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The approval of spotify is a sign of change at Apple

Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller has made it his personal mission to fix the iPhone's App Store.  Phil Shoemaker, Apple’s Director of Application Technology is also playing a hand.  Why would the top brass at a company like Apple be having to work so hard to "fix" a wildly successful marketplace that sold over a billion apps?  It boils down to one thing -- perception.

Apple has consistently shown inconsistency, approving usenet applications designed to assist in filesharing, while rejecting others that monitor your torrent client.  Likewise it rejected Google Voice, while approving a similar app from VoIP service Vonage.  Still other controversial apps -- like the infamous "Babyshaker" app -- it approved only to later reject.  However, there are some signs that Apple may finally be loosening up when it comes to its app store censorship.

This week Apple approved Spotify Mobile, a European music download service's application.  The app will compete directly with iTunes in digital music sales.

In the past, Apple forbade most applications that competed with the handful of applications it offers for the iPhone.  It relaxed this restriction slightly, recently allowing rival web browsers -- but only those based on WebKit, the rendering engine Apple's Safari browser uses.

For those interested, Spotify offers 6 million songs on-demand for $16.  You can stream songs to your phone, or download songs to listen to when offline.  You can even create and manage playlists in your account. 

Real Networks is currently working on a similar app for its own Rhapsody music subscription service.  It hopes its own app shares the same happy fate as Spotify.

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key word
By Totally on 9/8/2009 12:52:12 PM , Rating: 4
"European" I doubt we'll see anything similar in this side of the pond anytime soon.




ITune Rules!
By exNihlio on 9/8/09, Rating: -1
RE: ITune Rules!
By R3T4rd on 9/8/2009 9:27:02 AM , Rating: 5
I need something that wastes computer resources and annoying...wait there is a app for that...


RE: ITune Rules!
By Screwballl on 9/8/2009 9:31:19 AM , Rating: 5
as many of us actually work in IT and see what Apples stance and software does... sorry I refuse to install or use anything made or programmed by Apple, or has any official affiliation with Apple.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Don321 on 9/8/09, Rating: -1
RE: ITune Rules!
By damianrobertjones on 9/8/09, Rating: 0
RE: ITune Rules!
By 67STANG on 9/8/2009 10:25:49 AM , Rating: 2
Funny because I actually am a software developer and don't touch Apple computers.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Yawgm0th on 9/8/2009 10:34:51 AM , Rating: 5
The vast majority of programmers I know -- primarily software developers -- do not use Apple products past an iPod or iPhone. Apple software on the PC in particular is pretty bad, and the Mac is relatively poor as a development platform. Heck, it's not that bad, but not really preferable unless you're writing a Mac application.

In any case, the poster was referring to IT infrastructure professionals. The demographics are even more lopsided here, as virtually no good IT professional would allow Apple software on a PC if it were avoidable.


RE: ITune Rules!
By HrilL on 9/8/2009 11:24:43 AM , Rating: 3
That's for damn sure. Though I was forced to install itunes last week in order to activate 2 new iPhones. The downside of ordering them online is you have to activate them. And as the only IT guy at my work. I was the one given the job.

Why would a music application ever need 6+ services? Anyway it was uninstalled as soon as I was done.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Hieyeck on 9/8/2009 11:42:04 AM , Rating: 2
Are you SURE?

I'd put good money down there's some broken service left over because their uninstaller didn't know how to stop services.


RE: ITune Rules!
By jay401 on 9/8/2009 10:35:01 AM , Rating: 5
haha, you confuse "software development" with "graphic design".


RE: ITune Rules!
By ClownPuncher on 9/8/2009 3:03:45 PM , Rating: 2
Even in graphic design, most people I know use a Windows pc.


RE: ITune Rules!
By sprockkets on 9/8/2009 9:23:32 PM , Rating: 2
Guys, even Microsoft uses Macs to do their graphic work. That should tell you something.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/press/20...

See the properties of the picture for yourself.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Flunk on 9/8/2009 10:44:33 AM , Rating: 2
Wait, so you only program for a tiny niche market? That sounds like a good business plan!

I work in software development and if I only developed for the Mac I wouldn't have a job right now!


RE: ITune Rules!
By damianrobertjones on 9/8/2009 10:19:00 AM , Rating: 2
True.


RE: ITune Rules!
By MrWho on 9/8/2009 12:48:39 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
as many of us actually work in IT and see what Apples stance and software does... sorry I refuse to install or use anything made or programmed by Apple, or has any official affiliation with Apple.


While I hate Apple as much as you do, I wouldn't go as far as staying what you just said - search well inside your Linux servers and workstations, more than probably you got a copy of CUPS running there - and guess who that belongs to?

http://www.cups.org/


RE: ITune Rules!
By SoCalBoomer on 9/8/2009 1:51:42 PM , Rating: 2
However, very VERY few Linux stations around here. Many of them use LPD quite well, and they prefer it.

CUPS is clunky, and SLOW.


RE: ITune Rules!
By sprockkets on 9/8/2009 8:08:44 PM , Rating: 2
Cups has only been with Apple for like not even two years. But a good buy from Apple's viewpoint, since they need to make it work better.

Hey, they took KHTML and gave us webkit. I can't stand Apple on some fronts, but when they check their ego at the door, they come up with nice stuff, like Clang and OpenCL.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Phynaz on 9/8/2009 1:57:56 PM , Rating: 1
Not going to be running OpenCL then?


RE: ITune Rules!
By Smilin on 9/8/2009 9:46:55 AM , Rating: 3
Meh. Say what you want about mp3 players but as far as online service goes.. Zune stomps the crap out of iTunes.

Stomps.


RE: ITune Rules!
By QueBert on 9/8/09, Rating: 0
RE: ITune Rules!
By Hieyeck on 9/8/2009 11:53:45 AM , Rating: 3
/facepalm

It's an MP3 player. Why the hell are you trying to do anything MORE on it? Why not just get the right hardware for the right job:

Movies: Archos / Cowon with a 5~" touch widescreen, instead of a dinky 3~"

Wifi: the multitudes of touchscreen netbooks with good battery, 10" screen, and a proper internet browser. And a stylus to boot.

Games: PSP/DS. 'nuf said.

All of the above: PSP/netbook/cowon. All on a larger screen and similar or better battery lives with no software restrictions.

OR pay attention to where you're walking so you 'tards can stop walking into me cause your game of Need for Speed is ever so important.


RE: ITune Rules!
By ersts on 9/8/2009 1:50:13 PM , Rating: 2
I have a Cowon D2, does almost everything I want it to (no h264 support).

Thought I have to admit, that touch wheel interface on ipods is unmatched. So much that Cowon somewhat implemented it on the i7.

However, people want only one device in their pocket to play games, music, and be their phone as well, and the iphone does it all for them.

I hope the new Nokia N900 puts its OpenCL to good use, because if they don't, Apple will rule every market soon.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Flunk on 9/8/2009 10:42:11 AM , Rating: 2
iTunes is a pretty bad service, it it literally easier to pirate music than iTunes. You would think that they would want to make it easy for their customers. You have to pay extra for music without DRM and the DRMed music is only compatible with Apple branded MP3 players. You HAVE to download a media player to use the store and that media player installs a file server application (Bonjour) that shares your files without telling you clearly that it is.

I'm also not keen on the iTunes interface on Windows or its poor performance but those are less important arguments.


RE: ITune Rules!
By encryptkeeper on 9/8/2009 3:34:46 PM , Rating: 2
You're always going to have worthless applications installed with useful ones, particularly entertainment software. I would agree Bonjour is a problem except you can uninstall it without any adverse affects to iTunes, so it's really not anything worth worrying about.

As for problems with iTunes and a lot of music, I have no idea why some people have problems and some don't. I have 38GB of music in my iTunes, AND all of the artwork and it rolls with no hiccups or hesitation. It would be interesting to find out why.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Meinolf on 9/8/2009 10:42:40 AM , Rating: 1
I love the apps hate ITunes. Ever try loading a lot of music into ITunes it can't handle it when will they fix that?


RE: ITune Rules!
By JackBurton on 9/8/2009 12:14:22 PM , Rating: 2
I have 40GB+ music loaded into iTunes. No problems. What do you define as "a lot of music?"

As for iTunes, I love it! Great app and I've never had a problem with it and neither have the people I know that use it.


RE: ITune Rules!
By Inkjammer on 9/8/2009 1:15:51 PM , Rating: 2
The performance.

I have about 32GB of music and another 300GB of video, iTunes' performance nosedives when scrolling through my library (either music OR video). On a Q9550 with 8GB of RAM and a GTX 260 scrolling through iTunes is painful. A system that powerful shouldn't drag merely scrolling through track listings. Maybe the first time while it builds a cache, but not EVERY time. iTunes is the ONLY program I have that chugs like that.

It's not my PC's performance, either. I work for hours in Photoshop, 3DS Max, Premiere... never have a problem. iTunes? It's slow as hell. Everybody I know who has a sizable library has scaling performance issues in iTunes.


RE: ITune Rules!
By sprockkets on 9/8/2009 9:37:34 PM , Rating: 2
It has to do with the fact that Apple is too arsed to make it work well in Windows, and like others have said, is the worst at making slow resource hogging apps in Windows.

Part of it has to do with the fact that all the libraries and crap needed to run it slow it down on a PC, while on a Mac, it runs natively. It's Apple's sly way of saying, "Get a Mac, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!"


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