iTunes Use Surges Past QuickTime, RealPlayer 281
QuatermassX writes "Forget increased sales of Mac computers, think media players. The iPod 'halo effect' shows its true power in recently compiled statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings and Apple. From the report on WebSiteOptimization.com: 'Podcasting is taking off and iPods are seemingly ubiquitous. Unique users of Apple's iTunes player should pass RealPlayer by mid-2006 with nearly 30 million users in the US alone. People are tuning in over twice as long with iTunes than with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. As broadband penetration increases we are spending more time on our computers.'"
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the thing is (Score:5, Insightful)
'Automatic updates' consists of downloading a 35Mb new iTunes setup package each month or so...
The library doesn't update itself automatically...
There's no concept of 'checking for existing entries on import' - importing the same folder will just give you each track twice...
It doesn't work very well at all with keyboard shortcuts...
No plugin facility...
It's weighty as hell in memory...
but yet, after all these sore points, somehow, it's way cooler than WMP, RealPlayer, and sod it...anything else I've seen.
If Apple were a woman, she'd be a sexy slim figure - and you'd buy anything shite from her, just because she was so damn fine! Not like the fat moose of a wreck a Microsoft woman would be - she could be selling the moon on a stick, and you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole!
And on that note, perhaps I should mingle with real people some more.
Should surpass realplayer? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know plenty of people who use itunes, but none who use realplayer.
Still, both are irritating adware & nagware (along with WMP of course)
We need a firefox for media....
I have little sympathy for real player (Score:3, Insightful)
Real player has really wore out the good-will of its users. It is now a pretty good player, but for years they annoyed the hell out of everyone that downloaded from them.
You know...
* having to click through and read 10 webpages to get to the free realplayer whose link was always hidden in a corner somewhere. What were they thinking? That users would accidently click on the non-free version and then give up and just pay for it?
* Nag screens, annoying forms, when installing-- no real player, you will never fucking get my home phone number.
* Remember the instability and the crashes...
Sadly, I see some traits like this in iTunes. Recently, I had wanted to download JUST QUICKTIME. I was rudely surprised that I can't do that anymore. I HAVE TO download iTunes+quicktime-- whether I want iTunes or not. Screw that. It looks like iTunes has failed to learn the hard lessons of Real Player.
Re:Who "uses" real player? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And the thing is (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is like night and day. Both can play sound and video perfectly adequately - but Windows Media Player is just so awkward and cumbersome compared to iTunes. No, WMP isn't *hard* to use, it's just cumbersome. For example, when I watch video on my Mac, the screensaver doesn't kick in if I've not touched the keyboard and mouse. When watching video at work, I have to periodically waggle the mouse to stop the screensaver starting (or turn off automatic screen locking, which is also cumbersome). One training CD is made up of about a dozen WMV files with a menu. When you start the next WMV file, Windows Media Player forgets your last volume setting and blasts you through your headphones. By comparison, my PowerBook doesn't forget volume settings between files. (Even my Linux system doesn't forget volume settings between files - or turn on the screen saver when I'm watching video, for that matter). There are numerous other niggles with WMP that don't exist with the Apple product.
Re:So, when should podcasts ditch MP3s for AAC? (Score:4, Insightful)
You would be an idiot to drop mp3 in favour of mp4.
Mp3 is still the king. There is no format out there that comes close. You don't want to alienate all your listeners with old mp3 players (or the multitude who've bought the $20 256MB chinese cheapies)
Dropping it for mp4 would make about as much sense as dropping it for ogg.
First, I understand that AAC sounds at least twice as good at comparable bitrates.
I don't know what sort of audio files you're distributing - but do your own listen tests. Different codecs perform wildly differently depending on the source audio type & most reviews are using pretty standard music with vocals.
Re:iTunes (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the popularity of Macs on Slashdot really has shown how many users have abandoned the idea of having a usable Linux desktop system when they could have a UNIX workstation on a laptop or desktop by just buying a Mac running OS X. When I first got an iBook several years ago it was a dream compared to the headaches of trying to run Linux on a Dell Inspiron notebook while trying to get my wireless and sound working. In its defense, Linux support for my 6 year old Dell and 802.11b card has finally caught up and they're fully supported, but some of us prefer not to have to wait around for our computers to become obsolete before they're usable. If you take the average brand new computer today off the shelf, it's likely at least some of its components will not work with Linux. On the other hand, you can take any Mac off the shelf and it will work 100% with MacOS X.
Re:And the thing is (Score:3, Insightful)
Tools -> Options -> Uncheck "Allow screensaver during playback". Been there since at least WMP 8 if memory serves, which is when I started using it.
Re:And the thing is (Score:3, Insightful)
The real killer features that iTunes brings, namely tight integration with iTMS and the iPod, are of little interest to me, as I don't *have* an iPod.
Completely Un-Shocking (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you think changed? Nothing! (Score:3, Insightful)
Man, if my machine at work was a tricked out as any of the boxez at home, I never get any real work done.
Microsoft is pushing against the grain trying to get any if this shit acepted and businesses, Microsoft's biggest client base by far, aren't interested is in frivolity anymore than they're interested in the constant fight against viri.
Apple is getting sucked up in the vacuum of the differences between what Apple delivers painlessly in the home versus the resistance felt by Microsoft from its huge base of business customers.
Radio's dead at the hands ClearChannel, etc.
TV's dead at the hands of CableVision, etc.
Content costs too much. They just want to run ads and rake in money.
Their inventory consists of 1,440 of YOUR minutes of air time per day. And the economics of running ads over broadcasting means that you have to be selling shit that appeals to a broad demographic.
They want to force you to watch all of their shit and fuck you and fuck what you want. And its stupid, vapid, safe, bowldereized, placified, flacified, gutless content, as per FCC regulation.
The revolution'll be on a podcast. It just sound economic sense.
Broadcast and mass market media costs are way up here and getting worse.
Podcast are dirt cheap and limited to whatever the podcaster wants to produce. There's no pimping you stuff out to somebody who owns a transmitter and an FCC licence and charges somebody new 100 years of inflation all at once.
Podcasting stands all of the economic factors on their heads.
Re:I have little sympathy for real player (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There are three kinds of lies (Score:2, Insightful)
I got modded troll for suggesting that iPods are not as prevelant (at least in the world I live in) as the report suggests, and that anyone that doesn't want DRM might well be better off with a non-DRM'd MP3 player.... apparently, you've been breathing the special packets that they put in shipping crates at Apple for far too long. I'm sure you are quite happy with Apple, and statistically, there are lots of people that are happy with broadcast radio... so what?
My point is that the statistics saying that the iPod is "all that and a bag of chips" is just statistics, not reality in all places of the world, not even all places of North America. Quit huffing on the hype. Quicktime runs on MS too, so its not an OS thing. There are tons of MP3 players out there, all a bit different, most of them are not iPods. iPod is an iFad, like buying those special running shoes... you don't need an iPod to hear music. This story, and stories like it are just hype, the kind of hype that PR machines use to increase sales!
Statistics don't mean anything useful unless there are also statistics for all other aspects of the topic being discussed. How many non-iPod music players are there in use? How many have been sold with WMP on them? How many, including iPods, are just collecting dust in the glove box right now? Using ITMS statistics is sure to make the report lopsided. In fact, usage statistics are incredibly difficult to ascertain. Purchase statistics mean nothing for consumer electronics fads. The truth is that there 'may' be more MP3 players in use than anyone knows about because the owners are using their CD's to rip music and listen to it, ergo no music store stats, and few purchase stats. Statistics that arrive after the holiday shopping season are suspect to start with. How many gifts get purchased and never used? How many are resold or regifted? I resold the iPod I was given... the inflated price made that an EASY choice.
Statistics are just another way to lie....
Re:iTunes use surges past QuickTime? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, lets look at the current streaming formats .
1) WMV using proprietary codec controlled by MS.
2) Real media using a proprietary codec controlled by Real
3) MP4 media is an industry standard controlled by the MPEG and used by Apple and anyone else who cares to license it.
All these formats support the optional use of DRM. As for the
Re:WMP still No 1 and growing but slower than iTun (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple prevented MS from leveraging their desktop monopoly to gain a monopoly on media players (and DRM).
MS failed miserably on their own when attempting a monopoly on mobile phones by stabbing their partners in the back (I guess they couldn't help themselves).
It still remains to be seen if firefox, openoffice, linux etc will be able to break monopolies MS already has in place. lets all hope so for the good of mankind.
Re:Only the Player is crippled, not QT itself. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's pretty much my mail dislike of Quicktime. Most of us are running at or near 1600x1200 now and any Quicktime movies in my browser are the size of a postage stamp.
At least with Real Media and Windows media you can double-click the video to get full screen. But by far the worst is the recent trend of embedding videos in Flash objects. I've not looked in to this in detail, but IMHO they probably don't have access to the video acceleration on the PC in the way other media players have. You can see the repaints in some videos as it struggles to render it. And there is no way of saving the media locally.