When we hear the word innovation, we're enervated
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Apple launches Itunes Match later than planned
WALLED GARDEN VENDOR Apple has launched its Itunes Match service, but the launch comes several weeks after the original planned date.
Itunes Match is an Apple subscription service that automatically scans all of the songs on a user's Apple computer and matches them with equivalents on Apple's cloud servers, while also allowing users to manually upload songs that are not in Apple's catalogues.
The service costs $25 a year, which isn't bad considering that it solves the problem of having illegally sourced material, either via ripping songs from a friend's CD or downloading from a filesharing web site. Apple will match up to 25,000 songs, whether they were gained legitimately or not.
In addition to solving the problem of illegally acquired music, which the music industry can now make a small income on, Itunes Match works as a good backup service for ensuring that no content is lost while also allowing a user to access his or her music on multiple computers.
It can also free up a significant amount of disk space for a user who wants to simply stream songs from the cloud, but this is not necessarily the best option if a user's internet connection is less than reliable.
Itunes Match was originally slated for a late October release, but Apple failed to launch it on time. It also refused to comment on the delay, which was likely a logistical issue more than anything else.
To make matters worse, Apple made a monumental blunder on Itunes by posting a message saying that no new accounts were being accepted. This was an error and the notice has since been removed, according to the Associated Press, but it will likely have resulted in the loss of a few potential customers of the Itunes Match service. µ
Tags: Apple
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I agree ricardo - quality is paramount
however, lets be clear here - this is not MP3 we are talking about, at 256. it is aac.
AAC compression can produce equivalent quality with only 3/4 of the bits, so a 96kb (14.7:1) AAC file with the quality of a 128kb MP3.
therefore a 256 biitrate aac should be at least as good as a 320 mp3, and good enough.
IMHO the main concern should be that this is north america only at the moment, who the hell knows when we will even see in UK should be more the point of this article and comments...
Only 25,000 will be matched? Well that's no good to me. I have over 60,000 files to match.
The problem I see with this is, I dj and require a minimum bitrate of 320kbps, some of the music I have are even vinyl or CD rips you can't buy anywhere at all digitally, so there's no way I'll let Apple/Itunes convert (downgrade) my tracks into 256Kbps. It's a nice idea for the general public but for semi-professional or professional djs it's musical suicide.
Could this article be any more misleading? The author has clearly never written software before, much less something that millions of people will use. So what if it was two weeks late? In the world of software thats pretty dang close to the target.
Seems like the author is just a bit peeved that Apple has a string of product successes and he is a writer for some lowly web site.
Could this article have any more of a negative spin on it?
Apple launches another revolutionary service and the author points out every possible negative aspect he could think of other than bringing up Steve Job's death.