Analyzing iTunes for Windows
iTunes for Windows is out. Hell froze over. Oh wait, that was just Apple’s pathetically hyperbolic marketing pitch. Let’s take a step back and examine this situation.
The media is easily duped, and Steve (Hand)Jobs is a good duper. After all, it’s not hard for a guy in his position to sell hype, what with a legion of slavish Mac lackeys following your every move. But like everything Apple does, what we need here is a dose of good ol’ reality. So let’s talk numbers, shall we?
300
The first number is 300. That’s my guesstimate for what the average Joe pays for an iPod. (Some pay considerably more, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment.) Lots of average Joes are shelling out 300 bucks, if my ride home on the train is any indication, given that I see at least one twentysomething a day with those cute lil white earbuds blocking out the outside world. But I’ve already thrown misinformation at you. That guy with the iPod on the train is not an average Joe. First, he spent $300 for a portable music player! That is not average behavior! Second, he almost certainly owns a Mac, and that puts him in the most minor of minorities.
2700
But I still see tons of iPods out there, and it’s undoubtedly a good product, so what I am bitching about? Simply, this: Mac owners are free spenders. To be Mac owners, they have to be. Taking a look at the Apple store, I note that G5’s start $2k and LCD displays at $700, nevermind the shipping. And that brings us to our second number: 2700, the bare minimum sticker price for a G5.
Point of contrast: I would be hard pressed to spend $2700 on a PC. I could do it, but I’d have to work at it. So what’s the moral of the story? These Mac kids have got some serious money to burn, baby. They’re dropping close to $3k on a home computer and at least $300 on a gadget to listen to music. To someone who spends that kinda cash on the mothership, 300 bones is pocket change for a suped-up Walkman. But to your run-of-the-mill PC user? Your average average Joe? That’s a friggin investment, baby.
20
So we’ve established that Mac owners are in a different category than PC owners, but hey, that’s not a particularly new or interesting conclusion. What’s new is the “Windows question.” Apple calls its Windows version of iTunes, “the best Windows app ever.” Now first of all, who the hell comes up with this shit? Did they outsource the marketing to the same people who promote the Segway? That question aside, iTunes is absolute not “the best Windows app ever.” Here are two simple reasons why:
- 20MB download size
- 20MB of RAM consumed
That’s a bigger download than Mozilla! Do I need a download that long and an app that heavy to buy/play music? No. Do I need an app renaming my MP3s? No, I can take care of that myself. Do I need an app sucking up 20MB of RAM when the excellent Quintessential Player will manage everything beautiful in 8? Nah. How about stealing file associations? Not interested in that, either. And most importantly, do I need the risk that my Windows 2000 machine won’t boot properly and I’ll have to fix things in Safe Mode? Hmm, never heard of that problem in Winamp.
1
One more issue to address. $1 per song? Interesting thought. Apple is tooting its own horn, shouting from the (undoubtedly art deco) rooftops about selling 1 million songs in the first three days after iTunes for Windows’ launch. Think that’s a lot? Think again. According to Eric Garland, CEO of file-sharing monitoring firm BigChampagne,
When you look at the (Apple iTunes) numbers, they are very modest. You’re talking about a mom-and-pop business when compared to the millions in the file-sharing free-for-all. … Relative to the MP3 phenomenon, it’s a small revolution.
But then again, Macs have always been a small revolution. It’s (niche) business as usual for the turtleneck yuppies.
0
I’ll bring this long and blustery editorial to a close with one last number: 0. I don’t need yet-another-heavyweight media on my computer (WMP 7+ fills that space nicely, which is why I’ve stuck with 6.4). I’m not interested in buying music online, especially in the AAC format (wha?). I don’t want to pay $300 for a portable music player. And I never even liked iTunes on the Mac. So zero is the number of times I see myself using iTunes in the future. Maybe that will change; I’m not going to use the “n” word. But that’s all from Reality-land. I’ll leave you now to wallow in the spin and hype of Apple and its fanboys.
March 3rd, 2005 at 10:48 am
You bring up some great points, in which I will consider thoroughly, however your sense of humor is unmatched.
Thank you for the information.
Peace love and muddy waters
Jeannie
April 9th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Has your analysis changed in the last few months? Maybe you’ve seen through your haze of Apple-hating by now. Your data is incorrect (even at the time it was written - $2700 for a G5 was *far from* ever being the bottom line price) and your analogies still don’t line up.
$499 Mac mini change your view at all? If not, sounds like you’re just a die-hand Apple-hater with no good reason.
April 9th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Does the Apple Mini change my mind? No. The Apple Mini is a nice, compact package, but it’s got the equivalent PC processing power of something from like 2002. I don’t think you could buy a new PC today that is as slow. They just don’t make them.
What’s the point of the Mini? To look good? It’s not $499–it’s at least $700 with a real, usable configuation. (This comes from the Mac magazines, not me.) It’s significantly slower than the correspondingly clocked iMacs in speed tests, meaning you’re getting total POS mobo on that machine. It’s got one RAM slot. This is not high quality.
A Mac Mini might make for a nice cocktail party conversation piece, but who needs a computer smaller than a breadbox? The thing is going to sit next to your desk—it’s not a showpiece. I see no lasting appeal whatsoever in small computers. If small is really your bag, get a laptop and be small and *portable*.
April 17th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
I love stuff that doesn’t work.
August 9th, 2005 at 8:44 am
Time has shown that iTunes is for sure the best music player avaiable for any OS and obviously to windows to… million downloads? apple broke that number long time ago…
Put a bit of salt and pepper on you words and chew them gently…
August 9th, 2005 at 10:24 am
Andre:
This entry was written on October 22, 2003. But I wouldn’t expect you to read the fine print.
If you’d like to equate quality with quantity, Microsoft destroys Apple.
February 25th, 2006 at 11:25 am
ITunes. Terrible, terrible software. While I’m not a big fan of anything from Real Networks, their Rhapsody software is a better choice. For 9 bucks a month, you get to listen to the full version of the songs, and it works with nearly every MP3 player *including* the precious, over-hyped, holier-than-thou Ipod. Their song downloads are .89, so after a few downloads you have already recouped the initial investment.
May 25th, 2006 at 12:40 am
I see where he’s coming from in this article. I bought a 5g 60 gig ipod. Though I love watching TV when I have to wait in line somewhere trying to run itunes on my p3 500 mhz is a nightmare. It’s a file management program, it should be able to run on a 386. I think having this elaborate DB interface on the ipod is at least questionable as a design decision but perhaps understandable as apple wants you to use the ipod the way they envision you using it ( buying things through itunes ). I download “legally owned” TV programs in the correct format directly to my ipod and trying to get itunes to acknowledge that the file is there takes 3 minutes per file!
Granted I’m running a stonage computer but I could write a db program in an hour or 2 that could do these simple operations for me. Oh wait there is no API for the ipod DB.
July 26th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I am converting to Apple within a month; I am getting a MacBook. I’ve been sucked in! ^_^
la la la, hey! I want to be a fanboy! NOT.
Sure, I might be getting an iThing, but I still love all the OS’es I’ve used..
(*) Windows
(*) Linux
(*) OS X 10
(*) Unix
As for iTunes, it may run well on a Mac, but it SUCKS on XP. It seriously does.
November 28th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
I just got my 2000t and all of my songs are skipping in iTunes, and I cant figure out why. If someone could help me out and tell me how to fix this I would really appreciate it because its driving me crazy. Thanks for the replys.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:17 am
i just got an ipod. my experience with itunes has been terrible. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if you could simply drag mp3s onto the ipod in windows explorer and have the software on the ipod recognize them (mp3 is the most common audio format in the universe isn’t it?) so you can play them ON THE IPOD!? we would never have to open itunes. instead you have all these unnecessary steps where you add files to the library, then you add them to the playlist, then you sync them. And then if you delete the mp3 on your pc (which you would obviously want to do, since it’s in your ipod already, and you probably have better things to do with your pc harddrive then store duplicates; this is why i bought an ipod in the first place) itunes secretly removes them from your library, then secretly removes them from your playlist, and then when it “syncs” again, it secretly removes them from your ipod and you get to work and go “WTF I HAVE NO SONGS CAUSE I WANTED TO UPLOAD A NEWS PODCAST THIS MORNING TO LISTEN TO WHILE I CHECK MY EMAIL HOW WILL I GET ANY EFFING WORK DONE TODAY” and then you spend even more work time writing an angry comment on an obscure blog.
oh and macs are way too expensive too. i still run XP of course, but if MS continues down Retard Boulevard with Vista, my next machine will likely be a mac. Cost is important, but the piss-me-off factor weighs in pretty heavy too.
January 14th, 2008 at 2:23 am
This entry was written on October 22, 2003. But I wouldn’t expect you to read the fine print.
If you’d like to equate quality with quantity, Microsoft destroys Apple.