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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 wouldn't rule out the fact either that iTunes has a slick interface that makes organising your music, buying music, podcasting, listening to internet radio and so much more, really easy. Try saying that about RealPlayer.
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();
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.
Chances are that they're following the age old corporate habit of following completely unreliable and sometimes unrelated statistics. For example, downloads doesn't equal users (See: Browsers, Chat clients, Websites, etc), discovering more bugs doesn't make the product insecure (See: Browser and Operating system security debates.), etc. However 9 times out of 10, someone will make an outrageous claim based on these statistics, and people, not knowing better, will write articles about it. In the end it's just publicity.
In light of this report, I'm wondering if and when I should ditch providing MP3s for my podcast and switch to AAC?
You would be an idiot to drop mp3 in favour of mp4.
Mp3 is still the king. There is no format out there that comes close. You don't want to alienate all your listeners with old mp3 players (or the multitude who've bought the $20 256MB chinese cheapies)
Dropping it for mp4 would make about as much sense as dropping it for ogg.
First, I understand that AAC sounds at least twice as good at comparable bitrates.
I don't know what sort of audio files you're distributing - but do your own listen tests. Different codecs perform wildly differently depending on the source audio type & most reviews are using pretty standard music with vocals.
My pics.
Apple will always look bad in my eyes as long as they seek to lock people in via proprietry formats that they strictly enforce to prevent competition.
.mov files you're having trouble with, what codec was used for those? Also, I'm not very familiar with what's available for Windows, but on the Mac there are all kinds of full screen players that play .mov files, including VLC. So you don't have to pay.
OK, lets look at the current streaming formats .
1) WMV using proprietary codec controlled by MS.
2) Real media using a proprietary codec controlled by Real
3) MP4 media is an industry standard controlled by the MPEG and used by Apple and anyone else who cares to license it.
All these formats support the optional use of DRM. As for the