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New iPod Owner Onslaught Overwhelms iTunes
Billosaur writes "In the post-Christmas rush to power up and use their new iPods, an onslaught of downloaders brought iTunes to its knees, according to CNN. Monday and Tuesday saw users posting message after message about slow downloads and the iTunes site denying them entry. The heavy traffic was apparently more than the system could bear, what with the large numbers of people receiving iPods and iTunes gift cards. Perhaps Apple was underestimating just how successful they were going to be?"
So they underestimated how successful they'd be, and will quickly throw money at the problem and correct the issue.
I don't see this as positive, or negative. It happened, if they fix it quickly we'll all move on.
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2/3rds of the gifts I bought this year were iPods and iTunes music gift cards. I think I am not alone in this and the traffic shutdown on iTunes shows it. Apple has done a great job with their service and I don't mind paying for it. My wife did have to wait until yesterday to buy the rest of her Tunes though since the site was so hammered.
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Somehow, I doubt that Apple feels too badly about this; and I'm sure they're scaling up their server farm to accomodate this, their most recent success.
Well, I was using iTunes last night and it was as responsive as ever. Ripped a CD, listened to a podcast...
Oh, wait, did you mean the iTunes Music Store?
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Quote: "Perhaps Apple was underestimating just how successful they were going to be?"
I thought the press was saying the iPod wave had crested and the sales were on a downward spiral....
What if Apple believed those reports and scaled back iTunes?... Naaw not likely. But it is nice to see Apple get suprised once in a while.
Apple sells a ton of iPods, and then gets press about how many iPods they sell. You can't just do a news story about Apple selling a lot of iPods for the holidays, that's the story we hear every year. You need a situation where they sell so many damn iPods that their service is overwhelmed. That's a story. And you're further reinforcing the idea that "everyone" owns an iPod and nobody owns a Zune. Yeah, it was a pain for people for a day or so. If I read a story about how many iPods were returned because people had trouble with the iTMS, that's something else. But do you think those iPods went back? Doubt it.
A couple anecdotes and an analyst who uses the technical term "blew up" are a pretty week foundation for a news story.
I have drawn these conclusions:
1. The iTunes service has operated just fine
2. It's a very, very slow news day
--Richard
Which is why Creative is losing huge amounts of money. While DIVX might be popular among people who don't pay for things, it's not something that NORMAL people use. And by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots.
Creative stuff is generally big and bulky - not exactly the mass market stylish and simple product that Apple's been churning out with the iPod.
--
Inside Apple's iPhone
I have a feeling that you are trolling but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
In the brick-and-morder storea if you suddenly had a spike in sales... no one blamed you if you didn't get a new store constructed in a day or two to meet the demand. Plus if the demand spike only lasted a day or two did anyone expect you to construct an extra store and have it just sit dormant until that one or two days next year when you had the sales to support using it? No. So part of me doesn't wonder if some of these big online applications don't kinda expect to have there hardware taxed for a day or two, and consider the cost of doubling there hardware costs to only handle one or two days of traffic spikes not worth it?
Guess I'm wondering if Apple suspected this would happen but considered the cost of increasing there server capasity to handle it (maybe even doubling it) not worth it?
Yep, my wife and I spent a combined $35 on each other this year.
Yes, I know this is OT. Feel free to mod accordingly.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
if you expected a 4 fold ncrease for 72 hours, then demand to drop to more moderate levels- you might decide to take the service hit rather than make a huge capital
investment that would cover your 'brownout'
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I used to own a serial adaptor for my Psion Series 3 palmtop. It came with a blob of flash in the middle of the cable that contained all of the drivers etc. required to use it. I don't see why iPods shouldn't adopt this model. Sure, download a newer version of iTunes if you want, but at least provide the software required to use it...
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I love the spirit of Christmas. Soon *everyone* will know that Christ was born with a pair of Nike trainers on his feet and an ipod in his pocket!
And by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots.
That comment, sir, got you added to my friends list.
Your other observations about the importance of market research in determining a product's feature set are stating the obvious, but valuable nonetheless. Extremely granular market research that determines who will pay how much for this product over that product because of which features is what should have sent the Zune designers back to their drafting tables.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Portable means having a good quality of video for a smaller file size, and the MPEG2 you're burning for your DVD player doesn't fit that qualification. Especially since the Zen Vision M's screen is 320x240. Why play MPEG2 on it when you can use video specifically designed for good quality, low file size and that looks good at 320x240. Meaning MPEG4 SP/MP or h.264 AVC. You could still play those files on your computer, though admittedly not on your DVD player.
This is a repost of something I posted previously:
The 30GB iPod takes up 31% less volume than the Zune and 42% less volume than the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
The 30GB iPod has 15% less mass than both the Zune and the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
The 80GB iPod has 167% more storage space than the Zune and takes up 12% less volume than the Zune.
The 80GB iPod has 33% more storage space, takes up 38% less volume, and has 12% less mass than the 60GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
The 80GB iPod has 167% more storage space, takes up 26% less volume, and has 4% less mass than even the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.
No one makes an MP3 player comparable to the iPod in the capacity/form factor department. Same goes for the Nano. iPod owns the market because Apple has no real competition.
Why not put itunes on the ipod? Every ipod has a capacity > 35MB.