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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Thursday, April 29, 2004iTunes 4.5: A good starting point I've always sort of liked the simplicity of iTunes, and the latest version, iTunes 4.5, does a decent job of helping people get their WMA-encoded songs into the player (and, ultimately, into an iPod). And really, that's what it's all about: Accessibility. I would have prefered a more elegant solution (i.e. iTunes and the iPod just play WMA songs directly) but it's better than nothing. In short, this solution partially answers a big complaint I've had about iTunes and the Apple music strategy.
Let's look at some other features of iTunes 4.5 and the music-related announcements Apple made this week. iMix. This feature lets you share your playlists via email and, interestingly, the iTunes Music Store. It's a great idea. Party shuffle. I'm not quite sure I get the point of this. Apparently, it takes playlists you've lovingly created and then ... makes a sub-playlist of them? Eh. Print CD inserts. A nice idea taken from other media players like MusicMatch. But the Apple version is pretty barebones and is not extensible (at least not yet). I expect this to be improved over time. Better discoverability. I've often argued that Apple's interfaces aren't discoverable, but they've done a nice job of helping you find out more about your music. Just click on the little arrow next to any song name, artist name, or album in iTunes, and you'll be brought to the page on the iTunes Music Store about that item. Cool. Apple Lossless. Unlike WMA, AAC doesn't include a lossless audio codec, so Apple has created its own that features smaller file sizes than AIFF. This was probably a key concern for audiophiles, who want full CD quality without the resulting disk space waste. Naturally, Apple Lossless only works with iTunes and the iPod. iTunes Music Store: 70 million songs sold. Fantastic, and only screwed up by Jobs' foolish prediction that Apple would sell 100 million in its first year. Hubris hurts. Pepsi promotion: 5 million songs redeemed. An epic disaster. Apple was hoping for 25 million or more songs redeemed. I suspect there is a lesson here--something about the successes of a computer/consumer electronics company being put into the perspective of the wider, non-tech world--but I haven't quite been able to condense it down yet. iPod Mini. Once again, Apple did not call out iPod Mini sales, leading me to once again declare that the company is not being honest bout a product it was quite simply not ready to launch. Apple has yet to ship all of the 100,000 preorders it received for the Mini and it's unclear how many more orders it's received. Surely the one year anniversary of the iTunes Music Store would have been the obvious time to state how well the Mini is really doing. Vision. Jobs says it's all about the music, so he's downplayed color iPods, video iPods, and even subscription music services, which I think is a mistake. I've beaten this stuff to death already, so I won't waste time on it here. In short, Apple's music strategy is A-OK for the short-term, and I like what they've done with iTunes 4.5. But a lot of people were hoping for iPod updates and/or news, and that didn't happen. Let's hope there's more going on in Cupertino than they've intimated this week. [ Posted at 12:27 PM | Permalink ]
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