October 16, 2003
Windows Users, Your Day of Liberation Has Come
Steve Jobs rolled iTunes for Windows — the PC doppelganger of the much acclaimed Mac OS music player/iPod complement/online store — out today for immediate download. For free. If you work on a Windows PC with crippled music software that asks for $30 before you can use its full set of features, or use a version of Windows Media Player that only lets you make files in a proprietary, non-*.mp3 format, set your old program on the curb and give iTunes a try post haste.
As a business strategy, giving iTunes away makes sense. Apple can afford the up-front development costs, and every consumer who downloads iTunes gives Apple one more chance to sell songs and iPods. Consider it a knockoff of the Gillette model — Apple gives the shaver away to make its money back, and then some, selling blades.
Whatever its game, Apple plans to play with its usual panache. At today’s announcement, in between performances by Sarah McLachlan and live hosannas beamed in by Bono and Mick Jagger, Jobs spilled the beans about a contest tie-in with Pepsi that features a giveaway of a total of 100 million songs. It beggars belief that Apple would raise so much fanfare over a Windows product — that’s about as nutty a thought as a Cubs-Red Sox World Series — but as the company’s home page says today, “[h]ell froze over.”
It certainly has, and Windows users ought to get out and do triple salchows on the ice. See for yourself and download the program today.
Posted by Greg Greene at October 16, 2003 08:45 PM | TrackBack“Day of liberation” my ass. iTunes-for-Windows’ setup program just hosed my Win2K setup. There’s a whole thread on the Apple discussion site about Win2K Pro users who have had this happen to them.
I’m primarily a Mac user, but I was looking forward to having the household music library live on our one big-iron PC. I wasn’t looking forward to reinstalling farking Windows.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden at October 16, 2003 09:21 PMWow, Patrick — you really haven’t had much luck witn software lately. Yikes.
What gets my brow all a-furrowed about this is the similarity to the issues Apple ran into last month with the upgrade to OS X 10.2.8 — which came complete with an installer that hosed a few thousand users’ ethernet connections. [See Apple Matters and Mac Mike for the rundown on that.] Bugs can be rascally little creatures, but you would think that a company of Apple’s size and experience would work to catch bonafide showstoppers before unleashing new code on the public.
You would think — but I’m starting to feel less than sure. I’m also starting to think I might put Panther on hold for a couple of months.
Posted by: Greg Greene at October 16, 2003 10:23 PMThanks for noticing! Indeed I haven’t. And, in fact, tonight our sites are down, part of the evidently widespread Hosting Matters blackout that has also downed Calpundit, Matthew Yglesias, TalkLeft, Instapundit, and a whole pile of others.
Anyone who knows anything about this, I’d love to get some info; all the Hosting Matters pages are also down, as is everything connected to our hosting service, a small outfit that resells HM space and bandwidth.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden at October 16, 2003 10:51 PMWow, after the several problems we had at Hosting Matters over the last few weeks, we migrated off of their servers just this week. It sounds like we moved just in time. Scary.
OTOH, I’m running iTunes/Win on my W2K box with no problems.
Posted by: Phillip Winn at October 17, 2003 03:35 PMWow. An install of a sound app hoses the OS? I’m not sure I’m ready to “think different” on that level. I may wait until Apple does Windows a little bit longer.
This is just more evidence that the wise man waits for version X.1
Posted by: PhotoDude at October 18, 2003 11:24 AM