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What do you think of the itunes store

MacBH928

MacBH928

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 17, 2008
9,166
4,193
i just started buying from the itunes store and was wonder what do other users think of it

its great if you know what you want to buy, but its pretty hard to browse if you are looking for what is good or what you might be missing on

the same could be said about the apps store

from the looks of it , there seems to be a lot of apps that are gems burried in the unbelievable amount of other worthless apps

the stores are also a bit slow to browse both on my ipad and macbook
but the shattering sales numbers makes it look like people are really enjoying it and are happy with ot
whay do you think?
 
I'm pretty happy with it. I'm able to find what I'm looking for and I've not really run into any sort of performance issues.
 
I would like to see apps with the best reviews and most downloads (not just weekly/monthly or whatever it shows). Currently, I'm having hard time to find useful apps as most in the currently hot are crap.
 
I think the sales are good because it comes with iTunes, which many people use because they have iPods :D
 
R94N said:
I think the sales are good because it comes with iTunes, which many people use because they have iPods :D
Click to expand...

but they can do a purchase somewhere else, and just add it to the itunes library

looking for more opinions
 
So everyone else here is extremely happy with the itunes experience and does not demand any improvements?
 
They should improve the audio quality and remove DRM protection like other online audio stores. Other than that, iTunes has a great range of music at decent prices in my opinion.
 
kingmohd84 said:
i just started buying from the itunes store and was wonder what do other users think of it

its great if you know what you want to buy, but its pretty hard to browse if you are looking for what is good or what you might be missing on

the same could be said about the apps store

from the looks of it , there seems to be a lot of apps that are gems burried in the unbelievable amount of other worthless apps

the stores are also a bit slow to browse both on my ipad and macbook
but the shattering sales numbers makes it look like people are really enjoying it and are happy with ot
whay do you think?
Click to expand...

I think your general complaints are true for any retail store (or, for another example, a library). If one knows what one wants, of course it's easy to get in and out. To stumble upon something, you must browse. You can do this by genre, popularity (numbers and revenue), etc. You can look at hundreds of sites dedicated to App reviews (there are many threads on MacRumors concerning "what Apps are best/recommended/cool". As for the slow browsing it is likely due to the popularity of the store and its traffic (perhaps Apple's imminent server farm in NC may help).

What suggestions would YOU offer?
 
iTunes Music Store lagging behind

I used to buy a lot of music from the iTunes store and recommended it to others when it first came out. I don't anymore. iTunes used to be a leader when it came to digital rights, music quality, flexibility, ease of use etc. Now they are actually lagging behind. I still buy single songs from the iTunes store, now and then, but other than that I actively try to avoid it. I simply think prices are too high for the kind of product you get. I now buy full albums either on CD or lossless preferably directly from the artist or label, practically always at a better price than you could get them for on iTunes - or I buy lossy albums at an even lower price from Amazon/eMusic/7Digital. For example, every few months I take eMusic up on an offer to pay ~$10 for 100 songs.
 
I am fairly happy with the iTunes Store
I usually know what I want when I go there, either for music, movies or apps
I get the recommendations elsewhere and go there to buy
 
kingmohd84 said:
i just started buying from the itunes store and was wonder what do other users think of it

its great if you know what you want to buy, but its pretty hard to browse if you are looking for what is good or what you might be missing on

the same could be said about the apps store

from the looks of it , there seems to be a lot of apps that are gems burried in the unbelievable amount of other worthless apps

the stores are also a bit slow to browse both on my ipad and macbook
but the shattering sales numbers makes it look like people are really enjoying it and are happy with ot
whay do you think?
Click to expand...

I think that the iTunes store completely sucks, as does the Apple online store. They should take a closer look at Amazon to learn how it is done properly -- especially the part that covers returning of items that you don't want. (Hint: That's something that Apple doesn't do in the iTunes store, only when you send them an eMail and then only if they want to make an exception. And that policy, by the way, is actually against the law in many countries.)
 
noobsauce said:
They should improve the audio quality and remove DRM protection like other online audio stores. Other than that, iTunes has a great range of music at decent prices in my opinion.
Click to expand...

They already did that, everything is iTunes+ and DRM free now. I doubt they will go to lossless but the only places to download lossless legally are more expensive and luckily for me mostly classical music (theclassicalshop.net, passionato.com). The only place I've seen that gives a choice of Apple Lossless is Bowers & Wilkins Society of Sound. Someday when everything is lossless people will complain about audio quality and why isn't everything 24/96 or whatever is better even if its impossible to hear the difference, but then again people believe in homeopathy too.
 
it's too expensive and the audio quality still really isn't that great. the movies/tv shows are outrageously overpriced when i can just netflix instant stream most movies. app store is fine, however.
 
It's poorly designed and slow. Without knowing what to search for it's often difficult to find new stuff. It's tied to iTunes which is a horrible piece of crap to begin with. There's no "try before you buy" unless the app developer has uploaded a separate "lite" version of the app.
 
noobsauce said:
They should improve the audio quality and remove DRM protection like other online audio stores. Other than that, iTunes has a great range of music at decent prices in my opinion.
Click to expand...
There is no DRM protection on audio, only the video has a DRM wrapper now.
 
I guess almost everyone here agrees,
Searching else where and buying off itunes is the best thing to do.

There is a lot of issues with itunes, app store when browsing

1) There is no option to search for content by years(films from 50's, 90's, or specific 2007) . In fact, its confusing. Some movies will have release date for example "2000" , but if you look it up in wikipedia, it was released in '98 . I think Apple uses the dvd release date, instead of the year the film was released to the public. I found old movies with release dates in "2000's" , because that was when it was first ported to dvd I guess

2)Review system sucks, people would review the products, but it doesn't help in purchasing. Its hard to choose when you get 3 reviews with "1 star" and then 4 reviews with "5 stars" , !? Thats the difference between the best possible and worst possible.

3) No kidding, you have to DIG for a certain game/program you want. I know there is a game called Chaos Ring, I believe its one of the best games on the iPad(production wise), no matter how much I browsed it wouldn't show up. You have to type its name in the search box to be able to find it . This is what I mean when there are a lot of stuff that is buried in the itunes/app store. If you never know about it, you won't get to it.

there are a lot more complaints about this store,
I really use Amazon and wikipedia to search for the products I want, then go look for them by using "search" in itunes/app store. Other wise I will never get to them using Apple's store.
 
kingmohd84 said:
but they can do a purchase somewhere else, and just add it to the itunes library

looking for more opinions
Click to expand...

I much prefer using the Zune marketplace and Amazon to get my music. DRM free and compatible with all media players and most songs are still $.99 or less. Also I love to buy the acutal CD's off of amazon for bands that I like more than one song (most cost effective.) The other day I bought a used CD off of amazon for $.01 + 2.98 shipping and the total was $3.00 so I look at it as if I like 3+ songs from that album then it was a great deal because some songs grow on you as you listen so I try to get deals like that.
 
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