iTunes is Anti-Web

Ever find yourself clicking on links to music or videos and getting blasted in the face with this delightful little number?


This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/itunes-is-anti-web.html

omg! apple is stealing the interwebs! oh noes!

I own a macbook, I’ve used iTunes, it’s a heavy, non-working, closed down, cpu-hogging behemoth. Worst application ever.

Hmm… Must have been a long time since you last used iTunes. Right now, iTunes 7.7 is using around 126 MB of memory on my Macbook. That’s about half of Firefox. And as for CPU usage playing a full-screen mp4 movie uses around 20% CPU on my 2.2 GHz Intel Macbook.

Maybe an update of iTunes is due on your machine?

I do like this post, one of your best rants yet!

Though it does break down in the if you happen to be running windows or mac os x because well, most people will be. For us freetards as one lovely poster calls me, there’s basically little options other than just torrenting stuff anyway, since DRM is so pervasive as to make it impossible to get to the content.

I mostly buy cds and rip them myself, but this being the 21st century and all I wish I didn’t have to run to the record store to get a hold of what is basically digital information on a shiny plastic disk. Not to mention having to check carefully if you’re not dealing with DRM on the disk as well.

I usually like the subject matter posted here, but not this time. Is it really an issue that one must download software to use iTunes? I don’t know … maybe it is a Windows’ users thing.
I guess as many people pointed out, iTunes is making apple a good bit of money despite being so anti-web.

ah, this topic is not at all interesting.

What is happening here Jeff?

Wow. Anti-MS rants don’t hold a candle to the incoherent ravings of the anti-Apple crowd here. Jeff, please stick to programming issues rather than starting another holy war. Hint: the iTunes store works with iTunes. Always has, (likely) always will. It was never meant to cater to people who don’t want iTunes.

If you don’t mind being locked in to Apple and/or Windows then drink the kool-aide. Otherwise, be like the rest of us and use Linux and shop in places that support the level of openness you desire.

It is pointless to single out Apple because in one way or another ALL commercial operating systems do what ever they can to lock you in to their product. I’ve used OS X and Windows, but now I choose Linux (when I’m not at work. Find what works for you and leave everyone else to their own devices (no pun intended).

And what’s worse is that once you’ve installed iTunes, every time it does an update, Safari is ticked by default as a program to update (i.e. install) even if you don’t have it installed! Even Microsoft Update isn’t that bad!

This is what you’re all missing: DRM.

I believe this may have been the Apple team’s thinking:

  1. Browse songs
  2. Purchase from web
  3. Force download of itunes to listen

= SUPPORT NIGHTMARE + ANGRY CUSTOMERS when it doesn’t work

Downloading iTunes first means that tech issues are sorted out well before someone buys something.

Anyone who’s ever worked in customer service knows that anger comes only AFTER money has been spent.

Just a thought.

I honestly understand why Apple wants you to have iTunes. They want you to by an iPod and preferably an Apple computer. Apple wants to appear selling luxury and discrimination is one way to do that.

What I can’t understand is why iTunes Music Store functions almost like a web site, but SUCKS IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY. It’s like a 90’s web site in Nescape’s first beta browser used with 1200 baud dial-up connection. Only slower and harder to use.

Why, Apple? Why? Why do you hate your music buying customers so much?

I thought this was relevant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxQS_3A7_Fc

I honestly understand why Apple wants you to have iTunes. They want you to by an iPod and preferably an Apple computer. Apple wants to appear selling luxury and discrimination is one way to do that.

It saddens me that most ‘normal’ computer users think Apple macs are the coolest thing. The reason they ‘just work’ is because the apple hardware doesn’t vary as much as a PC. This makes them better than a PC but so much worse.

The integrated-store idea may have seemed great at the time (both from a marketing and from an ease of use point of view), but as far as I am concerned, they’d have a more usable and successful store (think of all the search engine referrals Amazon must be getting) had they set up a normal web store (downloads could still have been handled in iTunes).

Jeff,

You’re absolutely correct, of course.

OTOH another way to look at this is: Apple is treating the rest of the world the way Apple users have been treated since the dawn of the User-Agent string. If I had a nickel for every bank that wanted me to switch to Windows just so I could use their online banking … well, I’d have 15 or 20 cents anyway.

http://axoplasm.blogspot.com/2007/11/and-now-brief-message-from-netflix.html

FWIW, and I’m speaking here as a pretty big Apple fan, I’ve switched to Amazon mp3 for pretty much all my online music purchases, but I still listen to them in iTunes.

Using iTunes I can find something online, buy it and have it on my ipod in about three clicks…

My Zune does it in just two clicks…

@Non sequitur

The Market will sort this out

mod+1

Use what you like let capitalism pick the winner. The gummint’s not forcing me to use my OS, and Apple’s not forcing me to buy from iTMS. (They do, however, make it very very easy.)

Sure, it would be nice from Apple to create content that just works for the rest of the world too. But I don’t see too much trouble for downloading and installing their software iTunes. After all, you are going to need it if you purchase music from Apple, I think. Its good if it works by installing the software. Many sites are so bad, that they have bad layout and things don’t even work.

But can’t Apple just use plain MP3s? Well, I wish that they had normal music that is not bound to a certain platform. They offer some kind of enhanced DRM free music too, I remember.

Is there anything more anti-web than demanding users install custom software to display information that could have just as easily been delivered through the browser?

Beautiful quote… and my exact argument against Flash or Silverlight. Sure it has uses, but most of the time it is not necessary for what it is used for.

The problem I have with the One Moment Please. dialog, is that it doesn’t give an option to not install iTunes; either you already have it or want to download it.

Of course, you can cancel by clicking back on the browser, but not making it an explicit option seems coercive.

WOW. That AOL screenshot really brings me back.
Aah… nostalgia :slight_smile: