The new (2006 Model) iTunes has a lot of Pizazz! for everybody.
Written: Mar 29 '06 (Updated Dec 14 '06)
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They say that the strongest figure in geometry is a triangle; if that is so you can certainly see that same sort of strength in the whole iTunes world, given to us courtesy of Apple Computers.
Consider this triangle. In one corner of the triangle you have the object of this review, the iTunes(Music Store) Online Service, where one can obtain thousands of songs. The second corner is the iTunes software program which you can download off the net and which functions as a high-quality "free" "jukebox" right on your computer. These two components are really all you need to play music on your computer. But then in the third corner, you have the most excellent iPod portable music player itself, like this one (http://www.epinions.com/content_176234860164), and with all three corners of the triangle, you have one of the best consumer product/service components to ever grace the entertainment market. So far no other company has been able to duplicate or surpass this triangular model. The real genius of the model is that the player, the software program, and the online music store are all seamlessly dedicated to each other under the Apple banner, and with this trinity's corners all working together is a strong and compelling force to attract the consumer to use all three together and stick with all three until something better comes along. Which doesn't look likely, for a few years yet, on the radar screen of market technology today.
Probably the most important component of the triangle is the iPod, of course. iPods are the dominant market-share portable music player of the day, and just as people say "Coke" when they are describing the general field of soft drinks, most people today say "iPod" when they are describing the general field of portable digital music players. One can debate the technical capabilities of the iPod in comparison to other music players, but its current pinnacle of popularity with the majority of buyers is undebatable. The iPod and the iTunes software program go together, as Forrest Gump would say, like peas and carrots.
So why do you even need the iTunes Online Service, the "Music Store"? You don't. You can get music for the iPod from your ripped CDs, the music you once gleaned from the old free outfits like Napster, and a few other places, including other online "music stores." But
the Apple Music Store, while not essential by any means, is a real plus not just for the iPod owner, but for others as well.
The iTunes Online Service was really given life when "legitimate" music replaced "pirated" music on the net. To me that is still not an absolutely cut-and-dried issue of the legal vs. the illegal, because there is a lot of public domain music floating around out there for the (legal) taking, but for all practical purposes bootleg music and questionable file swapping is a dying concept, except for the most extreme underground jackers. The legal issues aside, the so-called "pirate" music sites were notorious as places for your computer to catch viruses and worms along with a few other bugs as well. I'm sure that there are several thousand cowboys out there still running the gauntlet to catch all the freebie stuff they can, but most computer jockeys today have either gone straight or started and have stayed straight. And, all in all, the music-for-money online stores are probably worth the money.
I still am bothered by the fact that your "product" is so volatile that if your hard disk goes south you lose your music library that you paid out good money for, but if that's a real concern you can back it up on an extra hard disk or even burn backup CDs. But the commercial stores have their place. And when server-on-the satellite comes, it may even get better. So what about the iTunes service when compared to the other commercial online music services?
To get to the iTunes Online Service you first download the (free) iTunes software program from the URL http://www.apple.com/itunes/. Your computer has to meet certain requirements to download this program, but most will today. Once you are there, and you have navigated to to the "online store", you will be greeted by colorful screens advertising many different artists and albums of music in many genres. Getting around in the site takes a little trial-and error, but soon you should be able to get to the kind of music you are interested in.
Once you have found your kind of music, you will discover a few things. You can click on a song you are interested in and then for about half-a-minute you can listen to the song to decide if you want to buy it. When you set up an account with your credit or debit card, you can then then buy the song---or an entire album---for 99 cents per song or so, with albums often costing about $9.99. Once you are approved for purchasing (you have to be passworded in every time you log on), you click on the "buy song" button, and then another screen (a fail-safe feature) with a button warns you "Are you sure you want to buy (this song/album) ?" If you click that, the song begins to download to whatever part of your computer's storage area you have chosen for your iTunes "music library".
What else can you get from the iTunes store? Recently the upgrade to the iTunes software program made it possible to see audio-visual items so that you could get more than "music" alone. A year or so back they made it to where you could get photography (for the Photo iPod), but now you can get A/V stuff. Along with "straight music", today the Apple store offers these items: audiobooks, music videos, movie trailers, and TV shows. You can also import movie snippets (and now whole uncut movies- from a limited but growing collection) into the "viewer", as well as your own "home-made" movies. Some of the A/V stuff is free, but most of it costs a nominal amount. For example, at this time a video of Shania Twain singing "Up!" costs about $2. You can get a TV show like Letterman or Desperate Homesluts for about the same amount, although it will run a lot longer and on the portable it will use up a lot of battery.
Now, up to this point anyone can buy and download any of this stuff provided that you have a worthy computer and you have downloaded the latest incarnation of the free iTunes software program. That is to say, you can see it all on your home computer. But if you want to see it on your iPod, you have to have one of the (new) video iPods (I realize that if you are reading this post-2006 they will no longer be "new" but will be old hat.) With the video iPod, one can open up a whole new area of debate here about the worth of watching audiovisual media on the iPod's relatively tiny screen, but we won't go into that here- although you might want to have a consultation with your optomitrist about that. It is probably enough to note that this is possible, and who knows...with the right kind of individual electronic eyewear maybe individualized movie viewing "off the iPod" will one day become as widespread as individualized music listening via earbuds.
The items you acquire from the iTunes music store and other places which you put into the iTunes software program can be edited a great deal. For example, suppose your girlfriend is named Donna and you download a song such as "I Hate Donna", you can rename the song "Donna Is So Sweet" and if Donna looks at your iPod she will smile at you rather than frown. And if you don't like or don't have album art for a song, you can snag stuff off the web (I love Google Images for this) or use your own digital images and make your own cover art, in the same way epinionators like Larry Lumpitt puts a picture of Paula Abdul for himself on his profile page.
With the iTunes Software Program you can do many other fun- and free- things today too, of course. You can listen to hundreds of internet radio stations (who needs XM radio? Get Sirius now), and perhaps even more interestingly, you can listen to "podcasts", individualized "radio broadcasts" wherein everyone from NPR to the good, the bad, and the ugly send their audio offerings out to brighten your day. One of these days soon- if it hasn't already happened yet- there will be pod telecasts, and who knows what we will see then. Possibly Tugboat Annie showing off her geisha-dancing skills (can't wait) or Uncle Fred showing off his movie-camera-ed trip with his kids to Universal Studios (can't wait for that either), but when you separate out the chaff from the wheat you may get some very interesting stuff that nobody else will give you. Personally, I cherish and guard my eyewitness accounts from some Burning Man Festival people I got off a podcast---and nowhere else. You can also get Mp3 programs for your iTunes from local radio stations (like Prairie Home Companion, Piano Jazz, and Car Talk) if you have a device called a Radioshark.
Once you have your music- and more- purchased from the iTunes Online Service don't expect that you can share it around with all your friends. Apple allows you to make a few "home-use" copies, but the-the-the-that's all folks. Copy protection. For some odd reason they don't want you reselling their products, and if you really strain your brain you can see their point of view, narrow though it is. Seriously, for the average user, this is no problem.
What about music quality? My friend Dan says that Mp3 music will always be less than CD quality and he can't stand anything but the best, so he eschews the whole concept of iPods, iTunes, and anything else like it. My hunch is that for the other 99% of us, if there is a loss in quality, it is negligible. And someday someone will create a new digital music format, hopefully backward compatible with our current formats, which will make even the purists sit up and get on board. Until that day iTunes is a pretty good way to go.
I'm not saying that the other digital music systems out there are by any means far less than that offered by the iTunes service. Some may even be superior. But for now, the Big Dog in Town is iTunes, and it's a dog that will hunt. For state of the art, I have to go with all five stars.
Five Stars/*****
Recommended:
Yes
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