I agree completely ScottC. Unless you have an Ipod there isnt much reason to get this software and some huge reasons not to. Also, if you want to play on other portable devices (not IPOD), you really have to get something else. I also agree about the problems. We spent hours recovering our PC after installing iTunes. Other people apparently gave up and reinstalled their OS, losing all their data. This is completely unacceptable in my opinion. Not only do I not think this is the best Windows software, I dont think it can even be called professional quality software.

Perhaps I should clarify, in "more demanding" I was thinking of various reports of "missing" features and such. Some people care about some features and some people don't, hence all the various choices of software which essentially does the same thing (be it play music or any other type of software).

As far as crashing your computer, yes, one should reasonably expect new software, even if free, not to do that. While this may or may not be widespread, it's certainly not just a few isolated incidents. Apple is going to lose some goodwill because of it. Only more time will tell just how many people end up using the iTunes software on Windows.

BTW I doubt it was necessarily lack of developer experience, although that may be part of the issue in the case of it being large and resource-hungry. More likely most of the problems are from just from not enough testing. I'm sure they were eager to have this software out there in the wake of new competitors and in front of the holiday season. It was rushed. This has it's good points and bad points, and again only time will tell how it works out for them.


[This message has been edited by CrazyOne (edited 10-18-2003).]

Funny, when Microsoft does this they are the big bad evil wolf but Apple seems to be able to get away with it.

Missing features are fine, but not when you play tough and claim that "hell froze over". If you are going to take the world by surprise and claim you have the best media player out there ("Welcome, Windows users, to the world�s best digital music jukebox") then you'd better have more to offer than this.

After a couple of days of thought and using both services, I've decided that I like Rhapsody much more than iTunes.

The $10/month fee provides a lot of flexibility to try music, and having burned a CD from both services, I think they're the same (to my untrained ear) from a quality perspective.

Although I don't have an iPod, the portability issue is the only chink in Rhapsody's armor that I see right now...

I think the reason iTunes was so popular on the Mac was because they had never seen a decent media player before. PC users are spoilt with good stuff. I bet that is also the reason all the other "i" programs are so popular, they are just the best the Mac user has ever seen. iTunes for Windows seems to be a direct copy of iTunes for Mac and it lacks so many features.

Actually, iTunes was based on Soundjam, which, especially for the time, was a very decent player. Apple bought it, and it became iTunes. Thus, Mac users did have experience with MP3 players prior to iTunes. There were others around pre-iTunes also, but I don't know anyone who continued to use them after iTunes was released.

iCal has many, many similarities to MeetingMaker, a great app for the Mac that has also been around for quite some time. Meeting Maker is, in fact, superior in many ways, as it handles booking rooms, proxy access to other users, etc.

Mail is based on Claris Mail and probably draws some from Entourage and Eudora as well.

Safari draws influences from Chimera -- but there are a number of other decent browsers that were out for the Mac, including Omni Web, Mozilla, Netscape, etc.

iMovie has many elements of Final Cut Pro. Besides that, it's considered better than any WIntel offerings out there by every review or comparison I've ever read (which is probably more than 50).

iPhoto is also considered better by reviewers, as is iDVD.

Even Office for the Mac is often considered better than Office for Windows.

So, in many cases, alternatives to iApps exist or were around prior to release of the Apple-developed offerings. Furthermore, the iApps usually win out in side-by-side comparisons with their Wintel counterparts, so any gushing over them is warranted.

I agree with you here, most certainly. I don't think the exaggeration is a fitting way of marketing at all.

On this, I think you're off the mark. There were and remain alternate player apps for those who like them. iTunes is about 3 years old after all. What these apps direct from Apple have done is popularize certain things with more Mac users than would have happened otherwise. People who wouldn't have sought out a music playing/ripping/burning app now have one preinstalled on their Macs, and they try it out. iPhoto is arguably also not best of breed. iMovie as I understand it still kills anything else that doesn't cost a lot extra. (I don't use it myself so I can't really say.)

The reason these Apple freebies remain popular on the Mac apart from the fact they come with every Mac sold is because they do work well for what they are designed to do. They do simple things simply and with minimal time spent learning how to do them. They are apps for the general public, not the power user. I think they do pretty well at that, at least on the Mac platform. It would appear Apple's track record at releasing stable Windows software remains suspect for the moment.

And sometimes even savvy users don't need every single feature on every single app. I don't find I'm lacking anything in iTunes. But that is me. There are very few apps that can really be the end all be all for everyone.

swise, thanks for addressing my questions earlier in the thread - I appreciate it.

For people that have had operating systems crash with Windows and the iPod, what OS are you using?

Apple Computer plans on Wednesday to release an updated version of its iTunes program intended to fix bugs encountered by some Windows users.

The company is in the process of posting to its Web site version 4.1.1 of iTunes, which aims to remedy some initial glitches with the jukebox software that Apple released last week. As previously reported, some Windows users were reporting bugs with the software, including a problem that caused some Windows 2000 Professional machines to freeze after installing iTunes. "A few customers reported conflicts with specific PC configurations and we quickly updated the iTunes software in response," Apple said in a statement. "iTunes 4.1.1 addresses an isolated incompatibility with Windows 2000 and older third-party CD burning software, as well as problems caused by corrupt MP3 files on some users' PCs."

And indeed, just one week after relasing it there is a new version (aka bugfix?? )

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Just installed ITunes... Didn't associate standard audio or media files to it.. disabled the startup quicktime junk... With all this turned off it still runs OK and doesn't cause any issues with other apps (like earlier RealPlayer builds did).

Pretty good. My observations - some of you have also harped on the same

- No Maximize button
- Visualizations DON'T use ANY acceleration when windowed. They depend on Quick Time's acceleration layer - no device drivers for Windows will EVER support this. Fullscreen tries to use DirectDraw as a surface but renders offscreen. Shame they couldn't have used OpenGL (as Apple is pushing it on their platform side for gaming... This would have made at least all NVIDIA and ATI cards run well with visualizations)
- Radio streaming speed is MUCH faster than Windows Media. I like the fact that nearly all the stations play (unlike Windows Media radio stations hijacking to a browser window and wanting me to subscribe to some stations)
- No capability to import WMA (at least I couldn't see any)

And still no CDDB support, it seems. Which is a huge problem as I have 300 CDs that need ripping. Have I missed something? Using the latest update (yesterday's)

Same here, keeps saying it can't find anything on CDDB but my router logs show it doesn't even try...

Odd. I'm assuming you have the little update that was put out the other day? CDDB is such an integral part of the experience. I've never had problems with it working (on a Mac I mean)....

Hope someone makes them aware of all the bugs.