Apple iCloud(apple.com) |
Apple iCloud(apple.com) |
Why's that? Because for $25, all those older CD rips and music which was certainly acquired legally can now be obtained easily in 256 Apple lossless (edit: not lossless, duh). I don't know if I'd keep using the service, but that alone is, to put it bluntly, fucking awesome. I wonder if there will be some sort of limit on this to prevent abuse.
Edit: Any of the downvoters care to explain why I was downvoted for this post? Tone, mentioning piracy/abuse, hating iTunes? I'm genuinely curious here.
Windows user?
I haven't found a worthy alternative on OSX.
Bottom of http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/: Limit 25,000 songs. iTunes purchases do not count against limit.
It really doesn't matter. It's best to be mature, take the high road, and ignore it.
I don't remember this, but it may have been in some fine print I missed.
* iCloud will not offer the ability to access content outside of Apple's devices: No web-based access has been announced or hinted at.
* Locked into music formats only Apple wants to support: No lossless format, no advanced tagging, no support for open audio standards, the list goes on.
* Forced to use iTunes: Forcing everybody to use iTunes prevents alternatives from being developed or brought to market. iTunes sucks but there's no alternative not because they don't exist, but because Apple's vertical integration prevents alternatives from gaining any ground.
The iTunes Store is great. The iTunes application is horrible. Media lock-in is bad for consumers.
Over the long term, maybe iTMS lock-in is bad for consumers. But when you say that, I personally (just me) think you have to account for the fact that over the short term, it's been a huge win.
I miss browsing. I miss (good) record stores. I miss (good) used bookstores. Some of my favorite memories are of browsing used bookstores in the five boroughs of NYC. Nearly all of them are closed now. The Strand sells mostly new remainders - though I go there anyhow, because I miss browsing. You can sort of browse online, but it's really not the same at all.
I grant that I can search online and get books from all over the world. I do it all the time. So, it's not all bad - not at all. (Nowadays searches for a specific target go much better than in the past at those random used bookstores.) The future is amazing. But I miss browsing.
Add that to the fact that all your songs purchased in iTunes are available for free and I think you have a pretty stellar service.
Plus from their perspective it actually saves bandwidth. Since the number of downloads most people make will be limited to the number of devices they have (as opposed to streaming where you have to serve the song up every time it's played)
Obviously it is too early to know now, and we'll only know for sure when it comes out, but still, thoughts?
Maybe they just don't give a shit.
currently with itunes you have to manually select which artists/albums you want to sync if you don't want to sync everything. this would be laborious to manage with multiple devices, especially if you've got 100gb of music on your macbook, and a 32gb iphone and a 16gb ipad. I'd much rather be able to selectively stream my music.
These seem like remarkably device-centric solutions for an increasingly web-centric world. Which is not surprising, I guess, for what is essentially a hardware company.
we'll know soon though
He was cool, and only made a few comments, but in the few he did, you could absolutely feel the repressed steverage.
:)
But it is better this way for everybody but the middlemen.
So more accurately: it's better for everybody but the previous middlemen.
The bottom line: No one cares about music any more. It's worth less than $25/year.
Apple didn't pay $150,000,000 a pop to the major labels to allow you to play music you legally acquired.
>It doesn't magically turn illegally downloaded music to legal ownership
Step 1) Purchase an iTunes Match subscription
Step 2) Convert MP3s to iTunes matched AACs
Step 3) Delete MP3s
stare in amazement at this magic before youYou can do this today only because Apple went to bat with the labels, won a bunch of freedoms, had a crapton of success and the labels (fearing Apple's leverage) gave even more freedoms to Amazon et al.