Microsoft's Take on iTunes for Windows 588
Skruffy writes "The Register has an amusing article about Microsoft's reaction to the launch of Apple's iTunes software on Windows. It seems that Microsoft is very keen to warn its users of the dangers of using a service that would restrict them from accessing music from other sources... Oh the irony."
Irony (Score:2, Informative)
Oh the irony.
Irony:
1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
Dishonest, but not ironic.
Re:OK... (Score:5, Informative)
The logical fallacy is that iTunes can of course play AAC [negating the concern about playing the files on your computer], and that iTunes is actually a sales-device for the iPod which of course can play AAC.
What's more ironic, and is being stated by several people already, is that all of Microsoft's efforts at distributing music [i.e. as partners with music distributing sites] involve the use of WMA format and DRM. Those files, of course, are no more useable than AAC, not to mention the particular point that WMA is not compatible with the iPod.
What it comes down to is this: there is a true dividing line between the Apple music scene [i.e. AAC/iPod/iTunes] and the Microsoft music scene [i.e. WMA/Napster 2.0/Media Player], and Microsoft isn't happy that the Apple side is beating them.
That said, I'm still using windows...just also using iTunes with my iPod, and purchasing AAC music.
Re:OK... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I'm afraid of ... (Score:2, Informative)
The pot and the kettle are both black. (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? iTunes is not limited to Apple Music downloads, it also plays mp3s, audio CDs, and pretty much anything other un-DRMed audio you have. The iPod has always played mp3s. What's Apple supposed to do, preemptively invent DRM solutions that profit other companies and put those into iTunes? And iTunes does allow you to burn to an audio CD. MS WMP would do no different than Apple here.
Granted, Apple Music downloads are useless to anyone without iTunes (on Windows or Mac) or an iPod. Until I can play them in linux, they're useless to me. And don't tell me to burn everything to a CD and then rip it. Apple Music is also useless if you want to listen on a non-apple portable. Once again, Apple has chosen to support "everyone" by offering a choice of proprietary systems, rather than a single open system. "Windows or Mac" is just as bad as "Mac only" or "Windows only".
link to the referenced article (Score:5, Informative)
The non-booting issue only effects people with... (Score:2, Informative)
that have directcd installed
as far as I can tell.
All you have to do as far as I can
tell is uninstall directcd before installing
itunes which most people dont use anyway
Subscribe? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:which means they see it as a threat? (Score:5, Informative)
I think I heard that Unca Steve and company have stated that their goal is 100 million songs sold by the end of this year. Considering that they sold 13 million to approximately 5% of the market (Apple users), and have since sold 1 million in the first 3.5 days of iTMS for Windows and Mac, that's pretty impressive. I don't know if 100 million is gonna happen, but hey, everybody needs to aspire to something.
Re:which means they see it as a threat? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it's by the end of the first year of iTMS's existence, so by late April of next year. I suspect that Pepsi promotion is going to help pad Apple's numbers if it looks like they're going to be a little short. ;)
-sam
Re:Stupid Itunes questions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Stupid Itunes questions (Score:2, Informative)
Is There an Easy Way to Window Shop at I-Tunes? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Stupid Itunes questions (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is disconcerted because Apple is not using WMA.
Re:OK... (Score:5, Informative)
It appears the only real problem with the service is that you can't buy a higher-quality song that would be better for ripping to your own lossy format (or that Apple doesn't simply supply Vorbis/MP3 in the first place). But this is a problem of quality, not DRM.
Add your band to the iTunes Music Store (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can you burn to virtual CD then rip? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is There an Easy Way to Window Shop at I-Tunes? (Score:5, Informative)
Haha, not quite. The iTunes music store is actually just regular web pages. If you use a tool like netstat (or better yet, TCPView from www.sysinternals.com) you can watch iTunes make a bunch of HTTP requests to Apple's servers when you browse each page in the store. If you use something like Process Explorer (this is turning into a Sysinternals commercial!) you can see that iTunes references the standard Internet Explorer HTML rendering engine to render the pages.
Apple presumably has something in place on the pages to ensure that only iTunes can access them. iTunes probably just sends some encrypted header doo-dad along with the normal HTTP request headers so that their webservers know that it's iTunes who's requesting the pages and not another web browser. If I wasn't lazy I'd fire up Etherreal and see exactly what's going on.
I'm sure with a little effort and header spoofing you could fairly easily access those pages with the web browser of your choice, although I can't think of any possible benefit to doing so.
Re:What I'm afraid of ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:which means they see it as a threat? (Score:1, Informative)
The US is a much bigger market than any other single country. Canada has 1/10 the number of computers as the US. Market size wil likely be a factor driving the order in which deals are negotiated.
number of computers by country [aneki.com]
Re:Is There an Easy Way to Window Shop at I-Tunes? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OK... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OK... (Score:5, Informative)
Can we please get our terminology straight so people like me at least have a chance of understanding the arguments?
iTunes is a program used for listening to and organizing music on a computer.
The iTunes Music Store or iTMS is a service which sells music in an standards compliant format (AAC) wrapped up with a proprietary (FairPlay) DRM scheme.
Thus iTunes does not restrict anything and can be used with several different audio formats and transcode between many of them. The iTMS sells music with some restrictions that are easily worked-around.
Re:OK... (Score:3, Informative)
Not to beat a dead horse here, but some are bound to mis-understand this. It sounds as if you're saying "if you rip your own CDs using iTunes the resulting files are a) DRM'd and b) unplayable in anything but an iPod. That is, of course, wrong on both counts. Nothing's preventing you from ripping your CDs as MP3s. Nothing's preventing you from putting those files on anything that will play them. The files are in no way copy protected.
Even if you for reasons of efficiency choose to rip the files from your CD collection as AAC (.m4a I think) they aren't "protected" or "restricted" in any way. The problem you'd run into is one of practicality: neither your car stereo manufacturer nor your portable mp3 player manufacturer have licensed MPEG4 technology for their devices and thus cannot play the files. At present, the only external device capable of doing so is Apple's iPod. In principle, nothing's stopping any one from licensing this technology from the mpeg group. That is, in fact, what they want I'm sure. One supposes that if the iTMS remains a leader in legit music downloads other players will jump on board to be able to play the format.
I'm betting they're considerably less usable. All of the previous models used to do legal music downloads have resulted in severely restricted files which are often a) rented, not sold b) literallly unplayable in any player besides the designated one c) unburnable or burnable in a very limited way, sometimes even requiring an extra fee. I think there has been one lonely exception to that rule and in that case the service was pimping independent "never heard of 'em" artists who were much more afraid of obscurity than of piracy.
Re:Is There an Easy Way to Window Shop at I-Tunes? (Score:2, Informative)
D.