Some car HU's (and even some MP3 players) that support USB drives do not support VBR. Could be a deal-breaker for a lot of people.

Yay! 256kbps! Yay! Something I may now play on my stereo without cringing!

Next stop, FLAC or SHNs please (or WAV)...

Now, Can I trade-in all the crap I paid for from iTunes to get a better sample rate?

Now I did notice that the selection is kind of dicey, but I grabbed a bunch of singles that iTunes wanted me to buy the whole album to get (those 10+ minute spaceouts I love so much)...

I'm reliably informed that they don't actually check the address. So you can pay with your UK credit card and put in a fictitious address such as
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
and it works.

Haven't these morons heard of VBR?

Typically a better quality rip for the same file size (if not less). And we all know smaller files means greater battery life.

I bet they use some shonky ripping software to boot.

They should seriously take some lessons from the "scene," with regard to their quality standards.

Needless to say I'll stick to buying CDs (no, seriously) and ripping them myself.

It IS VBR! And I've seen downloaded mp3s that are encoded with LAME. not too shabby.

From the FAQ:
"Bit Rate: Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bit rates for maximum audio quality and smaller file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bit rate allows us to allocate a higher bit rate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bit rate for the less complex sections. 

The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality. Some of our content is encoded using a constant bit rate of 256 kbps. This content will have the same excellent audio quality at a slightly larger file size."