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Saturday, October 18, 2003

 

News: Windows iTunes sparks mixed reactions  

News: Windows iTunes sparks mixed reactions: "Windows iTunes sparks mixed reactions

By Ina Fried
CNET News.com
October 17, 2003, 3:53 PM PT

A large number of Windows users have jumped at the chance to try Apple Computer's iTunes jukebox software--and reactions are ranging from unabashed praise to complaints of bugs.
Apple won't say how many people have downloaded the free software, but an executive said that it has been extremely popular since Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced it Thursday.
'The downloads have been going full tilt constantly,' said Peter Lowe, Apple's director of marketing for applications and services. 'We've been delivering a lot of Windows software over the last 24 hours.' "





It's here. It works. It has the gotchas noted in the article. Outside of that, it's a good client and the service EULA makes sense. Okay, it has a few things I'd like to see slightly changed or added in the UI, but for a first effort, it's ona par with anything else out there. It's instantly the app to beat.

Let me go into a little more detail on the situation. There are a number of Internet music services. Come the end of October, there'll be another one- Napster v2. Each has its strengths and weaknesses as far as the actual music catalog. No one site has ALL the titles I'd like to see, but that's up to the artists and record companies.

That said, it comes down to pricing schemes, the legalities of the EULA, and the client software. Right now, iTunes comes out near the top. Period. Yes, you can't use it with anything but an iPod as an external device. Right now. But there are an awful lot of iPods out there and nothing I saw keeps you from downloading the tunes to your computer and using the usual ways of transferring them to your particular device.

The pricing is reasonable. 99ยข to download and you can buy tracks by complete album for an average of $9.99. There are services that give you a better per-track price, but they don't throw in the per-album price, which can save you considerable money.

The EULA is ialso very reasonable, with no artificial roadblocks to burning your newly acquired tracks to CD.

The client is fairly neat and clean. Its UI could use a little polishing, but it works like a charm and lets you do everything (more or less) that you could want to do. Couple that with the fact that the iTunes service keeps track of what you've paid for in case you need to redownload and you have a good solid service and client.

All in all, iTunes has the makings of a Top Ten hit.


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