So it's out, and Steve's announcement on Apple's online music service was pretty much what the rumour sites anticipated.
With it comes iTunes 4:
"...new in iTunes 4 is support for burning data CDs or DVDs. It's not entirely clear how a data CD differs from an MP3 CD, but iTunes 4 now offers both options in the Burning pane in its Preferences dialog. This capability is particularly useful for people who have Macs with SuperDrives, since they can easily burn backup DVDs of their entire music collection.
Not surprisingly, given the file format used for the iTunes Music Store, iTunes 4 can now import music from your CDs in AAC format along with MP3, AIFF, and WAV. To import music using AAC, you must have QuickTime 6.2, which is available as a manual download from Apple's QuickTime Web page; it isn't yet available in Software Update." (This and plenty more from
TidBITS.)
At MacMinute, they explain how it's all supposed to work.
The Register details the "new, slimmer" 30 GB iPod. I've seen more and more iPods around in the Métro, but 30 gigabytes?
Chuck Toporek at O'Reilly took a few notes during the announcement. And that's one of the places where some of the less than awed have begun to post their comments.
The technology has been unleashed. Now what about the choice and the quality?
Oh, and as Petra points out at TechSurvivors, what about people outside the US? That little hole in the "service" is right at the bottom of Apple announcement page.
Update: Reax to all this hoo-hah are pouring in. At Blogcritics, Eric Olsen warns:
"Diabetics beware: Devin Leonard's feature (at Fortune) on the new Apple iTunes Music Store is so larded with sugar and honey it might induce seizures..." while adding elsewhere on the same site:"let us not forget a service that people actually seem to use and like: EMusic, whose only problem seems to be that its catalogue is largely confined to the indie label world".
On that downloads outside the US business, the Guardian Online doesn't reckon Brits, for instance, "shouldn't hold (their) breath ... it appears possible that Windows users in the US will get the iTunes store before Mac users in the rest of the world, which would hold a certain irony."
Me, I'll be sticking to CDs for a good while yet, though I found Apple's note on mp3 vs AAC codecs interesting (never having heard of the latter till this morning...).
11:20:24 AM link 
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