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iTunes swamped for the holidays
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 28th December 2006
"Merry Christmas, Mr. Jobs" - a flood of new iPod owners nearly crashed the iTunes servers over the holiday.
This holiday season twas the season of the iPod, apparently. So many iPods and iTunes gift cards were given over the past few days that iTunes hasn't been able to keep up with demand. On the 25th and 26th, the servers teetered precariously on the edge of going down entirely, which would be a new record for a service that has sold in the billions of songs.
Those unlucky shoppers who tried to purchase music were met with hour-long waits and even sometimes just plain error messages. Many of them went to seek help at Apple's forums, thinking it was a problem with their new goods - but the problem apparently lies with the estimated more than four times usual traffic at any given moment.
Analysts are saying that the slowdown illustrates exactly how much of a juggernaut the iPod really is - even beyond Cupertino's own expectations. Rationale falls along the lines that sales had to exceed Apple's own forecasts this holiday, or else servers would have been put into place to handle the chaos. For a company that already dominates over 75% of the MP3 player world, the question now becomes: where does it go from here?
Have you got a thought on the slowdown? Did you get an iPod, iTunes, or iSomething for Christmas that helped contribute to it? Tell us in our forums.
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i prefer another sync system..... i realy dont like itunes.
then I installed iTunes to transfer some music to it and the shine wore off big time.
Then I used the nano and while it lasted a while and did what it said on the tin, itunes was really pissing me off.
Then I discovered Anapod Explorer and thought it was as good as it could get.
Then a few days ago I discovered Rockbox and now my iPod is AWESOME!!!
I can now transfer music to it as if it was a USB pendrive, no more being tied to itunes.
I can now browse my music on the player by folder structure instead of the crappy ipod DB method.
I now have waaaay more options and can have my cake and eat it!
Anyone who has an ipod and doesn't like itunes and wants to play music on their player by simply dragging and dropping it on there in explorer and then browsing to it on the ipod should check out Rockbox!
It runs linux on your ipod, supports way more formats including lossless FLAC format, its completey reversible if you want to revert to the apple firmware, its skinable.
I just can't get over how much better it is.
Doit! :)
iTunes is selling about 60% LESS songs? Some people clearly don't know what
they're talking about.
Regarding the iTS;
Some people like it, some people don't. There's nothing wrong with personal
preferences. But that doesn't mean that it sucks, as DXR says. It has a lot of
room for improvements, but at the moment it's also clearly one of the biggest
(if not thé biggest) at this time. :)
However I am a fan of Itunes, I never buy music from the online stores mind you. But i do find that if you take the time out to set-up itunes exactly how you want it then it's very functional and one of the best prgrams at what it does....shame about that memory leak er...
but I'm still gonna get one, why? because it's the only player that has accessories made for it (eg clip on iTrip) new cars (or car stereos) come with iPod connectors, nothing is mp3-player ready or HiMD ready it's always ipod ready.
I'll install Rockbox or similar on my future ipod (I'll see if any support xvid etc)
Every 3rd-party add-on seems to be for ipods.
But, until people vote with their wallets and buy others, there will be no demand for 3rd-party add-ons for other players.
Its a downward spiral... :(
I'm sure itunes isn't THAT bad but I hated it even after persivering with it for ages to get it working the way I wanted.
In the tech-support forums I moderate I've lost count of the number of posts from new and old users who are upset that they let itunes manage their tunes and it messed them up for them!
Winamp and Rockbox fortehwin IMO! :)
But heck to those people, I reckon that Jobs should be praised for what he has done
Because for those non techies out there (and they outnumber us many times-to-one), iTunes and iPods are a veritable boon (not a bane) to anyone with even a slight interest in internet music - and you don't have to be a tech-nut to use it.
Everything is far more transparent and easier for the average user and it's relatively cheap.
What you guys forget, in a 'tech snob' sort of way is that once it gets mainstreamed it's not tech enough any more; the technology, the infrastructure, the hardware just became old news and new ammunition for those who are more predisposed to rebel.
Remember that the average Joe, who make up most of the million or so new sales of iPods are not tech snobs who rate sound fidelity, tech bells and whistles and what nots . They rate ease of use, price and looks - and the iPod, with iTunes has all of that.
Talk to a car nut and he'll probably bore you with BHP, PSI, MPH, KPH, blah blah blah when all you car about is how much it'll cost you, how does it drive and does it look good. Much is the same with the MP3 player world.
*Yes people who are this technilogically impared probably won't care
#Yes this does depend on hardware capabilities