business, I have had exactly 3 Apple calls; two of those were re-installations of used equipment. In other words, I would starve if all I done was work on Apples. Bill Gates and his Windows OSs has assured that I will always have food on the table and my bills will get paid!
Where is an open source grammar checker or close source that works with wine?
Spellbound works nicely for spell checking posts in firefox, but I want to catch idiotic crap as well.
Check out democracy player. It's a much nicer general player (more video-oriented, but plays audio too of course), which supports bittorrent feeds.
It's not needed on Linux. For audio podcasts, there's amarok, which is better than iTunes. For video (and audio, and other) podcasts, there's PenguinTV (use the latest unstable version).
On my Ipod I listen to more Podcasts than music. Audio Books are great too. Nothing better to pass the time at work.
At home video casts have become a big thing since building a Media PC for my TV.
Google Vs. Microsoft on Google's own turf. Oh the shame!.
Considering that I use iTunes because I WANT to, but use RealPlayer and Quicktime only when I HAVE TO. I find both of the latter bloated, irritating. I'm not sure the actual root of my dislike for Quicktime, but maybe it's because I used to have lots of problems playing .MOV files on my previous dual P3-550 (1GB RAM), with no apparent fix.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Here you go. Standalone Quicktime 7 player:e .html
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalon
"online video and audio were seen as frivolous, and a big waste of bandwidth."
Man, if my machine at work was a tricked out as any of the boxez at home, I never get any real work done.
Microsoft is pushing against the grain trying to get any if this shit acepted and businesses, Microsoft's biggest client base by far, aren't interested is in frivolity anymore than they're interested in the constant fight against viri.
Apple is getting sucked up in the vacuum of the differences between what Apple delivers painlessly in the home versus the resistance felt by Microsoft from its huge base of business customers.
Radio's dead at the hands ClearChannel, etc.
TV's dead at the hands of CableVision, etc.
Content costs too much. They just want to run ads and rake in money.
Their inventory consists of 1,440 of YOUR minutes of air time per day. And the economics of running ads over broadcasting means that you have to be selling shit that appeals to a broad demographic.
They want to force you to watch all of their shit and fuck you and fuck what you want. And its stupid, vapid, safe, bowldereized, placified, flacified, gutless content, as per FCC regulation.
The revolution'll be on a podcast. It just sound economic sense.
Broadcast and mass market media costs are way up here and getting worse.
Podcast are dirt cheap and limited to whatever the podcaster wants to produce. There's no pimping you stuff out to somebody who owns a transmitter and an FCC licence and charges somebody new 100 years of inflation all at once.
Podcasting stands all of the economic factors on their heads.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
When i ran itunes on my windows box (on 24/7) as my main media player, it seemed to do a perfectly good job of this (Eating over 300MB of my 512MB of ram)
I now have a mac. Itunes is consuming 37MB.
I got modded troll for suggesting that iPods are not as prevelant (at least in the world I live in) as the report suggests, and that anyone that doesn't want DRM might well be better off with a non-DRM'd MP3 player.... apparently, you've been breathing the special packets that they put in shipping crates at Apple for far too long. I'm sure you are quite happy with Apple, and statistically, there are lots of people that are happy with broadcast radio... so what?
My point is that the statistics saying that the iPod is "all that and a bag of chips" is just statistics, not reality in all places of the world, not even all places of North America. Quit huffing on the hype. Quicktime runs on MS too, so its not an OS thing. There are tons of MP3 players out there, all a bit different, most of them are not iPods. iPod is an iFad, like buying those special running shoes... you don't need an iPod to hear music. This story, and stories like it are just hype, the kind of hype that PR machines use to increase sales!
Statistics don't mean anything useful unless there are also statistics for all other aspects of the topic being discussed. How many non-iPod music players are there in use? How many have been sold with WMP on them? How many, including iPods, are just collecting dust in the glove box right now? Using ITMS statistics is sure to make the report lopsided. In fact, usage statistics are incredibly difficult to ascertain. Purchase statistics mean nothing for consumer electronics fads. The truth is that there 'may' be more MP3 players in use than anyone knows about because the owners are using their CD's to rip music and listen to it, ergo no music store stats, and few purchase stats. Statistics that arrive after the holiday shopping season are suspect to start with. How many gifts get purchased and never used? How many are resold or regifted? I resold the iPod I was given... the inflated price made that an EASY choice.
Statistics are just another way to lie....
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Uh... We all remember how that worked out for Netscape right? Right??
I Like Pie...
Ive used iTunes, I used to work at a mac service/sales store. I personally dont like iTunes, its slow, it uses a lot of memory, and its not skinnable etc. I have been a huge fan of winamp since version 2.x, Winamp 5 seems to do everything that iTunes does, except have the online music store. Most of the people i know only use iTunes for the ipod sync feature. Theres actually a plugin for that on winamps site, its free, and it seems to work even faster than iTunes syncs an ipod. So wheres the statistics for Winamp users in this thing? I have never seen anyone actually USE realplayer, for one. The only thing realplayer is good for is playing realplayer files. Which doesnt seem to be very common on the web anymore, most videos being in Windows Media format or Quicktime. Id just like to see winamp user stats on this page as well, anyone else use Winamp?
You want a standalone install of QuickTime?
e .html
Man oh man do they ever make it tough...
I had to search with Google using the obscure terms "Stand alone QuickTime installer" and even then I had to click the 'I'm feeling lucky' button to actually find the link. Of course, if I'd clicked Google Search instead the link would have been at the top of the first results page where I'd have had no chance of seeing it.
What's REALLY weird is that if I'd searched on MSN the link would also have been buried at the number one position. Jeez what a PITA it is to find that link...
Because this was so hard I thought I'd surf Apple's QuickTime site site to see how hard it was to find just browsing.... I had to click the big 'Download' graphic and then click a text link 'QuickTime Stand Alone Installer' to get to the download page.
Finding the stand alone download link is really nasty because it's completely burried almost smack dab in the middle of the Windows QuickTime download page and 'above the fold'. Plus the URL is really not human readable...
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalon
I mean it's not like a hardened IT pro could guess that?!?!?
Apple is just SO obnoxious about this... How much freakin' harder could they make it?
- AC
AAC supports bookmarking, which allows you to resume listening to an audiobook or podcast exactly where you left off, in either iTunes or on an iPod. For example, you could start listening to a nice 20 minute podcast on the way to the gym, switch to your workout playlist, and then resume your podcast on the way home.
This isn't true -- Quicktime the media framework, quite different from Quicktime Player -- will play back full screen. You just need to get a different player.
r eenMoviePlayer.shtml
I can't vouch for it personally but this one is less than 600kB with source code:
http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/Fullsc
BTW, this exact same situation exists for both Windows and Mac, it's not as though Apple is doing something special to gouge PC users. Most Mac users who don't want to pay just use a different player application. The player itself is just a frontend to the Quicktime architecture and libraries, which aren't crippled or require payment in any way. (iTunes is the same thing, it's a frontend to Quicktime also, which it uses to play audio and video.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
To right click with a one button mouse press CTRL + Click. If you hook up a regular two button mouse to your mac, both buttons work as expected.
Passing RealPlayer is a GREAT milestone.
How long has your PC been on for? I used to leave mine on 24/7, with itunes running in the background all the time. Afer 5 days, the thing was completely unusable.
iTunes and Quicktime Player are just front ends for Quicktime codecs, so there is no "bundling" involved. Unless you are wanting to get Quicktime Player without iTunes, in which case there is a stand alone download.
Statistics can be used to lie, therefore every use of statistics is a lie.
Interesting reasoning. If you go to college after high school, I recommend a course or two in formal logic. It'll probably be offered by the philosophy department though you might find similar courses in mathematics or computer science.
I find it amusing that several podcasters beg for money on air so that they can pay for bandwidth. Since most podcasts are talk anyway, why not use a codec designed for that use. Speex is free, open, and bandwidth efficient.
Why encode in 64 kbit when 16 would do just as well?
I finally get what you mean by "update library" after reading other people's posts.
It doesn't work that way. You associate iTunes library with a folder. It's just not that way. My iTunes library has stuff in it from about a dozen folders. If you want something in the library, just drag it to the icon in iTunes. No, it won't automatically pick up your torrents you downloaded into a folder, I guess it's just not designed to.
I do say I wish thye'd concentrate on adding features for the customer and not the store/labels though.
What is this "no shortcut keys" thing people say". I can use both ctrl-key shortcut and alt-key shortcuts (and command-key shortcuts on Mac). What am I missing?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
People still use Real Player? I honestly haven't used real player in YEARS! I thought it had gone by the wayside. Last time I used it was in the G2 days and it wasn't the best video quality. I technically have it sort of installed, if i needed to use it, Xine has all the plugin's for real player codecs, so I'd just use that, but again, I haven't seen any content for it in a while that isn't also available in much higher quality WMV or MOV streams. Honestly, how many people use RMs anymore?
-=JML=-
What the hell is Realplayer? Oh! You mean that company that had a very brief up on Internet media a good 10 years ago and then lost it due to poor licensing, bloating their player beyond belief, privacy disputes, and restrictive supplier arrangements. Got it. They even still around?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
It is impossible for iTunes to be more used than Quicktime, because iTunes is built on top of Quicktime. So, it is only logical that Quicktime is more used than iTunes, since it is used standalone and with other apps too.
Last Post!
And I don't mean that as a good thing.
Just today I tried to view things from two different websites - a TV station and the NCAA's site for viewing tournament games - on a Mac. Both of them flagged me because I didn't have Windows Media 9 installed, even though Microsoft is not updating it anymore and I have the Flip4Mac plugin.
As long as the vast majority of the news websites use Windows Media, QT and Mac users are still second-class citizens.
Read the article before posting (or nag the editors for better summaries. They are talking about the stand-alone QuickTime Player and not the underlying QuickTime frameworks.
I think that anyone that doesn't want Apple DRM will be just fine and happy with a Rio Forge MP3 player, and they are cheaper...
Since when iPods only plays DRM'd files? My 3G iPod only has MP3 files...
He He It's funny because it's true! Which of the above are you?
Since most podcasts are talk anyway, why not use a codec designed for that use. Speex is free, open, and bandwidth efficient.
Because most handheld music players know nothing about Speex audio and their jukebox software does not allow automagical transcoding from Speex to a supported format.
Some of your points are silly (automatic updates? turn it off... library update? wtf? my library updates when I import stuff, play stuff ,etc.... check for existing? uhh, why are you importing stuff twice? I don't seem to have this problem). Some are somewhat valid but really minor.
But you missed by far the biggest flaw in iTunes and iPod: lack of GAPLESS playback. It's fucking ridiculous that a CD player from 20 years ago plays a gapless album flawlessly with track skipping and everything, but iTunes can't. Join Tracks is NOT a valid solution. Crossfading is REALLY NOT a valid solution. iTunes should keep tracks separate in the interface and ELIMINATE the gaps in between! I don't give a shit how it handles them in the backend, one file per album or multiple files per album, I don't care. This is not difficult, but Apple is too lazy/stupid/stubborn to do it. Bah!
Linux prevented MS from leveraging their desktop monopoly to gain a monopoly on servers.
Apple prevented MS from leveraging their desktop monopoly to gain a monopoly on media players (and DRM).
MS failed miserably on their own when attempting a monopoly on mobile phones by stabbing their partners in the back (I guess they couldn't help themselves).
It still remains to be seen if firefox, openoffice, linux etc will be able to break monopolies MS already has in place. lets all hope so for the good of mankind.
evil is as evil does
I don't own an iPod, but I'm a heavy iTunes user (Mac platform). It handles my music library -- which is about 4,000 titles right now -- with good speed and grace, even though most of my music is mostly encoded in Apple's expansive Lossless format. It's really easy to browse your collection and build custom playlists.
iTunes handles videos in the same way it organizes music. I'm not aware of an easier way to browse a video collection.
If you like podcasts, iTunes makes it easy to find and subscribe your favorites.
iTunes has built-in CD burning, handles streaming audio, and generally functions as a media hub. It's pretty useful, and it's free. Enjoy.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
You mean keys that work when iTunes isn't the frontmost app?
I didn't know that was even possible. That explains why I didn't understand what was going on.
Is it common for applications to have this?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95