

Bill Gates Bans iTunes From Windows - njrc
http://pluggio.com/blog/?p=244

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warwick
Doesn't this accidentally back up the 'third party frameworks lack quality'
argument? iTunes for Windows is generally considered to be a lousy piece of
software. Same with Safari for Windows, another piece released under the same
approach.

~~~
cookiecaper
I consider iTunes for Mac to be a lousy piece of software, too. I've found it
to be a memory hog with inadequate features on both platforms. I think that
most people don't complain about it on Mac because it meets their needs and
they don't know any better, as most lay Windows users don't complain against
Internet Explorer.

~~~
panic
Do you know of any better music player software for OS X?

~~~
telemachos
One problem is what are your criteria for "better"?

As a for instance, I want a music player that handles flac and ogg files and
that I can access in a terminal. Low memory usage is important to me also. I
use cmus on a Mac, and I like it quite a lot.

~~~
squidsoup
There's support, albiet indirectly, for flac in iTunes via Fluke.
<http://blowintopieces.com/fluke/>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Apple's refusal to support FLAC, in favour of their own crappy rip-off (which
they refuse to licence to 3rd parties) was, for me personally, the moment they
jumped the shark. I feel later developments have borne this out.

I mean you can buy music from Metallica and The Beatles in FLAC format. If
Metallica and The Beatles are out ahead of you on some aspect of digital
music, it's time for a rethink.

~~~
gcb
made my day. Thanks

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frou_dh
While we're on the subject, iTunes could even do with being remade on OS X.
It's a bit crufty and funky feeling (non-Cocoa?).

~~~
flyosity
I think the crufty feeling comes from most of the App Store being implemented
using a WebView and custom HTML/CSS to mimic Mac-like UI stylings. This makes
it very easy for Apple engineers to update the Store but also makes the user
experience a little choppy since it's not using native rendering for the
interface implementation.

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RevRal
Awesome, finally a place I get to tell you guys about when I banished iTunes
from my house, in a fit of rage.

Who's dumbass idea was it to put rounded corners on the iTunes window when it
is maximized? What a wonderful feature, being able to close the window BEHIND
iTunes, jackasses. I don't actually look for the close button, Apple, I just
push my mouse forward and right, then click.

So, I push my mouse forward and right then click, then see a pop-up asking to
"save changes to my document." In a split, reactionary, second I decided not
to save the changes to what I thought was iTunes, not my fucking WORK.

I uninstalled iTunes from all my computers, then bought Media Monkey.

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asnyder
I thought this was pretty silly. Perhaps I've oversaturated with blog posts on
3.3.1.

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derefr
Please, Microsoft, do this. An iTunes designed for Windows would take 90% of
the irritation I have with my iPod away (and would just be a generally classy
move on Apple's part—providing the best experience of their hardware,
regardless of your choice of OS.)

~~~
jrockway
There are plenty of other media players that work fine with Windows. Some even
let you just rsync your media to the device and _they_ figure it all out.

The only people who still use iPods are college kids and Apple fanbois.

~~~
derwiki
I'm a huge Linux and Open Source fan, but my iPod Touch is the best portable
music player I've ever owned. I'd say 50-75% of my coworkers use iPhones as
their music players too. And we're not all college kids or fanboys.

~~~
jrockway
I guess you guys don't have any music in open formats. My collection is mostly
FLAC.

~~~
derefr
Why would you put FLACs on a portable device without transcoding them first?
Do you have TBs of room on your player? (My collection is currently 300GB of
average-quality MP3s, and growing...)

~~~
RevRal
Transcoding takes time and more space.

I like my classical music, jazz, and noise music to be of the highest quality
possible. The sound quality of most MP3s is distracting.

~~~
dustingetz
i can't tell with my middle of the road earbuds.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Crappy earbuds are more likely to expose flaws in lossy encodes than high-end
gear.

The psychoacoustic model assumes that certain sounds will mask other sounds so
you can leave them out or replace them with something that doesn't sound quite
right. If like most cheap headphones you don't have a flat response then the
masking sound can be too low to work as intended.

Having said that, with modern encoders it's mostly not an issue, even if
you're using 90kps Vorbis created specifically for portable use. What is an
issue is that you'll probably want to use the same file for portable and home
listening, or you'll have got the file from someone who wanted to be on the
safe side, since some songs are trickier to encode than others, so you'll end
up with a 256kbps AAC file from iTunes, or 320kbps MP3. At that point the jump
to FLAC compression sizes isn't particularly great and the management becomes
a bigger hassle plus it allows you to transcode to various other formats and
sizes as required, saving even greater space for listening in noisy
environments like cars, trains, buses etc.

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gxs
Ok, I'll bite and humor the author.

The reason Microsoft can't do this is because Windows penetration is absurdly
high- something in the mid 90%s of all desktop computers. Any action like this
would be followed by immediate litigation from competitors crying monopoly.

The reason Apple can get away with this is because contrary to what you would
believe from reading the HN front page, apple's penetration in the cell phone
market is minute and not a monopoly.

 _edit: for the person that said apple smartphone market share is 88%, its 14%
worldwide, I don't know where you got your figures though you claim wikipedia:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone-
sales-200...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone-
sales-2009-gartner/)

Having a stranglehold of 95% on an entire industry (desktop pcs) is very
different than owning 14% of a _subset of an industry (mobile phones in
general)

~~~
chbarts
Also, Windows doesn't have an App Store. _How_ would Gates ban anything from
the Windows platform?

~~~
bbq
It is a thought experiment

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment>

~~~
jsz0
A pretty lousy one. People are just going to focus on the obvious logical
problems of making this comparison.

~~~
philwelch
Thought experiments generally have the expectation that you don't quibble with
them; Maxwell's demon doesn't make sense because demonic spirits don't exist,
but that's not the point of the exercise.

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psyklic
>> Apple MUST use native windows controllers such as our in built Windowing
system and scroll objects.

... except that the Windows Presentation Framework (the successor to Windows
Forms) _does_ allow you to completely redesign the chrome and "scroll
objects."

~~~
danudey
…and pretty much every major application on Windows does this. Firefox,
Chrome, iTunes, and even - no, ESPECIALLY - Microsoft's software, like Office
and Internet Explorer, all do their own custom UI, custom behaviours. With
Windows Vista, you could have a dozen different looks and behaviours for
windows, using only Microsoft software.

I get the point they're making, but you know what? Mac users already get that
point. Cross-platform toolkits that have targeted Mac OS X have always been
shit. They don't look right, they don't work right. This goes for everything
I've ever used, from Java to Firefox (which was far, FAR worse pre-3.0, before
Cocoa controls were added).

From everything I've heard, iTunes on Windows is shit. Doesn't this make the
same point Apple is making?

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jkincaid
Good idea, not-so-great execution. I think this would have been better if the
author wrote in a more serious tone.

I think the point is that if you want to, you can probably conjure a logical-
sounding, professional explanation for just about any 'evil' action by a
company. From their standpoint, when isn't it logical to do something that
hurts the competition?

I'm not saying the explanation John Gruber came up with (and was later
reaffirmed by Steve Jobs) is false. I just don't think it makes Apple's
actions much easier to stomach.

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batiudrami
This would actually make iTunes for Windows much better.

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jsz0
How about this as a better thought experiment/reality:

Some Linux distro makers refuse to include closed source drivers because they
don't pass their idealogical purity tests. It's no good for the end user in
the short term because it makes setting up a fully functional Linux machine
more difficult. Some people accept this because they believe ultimately open
source drivers are better. A company like NVIDIA spends some money to develop
these drivers yet they are denied inclusion into most distributions out of the
box solely for idealogical reasons -- a choice made by a relatively small
group of people who control how the distributions are packaged.

~~~
blhack
Uhmm...except for I can still install the nvidia stuff if I want to. This
sounds exactly like what everyone is advocating.

Allow people to install rejected apps, just make it tiny bit more difficult.

~~~
0x44

      Allow people to install rejected apps, just make it tiny bit more difficult.
    

I'd argue they already have. Jailbreaking the iPhone is trivial enough that
anyone can do so if they desire rejected or non-AppStore applications.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Didn't Apple argue this was illegal under the DMCA?

[http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/02/13/apple.jailbreaking.st...](http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/02/13/apple.jailbreaking.stance/)

I'm not sure breaking the law fits my definition of 'trivial'.

~~~
0x44
Not exactly, they argued that the arguments the EFF put forth for carving out
an exception for jail-breaking did not meet the legal requirements for carving
out such an exception.

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mambodog
I never would have thought of making that parallel. Maybe because Windows PCs
don't have the limited interaction/input options of a touchscreen phone, nor
the limited system resources, making this an apples to oranges comparison?

Also, like others have said, if Microsoft did this, it probably wouldn't be a
bad thing. Apple's not going to lose the Windows iPod/iPhone market, so they
would capitulate, and we would likely end up with a much better Windows
version of iTunes. Awesome.

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taggerung
Yeah....NO

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ChuckN
This guy's a dumb-ass. At least use Ballmer so that there's some reality to
the satire.

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msie
I would love to downvote this. The title is misleading. You find out it's a
thought experiment only at the end of the page.

~~~
drm237
Unless of course you use common sense in which case you would have realized it
before even visiting the site.

~~~
msie
Common sense? That's being challenged everyday by news you read on this site.

Reading the comments on this page would lead you to think that many believe
the headline.

~~~
msie
What I mean by "common sense being challenged" is that the recent actions of
Apple do not seem to make "common sense" so I'm willing to believe that Bill
Gates WOULD ban iTunes. So nothing is surprising anymore. But please, vote me
down just for being frustrated by the misleading headline and then all these
comments that seem to reflect people's belief in it. This is not reddit or
slashdot. There is no way to mark a comment as being "Funny".

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pohl
I realized my calling in life was to sell hand-knitted red, white & blue beer
koozies. Alas, Walmart won't carry them in their store. Can I get some blogger
outrage over here?

~~~
stanleydrew
I'm pretty tired of this analogy. It doesn't even make sense! Of course
Walmart can decide what to carry in its stores. It _owns_ the store, and the
land on which it's built (presumably). The problem is that Apple continues to
"own" part of your device even after you've bought it! If I'm Walmart, and I
buy some land from XYZ realty to put a store up, I don't have to take orders
from XYZ realty about what I can and can't put in my store, or about how I
have to produce the goods I want to sell! Now that's a proper analogy.

~~~
mbreese
No one is forcing you to upgrade your iPhone. If you don't want iPhone OS4
apps and the licensing garbage that entails, then don't use it. Your phone
will still have the same functionality as before. It's not like apple is
taking away a feature that phones currently have. It's more like walmart
opening a brand new store right next to an existing store. Something like an
elite walmart (?) and the products in that section were all produced without
sweatshop labor. You could still shop at the old store and get the same stuff.
Or you could shop at the newer elite walmart next to the old one and get new
shinier stuff.

~~~
moultano
My understanding was that apple could remove an app remotely at any time. Is
this true?

~~~
ptomato
Yes, but they never have, even for apps they've removed from the store for
violating their ToS. And for what it's worth, they've stated that they will
only do that in case an actively malicious app somehow ends up on the store in
the first place.

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gabrielroth
Yes, of course! Every platform is exactly the same, and any statement that
applies to one also applies to all the others in exactly the same way!

