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January 31, 2008

itunes

iTunes reaching for absolute stardom, leaves RealPlayer behind

Posted Jan. 31, ’08, 2:40 PM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | iTunes

iTunes v. Real“It’s like offering a glass of ice water to people in hell.”

So said Steve Jobs in an interview with Walt Mossberg during the D5 conference. In case the simile eludes you, the “ice water” here is iTunes and the “hell” is—no prizes for guessing—Windows. Steve Jobs claims that Windows users love iTunes, but I’ve seen a lot of users who disagree; most people I know regard it as a necessary evil.

Your love or hatred for the application notwithstanding, a survey by WebSiteOptimization reveals that it has surpassed RealPlayer to become the second most popular streaming media player across all platforms. iTunes usage grew 26.8% in 2007 while QuickTime fell 8.6% and RealPlayer suffered a fall of 17.5%. Still the leader by a wide margin? Windows Media Player.

Plenty of people have told me that iTunes is quite slow on Windows and they wouldn’t use it if their iPods weren’t so intimately coupled with it. I understand that iTunes is naturally used widely because of the dominance of the iPod, however, managing your iPod does not require you to use iTunes as your streaming media player. If a person is doing that, they’re doing it by choice—or they just don’t know any better. Personally, I think iTunes is not quite as hated on Windows as zealous non-users make it out to be. It’s probably just that the haters are far more loud than those who’re happy with their glass of ice water.

That said, it is indeed true that iTunes on Mac OS X is far better than the Windows version, which could do with a lot of improvement, especially on the performance and responsiveness front. At the end of the day, gaining a little ground on a program as hated as Windows Media Player is kind of like…well, getting a glass of ice water in hell.

[via The iPod Observer]


2 Comments

Anonymous said:

The haters are always more vocal, but maybe iTunes on Windows has problems because..... it is on Windows lol
just a vocal Windows hater

January 31, 2008 5:23 PM
Kalessin Author Profile Page said:

I find iTunes on even an Intel Mac to be a slow, lumbering beast; I wouldn't use it if it wasn't tied in so tightly to the iPod. And iPhone, of course.

February 1, 2008 7:46 AM

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