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Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network
- whakojacko 16y agoIts going to be interesting to see what effect this has on last.fm ...It doesnt have appear to have my favorite last.fm feature, scrobbling, but I admit I use last.fm little besides that. Particular, the fact that it ties in to iTunes purchases could be very popular.
- timmaah 16y agoLastFm allows me to listen to music I don't own.. legally.. Doesn't appear itunes does that.
- thought_alarm 16y agoThat would be a killer feature; I've got 8+ years of listening history in Last.fm, starting with an old Linux jukebox that played music 24/7 (between X11 crashes), and then with iPod and iTunes. On the other hand, you'd have all these geeks accusing Apple of collecting data for nefarious purposes, just like many of the comments here. Regardless, Ping looks great and I can't wait to try it out.
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- SandB0x 16y agoThis is the most highly monetized social network possible. Direct advertising to your friends, with a Buy button right there in your status.
- keltex 16y agoApple really is amazing. We keep thinking they are going to go after the usual suspects like Google, Microsoft, and RIM. Now they are aiming their guns at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg must not be happy.
- patrickk 16y agoI would say Last.fm is closer to the centre of Apple's crosshairs
- mmelin 16y agoAlso, Spotify.
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- psadauskas 16y agoAnd costs a LOT more money. $1/song instead of $3/mo.
- sirn 16y agoNo wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. That aside, I'm looking forward to see how this work out. Given that a lot of people could mistake RWW for Facebook login[1], maybe being stuck inside iTunes could be an advantage. In a sense of "Open iTunes, click this, here's your profile!" [1]: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...
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- nphase 16y agoAlso, Rdio
- gyardley 16y agoCan I please have an application that just does the one simple thing it's supposed to? I feel like soon both iTunes and GMail are going to try to order my groceries for me.
- SandB0x 16y agoNot an Emacs user, I take it?
- thought_alarm 16y agoYou can always use QuickTime Player (or an antique version of WinAmp) if that's all you want.
- crowsfan85 16y agoYes, Winamp 2.95 still is outstanding. Simple, functional, tiny footprint, etc. Get it here: http://www.oldversion.com/Winamp.html http://www.oldversion.com/Winamp.html and apply AlpineAmp skin: http://customize.org/winamp2/skins/4571 http://customize.org/winamp2/skins/4571 The lesson- Sometimes newer and more "features" != better.
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- protomyth 16y agoOn the Mac side, there are a couple of widgets that use your iTunes library but provide a very simple / non-cluttered interface.
- aphistic 16y agoOne of these days I hope they'll add the ability for me to sync my iPhone to iTunes at home and listen to it on another PC (most specifically the office) from my iPhone via iTunes without some horrible hack and manually managing my music collection.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoI was under the impression that this already worked. You can't copy the files off (without some 3rd party software) but I thought you could browse and play via iTunes. I remember it being clunky enough that you might not want to do it regularly but I thought it worked for playing a couple of tunes.
- aphistic 16y agoI haven't been able to figure it out if you can. In order to see the music and actually play it (where it's not grayed out and unclickable) I have to set my music to be manually managed on my PC at home, then I need to get the iTunes library key from the file at home and inject it into the right spot in the same file on any other PC I want to listen to the music on. I actually just stopped putting music on my iPhone because it was too much of a hassle to do every time that key changed. I just use Pandora or GrooveShark now instead.
- danilocampos 16y agoI'm skeptical about Apple doing a social media platform, yet iTunes is a perfect trojan horse. It might not even have to be good to succeed.
- Perceval 16y agoIt's pretty amazing the number of things that have been smuggled into the old SoundJam: Quicktime, Webkit (occasionally Safari), the music store (expanded to video and games and apps too), Genius recommendations, and now a social network.
- danilocampos 16y agoAhh, good ol' SoundJam. Those were the days. I really didn't like iTunes at first -- I stuck with SoundJam for a good long time. Until I moved to OS X, actually.
- andfarm 16y agoThe funniest part is that the "finished importing" chime hasn't changed since SoundJam 1.0.
- WiseWeasel 16y agoDo people associate using iTunes with social networking, however? Are you going to fire up iTunes to socialize with your friends on your Ping wall? Are you even going to invite your friends to your Ping contacts? Or are you simply going to keep using Facebook to post about that new album you just got that you really like?
- danilocampos 16y agoExisting association may not matter, though. Consider that iTunes began as an MP3 player app. Full stop. That's all it was. At some point they added support for loading your songs onto portable MP3 players, but I don't remember if that was in 1.0 (this was pre-iPod). Then they added a store, which wasn't a huge leap, but there's a difference between listening to music and shopping for music, even though one can drive the other. Then they added movie and TV purchases. Not a huge leap from buying music, but nothing at all to do with managing your MP3s. Then they added syncing your iPhone, which has a multitude of features entirely unrelated anything anyone did in iTunes before. But, hey, you need to sync your music, too. THEN, App syncing and purchase. I'm sure I'm missing a feature or two in the chronology, but you get the point. iTunes has a rich history of having seemingly unrelated shit jammed into it. Sometimes there are alternatives for what iTunes can offer (Netflix Watch Instantly, Amazon MP3 Store) and sometimes you're locked in (iOS device sync). But either way, Apple seems to get away with it. The trojan horsiness of iTunes gives them leverage to accomplish things that would be much, much harder for other companies. We'll see if that holds for Ping. I wouldn't bet against it, even if I wouldn't put much money on outrageous success, either. Hopefully iTunes 10 will at least be more performant. All this cruft has come with a cost.
- Keyframe 16y agoI really enjoyed that "open standards" event, which was broadcast via HTML5 that only worked in Safari and on Mac.
- tzs 16y agoDidn't they submit this format for standardization a year or so ago? If so, you can't blame Apple that others have not implemented it.
- gecko 16y agoIs that also your stance towards OfficeXML?
- pmjordan 16y agoIn fairness, it's a lot easier to implement than OfficeXML - it's basically HTML + dynamic M3U playlists + MPEG. OfficeXML is more or less a core dump of Word/Excel/Whatever serialised as XML.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoNo, they didn't, but lots of people got confused and thought they had. Here's Gruber making the same mistake and correcting himself: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/01/http-live-streaming http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/01/http-live-stream...
- thought_alarm 16y agoAt one point I had it streaming on four different devices at once. It was awesome.
- pavlov 16y agoIt's called "embrace and extend". The phrase was coined by some other company than Apple, though -- I forget, but they were big in the '90s...
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- simonsquiff 16y agoIt's interesting that this is only for music. You can see this being just as applicable for movies and tv shows - and of course apps. Presumably this is a toe in the water and they'll extend it if it works. But this certainly has lots of potential for extension.
- Timothee 16y agoAbsolutely. The choice of "Ping" for its name, rather than a more music-centric name might indicate they're keeping the door open to extend it to the whole store. (I'll add books to your list) edit: one good reason I see to start off with music (besides the fact that it makes sense for iTunes) is that it's more common in the music industry to "follow" an artist, than it is for TV or movies. So, right from the start anybody will have people to follow while they're building their friends network.
- patrickk 16y ago"I'll add books to your list" I bet 'gifting' people in your Ping friends network with music (and apps, books later on) will be a profitable feature for Ping, when Apple implements it.
- Timothee 16y agoFunny because I meant that in the sense that simonsquiff didn't mention the books in his comment, but you're right. When gifting right now, I don't think you have any way to know if the recipient has or not the song/app. I haven't gifted songs too much, so I'm not sure what happens in that case. Ping might be able to avoid this situation.
- patrickk 16y agoGifting will do away with those Apple vouchers you can buy to the vale of 10 bucks or whatever for your friend. Instead, you can get them the song directly. A ready-made social network, all the network infrastructure in place, users with credit cards at the ready, owned by a highly successful tech multinational....the recommendation on APPL is 'buy'!
- benologist 16y agoFacebook must be crapping themselves a little - games, music, video and all the social aspects tied into a piece of software that's deeply integrated into a ton of people's lives.
- zppx 16y agoBut Facebook has a client accessible in every platform out there and it is even accessible by a common browser, whereas with Ping I will need iTunes or an Apple device/software to use, also it probably will not have an API. I think Apple is just making things to profit more as a content distributor that it is becoming, Ping and the new AppleTV is just pointing in this direction, at least for me.
- benologist 16y agoA lot of people already have iTunes ... not to mention with 230,000 new iOS activations a day they're coming pre-armed with massive traction. They could take it in a whole lot of different directions but nothing about iTunes is aimed at filling some tiny little niche. Why would they bother aiming so low now?
- zppx 16y agoSure there are ways to Apple amass a large user base with Ping, but I think it is hard to fight with the extensible, and relatively open, Facebook that can be accessed from any browser, I see no point for someone that does not use iTunes Store, an iOS device or iTunes installing iTunes only to use Ping. I think that initially Apple does want to use it to profit more with areas that they already are strong and also gather some experience running a social network, and them expanding it, maybe with user media sharing and an API. I think games and apps will be a next focus areas for Ping.
- benologist 16y agoOf course it'd be a hard fight. But that it'd be a fight at all makes them 1000x more dangerous than anything else in the last few years.
- ThomPete 16y agoThis is how Apple rolls and I must say I am impressed although it was expected. They have long been sitting on one of the strongest and certainly most profitable "social" networks. Now they have used it to do one of the most classical goals in business. Profit maximization. I don't even think this is something other companies can learn much from as most seem to be walking around like lemmings trying to incorporate features to grow their (non-paying) following. Be patient for growth not for profit as Clayton Christensen says.
- scott_s 16y agoYou say it was expected, yet I heard no one predict it.
- ThomPete 16y agoWell I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly did. It was also known that apple where buying into this space. Will see if I can find the reference. And I will make another prediction. Apple will have to take on Spotify once they reach momentum in the US (and I think they will with time) In other words iTunes music is going to turn into a streaming music service at some point.
- Tycho 16y agoWill they really have to take on Spotify though? Mightn't the content providers look at Apple's more attractive market and just pull the plug on Spotify (which would be cannibalising their own ITunes/Ping sales)?
- ThomPete 16y agoThat might happen of course, but the question is whether they will see that or whether they will think hey! two revenue streams. None the less I believe music will go streaming, it has to which becomes really obvious once you try out spotify (well it did for me and most of my friends who use it)
- chaosmachine 16y agoIt's funny to see them positioning it as "like Facebook and Twitter for music", as if MySpace never existed.
- WiseWeasel 16y agoIt really does look a lot more like Facebook than MySpace. You basically have a Facebook wall of all the people you follow, not some kind of customized site you can design from scratch, like the mess that was MySpace.
- hack_edu 16y agoMySpace was created for and, early on, largely marketed to bands who wanted a simple page with a place to feature music. It only caught on with the public as a secondary. Now, bands are pretty much the only people who still use the platform at all.
- ABrandt 16y agoWhere did you learn that MySpace was created for bands? Wikipedia states that they just explicitly copied the most popular features of friendster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#History
- acon 16y agoI think this will be the most monetarily successful social network yet. While Facebook has a huge mindshare I don't think they are very good at turning that mindshare into money in their own coffers. Apple is really good at daring to ask for money for their services. While other companies often rely on ads or even more nebulous ways of making money, Apple just asks their users to pay money. I really like this model of paying for what I get. I means that I am the customer, and not the product.
- leviathant 16y agoGiven how poorly iTunes 9 runs on my quad-core Win7 machine with gigs and gigs of ram, I'm not particularly excited by this news. Wake me up when they've completely rebuilt iTunes. The only reason I keep it around is for my iPhone - I've switched to Zune (of all things) as my music manager, and actually quite like most of how it organizes things. On a less grumpy note, the $99 Apple TV they just launched is pretty smooth looking, the only thing I feel grumbly about regarding that is the absence of Hulu. But that's a topic for a different thread...
- PStamatiou 16y agoreally? I've never had any performance issues with iTunes on any of my boxes. Last one was a i7 quad Shuttle SFF, and my year old 17-inch MBP now.
- leviathant 16y agoI understand that iTunes runs much better on OSX, which is why your Macbook Pro doesn't have any performance issues. I'm sure it runs great on a quad-core i7 too, although if you're running Vista or Win7, it's still not caching nor preloading the album artwork, and if you scroll through the album art, it's going to redraw the artwork. That's admittedly a nitpick on my part, but it seems like a simple thing to do that would go a long way, sort of like how they set the LED to pulse at the same rate as human breathing or whatever. Aside: It's interesting to watch the points on my original post fluctuate. I would be interested to hear what people voting it down have to say. I do HD video and multitrack audio editing on my computer, I promise you that it's a capable enough machine for a media librarian. And I really do think the AppleTV is a good deal at $99.
- tvon 16y agoIt's kind of amusing how bad iTunes is on Windows, all while Apple talks about how writing for a meta-platform produces lower quality software. It doesn't even look good, IMO, at least not compared to running natively on OSX.
- jbrennan 16y ago
- elblanco 16y agoYay! More bloat!
- doron 16y agoDid Apple just shot Myspace in the face? execution style?
- sz 16y agoThat was my first thought. Myspace Music is dead, it's not really about Facebook.
- tomjen3 16y agoBah, they should get their ass together and release an update to their iPods so that you could manage your music without having to use their bloated crap. You know, like the standards that apple talk about so much.
- bjelkeman-again 16y agoPing, only accessible from within iTunes? Not a web interface at all? That is surprising to me. I can't participate unless I have an iPhone/iPod Touch/computer with my iTunes installed. Also, he mentioned showing what my friends have purchased. I am more interested in what they are playing right now or are playing overall, regardless of where it came from. iTunes and iPods have been successful because it isn't restricted to only content purchased in the iTunes store, but now they are focusing hard on the iTunes store content only? I can't see that this is going to be as successful as if they had a more open mind about it. What about the MP3s I buy from Amazon or CDs (or whatever) and load on my iTunes? Only tracking what comes from the iTunes store is like navel gazing. I think they miss the big picture that way. Or maybe I am just old fashioned. :)
- Setsuna 16y agoIs this available in all countries?