iTunes Meets Windows in October! (1 Viewer)

[Lee Scoggins]

http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=1063705562

This will certainly lead to more song sales.

 

[Patrick Larkin]

Next Thursday. Oct 16.

Apple has scheduled a press event at the Moscone Center in SF which its billing with the phrase: "The year's biggest music story is about to get even bigger." Hmmm, what could they mean?

So, jump on board and help Apple make better products for Mac users!

 

[Dave Bennett]

I've been using the Apple Music store quite a bit(buying songs as well as listening to the samples). It's very good and I hope all the PC folks enjoy it as much as we Mac users have been since May.

 

[MickeS]

SO now it's out. I'm downloading it right now, will be interesting to check it out.

Anyone used it already?

EDIT:

Downloaded it and used it a little bit now, fairly standard musicplayer program. The store interface is very good, makes me want to buy songs right away. However, $0.99/song is just too much. The $9.99/album deal is better, but I am a little hesitant before I've found out exactly how the downloaded songs can be used.

Still, I'm glad it's available, I think I will buy some albums from here if I can't find them in stores for less (already seen a few albums on there that actually cost less as real CDs at Best Buy right now).

 

[Dave Bennett]

I downloaded it for my parents PC. I've been using iTunes since I first switched to OS X in April of 2001 (when I used OS 9 I used to use Soundjam which iTunes is based off of). I'm very impressed, iTunes translated very well to the windows platform. Some of my PC using friends used to say how much they loved iTunes and I know atleast one of them was ecstatic at this announcement. All in all a big especially for the added features not in the previous release of iTunes(ability to backup your music collection to multiple dvds/cds automatically in iTunes, cross platform library sharing, etc).

 

[Carl Miller]

I was really looking forward to this, but when I tried to install it I got a message stating that if I continued with the installation, I'd have to purchase a new key to update the Quicktime Pro I bought last year...or lose Quicktime Pro functionality. Very nice

 

[Todd H]

I'm downloading it as we speak.

EDIT: "We could not complete your Music Store request. There is not enough memory available." WTF does that mean? Turns out it was a firewall problem. All fixed now. Now if the server wasn't so busy so I could create an account.

The radio stations are nice though. 128 kbps isn't too bad for internet radio.

 

[NickSo]

Nice, just downlaoded it now... Itll go great with my MacOSX WinXP theme

Wow, its quite a power hog... it goes choppy even when i just play an MP3 when im multitasking (running it on my XP1700+)...

Neat feature is i can see files of other users on my University residence network also using iTunes!

 

[Phil Kim]

While I connect my iPod to my PowerBook G4, it is nice to be able to run iTunes on my ThinkPad running Windows XP. The Windows port feels a bit bloated, but this is a very good port with just about every features found on Mac OS X counterpart. It feels much smoother than dreaded QuickTime Player. It sure beats using MusicMATCH or Windows Media Player.

 

[Clint B]

Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but are there any programs like iTunes that I can use with my current setup (Win 98 1st ed., 128K RAM, 4GB HD)? I looked at iTunes and a few of the others, and they said I needed Windows XP. Thanks for your help.

 

[NickSo]

What are your purposes for finding a player like that? to buy music? to play music? to record? to organize?

 

[kevitra]

"Written by Mac programmers for the PC" should be the subtitle. This puppy is SLOW. I move the scroll bar and it jerks, plus my CPU goes to 60%. It is like they wrote a Mac emulator for the PC and are running iTunes in it.

Minus the lack of speed, it looks nice and they have a good selection. But, since I care about audio quality I can't see buying an album for $10 when I could get the uncompressed version for a few dollars more. For the occasional car mix CD it is a good service.

 

[Chris Farmer]

kevitra, you could be more right then you know there. Some people at ArsTechnica have poked around the executable, and it definitely appears the iTunes for Windows uses a fair of not all bit of the Mac OS X source code (the version/build number is even identical), so it appears that it's mostly running through a compatibility layer with minimal changes made for Windows (such as the lack of a global menu bar and putting the menus at the top of the window).

 

[MickeS]

It is a resource hog, but it doesn't overload my PC even though I have a lot of stuff running (P4 2GHz, 512 MB memory).

I wish there was an option to have it minimize to the tray!

It's so easy to get started and so tempting to buy music that I imagine Apple will make a buttload of money off of this thing... good thing I'm so cheap.

 

[Sathyan]

Sorry if this is OT for this thread.

I'm getting an error message terminating the install "1607: Unable to install InstallSheild Scripting Runtime." on WinXP Pro.

Any ideas how to fix it?

 

[Dave Bennett]

It definitely is a bit pokey(I run the OS X version on my 1ghz iMac with 768mb ram and the Windows version on my parents 2ghz Celeron with 256mb ram) but it's totally usable.It's only when I've been using the windows version and go back to my Mac that I notice a difference in the overall responsiveness of the app(specifically the GUI, which on the mac is drawn using the quartz layer of the OS, which might explain some of the pokiness on a PC).Sharing my music library with my folks machine is so simple. No need to deal with windows networking and passwords, just plug and play. I found out another one of my friends downloaded it and already bought an album from it. Apple may have made one of the smartest decisions EVER by bringing this to windows.

 

[Clint B]

To answer NickSo's question about the post that I posted earlier: I would be using an iTunes type player to legally download music and to burn the music to CDs. I just need a service that will be compatible with Win 98 1st ed., 4GB HD, and 128K RAM. Thanks again to anyone that might be able to help me here.

 

[GlennH]

A related chat transcript at USAToday.

 

[Thomas Newton]

Watch out for some of the "information" at that site:

The Windows version of Apple's acclaimed "music store," sells songs in the "AAC," format, which, unlike MP3s, is a closed Apple format.

AAC, like MP3, is a standard format.

The DRM on the iTMS tracks may make them closed, but then, the other outfits he mentions probably chose WMA over MP3 precisely for the purpose of inflicting DRM.

You can certainly fault Apple for using DRM, but to fault them for choosing AAC over WMA on the grounds that AAC is not standard (!) and that WMA is (!) is just plain silly.

 

[NickSo]

I dont know of any software-based audio-purchasing programs out there...

I know music match jukebox has almost the functionality of iTunes except for purchasing music.