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[MacBytes]

Category: Reviews
Link: Log in, rock on
Posted on MacBytes.com

Approved by Mudbug

[ntg]

Seems to be a fairly balanced review, which also points out the pitfalls of trying to circumvent ITMS by using Harmony, something Real forgets to mention when plugging Harmony.

Nig.

[nagromme]

Not to mention the BIGGEST reason not to use Real: iTunes happens to be a pretty good jukebox!

[shamino]

He forgets that iTMS was not the first music download site. Napster and a few others came before it. iTMS was simply(?!) the first store that people cared enough about to actually buy from in significant numbers.

As for Real, the biggest reason to avoid them is that even if Apple doesn't break the Harmony system, Harmony breaks the convenience that makes an iPod worth owning. Once you use Harmony to load songs into an iPod, you can never again use iTunes to automatically sync-up your playlists - if you do, all the Harmony songs get purged from the iPod.

(Nevermind the fact that Real is run by a gang of hypocrites. They reverse engineer the Apple file formats and insist that it's perfectly OK, but they sue people who reverse engineer the Real file formats. This is what I'd expect from a crooked law-firm or a gangster, not a software company.)

[shamino]

Originally Posted by nagromme

Not to mention the BIGGEST reason not to use Real: iTunes happens to be a pretty good jukebox!

There's a reason I use it on my Mac and Windows PC's even though I don't own an iPod and have not bought anything from iTMS. iTunes isn't perfect, but it's far better than anything else right now. (WinAmp used to be good, but it became slow and bloated when version 3 shipped.)

[exopuppy]

My favorite part of the article is where the writer insinuates that iTunes is only available for Mac because of its overwhelming popularity. . . methinks it should be the other way around? It only reached Winblows because it's the best software in its class and wanted to reach the largest user base.

[shamino]

Originally Posted by exopuppy

My favorite part of the article is where the writer insinuates that iTunes is only available for Mac because of its overwhelming popularity. . . methinks it should be the other way around? It only reached Winblows because it's the best software in its class and wanted to reach the largest user base.

iTunes was probably ported to Windows because Windows users needed a way to access the music store. It was easier to port iTunes than to find a way to retrofit the store into MusicMatch (the previous way of loading iPods from Windows.) Especially since MusicMatch has their own (WMA-based) music store.

I doubt "because it's really good" was a major factor. If Apple was making porting decisions based on that, we'd have seen the rest of iLife ported over as well.

[solvs]

Originally Posted by shamino

He forgets that iTMS was not the first music download site. Napster and a few others came before it.

Well iTunes wasn't the first legal d/l service, but Napster didn't turn legal until awhile later. That's true about nobody caring though. A lot of the early legal sites did suck, especially the ones where you had to have a subscription. Or where they only sold indie stuff, which is ok, but sometimes you want some mainstream stuff. Back when iTMS was just a rumor, Gateway came out with a similar product. Needless to say, it has not been very successful.