bah, can’t go back and edit mistakes. I blame my errors on my sleepy-ness.
We forgive you, cmason16.
So far the suckiest thing I’ve discovered about the iTMS is sharing it with Windows users.
Seriously. What I liked most about the iTMS was that it belonged to Mac users. After years of being unable to buy certain popular software titles because the manufacturers didn’t create Mac versions, it felt wonderful to know that the iTMS and the buzz surrounding it was for Mac users only. I knew a PC version was inevitable, and that achieving popularity among Windows users would be a sweet affirmation of sorts, but I still didn’t want to see any of it for a long time. It sounds weird and fanatical to say this. But I can’t help it.
Now, the iTMS isn’t going to make CD stores and its online competitors obsolete. The files you can download from it aren’t superior quality or replacements for CDs. The iTMS didn’t reinvent the wheel. But it was the first to legally bring consumers quality digital music by mainstream artists on fair and simple terms. It did this at a time when it seemed it would be impossible to do so. It has an amazingly diverse selection and it is frequently updated. It has exclusive content. Its music is designed to play on the most popular portable digital music player on the market. And now it delivers to both Mac and Windows users. While it’s far from perfect, it ain’t doing much wrong, either.
YMMV.
There was an article in US Today on Tuesday which explained the key differences between iTunes, Napster, and the other music subscription services such as Rhasody.
Acc. to the article, iTunes has a library of 200,000 titles while Napster has a library of 500,000. However, iTunes has negotiated exclusive rights to some artist’s catalogs, such as The Eagles. The writer gave both services 3 stars.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techreviews/products/2003-10-13-download-options_x.htm
I attempted to download iTunes for Windows today but you have to have Windows 2000. I’m still running on Windows 98. 
(I know, I’m light years behind in my technology.) Went to Napster and same story. Rats!
And now I’m stuck with the age-old question. Should I bite the bullet and buy a new computer and hope that I can transfer all my old files or should I give more money to MS and buy Windows 2000? And if I buy a new computer, should I buy a Mac or Windows? I love the idea of iTunes and iPod but I do so much more with my computer than just music. All my games are window based…
Very true, but why not wait until I actually have an iPod to waste my resources with that?
The iPod has roughly a 25% market share. It is the only portable music device capable of playing Apple’s DRM’d AAC music files. Creative just introduced the Nomad Zen Xtra. It does not play iTMS files. iRiver just introduced the iHP-120. It has support for 5 different audio formats, an integrated FM tuner, a voice recorder, real-time MP3 encoding, and optical output. Clearly an advanced device. But it does not support iTMS music files. Unless you’re going to define Apple and the iPod as the standard, I wouldn’t say that my problem is not having an up to date portable music player.
Yep, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t matter much to me, I prefer to download full albums.
eMusic’s been doing it since 1998. PressPlay and listen.com’s Rhapsody launched way before iTMS for Mac.
I cand do that with the Windows “Find” function. I just did. I have 72 song with “Love” in their title. I believe MusicMatch Jukebox does this too, and I’m sure there are others.
Because there was so much fanfare surrounding its Mac launch, and so many positive things said about it to us lowly Windows users that I assumed it would be, you know, impressive. Or something I’d want to use. Unfortunately it is neither.
Because, as has been noted, I don’t like the store, and I prefer another program for music playing.
Wait, this shit won’t even catalog my existing MP3s? What the fuck is the point then?
Sam
Actually, according to Apple, the number is more like 400,000 titles by the end of October…including 200 signed independent labels.
Phil Shiller from Apple has said that the ITMS has been a loss leader so far, they really haven’t made money on it. They view it as a “trojan horse” to increase purchases of iPods…where they have been making shitloads of dough.
I stand corrected. Buried, and I do mean BURIED within the drop down menus, under “options”, is the place to add your folder.
We’ll see how this works out. It looks ok, seems to work ok, but I
haven’t even played a song yet.
Sam
Well, just to throw in my 2 cents worth, I really like iTunes. The program was the only one that from the mac I ever liked, but because I have a hard time dealing with the mac interface, I didn’t play with it much (Besides, the iBook is really more my bf’s computer anyway) Now that is is out for windows I love it. As far as the drm management, you can so easily circumvent it by burning a cd that it is bassicly a non-issue to me. Also, I know I am probably going to be excoriated for this, but I can’t tell the difference between cd’s and lossy files. I realize that others can though, but for me its a non-issue. And I love being able to buy inidividual tracks, or if there are enough tracks on a cd I like, a whole cd for $9.99. Tower certainly isn’t that cheap.
Actually, there’s a much easier way: Drag the folder containing all your music directly onto the iTunes library window. Voila! It’s all cataloged. If you have “copy files into library” and “organize my music” checked in the Advanced preferences, it will create a folder heirarchy in your specified library location sorting the files in by Artist, Album and Title. It’s really quite simple, no digging through menus involved.
MilTan-
That’s just not intuitive. In Musicmatch, I click a button and it refreshes all of my music titles, voila.
One thing I find missing in iTunes is some sort of an “autoDJ”(in MusicMatch that’s what it’s referred to). I don’t always want to create a damned playlist song by song or band by band. Anyone know if this function does exist?
Sam
Assuming you don’t have “copy files into library” checked, it simply leaves the files where they are, correct?
GaWd,
Create a ‘Smart Playlist’. Mess with the options all you want. Afterwards, all the music based on that criteria should get automatically dumped into the playlist. If you change the options, the music in the playlist will be changed.
It’s all relative. Intuitive for who would be the question. Is it intuitive for a Windows user? No, not likely because Drag-And-Drop is for the most part restricted to moving files about in folders. For a Mac- user it is QUITE intuitive given that almost anything can be done by drag and drop on the MacOS from moving text between documents to grabbing pictures from webpages to opening a document with a particular program rather than with it’s default.
The main issue here is that the WiniTunes is too much a Mac program to be intuitive for people used to the way Windows operates. This isn’t a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just different. Being a recent switcher (well…REswitcher) I can feel the pain of people trying to figure out some of the little things about the interface such as simply dragging the folder to add anything, or dragging to do just about anything. It takes some getting used to but eventually I think you’ll find it MORE intuitive than the way it’s done by other programs if for no other reason than the fact that there is a layer of abstraction removed between action and effect.
Shrug Call it the “Mac philosophy,” if you will – the user’s ease of use is paramount. Spending a few extra nanoseconds to make your life easier beats removing a user-friendly feature all together. The clock cycles you save won’t be of any use six months down the road when you plug in your iPod and the computer doesn’t have any idea what to do with it.
And again, not to be snarky or anything, but I think the “wasting resources” could be a nuisance merely because you’re using Windows. On my MacOS X box, for instance, almost all the extra services consume no resources (except disk space) until I actually need them. I can only imagine that Windows is missing some sort of comparable OS functionality, so the extra process is needed instead.
Again, as far as I know, AAC is not an Apple-only standard, and there’s nothing preventing other folks from creating AAC-friendly music players. But I’m not an expert on these things, I just lurk on Slashdot. 
I have similar feelings about American Idol, but when I get disappoitned, I just don’t watch the show and let its fans enjoy themselves. YMMV. 
You can play your music on any one of the three authorized computers. You can copy them to all 500 computers in your lab, but only the authorized ones will be able to play them.
You cannot, however, download the same song to all 500 computers for free. That’s what a LAN is for.
Actually, under the “File” menu, there should be an “Import…” option. I prefer that over drg-n-drop, myself.
Yes, but in my experience, it’s just easier in the long term to let iTunes manage your files. It’s awfully convenient (hey cheddarsnax! ) to just plop in a new CD, then let iTunes rip it, title it, and stash it away, without having to worry about where it’s going or how it’s filed. Let the servant do the job, as it were. Besides, it’s not like you’d have a hard time finding the file on your drive if you really wanted to.
Really? That’s weird. When I installed the first version, back in '01, it had an option to search my hard drive for MP3s the first time I started it up. Does it not do that anymore?
Which brings me to the one thing that really bugs me about iTunes (and Apple apps in general): the lack of documentation. Apple seems to think that their programs are so easy to use that they don’t need any sort of manual. Which is true–for about a third of the features of any given app. To find the other two-thirds, you have to hunt. True, there is the Mac Help program, but it’s set up in such a way that it’s well-nigh impossible to find anything useful in it. I want easy-to-read documentation that tells me EXACTLY what the app can do, and how to do it.
Anyone can use the AAC format, but Apple wraps iTMS downloads with a proprietary DRM system. You’d need Apple’s help to create a device which can play iTMS songs.
I use iTunes the Mac, and I really, really don’t like my Mac, but I like iTunes and itms a lot. iTMS seems like the only (barely, barely) acceptable online music source out there. The number of songs needs to go up by a factor of 10. or even 100. But it’s a start.
And the Drm… :rolleyes: It is stupid. I buy a disc of songs, burn it in iTunes to CD on my Mac. Walk over to my PC and rip it back to MP3 and up to the Big Home Music Server. Whee. It’s dumb, but it works.
So for the last few weeks, I’ve been buying iTunes AAC and burning etc on my Mac. Relatively contented. Now (drum roll!) buh buh buh bah!!! iTunes on the PC !! YAY. I don’t have to use my stupid Mac any more to buy some songs!
Sigh… except stupid iTunes on PC thing can’t find my CD/DVD burner. The setup dialog sees it – “CD Burner: G: SONY DVD RW DRU 510A” but the Burn icon and menu never undimms.
Goddammit. I was hoping to get off Apple’s (Jobs! Sieg Heil!) platform and stop screwing around with 2 platforms just to buy some music. I was hoping iTunes was going to work right on PC!
And it’s not like this Sony drive is an obscure drive – it’s probably one of the top sellers: it burns DVD/RW DVD-R DVD-ROM CD-R CD-RW, damnear everything, AND it has firewire, so laptop people like it. And it runs on Mac. And apparently Apple didn’t test with it. AAAAGHHH!
I’m sure they’ll fix it, but right now I’m really pissed. Apparently, if I buy a drm’d AAC from iTunes on my PC, right now I’d have to share it to my Mac, burn it to CD there, then rip it back on my PC, all to get a stupid MP3 which is what I was willing to pay for in the first place.
Woah, that was my 1313th post. And on a Friday. In October. And I cursed Steve Jobs and Macs as I was typing.
Man, I’m going down now.
First of all, for the record, the 12" Powerbooks kick some ass and I want one.
That said, I won’t be buying (or even trying) the iTMS. 10 bucks a month for unlimited downloads from Emusic of high-quality mp3s beats the shit outta 10 bucks for an album. Even the pending change in the Emusic subscription rules isn’t much of a deterrant; if I only get forty songs for my ten bucks, it’s still a helluva lot better than what I could get from Apple.
Plus, they have a Linux client, or I can just use a perl script and wget.
Plus, there’s no limit on what I’m legally allowed to do with the files, barring sticking them on a file sharing service. I can transfer them to as many computers as I want… Desktop? Check. Notebook? Check. Work PC? Check. Girlfriend’s PC? Check. Parent’s PC, for when I go to do laundry? Check.
Plus, they carry the catalog I’m interested in. If the iTMS is only carrying 200 indie labels (and, among others, fuckin’ Matador counts as an indie), that means I’m not interested in 99% of the music that Apple carries in the first place. I don’t buy my records at Media Play or Target. Yeah, it’s snobbish, but Emusic carries a back catalog that’s every music geek’s wet dream.
Plus, I’m pretty drunk right now. Sorry if that came out boorish. Buy your music wherever the hell you want, but don’t get all huffy when somebody else finds your choice lacking.