Yeah, I was trying to pay pretty close attention to that yesterday. I'm a
long-time PC user, but recently I've been considering switching to Mac within
the next year or so. I'm not sure how I feel about this whole thing.
I shouldn't be *too* concerned about iTunes, because it's not the only media
player for the Mac, but it would be convenient to just use iTunes because it's
free and it's the default, so...
I have a couple concerns.
1) for the past two years, all of my music has been in Ogg Vorbis format. Apple
shows no interest in making it easy for geeks like me (admittedly a minority) to
switch. Vorbis is free and I can't see what the obstacles are to adding Vorbis
support to iTunes and, more importantly, to iPod. For me to switch, currently I
would be forced to re-rip and encode all of my CDs, particularly if I want to
get an iPod, which I do. This would be a major pain.
2) OK, so forget that, and assume I am willing to re-do my whole music
collection. I'm not going back to MP3, that would be stupid. I'm used to the
smaller file sizes and better quality of Ogg, and so I'd want to use the AAC
format Apple is championing. I can accept that iTunes is going to restrict my
usage of the AAC files I purchase and download from the iTunes Store. But what
about music I import? Will my own music be similarly restricted? I mean, does
iTunes 4 restrict the copying, sharing and burning of all AAC files, or only
those downloaded from the iTunes Store?
3) AAC isn't quite standardized yet. Yes, it's an MPEG standard, but there are
differeing implementations, and there's no standard, accepted way of tagging the
files. Will Apple's Quicktime implementation quickly become the standard
because of their store, or will AAC music created on a Mac not play on Windows
and other machines? Should I bite the bullet and go back to MP3 because it's so
portable? (This would be solved for me if they just supported Ogg Vorbis as an
option.)
So anyway, I guess I'm not expecting answers from the list, I just wanted to
vent. Apple's announcements yesterday seem great for current Apple/iTunes/iPod
users, and will probably attract people who are still using MP3 and have no
problem with it, but it makes the switch decision more difficult and complicated
in general. Even if all your music is still in MP3, if you start using Apple's
AAC, are your music files as sharable? Switching to Apple is already a
sacrifice in some areas, like gaming (here's hoping Half-Life 2 is available,
because I really do want a Mac, and I want to play that game). This limitation
on digital music on the Mac makes the switch dilemma just more confusing and
troublesome.
-Adam
Quoting William Samuels <w_technoir@yahoo.com>:
quoted 28 lines I thought some list members might find this
> I thought some list members might find this
> interesting.
>
> --- ---
>
> Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils the iTunes service Monday
> in San Francisco.
>
> http://salon.com/tech/feature/2003/04/29/itunes/index.html
>
> I have seen the future of music and its name is iTunes
> Apple's new online music-buying system is everything
> Napster promised to be -- cheap, easy and, best of
> all, legal.
>
>
>
>
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