THE MAC GOD

Says it all in the title... Here's a current log of what's going on in reverse cronological order (read from the bottom up to see what happened first). The event started at 1pm eastern and is still going... transcript is from macrumors.com (alternate is from macnn.com):
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Thank you. Steve Leaves stage. Broadcast over
- Jobs back on stage, saying thank you. We love what we do, and we work hard on it because we love it.
- Song ended. Everyone clapping
- Sarah singing again
- Sarah talking... proud of Steve Jobs and what Apple's done.
- Introducing Sarah Mclachlan... playing on stage now
- And now... London. Mick Jagger.
- Dr. Dre: Congrats on the iPod.
- Next to Los Angeles - DR. Dre
- Bono says he appreciates what Apple's done and that's why he's here to "kiss corporate ass. I don't always kiss corporate ass"
- "I'd like to teach the world to iTune... uh, sorry, wrong company." - Bono
- "Really happy to be here. It's like the Pope of software meeting up with the Dali Llama of integration" - Bono
- Bono is video chating with Steve Jobs
- First to Dublin.
- Some of the arists wanted to say a few words, but they are out touring. So, am going to use iChat. "Gotta use a Mac for that" (applause)
- REM, Black Eyed Peas, Grateful Dead - only place to find it online is iTunes, Coldplay.
- Now, talk about Artists. A Bunch of exclusive content.
- So, 100 million songs in the first year.
- Jobs: Historic promotion. Clearly going to make music lovers happy, and soft drink lovers happy, and labels and artists happy. Pepsi happy, and Apple happy. Everybody wins promotion.
- Pepsi, Diet Pepsi or Sierra Mist bottles.
- Introducing President of Pepsi (video)
- Just enter the code from the cap and download your favorite song. Starts on Feb 1, 2004 at the Superbowl
- Jobs: What else to get to the 100 million goal? We are giving away 100 million songs. Partnering with Pepsi. Pepsi is going to make 300 million bottles with 1 in 3 a winner. Give away them all in a 60 day time period.
- We're taking AOL's #1 music destination, and combining it with iTunes. It will be an unmatched offering.
- Introducing CEO of AOL - Jon Miller
- AOL users don't have to put in their Credit Card. Can enter their AOL ID and that's it.
- Talking about AOL's music store. Going to put iTunes buttons next to every song/album on AOL's music site. Will launch iTunes and show the song/album
- Exclusive partnership with AOL and Apple.
- But what if that's not enough? What else should we do? We're going to make it really easy for 25 million online users to discover music to get iTunes... to do that, we are announcing a partnership with AOL.
- Now, taking it to windows
- How are we going to do it? Mac customers will buy 30 million at current rate in year.
- Now, we are clearly the market leader here. We set some goals. We wanted to sell 1 million in the first 6 months, but sold 1 million in the first week. Reset goal to 10 milllion in 6 months, but reached it in 4 months. Now... want to sell 100 million songs in a year - by April 2004.
- http://www.itunes.com
- New iTunes available on both platforms Today! And is Free download.
- Grateful Dead on iTunes
- New exclusive content on the featured artists. Best of the Eagles. Not on CD yet, but can get it on iTunes today.
- Demoing Gift Certificants. Can buy or redeem. Sending on to Phil via form. Sending $50. "Happy Birthday Phil". Confirm purchase. How do I redeem one? I get it in my mail. Click on redeem now. Boom. brings up iTunes. Do you want to redeem it on this machine? And that's it. You get the credit in the itunes store.
- Showing Celeb Playlists. Dave Brubeck's, Sting's. Playing demos of songs they have chosen.
- david mccullough's biography of "john adams", recommending eb white's "charolette's web" again, listening to preview, showing browsing, it uses Mac-like scrollbars and widgets on Windows. robin williams, some are tagged with "explicit". fresh air on NPR - 767 Terry Gross programs
- Previewing Audio Books - Hillary Clinton, and others...
- genre pages have "really blossomed"
- biography information now
- Now can sort albums by album name, or best sellers on artist pages, or Original release dates.
- Playing Hey Mama, buying songs, playing songs.
- Now demoing the store on a PC
- iTunes Radio Stations
- Playing Songs with visualizer on PC, smart playlists
- Playing Songs
- Launching iTunes for Windows
- Do something, I've never done before... give a demo on a PC
- Can mix and match your 3 authorized computers (Mac or PC)
- Apple is the "gold standard for personal use rights"
- Also the Best Music Store "on the Planet". Exactly the same as Mac store. Identical.
- iPod now comes with iTunes
- Music Match limits burn speeds unless you pay $20.
- Compares it to WMP and MusicMatch. iTunes has full speed encoding, MP3 CDs, iPod compatible. Others are limited in features or prevent it altogehter. iTunes shares Music up to 3 computers via Rendezvous. The others don't. No upgrade costs for iTunes. Free.
- Jobs says it is the best jukebox on the PC
- Jobs says it is the best jukebox on the PC
- Runs on XP and 2000
- Probably the best Windows app ever written.
- Windows iTunes - exactly the same thing
- One more thing..."Hell froze over"
- Celebrity Playlists. Music lists from celebs - Sting, Dave Brubeck, Herbie Hancock, Michael Stipe etc...
- Allowance - instead of giving your kids your CC#. Can give an allowance (recurring monthly gift certificate basically). No need for credit card for the accounts. Perfect for kids.
- You get an email with a Redeem Now, and gives you a Credit in your iTunes account. Can by anythingin the iTunes Store.
- Gift Certificates - most requested - select between $10-$200 to send to anyone.
- Perfect "round tripping" - syncs and knows where it stopped off. So, when you sync, the mac or ipod will remember where you left off
- One click shopping for iTunes Book Store
- Showing iTunes Book pages
- Free previews of Audio Books
- Audio Books, alongside the music. Deal with Audible.com. Multiyear exclusive deal. Over 5000 books on iTunes.
- Over 200 indie lables.
- # could be higher if they let in every song. Claims these are quality songs
- More Music - Today at 400,000 tracks by end of the month
- Today, 2nd generation of iTunes
- iTunes Market share - 70% last week of all legal downloads
- 600,000 songs a week
- 13 million songs
- People don't want to rent music.
- Good integration, 99cents, unlimited iPods, 3 Macs
- Talking about iTunes Music Store
- new iPod Ad previewed. Rock and Roll iPod Ad.
- Showing the iPod Ad that's been on TV - Hey Mama
- Photo Storage - $99 Accessory. Connects to bottom of iPod. syncs with iPhoto.
- $49 Microphone and speaker, syncs into new version of iPods. Record 670 hours.
- Marketshare of iPod is 31% - #1.
- 336,000 iPods sold in this last Quarter.
- First thing - the iPod. It's amazing. These third gen iPods are as thin as two cd jewelcases, now up to 10,000 songs in 40GB iPods.
- Steve Jobs comes on stage
- there's a grand piano on the stage
- "Please turn off all cell phones and pages"
- Music playing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guess it is over now... everyone here should download it to check it out. If you like it (and you will) sweet... if you don't, then that is just as fine... but don't knock it until you try it!

__________________
Why continue fighting? Is it for Love? Illusions. All as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as Love.

sandeep

I've been dying to use the windows version of itunes.

i had no idea it was out for windows... yum

i don't plan on buying any music from the music store, but here's hoping they were able to retain some of that solid feel that they put into mac apps when they made this one.

wonder how they pulled off the DRM for windows.... let's just have a looksey


thanks for the heads up though.

Redlemon

Just installed, been playing with it on WinXP, appears to be EXACTLY the Mac version. Enjoy, everyone.

__________________
I can't read your signature. Sorry.

sixate

It better be one hell of a program because I hate when after I install a new program it tells me I need to reboot.... MusicMatch doesn't do dumb stuff like that.

a2k

It seems cool. Still not sold on the iTunes model, though: too expensive ($.99/song is about twice as much as I want to pay) and doesn't help the artists. Check this out:

http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/

bodypainter

Mac users note there is also an update to iTunes, Quicktime, and iPod in Software Update.

juanvaldes

probably Rendezvous.

Pragma

It was the Quicktime 6.4 update that required the reboot, apparently -- that or the drivers for CD/DVD writers.

I like it, it didn't crash when I dropped by entire music folder on it -- unlike any other music app I've tried.

__________________
Eat antimatter, Posleen-boy!

Rudel73

Three hours ago, Apple released iTunes along with the iTunes Music Store for Windows. iTunes is a free download and has all of the features that the Mac version has, while individual songs in the iTMS are US$0.99 with albums going for approximately $10 (includes cover art).

Unlike other music services, music you pay for from the iTMS is yours as much as a CD is yours. In other words, you aren't just licensing it like competing services. Purchased music is played through the iTunes software in a special AAC audio format that includes DRM (encoded in 128k AAC which is about the equivlent of 192k MP3); iTMS's DRM scheme is designed to keep legal people legal and not combat piracy (ie. keep legal users from accidentally doing something illegal with the music, but those who have other intentions can easily bypass the DRM).

iTMS allows you to do the following with your purchased music:
• Authorize up to three computers to store and use the original AAC audio files (1 primary and 2 secondaries; primary computer can be changed, and computers can be authorized and deauthorized as many times as you want)
• Share your playlist with any number of computers on your LAN
• Burn a playlist 10 times before the playlist order must be changed (keeps people from mass burning CDs by forcing the user change the playlist every 10 CDs)
• Can copy to any number of iPods


Some featues of the iTunes Music Store:
• 400,000 songs available by the end of October, including exclusives from over 60 artists
• 5,000 audio books titles available through a multi-year exclusive with Audible.com. iTunes and iPods remember where you stopped.
• 30-second previews of songs
• Gift certificates ranging from $20-$200
• Parents can set an "allowance." Parents can create kids accounts directly and send "monthly allowance" without giving kids the credit card number.
• More info can be found at http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/

Other worthy things to mention:
• Apple will be giving away 100 million free songs in conjunction with Pepsi. 1 in 3 bottle caps win; Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and Sierra Mist 20oz and 1 liter bottles will be apart of this promotion starting February 1st, '04
• AOL has integrated the iTMS into their service
• iTMS has sold 13 million songs within about 6 months, which makes-up 70% of all songs sold among all of the music download services
• iPod unit marketshare is 31%. Revenue marketshare is 56%. No 1 in both unit and revenues.


iTunes and the iTunes Music Store is available only to the USA currently and will be available to Europe next year due to legal issues. iTunes requires Windows 2000 or XP and is available to download now from Apple's web site.

Just thought I'd give a heads-up to everybody =)

Speed_Gibson

AAC is my first choice for the lossy formats behind MPC. If I can play those DRM-"protected" files in Foobar2000 then I might use the service.

__________________
Started talking to yourself I see.
Yes, it's the only way I can be certain of an intelligent conversation.

Black Adder

sixate

MusicMatch 7.2 > iTunes

The sound quality doesn't even compare to MusicMatch. It's like a bloated version of Winamp, and I hate Winamp. Plus, I'll never use that stupid online store. People actually pay for music?

And it took 3 minutes for iTunes to add My Music folder.

I can remove all my music from MusicMatch and place it back in my music library in less than 10 seconds. iTunes is slow and it completely sucks and wasn't worth the 2 minutes it took me to download the fucking 19 meg setup. 19 megs for a program to play my MP3's... What a joke. Already uninstalled. I didn't look, but can the stupid program even rip a CD?

A note to BOCO.... Don't fucking download it. You'll hate the piece of crap even more than me.

meff

Yawn

When will companies learn that DRM is a waste of time/money and is destroying our rights...

__________________
Toy-like people make me boy-like.

thumper69

Uhh, is it that good? Cuz i really hate macs with a passion. Winamp 2.x is good for me.

__________________
Ohh Yeah Baby All Night Long!

(' . ^)

Look at Kirby---> <(' . '<)

cub4life78

I enjoy it so far. I have purchased 3 songs tonight and I like the sounds it produces. One thing though...if anybody knows how to update the library after deleting some mps that would be great if you'd clue me in to how it's done...

The_Dude

I agree with sixrate, but Kazaa > iTunes.

__________________
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

meff

Kazaa (FastTrack) has always been pretty shitty, and is going to be a pay service soon (ie, they're shooting themselves in the head to charge for something like this) ..

They'll be gone soon probably.

Try out giFT/OpenFT and Gnutella.

Especially if you don't want your ass invoiced by the RIAA :P

__________________
Toy-like people make me boy-like.

moof

you haven't truly experinced itunes till you mess around with the search and smart playlist features!

just like the mac version but with more bugs

Pragma

I was fairly pleased with it, until I loaded up a playlist and then locked my computer and prepared to go to sleep. iTunes is incapable of playing music while the computer is locked. Whups, it just got uninstalled.

__________________
Eat antimatter, Posleen-boy!

Jesus Pimp

Actually it's not, but it's a great mp3 player nonetheless. I was disappointed that they didn't include any synch options for ipods as found in the mac version. So I'm going to stick to ephpod for synching my music.

__________________
Never date anyone who doesn't make your dick hard.

Ganguro

does the iTunes store have import music for sale?
a buck a song isnt a bad price.. Sure it's not free, but it's legal. I totally dont think it's out of line to pay 15 dollars for 15 songs that you like and could be possibly hard to find. Imagine if you went into a cd store and got custom cd's made for you with new and old tracks by a wide variety of artists..
No more intros/ outros, skits, filler songs.. You can get bsides, remixes, rare tracks, imports.. possibly special versions made for users of that service, etc...
How neat would that be?
I would easily pay 15 dollars for a 15 song CD where i picked all the tracks.

laconic1

I have played around with it for a few hours now. I don't like how the song title scrolls, I really don't like the pervasive Apple logo in the visualizations. It'll probably be uninstalled soon. I still like Winamp 2.9 better

juanvaldes

I would expect them to have the same problems with selling "American" music outside the US, nasty nasty legal and control problems between the RIAA/Music Co's and there counterparts in other countries.

Nomad

I like the iTunes player, It's much better than that Winamp crap. It does take some time to load my music folder ( 2.04GB ) 518 songs. It took iTunes about 40 seconds to load It, It takes Media Player 9 about two seconds to load It, Winamp will not load It.

EDIT - After playing around with It for some time now, I can now load my play list In under 10 seconds.

manaz12

fuck yea - itunes is so sick.. i just wish it had keyboard button support (next, previous) when itunes is NOT in focus. i also wish it took better use of our graphics cards, and gave us more options.....

Nomad

I Agree ...
It does suck that there Is no keyboard button support when the player Is minimized, they do work when the player Is in mini mode.

Wyodiver33

I like it so far. The Apple logo displayed when you turn visualization on goes away after a few seconds.

__________________
I like stuff.

sandeep

i'm not talking about the store, because it's not available to Canada, but also because that's a whole other issue for me alltogether, but the player itself is quite appealing. the library function, and the ability to share your library with others on the network is very appealing.

i still have to play around with it a bit more, but i'm quite happy about it. plus, my Ipod seems to like it too.

Johnny Rotten

I'm digging the Internet radio. Digitally Imported switched to 96kbps as its highest bitrate a while back, so I was pleased and surprised to see a buttload of 128kbps feeds from them in the Electronica section. And the sound is so awesome on my headphones that I thought I'd left my speakers on by accident. I don't know if it's an MP3 or AAC feed, but I'm getting a lot more bass than I'm used to without any distortion.

Don't plan on buying any music through iTunes anytime soon, but the 'Net radio kicks booty.

__________________
"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

brandon11983

I love it!! Yes, it is an extremely bloated MP3 player. But it gets me 1 step closer to total Apple bliss....

*goes back to hating his PC...*

__________________
Well behaved women rarely make history.

sailor

I just dont like how much RAM it takes--it was using roughly 40MB just playing music on my machine. Id hate to see what it was like doing anything else (ripping, copying, etc).

__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

longjohns

mine seems to use about 25megs of ram.

there are ipod sync options. when the ipod is plugged in, an icon for it appears in the lower right corner (have to have the ipod selected under source) - there you can choose how to sync. i think itunes works much better with the ipod than ephpod.

it does take quite a while to let it sift through your library, but once it does, the playlist capabilities are winampX1000. i've used it to do a lot of tag editing and it seems fairly powerful for that.

the player itself is sluggish

i'm going to use it for two reasons: works great with the pod and excellent song organization

drown_with_me

Love iTunes ... great player.

Also, does anyone realize what Apple is doing now with its AOL integration ? They are seriously setting themselves up to be the new leaders in legal digital content suppliers. All those AOL users.... with expanding iTunes users... WOW ~ this is gonna be huge. Add on a MONSTEROUS SuperBowl ad campaign kick off with Pepsi !?!?!? This is going to set the bar for a long long time.

__________________

"I wanna see the movies
of your dreams..."

- Built to Spill

apetaster

All that for playing mp3s? I'm sure it's great for other audio functions, but to me it's seems like WinAmp that a GUI designer went nuts on. I'll stick to the llama's ass.

TrogDor

God I was so happy when itunes finally came to windows. No more clumsy winamp UI, no more trying to fuck with winamps ridiculous playlist scheme. Just pure itunes goodness.

I dont know how some people have itunes taking up 40MB or RAM. Mine takes 19.

Havnt used the music store, as im in Canada, but I've heard its the best. Some people said 99 cents per song is too much, and well, are there any cheaper legal solutions?

A2k: That site you linked is quite funny. They beleive that if you aquire music illegally, and send the artist "a buck", its perfectly okay, and much that downloading music off of ItMS. Yea, try doing that when the RIAA is suing your ass for a million dollars.

tikki

iTunes for Windows is great, but the interface is clunky imo and I really question some of the UI decisions. It's like they meshed XP's usability and Aqua all into one big clusterfuck.

For those that say its a bloated mp3 player: it is designed to be more than just an mp3 player. It's a jukebox. It's multifunction.

For those that knock the music store with the whole 'people buy music thing': Yes, I use the music store, and I love it. It's good karma.

__________________
Take notice. Take interest. Take me with you.

CyCo PL

Takes up WAY too much ram.

Winamp 2 all the way.

Gortexfogg

So let me get this straight: Since iTunes is now on PC too, the ACC audio format is also available?

cub4life78

No but AAC is....

Johnny Rotten

I think iTunes uses as much RAM as it does because it's a full-fledged online music purchase application and CD burner/ripper as well as an audio player, 'Net radio app and jukebox database. Comparing it to something as simple as WinAMP or even MusicMatch seems a little knee-jerk to me.

__________________
"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

YaWhateva

Um, i really like the look and sound of iTunes after playing with it for awhile. The only thing is that whenever i try to add my entire music library in, the program has some sort of error. anyone know what i can do cuz i have really been looking for a good mp3 program.

__________________
“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"