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iTunes Music Store

Just about everyone on the internet has already covered the new iTunes Music Store for Windows topic, but I’ve been busy and haven’t been able to write about it, so I’m going to now even if it is a week and a half late. :)

To sum up all of my feelings in a word, I’ll have to go with “HOOOORAAAAAYYYYY!!!”.

On the day of the announcement I had Opera open with a tab on a Mac forum that was doing live updates, the live update page on MacRumours, the live update page on MacNewsNetwork, the announcement thread on YayHooray, and of course the iTunes page on the Apple web site, with it set to automatically refresh every 15 seconds. I came in early that day so I could take a longer lunch break and be there for the whole event, which I was. I was probably one of the first people to download it… I’m guessing I started my download less than 30 seconds after the new page hit the server. :)

I installed it here at work and everything went flawlessly. The download was fast, the installer was nice and helpful. Then I finally fired up iTunes on my very own computer!

I figured it would be very close to the Mac version, but without a doubt, it is identical to the Mac version in nearly every way, which is of course a very, very good thing.

The overall appearance of the program is identical to the Mac, with the exception of the sexy anti-aliased fonts that the Mac version has. But all of the animations and visualizations are the same.

It asked for the location of my MP3’s during installation, and they were all there when I started it up for the first time. Only 200 at work, but it found about 1200 at home and imported them all quickly and easily, even on my P3 866mhz at home.

After listening to some of my own MP3’s for a while I tried the radio stations, which I had not had a chance to try on the Mac version yet. There is a large selection of everything from rock to classical to jazz, and they are all high quality. I clicked on a Rock station (Radiostorm Alternative, if anyone cares) and it started playing immediately, just as fast as an MP3 on my own computer. The quality is just about as good too. I’ve had a few skips and “buffering” messages, but overall I am amazed at the quality of the streaming radio.

When I got home I started ripping CD’s with iTunes, and everything went perfectly. I just put the CD in and clicked on Import, and iTunes took care of the rest, downloading the track names from an online database like most rippers do and automatically adding it to my library. It even started playing the song as it was ripping it, which still impresseses me. :)

After I ripped a few CD’s I plugged in my new iPod. It immediately came up on my iTunes screen, where I could see all of the songs that were currently on it. I then pressed Sync and it synced all of my new files over. Completely seamless. 5,000 times better than doing it with MusicMatch.

I’ve browsed around the iTMS quite a bit, but haven’t purchased anything yet. I’ll probably buy an album the next time something new comes out that I want to hear, rather than re-buying an older album. But I love the iTMS anyway. The 30 second previews are awesome, the navigation is great, and I really like how the featured artists pages look, with all the information, music videos, etc. It really makes it feel like an upscale CD store or something.

My boss installed iTunes on his laptop the night that iTunes came out, after hearing me rave about it all afternoon. Then he plugged it in to the network yesterday morning, and as soon as he started iTunes my music library came up on his screen. “What? It was that easy? Just turn the thing on and open iTunes? Yup.”. I then went into his preferences and set his library to share, and immediately all of his MP3’s came up on my iTunes screen. I was just amazed. Why can’t anything else on Windows work this seamlessly and easily and automatically?

I mean seriously, if Apple can create an application that is so well integrated and easy to use on Windows, why can’t Microsoft get it right? Stupid Windows… I’ve probably said that phrase a couple of hundred times in the past few weeks as my Windows frustrations continue to grow. I swear if I don’t get a Mac soon I’m going to have a heart attack… :)

Anyway, if you are reading this on a computer, GO DOWNLOAD ITUNES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

www.itunes.com