Wednesday, 17 May 2006

ITunes, Ipod and Apple

How hard is it to get a standalone version of Quicktime?   Quicktime is a program that is completely unrelated to digital music, yet Apple now package it with ITunes , and there doesn't seem to be a legitimate way to get around the 35 MB download of Quicktime with ITunes piggybacked onto it. Or should I say, ITunes with a "free bonus" of Qucktime?  

Aftr installing it, I'd expect to see a checkbox that says "Install ITunes" that you can uncheck..  no chance.   Apple now make you install the whole lot, and only when it is done can you finally go into Control Panel, Add/Remove, and get rid of their bloatware ITunes.

It feels like software is being shoved down my throat, why can't the consumer be treated like a real human being, and given a choice?  Apple calls iTunes "revolutionary" but record companies are simply using the service to force the same exploitive and unfair business model onto a new medium. iTunes AAC files don't sound as good as CDs. AAC is basically a "lossy" compression format in comparision the higher bitrate, higher quality MP3's. So does WMA for that matter.

Apple says iTunes is "better than free" because it's "fair to the artists and record labels." That's not true either, after a quick google, it turns out Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale and Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract.

You couldn't pay me any amount of money to use ITunes and pay Apple money for this DRM-infested corporate greedware masquerading as a music service.

Update: I have just now (about 2 hrs later) found a  link to the Apple  "Without ITunes Quicktime."  It's still 21 megabytes full of crap.  Even Windows Media Player is only about 10 MB or so.

 

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