Apple

There’s an article from the Reuters news service covering the iTunes ruckus that has some rather surprising errors in it, not to mention being amazingly clumsily written. And, since I can’t leave well enough alone…

Earlier this week, Apple released an update to its iTunes music software for its Macintosh computers, which allows subscribers to download songs for 99 cents each.

Minor nitpick: iTunes does a whole lot more than that.

One feature of iTunes, called Rendezvous music sharing, allows users to share downloaded songs between three Macintosh computers and also allows users to share songs copied from CDs to be shared over the Internet.

Minor nitpick: Rendevouz is a system-level networking technology that allows computers to auto-sense their network environment, configure themselves, and automatically discover available services. iTunes takes advantage of Rendevouz, but is not tied to it.

The update eliminates users’ ability to swap songs copied from CDs, but doesn’t disable the Rendezvous feature, itself.

Minor nitpick: See above, regarding Rendevouz.

Minor nitpick: Songs ripped from a private CD library were available for streaming before the update, and still are (just not over the ‘net at large). They were never officially open for swapping.

The new service has been a hit, with more than three million songs downloaded since the service was released a month ago, according to Apple.

Bad writing: The facts in this paragraph are about the iTunes Music Store. However, with its placement in the story and unclear subject (“The service…” — iTunes? The iTunes Music Store? The Rendevouz-based streaming?), it seems to say that over three million songs have been illegally downloaded over the Rendevouz streaming feature.

Subscribers to the iTunes service, who paid \$10 to join…

Major error: I haven’t got a clue what this might be referring to. Neither iTunes nor any of its features require a \$10 fee of any sort. iTunes is free, all of its features are built-in, and the only charges from the iTunes Music Store are those accrued when purchasing music.

…started receiving notices on their computers from Monday urging them to update their iTunes software. While the upgrade is not mandatory, it shows up on a daily basis, forcing users to reject it until it is downloaded.

Error: I’ve been using iTunes for years, and have purchased a few tracks from the iTunes Music Store, and yet I never got any notice from Apple urging me to do anything. What this probably refers to is the Software Update feature of Mac OS X, which is simply an automated agent that checks Apple’s servers at a regular user-specified schedule to see if there are any available software updates.

If someone had their Software Update scheduled to check in with Apple daily, then they could conceivably get a daily alert about the iTunes update — but then, they’d get a daily alert about any software update that was available and uninstalled. If you choose not to install an update, and don’t want to be notified every time that Software Update runs, you can simply select it and disable any further alerts for that particular upgrade. Nothing is forced or urged upon the customer.

Normally I don’t have much problem with the stories I see on Reuters — but then, I’m not nearly as well-versed in many of the subjects I read from them. If the rest of their news reporting is as solid as this story was, I should just stop paying attention.

Today, as I took the odd moment here and there to keep an eye on happenings in the web world, I was somewhat startled to watch Apple provoke absolutely ridiculous amounts of stürm und drang with an update to iTunes.

In brief, when iTunes 4 was released a few weeks ago, one of the new features was the ability to stream your music to other computers running iTunes. This was intended as a way for someone with multiple machines in their house to keep all their music in a centralized location, and still be able to listen to the music anywhere — even if the music was stored on dad’s machine in his office, the kids could call up the music collection on their computer in the living room, for instance.

Not too surprisingly, within hours after the update was released, people discovered that the streaming would also work across the ‘net, if the hosting computer’s outgoing bandwidth was strong enough. Not long after that tips were being traded on how to capture the music stream — and suddenly what was intended as a convenience for personal use became yet another way for people to illegally acquire music.

Today, the update to iTunes 4.01 was released. From Apple’s description (with emphasis added)…

iTunes 4.0.1 includes a number of performance and network access enhancements, and only allows music sharing between computers using iTunes 4.0.1 or later on a local network (in the same subnet).

…and the Apple-centric sites absolutely exploded with rage and indignation (and, thankfully, a few somewhat reasonable voices).

Noticeably upset:

• MacSlash: iTunes Downdated, Features Ripped Out To Please Greedy Music Execs
• Forwarding Address: OS X: “…please take note that Internet sharing is squashed in this release.”
• Slashdot: Apple Updates, Cripples iTunes
• BackupBrain: A Public Service Notice…just say no.
• BoingBoing: Apple force-feeds customers shit, calls it sunshine
• MacInTouch (no permalink): “…Apple used the update to cripple song-sharing…”

Neutral, or posted with actual thought:

• mrbarrett.com: “Enabling pirates isn’t in Apple’s best interests. And so now the feature is gone and probably for the better.”
• MacRumors: “Only allowing music sharing in a local network is likely a response to piracy hacks that allowed files to be copied over iTunes’ current sharing method.”
• MacCentral: iTunes update disables Internet playlist sharing

Quite honestly, I find this collective tempertantrum to be surprising, and more than a little childish. Apple is having to walk a fine line, balancing their desire to use as little DRM as possible with the music industry’s desire to actually be able to still make money. The fact that they’ve been able to come to an agreement with all five major music industry players that allows the iTunes Music Store to exist with as little DRM as there is, is impressive enough. The balancing act that they’re having to pull, with their customers ~~needs~~ demands on one side, and the music industry on the other, is one that I wouldn’t envy any company, and so far I’ve been impressed with what they’ve been able to pull off.

What we seem to be seeing, at its most base, is the battle between two very strong forms of greed: the greed of the music industry, and the greed of those users who seem to feel that it is their right to be able to listen to anything, at any time, for free.

I, for one, have never understood, or been sympathetic to those who feel that they have some right to free music. As a DJ for many years, I’ve amassed an impressive collection of music — some 1200 CDs or so — and have long lost count of the number of requests I’ve had to make copies of my music for people. Why in the world should I do such a thing?

First off, copying and distributing music is illegal! Yes, I know that the music industry is (very generally) Evil, that CDs are hideously overpriced, and that artists see very little of the money from music sales. However, no matter how small of a percentage an artist might get from any single sale, how much money will they be getting if there are no sales? A little bit of something is still something, but nothing is just that. If there is an artist that I like, I’d much rather pay the money and support them in what little way I can — they created the music, they should be able to reap what rewards they can from that creation.

Secondly, and equally as important in my eyes, I’ve spent untold hours and ungodly amounts of money on building my collection over the years. Why in God’s name would I turn around and proceed to give the fruits of that undertaking away for free? If someone hears music that I have and likes it, they have the ability to take the time and money to find the music themselves (though I’m afraid that many, if not most, are far more likely to spend the time on Kazaa or some other file-trading system than spend the money at a music store). It’s all out there somewhere, and I don’t have any secret tricks or magical conjurings that allow me to find the music I do. Time, patience, a little luck, and money is all it takes.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. The streaming feature of iTunes is a feature — not a right. It is a convenience — not a right. And, most importantly, it is for personal use, for you the consumer to listen to the music that you own. Had Apple allowed the iTunes streaming implementation to continue to exist as-is, they may very likely have faced suits and the dismantling of the iTunes Music Store (quite possibly the first realistic model for online music distribution) when the music industry decided that it didn’t want to support a service that was so obviously and prominently being used for illegal distribution, no matter what the original intent of the service was. Rather than do that, Apple added a slight restriction to the streaming service, so that while streaming still works, and will work in the home, it no longer works over the internet at large. Would you rather have had Apple pull the streaming feature entirely?

Grow up, everyone. This is truly a tempest in a teapot.

Just some initial thoughts after playing around with iTunes 4.0 and the iTunes Music Store for a bit.

• AAC: I’m sold. Through some very non-scientific, non-mathematical experimenting, I seem to be getting about a 40% reduction in file size with 128kbps AAC .m4a’s as opposed to 160kbps VBR .mp3’s. With a \~14,000 song, 75GB music collection, a 40% reduction in size is beautiful. Plus, they do sound at least the same, if not better.
• iTunes 4.0: Basic functionality is still the same as previous versions of iTunes, which I was already quite happy with. They’ve obviously done some under-the-hood work, though — where I used to get “spinning beach balls” almost anytime I clicked around in iTunes, now the only time I get a wait cursor is when I’m getting info on multiple tracks at once. Much snappier performance — and on an aging 350Mhz blue-and-white G3, that’s pretty impressive.
• iTunes Music Store: Again, I’m sold. Very nicely and simply integrated directly into iTunes, finding stuff in the store is a breeze. I’ve already purchased one track to replace a corrupted .mp3 file created from a scratched CD, and once the iTMS is tied to my .mac account, single-click purchasing works flawlessly. Could be dangerous, though — talk about instant gratification! The selection of music available could use a little work, though I suffer a bit in having more esoteric music tastes — the majority of the “big artists” seem to be pretty well represented, and Apple says that they’re constantly working on expanding their library. Can’t complain too much, though — I’ve even found some pleasant surprises that I’m thinking about picking up (lots of Bill Cosby, and even a fair chunk of Spike Jones albums!).

Excellent work, all around. As far as I’m concerned, all of the whiners at MeFi and /. can jump off a cliff — Apple’s got a good thing going here. The only downside I can see is that to take advantage of AAC’s smaller file sizes, I’ve got about 1500 CD’s to rip all over again…

Well, today was the day that Apple finally made the announcments that rumor sites had been salivating over for the past few months. Lots of cool goodies…

• QuickTime upgraded to v6.2, which includes support for AAC (more info on AAC here).
• An iPod software update to v1.3, adding support for AAC, and longer battery life.
• Redesigned and updated iPods, now in 10Gb, 15Gb, and 30Gb models, a slimmer design, software updates, and a price drop.
• iTunes goes to v4.0, adding AAC support, Rendevouz local streaming (so you can stream audio from one Mac to others on the same local network), and support for the new…
• …the long-rumored iTunes Music Store! Featuring 200,000 songs (and growing) from all the major music lables, previews of songs, one-click downloading, a 99 cent-per-song purchase price, and very reasonable DRM (unlimited listening time, unlimited CD burns, unlimited iPod support, purchased tracks can be copied to up to 3 other Macs), Apple looks to be making a good solid attempt to do the online-music experience well.

The new software just made it to my Mac — time to install and play!