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iTunes Music Store for Windows is here!
Originally posted on October
19th, 2003
Man Alive! This is really really ultra
cool!
Apple once again has pulled another
big fat happy rabbit right out'a Steve Job's hat!
Okay you music thiefs: Now you
don't have an excuse to ripoff the middle men fat cat record
corps. C'mon... Snoop Dogg needs a new ride!
Everything's there; music, audiobooks,
playlists, radio stations, meta tagging, file sharing, syncing
with your ipod, burning CD and DVD disks, AAC support, everything...
well, almost.
Apple these days is just oozing
and seeping with fantastic ideas these days. Where did they find
these guys? Who cares. As long as they keep tickling us with
toys likes this (yes this is a toy) I'm sold and my dead presidents
love to travel.
I am a 100% Windows Media Player
(ver. 9) advocate. In my humble opinion, WMP9 was one of the
best digital content delivery systems for the PC. I wonder if
Billy over at M$ has his rearview mirror laying on the floor
of his Lexus because the Apple stealth marketing juggernaut is
gonna blow his doors off if he doesn't look over his shoulder.
I'll never forget the time I was driving to NEC a few years back
on hwy. 280 here in California (280mph is the speed limit) and
this little red dot appeared in my rearview mirror. Before I
knew it I felt my little VW VR6 GTi shake left then right as
if I drove over a pothole as a fuzzy red blur streaked by my
drivers side window. The next thing I knew that little red dot
was in front on the horizon...
[blink]
Back to my review...
 Within
minutes of downloading and installing the 19.5 megabyte iTunes
download I found myself perusing the listings in the audiobooks
section, then the Electronic section (i like electronic Groove
Salad type music nowadays).The first thing I noticed is the
striking similarity of the appearance of iTunes for Windows compared
to the Apple version on my G4. It looks and feels the same (duh
i know). Everything is very clear and easy to find.
 Right
after I finished loading it, iTunes wanted to scan the My Music
folder to add my music to it's library. I was a little skeptical
at first because I read about Apple implanting DRM (Digital Rights
Management) inside iTunes for Windows. DRM puts limits on how
you can move your songs around. How many times you can burn a
CD, copy to another computer etc. I have all my music backed
up to DVD on my Sony GRV-680 so I didn't care at this point.
I was wrapped up in that new toy feeling and wanted to go forth
and experience this changing moment in the computer arena.
After that was finished I played
around in my Library for a while. I made a sample Playlist and
I looked in the Radio Stations section so see what was offered.
To my amazement, my favorite Internet broadcast station ( Groove
Salad / SomaFM.com ) was
right there in 3 flavors of streams for me. Oh yeah.
Then I thought, here I go...
I'm gonna see what I can download. I heard that songs are .99
cents. I couldn't wait to check it out then... it happened...
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Symantec Stops Me Cold!
The moment I clicked on the Music
Store icon I got this friendly message...
"We could not complete
your Music Store request. There is not enough memory available."
I'm reminded of the old Apple
Macintosh's when it didn't know the cause of an error and you'd
see Error Type 1 on the screen... following in true Apple tradition,
this error misdirects you to think you don't have enough memory...
fault = 50% Apple 50% Symantec. Read on...
I clicked a few more times and
didn't get anywhere... at first I thought maybe all those millions
of PC users were clogging up all those little Apple servers.
Then it occurred to me... Symantec! I have DSL
at home and not only do I run a Linksys
firewall but I also have Norton Internet Security 2003 running...
I right-clicked on the little green globe on my taskbar and temporarily
disabled it. I then clicked on the Music Store icon again and
I was in! I've had issues with NIS before and this was an easy
fix.
All you do is double-click on
the little green globe in your taskbar and that'll pop up the
NIS dialog box. From there click on Personal Firewall and then
on Configure. Click on the Program Control tab at the top. Now
click on Add and point the explorer to C:\Program Files\iTunes\itunes.exe.
That'll fix it. After you close this you can re-enable the NIS
globe again by right clicking and then click on Enable.
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The next thing you'll need {yes}
is another ID for yet another website, Apples'. I already have
one so I'm cool and ready....
Navigating iTunes
 It's completely obvious to start searching
and playing music and audio files. I made some playlists and
sorted out a few songs in no time. WIT {Windows iTunes] is much
simpler and easier to use than Windows Media Player (Sorry Bill,
I switched).
Basically it's a menu driven
dropdown list like in Windows Explorer when your drilling down
looking for a file on your hard drive. The display looks like
an excel spreadsheet with columns and rows. You have the capability
of sorting by all columns; Song Name, Time, Artist, Album, Genre,
My Rating, Play Count, and you can expand the details by turning
on hidden columns like Bit Rate, Beats per Minute, Comment, etc.
 One
of the cool things I did right off the bat was make a shortcut
on my desktop to my favorite Radio Station on the net so all
I have to do was double-click it and it will open up WIT without
my having to open WIT, then drill down the Radio Stations, then
the station. Really cool thing.
 Top
left of the screen we have a very familiar interface known even
to one armed, one eyed monkeys. Volume control at the bottom.
Above that the Back, Play/Pause/Stop in the middle and Next at
the end. Near the very top of this area we have File, Edit, Controls,
Visualizer, Advanced and Help. The help section is very well
written and I highly recommend you cruise around in there for
a while to familiarize yourself.
 There
are four really handy buttons right at the lower left screen
that enable you to Create a Playlist, Turn Shuffling On or Off,
Play Playlist / Repeat a Playlist / or Repeat a Song, and Show
or Hide Song Artwork.
 On the
lower right on the screen the are more buttons for the Equalizer,
Visual Effects, and Ejecting the CD. The Equalizer has 20
some odd presets ranging from Acoustic to Vocal Booster.
It would be kind'a cool if Apple could arrange it so that I could
make a preset stick with each song. That way when a Classical
score came on it would choose my preset for that and if a Rap
song came on it would choose the preset for that, kind'a like
a DJ environment.
 Top
right of the screen show you the Windows like control bar functions.
This is most likely the only change from iTunes Mac. I wish Apple
would've kept the more colorful buttons. Here we have the well
know minimize button, the Skin Mode button and the Close or Exit
Program button.
 I did
notice a slower response time resizing the iTunes window. It's
kind'a jerky while any other window that I resize is very responsive
feeling. This is the same on my G4. The windows seem just a little
pokey when you resize them. It's a small thing thou. Something
else to note and I don't know if this is a slap in the face of
Windows but you can't resize the iTunes window with the other
corners of the window. You can only resize it with the lower
right grabber corner where the Apple programmers placed some
grip lines so your thumb doesn't slip... You also can maximize
the iTunes screen. Not by mouse or keyboard. I can usually hold
the ALT+Spacebar and a mini menu will drop down and it does in
iTunes but the Maximize selection is grayed out.
.
DRM - Digital Rights Management
 DRM
is designed to keep you a honest George Orwell drone. You don't
own anything in the country. You license it kids. You gotta think
of it as a drivers license. It can be taken away at any time
by big brother. Either remember that or get a tattoo.
iTunes for Windows and as far
as I can tell the Macintosh version use DRM with specially formatted
music files called AACs. AACs are copy protected music files.
No, they don't have AAC extensions like HappyBirthday.mp3, they
consist of 2 formats. .m4p files are the ones you download from
the Music Store and .m4a's are ripped or copied from CD. According
to Apple, you are licensed to burn unlimited copies of your AAC
music files to CDs but there are protections when you wanna put
them somewhere else, like on the internet or your local network.
If you Burn a CD with your AAC files all the copy protections
are removed. Apple also says that you can only listen to AAC
files with iTunes on a Mac or PC but a quick search on the net
yielded me several plug-ins for Windows Media Player, Winamp
and others so that's not true. If you copy songs from your CD
collection to AAC there is no copy protection {for now anyway}.
Apple Terms of Sale (you better
read this part)
http://www.info.apple.com/usen/itunes/policies.html
Here's a story about a guy that
got a little screwed over [by the Apple lawyers] because he didn't
read his User Agreement.
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200307/msg00150.html
Syncing with my iPod
I haven't tried it yet.
Syncing with other MP3 devices
Ditto, I have a Nomad in the
store but I haven't tested it yet.
Michael Chukov
Playback shortcuts
> Play the selected song immediately Enter
Listen to the next or previous album in a list
Shift-Control-Alt-Right Arrow or Shift-Control-Alt-Left
Arrow
Rewind or fast-forward to the next song in a list
Control-Left Arrow or Right Arrow or Control-click
the Skip Forward or Skip Backward controls in the upper-left
corner of the iTunes window
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> Library and playlist shortcuts
Create a playlist from a selection
of songs
Shift-click the Add (+) button (You can also drag the
songs to the white area of the Source list.)
Create a new Smart Playlist
Shift-click the Add (+) button
Reshuffle the current playlist
Shift-click the Shuffle button
Delete the selected playlist from your Source list without confirming
that you want to delete it
Control-Delete
Delete the selected playlist and all the songs it contains from
your library
Shift-Delete
Delete the selected song from your library and any playlists
Shift-Delete
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> Music Store shortcuts
Go to the next page in the
Music Store
Control-Right bracket (])
Go to the previous page in the Music Store
Control-Left bracket ([)
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> File and window shortcuts
Check or uncheck all the songs
in a list
Control-click the checkbox next to a song
Change the song information columns you see Using the right mouse
button,
click a column heading
Expand or collapse all the triangles in the Radio's Stream list
Control-click a triangle
Shrink the iTunes window to show only the playback controls
Shift-click the Maximize button in the upper-right corner
of the iTunes window
Zoom the window to an ideal size
Shift-click the Maximize button in the upper-right corner
of the iTunes window
See more options when a visual effect is showing
Press ?, then press the indicated key to use an
option (not all visual effects support this)
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> Audible shortcuts
Go to the next or last chapter
(if available)
Control-Shift-Right Arrow or Left Arrow
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> File menu shortcuts
Create a new playlist
Control-N
Create a new playlist with the selected songs
Control-Shift-N
Create a new Smart Playlist
Control-Alt-N
Add a file to the Library
Control-O
Close the iTunes window
Control-W
Import a song, playlist, or library file
Control-Shift-O
Open the song or CD Info window for the selected song or CD
Control-I
Show where a song file is located
Control-R
Show the currently playing song in the list
Control-L
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> Edit menu shortcuts
Undo your last action
Control-Z
Cut the selected song's information
Control-X
Copy the selected song's information
Control-C
Paste the selected song's information
Control-V
Select all the songs in the list
Control-A
Deselect all the songs in the list
Control-Shift-A
Hide or Show the Artist and Album columns
Control-B
Hide or Show the song artwork
Control-G
Open the View Options window for the selected source
Control-J
Open iTunes preferences
Control-comma
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> Controls menu shortcuts
Stop or start playing the selected
song
Space Bar
When a song is playing, play the next song in a list
Control-Right Arrow
When a song is playing, play the previous song in a list
Control-Left Arrow
Increase the volume
Control-Up Arrow
Decrease the volume
Control-Down Arrow
Mute the sound (song keeps playing)
Control-Shift-Down Arrow
Eject a CD
Control-E
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> Visualizer menu shortcuts
Turn the visualizer on or off
Control-T
Make visual effects take up the entire screen (when visualizer
is on)
Control-F
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> Advanced menu shortcuts
Stream audio file at a specific URL to iTunes
Control-U
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