5 ms·

ITunes is Anti-Web

72 points by bdfh42 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago
Agree 100% - no iTunes at work and at home I use Ubuntu. Guess I won't be an Apple customer.
- gnaritas 18y ago
  I use Ubuntu as well, doesn't prevent me from using my iPod. Besides, if you use Linux, you're such a small part of the market Apple doesn't need to care about you. Windows and Mac users are the low hanging fruit.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    Well to tell a secret, I also have an iPod. This discussion for me was more about the iPhone applications, really. Also, Apple made sure that iPhone apps can ONLY be bought via iTunes. For the iPod you can get your MP3s anywhere.
mcormier 18y ago
Saying that iTunes is anti-web is like saying that any desktop application is anti-web. When you click on a link in the browser it is forwarding the request to a desktop application. Just because the application connects to a remote server and displays html type content does not mean it needs to go in a web browser. This is classic idealistic programmer blindness. Examples: I could write this program and I don't think it's worth $20 so it should be free. It should be open source. I can't reprogram my the fuel intake of my car so it must be anti-web. etc, etc, ...
- Tichy 18y ago
  OK, so I'll say it: any desktop application is anti-web. Is it programmer blindness? The reason I hate it as a programmer is that I don't see any compelling reason for the store to be not on the web. And it is very inconvenient. So it appears to be bad design, which disturbs the harmony of the cosmos.
  - utnick 18y ago
    It isn't on the web because it is integrated into the software that you play your music and videos in. This is a good thing.
    - Tichy 18y ago
      Why? There are players for music and video for the web, and in any case, this is supposed to be a shop for iPhone applications? If the players for web don't live up to Apple's standards, why not improve Safari accordingly?
      - utnick 18y ago
        i admit I only use Itunes for music/video.. and it is convenient to buy and then automatically be in my library where I can fire it up quick or export it to my ipod. For Iphone apps it might not make as much sense.
        Tichy 18y ago
        I have nothing against the convenience, I am just surprised they do it that way. I would have thought that basically iTunes integrates a browser for the shop, with some "plugins". So you could have the best of both worlds. If you want to just browse, you can do it with a normal browser, if you want the convenience, use the iTunes browser.
  - mcormier 18y ago
    No reason? Seriously? How about some business reasons? - Don't have to test on multiple browsers. - Can upgrade the browser engine automatically with application updates and tie new features to iTunes version - Less risk of HTML hacking (source is much harder to get to), increases entrance barrier - Long term goal of familiarizing Windows users with a mac style interface.
    - Tichy 18y ago
      <irony>I guess web applications were the wrong approach all this time.</irony> I am surprised that it is still possible to buy applications for OS X anywhere. Why don't they tie OS X to the iTunes store as well? In fact, why doesn't Apple just create it's own internet, completely isolated from the real internet? Edit: one reason I can accept (just barely): pushing apps directly onto the phone if bought in the shop. I still think there should be a way to view the apps available in a browser.
- yef 18y ago
  Classic Apple apologism. If Microsoft did this, there would be a swarm of complaints, and rightly so. I'll stick with the Amazon music store, which is not only cheaper, has no confusing DRM files to deal with, and is fully on the web, meaning I can link to music, buy it on any web-enabled computer, etc. There are plenty of reasons to like Apple, but their music store seems backward and anti-competitive to me.
  - raganwald 18y ago
    > If Microsoft did this, there would be a swarm of complaints, and rightly so. help me understand: how do I buy music for a Zune? I went to Zune.net, and this is what I found: "For the full Zune Music experience, get the free Zune software. Browse over three million songs you can preview and download..."
  - jimbokun 18y ago
    "If Microsoft did this, there would be a swarm of complaints, and rightly so." In Cringely's interview of Steve Jobs from "Revenge of the Nerds", Jobs says that he doesn't begrudge Microsoft their success. It just bothers him that they have absolutely no taste. I agree that Apple (particularly under Jobs) is no better than Microsoft in terms of wanting to lock in all of their customers and extract as much money from them as humanly possible. However, I do think that Apple (particularly under Jobs) exhibits outstanding taste in software and hardware design. In particular, the combination of iTunes and iPod, while striving to lock customers in and not playing fairly with others, is far more usable and aesthetically pleasing than all of the sorry attempts by Microsoft to solve the same set of problems. I think the fact that so many people LIKE Apple's products is part of the reason why not as many people get upset at Apple's anti-competitive behavior.
pchristensen 18y ago
Well Jeff, I understand you have a right to be upset at the value you got for all the money you gave Apple for that info. This is a rant against what he sees as a stupid business practice, but in a business argument of Jeff Atwood vs Steve Jobs, do you even need to know the question before you decide who's right?
- pchristensen 18y ago
  OK, if you disagree, let's compare how the iTunes-only viewing has limited Apple's market share in music sales so far. Not too much. Then let's check back in 6 months or a year to see if iTunes and the App Store have bombed. Doubtful. If you oppose something (that's you're not even paying for), but it still ends up wildly successful, then the aspect of it that bothered you clearly doesn't bother too many people. You can settle for being a minority. (note: this isn't Apple fanboyism. This is the same argument I would give to people who complain about Windows, oil companies, pharmaceuticals, Hollywood, etc. If you're a minority opinion, then you have to DEFEAT the thing you hate.)
  - Tichy 18y ago
    I guess if Apple was a presidential candidate, they would be fighting nails and teeth for every single vote, instead of saying "we don't care about you". Yes, I don't have an iPod, but I am inclined to buy an iPhone. So in elections, I guess I would be a swing voter. Seeing nice apps in the store might just swing my vote to the right side (buy). Care or don't care - it is one customer more or less.
    - gnaritas 18y ago
      Swing voters don't matter when the election isn't even close. iPods own the market, why should they chase you?
      - Tichy 18y ago
        Fine, let them not chase me, but then don't ask me to be happy with their service.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
hopeless 18y ago
100% agree. I hate that iTunes store. I'd really like to legally buy an MP3 for my wife's Creative Zen and yet I have to install iTunes? Hell, I can't even see if they stock the track. Nah, don't think I'll bother thank you very much. I'll go and buy the CD from Amazon. I think the browser/html/http combination are perfectly capable of delivering MP3 files but I guess that's not proprietary enough for Apple.
- bdotdub 18y ago
  I think Apple is okay with Creative Zen owners not buying MP3s from them. They're only targeting iPhone/iPod owners, which has by far the largest market share. The trouble of getting the iTunes store onto the web (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242316 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242316) would not be worth it because they already have the largest market share in MP3 players AND in MP3 selling. So I don't think they mind. People can complain all they want, but as long as Apples earning money, they won't be sad about it.
  - hopeless 18y ago
    I guess it depends whether the iTunes music store is about selling music or just selling music to ipod owners. Obviously, Apple's priority is the latter (understandably from a business / monopoly point of view). However, if the iPod/iTunes combination didn't feel like such a lock-in (i.e, if the online music store, software and hardware could operate independently), I might easily be persuaded to drink the Apple juice.
inovica 18y ago
Maybe it is anti-web, but its leveraging the internet in what it does. We have created some hybrid apps that work really well - we have the power of the desktop (for what we do) and the connectivity of the internet (not web) for delivering a better service. I don't like how iTunes works, but I do like what they have been good at which is pioneering the service they have. I also use it for renting movies, which is a great service. At the end of the day Apple is a business - most of us are on here because we're looking at, interested in or running startup businesses and if we had a great idea that took off similar to iTunes I'm sure we wouldn't be so negative towards our own invention.
danielrhodes 18y ago
I agree, it is. iTunes would be nothing without the iPod. It's not even that great a piece of software, and it never was, even prior to when Apple bought it. Apple is consistently been anti-open everything, and iTunes is another example. Can't use their hardware with other OSes. Can't use their OSes with other hardware. The only reason they opened up the iPhone was because people were vehemently demanding it and were going to open the thing up by themselves if Apple wasn't.
raganwald 18y ago
Typical "Apple is against freedom" linkbait from someone drenched in the Windows ecosystem. That being said... Lots of links on the web are to other applications. like links to flash, pdf, office documents, .dmg disk images to download, files to ftp, ... The iTunes Music/Movie/Application store is just an egregious example of this because it renders a lot of stuff that looks like it could be rendered in a browser, which is why they use a browser under the hood. But we could make the same argument about PDF, and the defenders would say that PDF can render things with a UI and a rendering model that surpasses HTML in fidelity, and that its users need that. And that's the reason iTMS isn't a web site. Apple wants an interaction model that is difficult to render with fidelity in browsers. We can make something almost as good in a browser, but almost as good isn't what Apple does. It's what Microsoft does, and that's why people for whom Windows is good enough don't understand why iTMS isn't a web site.
- Tichy 18y ago
  The annoyance is not that "Apple is against freedom", it is that I can not check what is on offer at the store right now. At home I'd have to boot my gaming PC so that I can take a peek at the store (lucky I still have a gaming PC instead of a console). It is simply not user friendly. But I know, Apple is making money with it, so whatever...
  - raganwald 18y ago
    I sympathize with you greatly, and you'll notice that on my own blog I promote Amazon books and music. But you and Jeff are saying very different things: You said iTMS is annoying because you have a use-case it does not support, whereas he said Apple is Anti-Web because they employ a technique--web links to a proprietary desktop application--that supports a different use case. I think I can agree with you while disagreeing with the way he frames his argument.
    - Tichy 18y ago
      OK, let's agree ;-)
mojuba 18y ago
On top of that, Google has the right to ban them. For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:itunes.com+pink+floyd http://www.google.com/search?q=site:itunes.com+pink+floyd
- Tichy 18y ago
  I think you meant "scan", not "ban"? I was wondering about that, because the marketing of my iPhone app would not be very far reaching if it could not even be found by Google.
  - mojuba 18y ago
    I mean "ban". Google requires that all pages make no distinction between the indexer and ordinary browsers and should return same data to both. In the case of that link I gave or any other link to itunes.com, what you see doesn't look the same as what Google sees (see Cached). They have the right to ban the site, I think.
    - silencio 18y ago
      Actually, I think that is the same thing that you would get in the iTunes store if you could see the raw XML. So what distinction does it make, exactly?
      - mojuba 18y ago
        The problem is, that page doesn't require Google to use iTunes for viewing its contents. In fact, as you can see the output of wget from my other comment, iTunes tricks both Google and us by sending Content-type: text/html.
- raganwald 18y ago
  How is that different from Google reaching into PDF documents, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, or Flash applications? In all of those cases, end users must use a proprietary application to actually view the content. I clicked on your link and when it opened in iTunes, I saw the same text that Google's spider previewed. Here is Google's cache: http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:GYFPOvjhhfoJ:itunes.com/album%3Fp%3D684888%26i%3D684859+site:itunes.com+pink+floyd&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1 http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:GYFPOvjhhfoJ:itunes.com... As you can see, the spider saw the full text of the review. The preview in the search page might be some metadata Apple provided as a hint to Google or it may be that Google's spider is really good at extracting interesting sentences :-)
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Yeah, iTunes is "anti-web", by the enlightened standards of 2008. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why iTunes is anti-web: iTunes was originally released in January 2001. The best-of-class web browser at the time was IE 5.5. IE6 was nine months in the future. Safari was two years in the future. Firefox 1.0 was nearly four years in the future. The XMLHttpRequest object had not been invented. The term "Ajax" was four years in the future, as was the first famous Ajax application, Google Maps. Apple is a farsighted company, but surely it's a bit much to expect them to have traveled half a decade into the future and brought back Web standards that didn't exist yet. And, let me assure you: Web versions of iTunes built with the technologies of January 2001 were terrible (cough Java applets cough) compared to iTunes. That's not a hypothetical -- lots of people built such apps. They're all forgotten now. Why, now that things have moved on, doesn't Apple abandon the iTunes model and build a web app? A) Because iTunes needs to connect to iPods. Can you build a web app that can reach out over the USB ports and talk to an iPod? I'm pretty sure that, if I could, it would be treated as a dire emergency and high-priority patches would be issued. If I can talk to your iPod via JS, I can talk to your hard drives. Even the Amazon music store communicates with iPods via... iTunes! There are few other ways, and no other sanctioned way. You could, I suppose, reduce iTunes to a tiny browser plugin or a stub, but that would still require users to download and install a third-party plugin, and it would lead to problem B: B) Now that iTunes is established with millions of existing iPod owners -- who are Apple's best customers, now that so much of iPod sales are to people replacing existing iPods -- why make a major change in their workflow, with no benefit for them and trivial benefit for the world? The risk of confusing one existing iPod customer may well offset the potential benefit of getting several new music-only customers like Jeff -- who obviously doesn't own an iPod or he wouldn't be complaining. Plus: Cross-browser maintenance of an app as complex as iTunes is expensive and difficult, you can't control every aspect of the UI, and the population of people who balk at iTunes is small and is unlikely to contain many loyal Apple customers.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Oh, and I left out Big Reason C, perhaps the biggest reason of all: Apple doesn't build a web app to sell music because several of their big recording company contracts don't let them sell DRM-free music. Apple is being deliberately constrained from competing with Amazon by the record companies. They've decided to fight Apple's growing control of their industry by manipulating the market, allowing Amazon to sell DRM-free MP3s while refusing to give Apple the same terms. The recording industry is playing Amazon off against Apple in a spiteful attempt to maintain more control. So: Apple can't sell much of their music without DRM, though they know as well as anyone else that DRM is a dead end. Selling DRM tracks through a Web app might not be impossible, but it certainly is difficult, and it's hard to believe it isn't a waste of time when Amazon is there to clean your clock in the marketplace (to say nothing of the P2P elephant in the room). Apple could put up a Web store that sells the DRM-free portion of their catalog while leaving the DRM-hobbled portion in iTunes, but it doesn't take Steve Jobs to see that as a spectacular marketing mistake.
grhino 18y ago
Amazon music store is a little Anti-Web. It requires the user to download and install their "MP3 downloader" if they want to purchase albums. Why isn't Amazon's "MP3 downloader" completely optional?
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
sanj 18y ago
By this definition, mailto links are anti-web. Unless you have some serious browser hacking () kungfu, it takes you to (gasp!!) a desktop email client! () kungfu measured against general populace, not HN populace.
weegee 18y ago
so now that Apple has the best music organization program out there, people can only complain about it. I remember back in 1999, when I began to listen to MP3's, we used a program on the PC that was a major pain in the ass, but it was the one popular program so we dealt with it. iTunes works well for me, it's easy to get, and it does pretty much whatever you want it to. Don't buy music from the iTunes store if you don't want compressed AAC files, rip your own CDs to your iTunes with the Apple lossless compressed format.

ITunes is Anti-Web

72 points by bdfh42 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago

Agree 100% - no iTunes at work and at home I use Ubuntu. Guess I won't be an Apple customer.

gnaritas 18y ago
I use Ubuntu as well, doesn't prevent me from using my iPod. Besides, if you use Linux, you're such a small part of the market Apple doesn't need to care about you. Windows and Mac users are the low hanging fruit.
- Tichy 18y ago
  Well to tell a secret, I also have an iPod. This discussion for me was more about the iPhone applications, really. Also, Apple made sure that iPhone apps can ONLY be bought via iTunes. For the iPod you can get your MP3s anywhere.

mcormier 18y ago

Saying that iTunes is anti-web is like saying that any desktop application is anti-web. When you click on a link in the browser it is forwarding the request to a desktop application. Just because the application connects to a remote server and displays html type content does not mean it needs to go in a web browser. This is classic idealistic programmer blindness. Examples: I could write this program and I don't think it's worth $20 so it should be free. It should be open source. I can't reprogram my the fuel intake of my car so it must be anti-web. etc, etc, ...

Tichy 18y ago
OK, so I'll say it: any desktop application is anti-web. Is it programmer blindness? The reason I hate it as a programmer is that I don't see any compelling reason for the store to be not on the web. And it is very inconvenient. So it appears to be bad design, which disturbs the harmony of the cosmos.
- utnick 18y ago
  It isn't on the web because it is integrated into the software that you play your music and videos in. This is a good thing.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    Why? There are players for music and video for the web, and in any case, this is supposed to be a shop for iPhone applications? If the players for web don't live up to Apple's standards, why not improve Safari accordingly?
    - utnick 18y ago
      i admit I only use Itunes for music/video.. and it is convenient to buy and then automatically be in my library where I can fire it up quick or export it to my ipod. For Iphone apps it might not make as much sense.
      - Tichy 18y ago
        I have nothing against the convenience, I am just surprised they do it that way. I would have thought that basically iTunes integrates a browser for the shop, with some "plugins". So you could have the best of both worlds. If you want to just browse, you can do it with a normal browser, if you want the convenience, use the iTunes browser.
- mcormier 18y ago
  No reason? Seriously? How about some business reasons? - Don't have to test on multiple browsers. - Can upgrade the browser engine automatically with application updates and tie new features to iTunes version - Less risk of HTML hacking (source is much harder to get to), increases entrance barrier - Long term goal of familiarizing Windows users with a mac style interface.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    <irony>I guess web applications were the wrong approach all this time.</irony> I am surprised that it is still possible to buy applications for OS X anywhere. Why don't they tie OS X to the iTunes store as well? In fact, why doesn't Apple just create it's own internet, completely isolated from the real internet? Edit: one reason I can accept (just barely): pushing apps directly onto the phone if bought in the shop. I still think there should be a way to view the apps available in a browser.
yef 18y ago
Classic Apple apologism. If Microsoft did this, there would be a swarm of complaints, and rightly so. I'll stick with the Amazon music store, which is not only cheaper, has no confusing DRM files to deal with, and is fully on the web, meaning I can link to music, buy it on any web-enabled computer, etc. There are plenty of reasons to like Apple, but their music store seems backward and anti-competitive to me.
- raganwald 18y ago
  > If Microsoft did this, there would be a swarm of complaints, and rightly so. help me understand: how do I buy music for a Zune? I went to Zune.net, and this is what I found: "For the full Zune Music experience, get the free Zune software. Browse over three million songs you can preview and download..."
- jimbokun 18y ago
  "If Microsoft did this, there would be a swarm of complaints, and rightly so." In Cringely's interview of Steve Jobs from "Revenge of the Nerds", Jobs says that he doesn't begrudge Microsoft their success. It just bothers him that they have absolutely no taste. I agree that Apple (particularly under Jobs) is no better than Microsoft in terms of wanting to lock in all of their customers and extract as much money from them as humanly possible. However, I do think that Apple (particularly under Jobs) exhibits outstanding taste in software and hardware design. In particular, the combination of iTunes and iPod, while striving to lock customers in and not playing fairly with others, is far more usable and aesthetically pleasing than all of the sorry attempts by Microsoft to solve the same set of problems. I think the fact that so many people LIKE Apple's products is part of the reason why not as many people get upset at Apple's anti-competitive behavior.

pchristensen 18y ago

Well Jeff, I understand you have a right to be upset at the value you got for all the money you gave Apple for that info. This is a rant against what he sees as a stupid business practice, but in a business argument of Jeff Atwood vs Steve Jobs, do you even need to know the question before you decide who's right?

pchristensen 18y ago
OK, if you disagree, let's compare how the iTunes-only viewing has limited Apple's market share in music sales so far. Not too much. Then let's check back in 6 months or a year to see if iTunes and the App Store have bombed. Doubtful. If you oppose something (that's you're not even paying for), but it still ends up wildly successful, then the aspect of it that bothered you clearly doesn't bother too many people. You can settle for being a minority. (note: this isn't Apple fanboyism. This is the same argument I would give to people who complain about Windows, oil companies, pharmaceuticals, Hollywood, etc. If you're a minority opinion, then you have to DEFEAT the thing you hate.)
- Tichy 18y ago
  I guess if Apple was a presidential candidate, they would be fighting nails and teeth for every single vote, instead of saying "we don't care about you". Yes, I don't have an iPod, but I am inclined to buy an iPhone. So in elections, I guess I would be a swing voter. Seeing nice apps in the store might just swing my vote to the right side (buy). Care or don't care - it is one customer more or less.
  - gnaritas 18y ago
    Swing voters don't matter when the election isn't even close. iPods own the market, why should they chase you?
    - Tichy 18y ago
      Fine, let them not chase me, but then don't ask me to be happy with their service.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

hopeless 18y ago

100% agree. I hate that iTunes store. I'd really like to legally buy an MP3 for my wife's Creative Zen and yet I have to install iTunes? Hell, I can't even see if they stock the track. Nah, don't think I'll bother thank you very much. I'll go and buy the CD from Amazon. I think the browser/html/http combination are perfectly capable of delivering MP3 files but I guess that's not proprietary enough for Apple.

bdotdub 18y ago
I think Apple is okay with Creative Zen owners not buying MP3s from them. They're only targeting iPhone/iPod owners, which has by far the largest market share. The trouble of getting the iTunes store onto the web (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242316 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242316) would not be worth it because they already have the largest market share in MP3 players AND in MP3 selling. So I don't think they mind. People can complain all they want, but as long as Apples earning money, they won't be sad about it.
- hopeless 18y ago
  I guess it depends whether the iTunes music store is about selling music or just selling music to ipod owners. Obviously, Apple's priority is the latter (understandably from a business / monopoly point of view). However, if the iPod/iTunes combination didn't feel like such a lock-in (i.e, if the online music store, software and hardware could operate independently), I might easily be persuaded to drink the Apple juice.

inovica 18y ago

Maybe it is anti-web, but its leveraging the internet in what it does. We have created some hybrid apps that work really well - we have the power of the desktop (for what we do) and the connectivity of the internet (not web) for delivering a better service. I don't like how iTunes works, but I do like what they have been good at which is pioneering the service they have. I also use it for renting movies, which is a great service. At the end of the day Apple is a business - most of us are on here because we're looking at, interested in or running startup businesses and if we had a great idea that took off similar to iTunes I'm sure we wouldn't be so negative towards our own invention.

danielrhodes 18y ago

I agree, it is. iTunes would be nothing without the iPod. It's not even that great a piece of software, and it never was, even prior to when Apple bought it. Apple is consistently been anti-open everything, and iTunes is another example. Can't use their hardware with other OSes. Can't use their OSes with other hardware. The only reason they opened up the iPhone was because people were vehemently demanding it and were going to open the thing up by themselves if Apple wasn't.

raganwald 18y ago

Typical "Apple is against freedom" linkbait from someone drenched in the Windows ecosystem. That being said... Lots of links on the web are to other applications. like links to flash, pdf, office documents, .dmg disk images to download, files to ftp, ... The iTunes Music/Movie/Application store is just an egregious example of this because it renders a lot of stuff that looks like it could be rendered in a browser, which is why they use a browser under the hood. But we could make the same argument about PDF, and the defenders would say that PDF can render things with a UI and a rendering model that surpasses HTML in fidelity, and that its users need that. And that's the reason iTMS isn't a web site. Apple wants an interaction model that is difficult to render with fidelity in browsers. We can make something almost as good in a browser, but almost as good isn't what Apple does. It's what Microsoft does, and that's why people for whom Windows is good enough don't understand why iTMS isn't a web site.

Tichy 18y ago
The annoyance is not that "Apple is against freedom", it is that I can not check what is on offer at the store right now. At home I'd have to boot my gaming PC so that I can take a peek at the store (lucky I still have a gaming PC instead of a console). It is simply not user friendly. But I know, Apple is making money with it, so whatever...
- raganwald 18y ago
  I sympathize with you greatly, and you'll notice that on my own blog I promote Amazon books and music. But you and Jeff are saying very different things: You said iTMS is annoying because you have a use-case it does not support, whereas he said Apple is Anti-Web because they employ a technique--web links to a proprietary desktop application--that supports a different use case. I think I can agree with you while disagreeing with the way he frames his argument.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    OK, let's agree ;-)

mojuba 18y ago

On top of that, Google has the right to ban them. For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:itunes.com+pink+floyd http://www.google.com/search?q=site:itunes.com+pink+floyd

Tichy 18y ago
I think you meant "scan", not "ban"? I was wondering about that, because the marketing of my iPhone app would not be very far reaching if it could not even be found by Google.
- mojuba 18y ago
  I mean "ban". Google requires that all pages make no distinction between the indexer and ordinary browsers and should return same data to both. In the case of that link I gave or any other link to itunes.com, what you see doesn't look the same as what Google sees (see Cached). They have the right to ban the site, I think.
  - silencio 18y ago
    Actually, I think that is the same thing that you would get in the iTunes store if you could see the raw XML. So what distinction does it make, exactly?
    - mojuba 18y ago
      The problem is, that page doesn't require Google to use iTunes for viewing its contents. In fact, as you can see the output of wget from my other comment, iTunes tricks both Google and us by sending Content-type: text/html.
raganwald 18y ago
How is that different from Google reaching into PDF documents, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, or Flash applications? In all of those cases, end users must use a proprietary application to actually view the content. I clicked on your link and when it opened in iTunes, I saw the same text that Google's spider previewed. Here is Google's cache: http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:GYFPOvjhhfoJ:itunes.com/album%3Fp%3D684888%26i%3D684859+site:itunes.com+pink+floyd&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1 http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:GYFPOvjhhfoJ:itunes.com... As you can see, the spider saw the full text of the review. The preview in the search page might be some metadata Apple provided as a hint to Google or it may be that Google's spider is really good at extracting interesting sentences :-)

mechanical_fish 18y ago

Yeah, iTunes is "anti-web", by the enlightened standards of 2008. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why iTunes is anti-web: iTunes was originally released in January 2001. The best-of-class web browser at the time was IE 5.5. IE6 was nine months in the future. Safari was two years in the future. Firefox 1.0 was nearly four years in the future. The XMLHttpRequest object had not been invented. The term "Ajax" was four years in the future, as was the first famous Ajax application, Google Maps. Apple is a farsighted company, but surely it's a bit much to expect them to have traveled half a decade into the future and brought back Web standards that didn't exist yet. And, let me assure you: Web versions of iTunes built with the technologies of January 2001 were terrible (cough Java applets cough) compared to iTunes. That's not a hypothetical -- lots of people built such apps. They're all forgotten now. Why, now that things have moved on, doesn't Apple abandon the iTunes model and build a web app? A) Because iTunes needs to connect to iPods. Can you build a web app that can reach out over the USB ports and talk to an iPod? I'm pretty sure that, if I could, it would be treated as a dire emergency and high-priority patches would be issued. If I can talk to your iPod via JS, I can talk to your hard drives. Even the Amazon music store communicates with iPods via... iTunes! There are few other ways, and no other sanctioned way. You could, I suppose, reduce iTunes to a tiny browser plugin or a stub, but that would still require users to download and install a third-party plugin, and it would lead to problem B: B) Now that iTunes is established with millions of existing iPod owners -- who are Apple's best customers, now that so much of iPod sales are to people replacing existing iPods -- why make a major change in their workflow, with no benefit for them and trivial benefit for the world? The risk of confusing one existing iPod customer may well offset the potential benefit of getting several new music-only customers like Jeff -- who obviously doesn't own an iPod or he wouldn't be complaining. Plus: Cross-browser maintenance of an app as complex as iTunes is expensive and difficult, you can't control every aspect of the UI, and the population of people who balk at iTunes is small and is unlikely to contain many loyal Apple customers.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
Oh, and I left out Big Reason C, perhaps the biggest reason of all: Apple doesn't build a web app to sell music because several of their big recording company contracts don't let them sell DRM-free music. Apple is being deliberately constrained from competing with Amazon by the record companies. They've decided to fight Apple's growing control of their industry by manipulating the market, allowing Amazon to sell DRM-free MP3s while refusing to give Apple the same terms. The recording industry is playing Amazon off against Apple in a spiteful attempt to maintain more control. So: Apple can't sell much of their music without DRM, though they know as well as anyone else that DRM is a dead end. Selling DRM tracks through a Web app might not be impossible, but it certainly is difficult, and it's hard to believe it isn't a waste of time when Amazon is there to clean your clock in the marketplace (to say nothing of the P2P elephant in the room). Apple could put up a Web store that sells the DRM-free portion of their catalog while leaving the DRM-hobbled portion in iTunes, but it doesn't take Steve Jobs to see that as a spectacular marketing mistake.

grhino 18y ago

Amazon music store is a little Anti-Web. It requires the user to download and install their "MP3 downloader" if they want to purchase albums. Why isn't Amazon's "MP3 downloader" completely optional?

deleted 18y ago
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sanj 18y ago

By this definition, mailto links are anti-web. Unless you have some serious browser hacking () kungfu, it takes you to (gasp!!) a desktop email client! () kungfu measured against general populace, not HN populace.

weegee 18y ago

so now that Apple has the best music organization program out there, people can only complain about it. I remember back in 1999, when I began to listen to MP3's, we used a program on the PC that was a major pain in the ass, but it was the one popular program so we dealt with it. iTunes works well for me, it's easy to get, and it does pretty much whatever you want it to. Don't buy music from the iTunes store if you don't want compressed AAC files, rip your own CDs to your iTunes with the Apple lossless compressed format.