Microsoft Dismisses Apple's iTunes for Windows 916
fewnorms writes "Microsoft's general manager for the Windows Digital Media division, Dave Fester, yesterday dismissed the new iTunes for Windows version, saying it was too limited for the average Windows users. Choice quote: "[Apple's music store] ... is a drawback for Windows users, who expect choice in music services, choice in devices, and choice in music from a wide-variety of music services to burn to a CD or put on a portable device." Of course Apple doesn't feel to worried about this, simply stating their products will (and have) lived up to the hype." The points made are all valid- but contradictory to standard Apple product design where simplicity always takes priority over flexibility. Besides, iPod is growing market share, and iTunes will be the best choice for windows users who own it.
The best choice? Guess again. (Score:2, Informative)
Can't disagree with the first point, but the second? Not really. There's at least one other jukebox app [musicex.com] that has a substantially better feature set [macobserver.com] than iTunes and is just as easy to use. I tried iTunes for a day and got frustrated with its limitations. Other than purchasing the occasional track from the iTunes Store, I can't see myself firing it up again. (And no, I'm not one of those people who had stability problems; it worked just fine for me.)
itunes? naah... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:iTunes for Linux? (Score:1, Informative)
no scripting required (Score:3, Informative)
if you're using iTunes for windows... (Score:5, Informative)
This is too stupid for words (Score:2, Informative)
untrue
Most of this guy's comments seem to be based aroundthe fallacy that iTunes can only listen to music from the iTunes Music Store. No, it can listen to absolutely anything you, or your programs, or your perl scripts choose to import into iTunes. The only conditions is it doesn't support RealAudio or WMA. Oh, but that's what this is really all about, isn't it?
But I'm pretty sure at some point in the future, Microsoft will fully believe that Windows users expect exactly one choice for this same thing, and that choice is Microsoft.
Lastly, if you use Apple's music store along with iTunes, you don't have the ability of using the over 40 different Windows Media-compatible portable music devices.
So in other words it doesn't support Microsoft's phony "standard" because MS won't license its codecs for Quicktime. If this were something that windows users cared about, this would mean that windows users could not use anything except windows media player. Odd sort of "choice", that. Funny, because the "it's only happy with the iPod as an mp3 player" argument is the most valid problem with iTunes. But MS can't point that out becuase that would be admitting people like mp3 better than wma.
This talk about Choice might mean something except that 1) it is Microsoft promoting this, and they've hardly ever been champions of consumer choice 2) iTunes gives you every option that you want as long as it is a standard media format being used. They are basically saying "iTunes doesn't give you the choice to use any service that locks you in to Windows Media Player". Well, duh.
This last quote requires no explication:
What I think is great about most of the new services available on Windows is that being built on Windows Media enables such amazing choice. For example, consumers can download music from a wide variety of music services, bring it into their media library in Windows Media Player, create playlists, and burn CDs with music aggregated from many different services. You can even transfer any or all of the music to a wide variety of portable devices. That is what Windows users love -- being able to shop around and pick and choose the products and services that work best for them.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
This entire thing is one huge advertisement for Windows Media. He says nothing except "consumers love Windows Media, therefore use Windows Media" and then lists a bunch of bizarre advantages that Windows Media doesn't have, all related to interconnectedness, funny considering no codec out there is as restricted, locked in, and limitedly-supported as WMV except for RealAudio.
(Oh, and don't give me the "iTunes limits choice because it doesn't support ogg" bullshit. If you want ogg support in iTunes, go to apple's developer documentation and find the docs for how to write a Quicktime plug-in. There's an entire plug-in architecture for Quicktime that allows you to add support for codecs, such as Ogg, that apple did not. We on the mac side already have one such plugin, and we can play oggs in iTunes. So "go read the documentation and write your own". That's the Open Source Way anyway, isn't it?)
Re:Has anybody noticed... (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all, either (Score:1, Informative)
not for me, but i've heard similar complaints (Score:3, Informative)
I have heard skipping complaints, though, mostly from friends with older hardware, but there was one dude with a shiny new Athlon XP 2800+ that was getting some skips.
My guess is there's some driver conflict somewhere, because the skips don't seem to occur with all hardware or with just "slow" hardware. (And it runs fine on a 266 MHz G3 in Mac OS X).
Re:Microsoft is scared (Score:5, Informative)
With only the Mac market so far, Apple captured, what, 30% of paid downloads. Now the other 90% can use their service, so watch out Microsoft.
No, with only the Mac market, iTMS has 70% of the paid music downloads. Imagine what they'll have after Pepsi will have given 100 000 000 songs for free!
30% is the iPod market share, and they have 50% of the revenues for portable digital players.
Re:The best choice? Guess again. (Score:1, Informative)
J. River Media Center is not.
Re:Has anybody noticed... (Score:2, Informative)
MP3, RIP (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft's main complaint is that AAC is a closed format, which is only useful with iTunes, the iPod, Apple's Music Store, and QuickTime, and throwing the stone that the Windows Media Player format is compatible with 40 devices and several download sites... but let's face it, WMA is a closed system to. The WMA system has a few more choices, but not an unlimited number.
What I really see is a future where you're about to lock yourself into the music network you pick today. If you buy your music by AAC, then you're stuck in the Apple products universe, if you buy your music by WMA you'll get stuck in the Windows Media products universe. If you want to stay with MP3s, you'll either have to buy CDs or risk the P2P cops finding you...
Yeah, there are you options. How would you like to pay today?
Re:A windows convert, possibly... (Score:4, Informative)
IIRC, the Maximize/minimize buttons don't work the same as regular Windows UI buttons do. On the Mac, the "Maximize" button effectively toggles between mini-mode and full size mode. Try that.
Re:A windows convert, possibly... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:iTunes... (Score:1, Informative)
There is a quicktime plug-in architecture that will allow you to add support for additional codecs to iTunes.
There is an iTunes plug-in architecture that will allow you to add things such as more fine-tuned EQ controls.
Go look around Apple's Developer site. It's all there.
Here is a link to a Win32 Quicktime plugin that plays Ogg right now, and will let you play Oggs in iTunes [sourceforge.net]. I took this link from a post several up from yours in this thread.
I've never heard of "FLACK", "MPC" or "ReplayGain" so I can't comment on those things.
Re:no scripting required (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A windows convert, possibly... (Score:2, Informative)
On the Mac version, I can shrink the iTunes app by hitting the green button (minimize/maximize). After it is minimized (small), I can click in the lower-right corner where is the option for resizing an application window. Voila, only the control buttons are displayed; the song info or equalizer window disappears.
Re:For me its a fun poke in the eye to mr Gates (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Has anybody noticed... (Score:3, Informative)
I've noticed that iTunes.exe does seem to be very sensitive to the amount of horsepower available, and ram in particular.
My fiancee and her sister have near-identical Toshiba laptops. Both have 1.4ghz Celeron chips, both are running WinXPsp1. The software and configuration on the two machines is similar in most respect. The only difference is RAM: my fiancee's has been upgraded to 512mb, while her sister's is at the stock 256mb.
My fiancee's higher ram machine has no problem establishing a connection to my Mac to share my mp3 library.
Her sister's can only establish a connection if no other applications are running (right after booting seems to help), and the playback quality seems to be a bit flaky compared to the other computer.
My Mac, of course, works just fine, but then it would, wouldn't it?
My hunch is that when the specs say that iTunes needs a lot of ram, they really mean it. For whatever reason, a memory bottleneck seems to be enough of a choke to prevent acceptable network performance.
My suggested fix, barring a patch from Apple to make iTunes less resource hungry, was to just buy another stick of ram -- but then it's not my computer... *shrug*
Re:iTunes for Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
When the linux developers start caring about interface design as much as they care about kernels.
Re:A windows convert, possibly... (Score:3, Informative)
iTunes is Open (Score:4, Informative)
Why?
Because all the decoding of the AAC files - both DRM'd and non-DRM'd - is completed through the QuickTime libraries (NOTE: this is also a way to get iTunes to play ogg/vorbis encoded tracks). ANY application that makes the appropriate calls to the QuickTime API [apple.com] can decode and play tracks ripped by iTunes into AAC and tracks downloaded from the iTMS (assuming the computer is authorized to play them).
So, in theory, it's possible to get WinAMP to play files downloaded from the store if you don't want to use iTunes as your player software. Toast for Mac already can burn tracks ripped by iTunes and/or downloaded from the iTMS onto an audio CD [roxio.com].
The only problem is audio device support, but Apple likes it's iPod sales and Hell already froze over, so we probably won't be seeing WMA support on the iPod or iTMS compatibility on 3rd party devices ever - or at least not until iPod sales start slipping in a major way.
Re:"Open up?" (Score:4, Informative)
Surprise [apple.com], surprise [apple.com].
Oh, and where exactly are you finding all this Dolby 5.1 music? Or do you just spin movie soundtracks at parties?
ipod is too expensive (Score:2, Informative)
Minidisc playerwith MDLP(allowing up to 4x80mins on a single md) and NetMD(transfering mp3s to the md) for just 100 pounds. If had the money i would have definitely have bought the ipod but for many ppl it's simply too expensive.
Re:"Open up?" (Score:2, Informative)
Go read the BSD license. It requires nothing of the sort.
Re:I know what you mean (Score:3, Informative)
From that article:
That article was from April, and I'm not sure if the quarter they refer to is the last quarter of 2002 or some companies fiscal year, but I can't imagine iPod sales haven't overtaken the other two by now, although, I would love to see the figures on it.