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
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();
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!
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".
QuickTime uses an open format.
Because the maker of your main player has chosen not to support the QuickTime format.
Ditto.
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
What?
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