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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?"
The Microsoft Zune store was working just fine.
Huh.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It's September on USENET all over again.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
iTunes got slashdoted, iDoted.
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.
Laborare Est Orare
Similar here. It'd be easier to count the number of relatives who *didn't* get iPods as christmas presents. That'd be me, my mother, and my two year old nephew. Everyone else closely related that I can think of has a new nano, shuffle or iPod, and they're anywhere from 8 to 71 years old.
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.
CNN confirms it! iTunes is dieing!
--fatboy
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.
Best competition? There's stuff from Sandisk and Creative, as well as Microsoft's Zune. But none of them have the marketshare of the iPod, or the vast amount of accessories. Whether or not the store is "as populated with songs as they say it is" is really a matter of opinion. It suits my needs, but mine may not be the same as yours. You're free to install iTunes and browse the store anonymously (without creating an account) for free. You can even preview the 30 second clips without an account, though the system will nag you every 4th or 5th preview to log in. If money's a factor, you can always go the route I did - go to the Apple Store online and look in their refurb section. Everything on there is backed by the same warranty as the new stuff. They used to have (and may still have) first gen (black/white) 2Gb nanos for $99, for example.
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.
Creative's products are better. Especially if you want to play videos in a format people actually use (divx).
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I bought my wife an IPod Nano and an I-Tunes gift card. I am so sorry.
I was gifted with an iPod shuffle for Christmas, and haven't even bothered to try out the iTunes store yet.
This post is about as useful as an alligator both on fire and LSD.
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.
Maybe so, but this definitely shows that those rumors of apple's iTune sales being way down were total crap.
MABASPLOOM!
If money's a factor, you can always go the route I did - go to the Apple Store online and look in their refurb section. Everything on there is backed by the same warranty as the new stuff. They used to have (and may still have) first gen (black/white) 2Gb nanos for $99, for example.
For Christmas I got a refurb'd 60GB iPod video. I'd told my parents that I had no need for 80GB, but 30 was too small (they really should stick a 60GB in that $300 hole) and pointed them to Apple's refurb site. Since the 5G 60GB is for all intents and purposes the same as the current generation aside from the capacity, it seemed like a good call.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
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?
While I'm not an iPod owner, I heard this Zune thing was poised to take over the portable media market.
It did record numbers for November. It'll probably beat last years sales for December too.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
The internet was overall extremely slow after XMas, mainly due to Taiwan going
offline for an earthquake. All the traffic to Asia had to go through the Atlantic cables instead of the Pacific cables.
the interface is ATROCIOUS
Well, considering everyone points to the interface as the best part of the iPods, you're in the minority there. Sure you weren't using a Zune?
The carbon uses a standard mini-USB cable
My original iPod uses a standard Firewire cable.
it can also be used as a portable hard drive right outta the box
So can every iPod.
And lasts at LEAST 15 hours if not 20 hours on a single charge (25 if you keep the bass output and volume down)
My 5G iPod lasts that long as well. (Not 25, but I'm assuming you're exaggerating.)
BOTH players can play a multitude of file formats, contain no DRM restrictions
Same with the iPod. (ITMS files are DRMed, yes, but that's not the iPod.)
Basically, bully for you that you like the Rio stuff, but you should know that calling iPods "shit incarnate" makes you sound like a blathering anti-Apple zealot.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Stuff by COWON America is pretty good. They support a whole lot of audio formats, such as mp3, wav, flac, ogg vorbis, and wma (including DRMed, though it requires a firmware update on all but their newest player). I just got an iAudio x5l, and I am quite impressed by it, especially the 35hr. battery life. The only downside as far as I'm concerned is the video, which is only 160x128 xvid at a bitrate of about 256kb/s, but they have a model specifically for video playing called the A2.
Last I recall the iTunes Store runs on Akamai's EdgeSuite infrastructure - EdgeSuite Delivery and EdgeSuie Enterprise look about right.
Sometimes bad things happen.
Ewwww! You just got cow on my America!
... and then they built the supercollider.
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
Ahh, so that explains why murder rates have risen recently.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Since I own stock in Apple, I sure hope this was because of tons of iPods being sold and overwhelming demand for ITMS downloads. However, it might have been caused by Apple's change in packaging. When I bought a Nano in October 2005, it came in a cardboard package, approximately the size of two CDs. It needed to be bigger than a CD because it contained a CD -- a CD with iTunes on it. If you buy a Nano or Shuffle (not sure about the video iPod) this year, they come in a clear plastic package that's a rectangular solid similar in size to a soda can. The packaging can be smaller because it does not contain a CD with iTunes on it. Instead, you have to download iTunes from Apple. So maybe that was the cause of the traffic in Christmas morning. Lots of first time iPod owners all trying to download iTunes. That's a 35 MB download, compared to the ~4 MB downloads for most songs on ITMS. Steve Jobs was touting that the smaller packaging was more environmentally friendly (maybe cheaper, too?)
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...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Actually, indie is starting to pull away from CD's, at least the indie that I'm associated with. Some bands are setting their stuff up online for download instead of having CD's made and mailing them out. I remember one of my favorite bands that came through town, The Blakes, talking about choosing between record deals they had on the table for their new CD. In the end they went indie and set up their new CD online through Snocap for $11, $6 of which goes to Snocap. Of course the CD's are available to be ordered, and they can be purchased at shows the Blakes play at, but I imagine this will become more and more the trend as online sales boom and CD stores close, stores which indie bands can't get their record in to anyway.
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!
Since most of the portable video "out there" seems to be in MPEG4 SP or h264 AVC that means your options are either a video iPod or a PSP.
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!
I do not know of a single family member or co worker that got an iPod for Christmas.
Your post was modded as interesting. In theory, my comment should be moderated just as "interesting" as your post as we are sharing the same exact subject and material but with opposite results.
Let's see if there is a bias in the moderation around here.
I have a feeling how this will work out because I would not classify one person posting about knowing a bunch of people that got an iPod for Christmas as "interesting".
Here's one for you. I know of at least 10 people in my family (ages 18-80) that got snow globes for xmas!
I know tons of people that got iPods this year, +5 interesting
I do not know anyone that got an iPod [silence...still silence...no moderation)
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.
h.264 certainly will give a smaller file size for similar quality, but it's also much more processor intensive to decode, and would eat the battery much faster. Further, why go to the trouble of re-encoding things to some esoteric format, when I've already got lots of stuff in divx that I can just throw on the device and use? And why would I want to keep two archive copies, one for the PMP and one for the DVD player?
There's also the fact that the Zen can output at 640x480 to an external display.
The iPod owns the market because of good marketing. Period. Apple would have to majorly screw up at this point to lose that. If an iPod meets your needs best, fine, that's nice. Have fun. But there's no need for a religious crusade against people who's needs are better met by other things.
My Zen is slightly thicker, but otherwise the same size as an iPod. It fits in my pocket, and that's all that matters from my perspective. 60GB is more than enough for me, so more isn't really much of a selling feature (again, to me. If it is to you, wonderful). The LCD on the Zen is much nicer for watching videos on, though not in the sunshine. However, if I'm out and about in the sunshine, I'll have other things I'll want to look at. It's a trade off, which works out in favour of the Zen for me.
I don't personally like iTunes very much, and have no intention of buying music from a DRM service, so that has no effect to me. I *do* bring my media player over to friends places to share music. This is perfectly legal in Canada, where I live, and I don't particularly like the idea of Apple trying to force American laws on me. I know it's possible to get at the music files in other ways, but why would I want to put up with that hassle if I don't have to?
I had to fix a family member's Ipod mini on Xmas day and found that the ipod software updates were overwhelmed too. I wonder if many of the new pods were downloading updates too - it was nearly 20Mb I think. Seems like they come through the store now. Got it in the end though.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Obviously it's a bummer to not be able to buy new music for a day, but with DRM, there's more at stake. On Chrismas, I wanted to transfer some songs and videos I already owned to my new iPod, but I was using my powerbook which I hadn't authorized to play the songs. Even though I had the files, iTunes wouldn't put unauthorized content on my new iPod. When I tried to authorize my computer, I couldn't because the iTunes music store was down.
Even if the iTunes store is too flooded to handle new purchases, Apple has an obligation to keep rights management up and running. It's very disheartening to lose access to content you made the deliberate choice to buy legally.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Definitions of 'portable':
Definitions of portable on the Web:
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven