So, Steve Jobs finally unveiled Apple’s iTunes service for Windows. A couple comments:
First, there was obviously a lot of demand for this. I tried to download the software yesterday, when it was first available, and it took several hours, with several timeouts, to get it. Presumably because a few million other people were trying to do the same thing. Maybe next week it will be easier.
I have a problem paying 99 cents a track for tunes that are of lower quality than the artist originally recorded. Oh, Apple says I shouldn’t worry: “… some expert listeners have judged AAC audio files compressed at 128 kbps (stereo) to be virtually indistinguishable from the original uncompressed audio source.” Yeah, right. Can you count the number of qualifiers in that sentence? There are lossless compressed audio formats available. At that price, I want the real thing.
The iTunes player, which is no doubt cooler than cool, uses QuickTime as its underlying engine. I get a shiver down the back of my neck when I even think about QuickTime, because of all the problems it’s caused me through the years.
And then there’s U2’s Bono, who spoke with Jobs at the press conference yesterday and delivered what may have been the most pretentious and overwrought line in the history of software launches: “It’s like the pope of software meeting up with the Dali Lama of integration,” he was quoted as saying in a Reuters story. Sheesh.
I’ll wait.
Ed Bott 