reviewer 2008 Contributor
scottmage
Clearfield, UT

Proprietary format - Just won't play on every device

2 star rating

a techie
Pros

    huge inventory, can purchase individual songs

Cons
    no way to redownload purchases, expensive per song cost, resource hog

MAR
1
2008

Apple iTunes — 

My daughter called on Christmas day since she and her nephews that she nannies had received MP3 players for Christmas.  They had also received iTunes Gift cards which is nice to have to download songs they like.

The problem my daughter was experiencing was in order to use the gift card they had to install iTunes.

iTunes is produced by Apple and like Microsoft seems to belive they are the only format on th planet.

The default format that the songs wants to download into is M4P a proprietary format that only works in iTunes or on an iPod.

So that she did not have to purchase an expensive format converter, I had my daughter burn the songs to CD using iTunes and choose the option to convert the format to MP3.  I then had her copy the CD onto her hard drive.  I told her to put the CD on the shelf as a backup.

Since iPods will play MP3 format, it would make sense that the default format should be MP3 and then if by some stretch of the imagination someone just had to have M4P format, they could use iTunes to convert it.

Every time some program wants to install iTunes, I un-install it as quick as possible.

The fact that they have a huge inventory and you can purchase individual songs as well as Gift cards are the only redeeming qualities.

There are ways to burn these to CDs, however since it is not easy, only techie types seem to be able to do it.  Thus we get calls on Christmas day when we should be enjoying our gifts.



I_thumb_down Apple iTunes is not recommended by scottmage

D
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