Apple Misses iTunes Match Launch Target as iTunes 10.5.1 Developer Beta Expires

[IamZoso]

Is this post a joke?

As a few others have mentioned, you obviously know nothing about Steve Jobs if you think he wouldn't have delayed a product release if it wasn't done. Steve was a perfectionist to a fault. He spent weeks choosing the exact shade of grey for the first Mac and the color of the walls of the factory making it.

Not to mention: Leopard, the white iPhone, push notifications. And no doubt countless other announcements were delayed that we don't know about.

We know all this; you're not saying anything new.

Tim had the chance to start again and there's no update from him on the US or UK side of iTunes Match; everyone seems to be on holiday. Not the greatest of starts.

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Steve let many product releases slip. If a product isn't ready (in their eyes) it simply doesn't ship.

Really not sure what you are talking about here. ALAC can be played on most iDevices if you are intending to mean they don't support this lossless format.

If you are referring to Google music, magically upgrading your songs to FLAC, perhaps you should read exactly what they do to your own FLAC files when you upload them to Google's music service.

Though, perhaps I may have misunderstood exactly what you were talking about here.

Sure and Tim's and Apple are still applying that same approach. Why both giving a date at all if you can't commit. Further still, where is the update as to when iTunes Match will be available in the US or the UK. Just a simple update on the website would suffice - not hard is it?

Also, where are our FLAC equivalent songs on iTunes; I'm fed up of the 75% ACC loss. They've had ten years to sort this out.

You've missed the point with your ref to Google and ALAC - we know what you're saying already. What i want is an option to upgrade all of my songs to ALAC from Apple through iTunes. C'mon we've been waiting for ages now for this as well as 24bit audio as well.

 

[kokako]

"What i want is an option to upgrade all of my songs to ALAC from Apple through iTunes" me too! everything on the iTunes server is already ALAC or AIFF that's how it was uploaded by the artist/label through iTunes Producer so hoping this does happen oneday soon.
I was really looking forwards to iTunes Match today, I mean yesterday, c'mon Apple.

 

[charlituna]

Also, where are our FLAC equivalent songs on iTunes; I'm fed up of the 75% ACC loss.

Talk to the music labels. They are the issue

 

[noisycats]

You can optionally download and reinstall the same beta and it will work just fine.

This post was downvoted at least 6 times?

What is wrong with you people?!?

 

[rosskinard]

My thoughts on Match

A bit over a month ago I was not impressed with iTunes Match. Out of 3000+ songs it matched around 120 and wanted to upload the rest. I canceled the upload and didn't mess with it much after the library delete.

About 2 days before the latest purge, I reactivated it and it matched around 2100 of the 3000, with random ones missed. Like one song in an entire album didn't match but the rest did, so I chalk it up to tweaking on the server side.

I had a bunch of 128kbps AAC rips from my CD collection done back when HD space cost quite a bit more than now. I synced my laptop's library to Match, then added one of my minis to the account. I then downloaded all the songs to the mini's HD. This gave me a library of mostly 256kbps songs identical to my laptop.

I backed up my laptop library, then replaced it with the one from the mini and now I have a much higher quality library than before. Hopefully these "Matched AAC" files will sync with Match once it is online and those last lower quality AAC and MP3 files I have will be updated to higher quality.

I'm looking forward to it being refined and all...much more impressed than I was weeks ago.

 

[SeanForester]

I am bummed..I cancelled my Spotify so I could use this service..Oh well have to wait now

Why would cancel Spotify? It's the best program out there!

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Reminds me of a software scheduling rule:

If you slip your release schedule, people might complain.
If you ship a crappy product "on time," people will hate you.

I really do agree with you! In the past Apples product launches didn't go over so well because so many people received it at once, intern crashing. I would rather wait than some bug steal my music and corrupt it. I'm perfectly content with using my Spotify right now.

 

[SirHaakon]

what? why? its 2 completely different things. thats like cancelling ur cable provider bc u can download shows on itunes

Not necessarily; I buy all of the music I like, but my iPhone doesn't have enough capacity to hold it all. Streaming audio is a great answer to this problem. Spotify works pretty great right now (it doesn't have every CD I own, but definitely the lion's share of them), but it's $10 a month. As soon as match comes out, I'll be ditching it for Apple's offering too.

 

[subterFUSE]

I still purchase all of my music on CD because I care about quality (also because not all of the music I want is sold in digital format), and I am not about to let Apple force me into downgrading to 256k lossy files.
I understand why they would do this for the storage capacity and bandwidth considerations, but it's a deal-killer for me. No thanks.

 

[TexasTexan]

Well audio quality is important, but i have to say I like the fact I can get anything I want to hear from anywhere. Saves me the times I am annoyed when I want to hear something and I don't have the song. The other plus is all the iPads, iPods and iPhones in the family can access it for the one price.

As far as the timing, I am hoping they just had a delay in setting up the area of the cloud where the music sits. Beta testers were in a "test" cloud and not in the production cloud.

My beta still works but matching yields the dreaded 4100 error when I turned it back on again after Apple said to turn it off for the last wipe. Still up to date last time I looked but will look again tonight.

Come on cloud, let it rain music!!!

 

[happyduck42]

iTunes Match released.

Seems to be out.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/whats-new/

edit
nevermind, I read that wrong

 

[drgreenberg]

False alarm without fact checking

The latest beta, 10.5.1.4 (Windows version), dating back to Oct. 11, is still working perfectly fine for me (sans Match) as of this morning. Anyone receiving an expiration warning should just reinstall.

 

[anotonin]

My first thought too... just watch, bit by bit Steve's influence will disappear and we'll be stuck with Microsoft again

Give the company a chance first. A grieving period perhaps?

 

[malnar]

Give the company a chance first. A grieving period perhaps?

Why would they be off the hook because Jobs died? I don't understand this line of reasoning. It's perfectly okay for products to slip because someone died? That, to me, indicates the company is in deep trouble. And how long is it okay for that excuse to be used? A month, two months, six months, a year? How long? I think it's inexcusable, period. It's certainly not the way Jobs himself would have wanted the company to behave, so I think we have to rule out "grieving" as the reason iTunes Match has slipped. I really can't imagine many in Apple saying "we're just going to have to let Match slip because the engineers and programmers are crying." Come on, people. Be realistic.

The likely reasons for the delay: licensing and/or bugs. It would be really fantastic if Apple just said something. In the meantime, I've backed up my 180gb collection to Amazon for safe keeping (8 days of uploading so far, my ISP must love me.) Now when Match goes live, I don't have to worry about whether something gets screwed up or not. If it does, I turn it off and pull down whatever I need from Amazon into iTunes again, if I have to.

 

[pmz]

What about iTunes Match wasn't ready for primetime?

Did Not Work. That's usually a pretty good reason.

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I still purchase all of my music on CD because I care about quality (also because not all of the music I want is sold in digital format), and I am not about to let Apple force me into downgrading to 256k lossy files.
I understand why they would do this for the storage capacity and bandwidth considerations, but it's a deal-killer for me. No thanks.

That's cool. I'm a pretty big fan of lossless audio (even though those CDs you buy are no where near lossless).

However I only care about a small range of music being in lossless. The rest can be 256 aac because its a fully sufficient trade off considering the indescribable benefit of having all music available via iCloud.

 

[diamond.g]

Did Not Work. That's usually a pretty good reason.

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That's cool. I'm a pretty big fan of lossless audio (even though those CDs you buy are no where near lossless).

However I only care about a small range of music being in lossless. The rest can be 256 aac because its a fully sufficient trade off considering the indescribable benefit of having all music available via iCloud.

It worked for me just fine, I don't understand how it didn't work for others (assuming they meet the requirements to use it).

 

[marioguarneros]

Hope this delay is not too long.

I am really looking forward to iTunes Match.

Can't wait to see how many of my songs it will match. Many of them were converted to a crappy low standard mp3 format long ago from original CD's, it will be nice to hear them at great quality again.

 

[RTW]

This story has really taken off in the media today, and now there are a few dozen Google hits reporting that Apple has missed the iTunes Match deadline.

I'm as psyched as anyone to see this feature go live, but I really don't think Apple deserves this to have become a negative publicity nightmare... which it now officially is.

 

[mastercheif91]

This story has really taken off in the media today, and now there are a few dozen Google hits reporting that Apple has missed the iTunes Match deadline.

I'm as psyched as anyone to see this feature go live, but I really don't think Apple deserves this to have become a negative publicity nightmare... which it now officially is.

Their complete ignorance of the issue caused this. If they put out a press release or even just a statement saying "were having some issues with iTunes match, and its release has been pushed back to November in order to provide our users with the best possible experience", there would have been a little backlash but I think everybody would understand. To set a deadline, miss it, and be completely silent about it is setting yourself up for the rumors to start spreading and negative buzz being created.

 

[mvmickey]

Their complete ignorance of the issue caused this. If they put out a press release or even just a statement saying "were having some issues with iTunes match, and its release has been pushed back to November in order to provide our users with the best possible experience", there would have been a little backlash but I think everybody would understand. To set a deadline, miss it, and be completely silent about it is setting yourself up for the rumors to start spreading and negative buzz being created.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Why leave the customers in the dark. Just tell us it will be delayed. While yes I know it only takes a minute or so each day on the net to see if its out yet. I still don't want to be checking daily to see if its out yet. Apple is wasting my time frankly.

 

[Tinmania]

You took the words right out of my mouth. Why leave the customers in the dark. Just tell us it will be delayed. While yes I know it only takes a minute or so each day on the net to see if its out yet. I still don't want to be checking daily to see if its out yet. Apple is wasting my time frankly.

Exactly.

Worse, with their lack of any kind of statement I wonder if it is because they don't want, or are not even able to, give a firm commitment at this time. I HOPE that is not the case and that instead their reason is that it will be out at any moment and any negative press will evaporate quickly.




Michael

 

[TexasTexan]

Still hoping that since they haven't said a word, that the launch is imminent. I would think if they hit a major technical issue, they would make an announcement. A small glitch they think they can correct quickly, release it a few days late and then tada!

In Apples defense, it is still less than two days into November. Which in term of software development, isn't much. Somethings are worth the wait. All things considered, the iPhone 4s was released available on time, which would have been way worse press than this. If this many people are talking about it being late, imagine the people talking about it when it is available.

To the cloud!

 

[Tinmania]

The thing that worries me most is the apparent unreadiness of the product even in the last beta. Usually we see a more polished beta before a product rolls out live. But I am hoping!

 

[robandrob]

iPhone "5" and iTunes Match

To all the stupid people who are "so upset" about the iPhone 5 not coming out... I hope you've given up on the iPhone 2 coming out. People also still expect for the iPhone 5 to come out... its gonna be the 6 ok! lol

On the "late" iTunes Match subject and Tim Cook doing a poor job... Well I believe Apple/Tim Cook is doing a great job and even though they might miss a date, they are just trying to make the user/customer satisfied. As like Steve Jobs said "Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." So in other words wait for the excellence that will be expected aka:iTunes Match! lol

 

[darkplanets]

Thanks for assuming what line of work I'm in. I'm perfectly qualified to have this opinion based on my profession and career.

Ok.

If you told your superior R&D boss that you're going to miss your deadline for a project, is he or she going to pat you on the back for it and say, "it's OK!"... No, because if they did, the EXPECTATION is now that deadlines don't matter. While you may have a perfectly valid reason for missing the deadline, the expectation was not met to deliver a product that was PROMISED to be delivered by.

Are you sure you're qualified? Just because you miss a "deadline" doesn't mean that "deadlines don't matter" anymore, it just means that you missed a deadline. In science deadlines get missed all the time, or are completely blown out of the water. In most cases most bosses would say it's okay if you aren't lazy and have a valid excuse, especially in R&D, since you're typically on the cutting edge. You keeping saying promises... an announcement is not a promise, it's a declaration of intent.

Let's look at an example, shall we? Let's say company X is trying to raise funds for a promising project, and while trying to woo venture capitalists, pegs the release date of a therapeutic as Y years out. They state the release of said product as such, but does that mean the actual release will be that year? Probably not. Assuming said project was in IP form, they could lose time going to IND or phase 1. They could entirely fail in phase 2, thus never reaching the deadline. Do you get the point? Just because a company says a date, doesn't mean you should expect it as a promise... **** happens. While company X could attempt to release an unfinished or non-working product (not possible in therapeutics), would the consumer (or you) really want that?