| Grave 313th Post
 
Bronze Customer
 
    
|  "OT: Apple's new products and music service!"
, posted Mon 28 Apr 20:11
I know I can't be the only Mac user at the Cafe, and I'm not sure who'd be interested in this, but I thought I'd touch on it briefly because it'll interest some PC users too.
The new iTunes Music Store in iTunes 4 seems to be a great, legal way to get music. Now, I buy a lot of CDs, because I like to own the physical object, along with the data. However, a lot of the time, I won't buy a CD if it has only one song I like... which usually leads to me downloading an often low-quality rip of it online. For 99 cents on credit, I can get that song in a 128kbps AAC file (yes, much better quality than 128kbps MP3, and not bad compression either) in a relatively short amount of time. I've downloaded one song so far and I'm happy with the quality, and it has album art, too. Kind of insignificant, but a cool little bonus.
Will I buy all my music this way now? Nah. But it's pretty cool.
Restrictions that apply? Not many. You can burn unlimited CDs with the song (only 10 of each identical playlist, though, I guess to keep rampant distribution of full CDs down), put the song on unlimited iPods, and transfer it among 3 computers. I'm not sure how the 3 computers thing will work in the future. 3 computers EVER, or just 3 at a time? I'd like to take my library with my years in the future...
It also appears that if you get disconnected in mid-transfer, the song is incomplete and you're screwed. But the service just came out today so not a lot is known about that. I'm sure it'll be addressed for dialup users like myself.
And speaking of iPods... the new models are awesome. In addition to on-iPod playlist editing, more games, more PDA-like features, and a cool new docking station. And the new max. size is 30GB. I still love my 20GB iPod, but the new features make me jealous, hehe.
Oh, and iTunes for Windows is said to be appearing later in the year. iTunes is what helped me switch to my Mac, I was a diehard Winamp advocate until I used it. And MusicMatch Jukebox just plain sucks. Windows iTunes + Windows iPod = lots of mp3 player sales for Apple, I think. 
|
"Re(1):OT: Apple's new products and music serv"