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?"

Comments

I helped with this

[sgt.greywar]

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.

Re:I helped with this

[needacoolnickname]

I'm guessing that someone who might have thought of getting you a gift, you already gave this rant to and they decided just to get you some nice socks.

Shit. It's a gift. Say thank you and smile.

Re:I helped with this

[geekoid]

You are an ass and you are giving UNIX a bad reputation.
Immediatly change your logon and then think hard about the idea of hitting someone just because they give you a GIFT.

You ungratefull S.O.B.

1) No one,not even you, can tell the difference without looking at high end equipment.

2) "Epensive" is determined by the market, not by your opinion. YOU may find them to expensive, but clearly the market doesn't it.

3) No music you buy from anywhere is yours. The media is, and the ability to listen to that media any way you want is, but the content is not your, and never has been in the history of music.

4) How much would you spend at a music store if you wanted only 1 track that is on 10 different CDs? You would have to pay 100 bucks to get the home made compilation. 25-50 bucks if you could get it as used music.

It's Win/Win for Apple

[mrshermanoaks]

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.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[gordgekko]

bulkier to carry

God, I wish this would die. The Zune is marginally larger and heavier than the latest iPods. If the Zune is a huge brick, that means every previous iPod was a monster as well.

And before someone resorts to that tired accusation of "shill", I own a 5.5G 80GB iPod and a Mac (along with two Windows XP machines).

Re:Yes

[DECS]

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

Re:So what?

[neoform]

Maybe so, but this definitely shows that those rumors of apple's iTune sales being way down were total crap.

Re:Why was everyone downloading?

[TheRaven64]

That must suck for people who don't have broadband (yes, there are some, and many of them have extensive CD collections). Since all iPods can act as USB mass storage devices, why not just put it on the device itself?

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...

Re:First Post!

[leenks]

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!

more marketing research required by competition

[SethJohnson]

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

Re:Yes

[jonnythan]

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.