Unearthed Microsoft emails reveal reaction to iTunes launch, make us giddy for MWC
By Darren Murph 
posted February 10th 2010 10:48AM
posted February 10th 2010 10:48AM
It's a funny thing, really. iTunes has somehow managed to become the world's largest seller of music in just seven years, yet it's easily one of the buggiest, most resource intensive and altogether unlikable pieces of software to ever come from the labs of Cupertino. From Microsoft's perspective, however, they're really just interested in the first bit, and in particular, why it wasn't able to take advantage of the market opportunity in the way Jobs and company did. Groklaw managed to dig up a handful of email chains that were made public after the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust litigation, and the content is nothing short of eye-opening. One particular snippet from Bill Gates was exceptionally juicy, as he noted (in a number of words) that Apple had somehow managed to "get a better licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music." Jim Allchin's terse reply consisted of two statements, one of which was "we were smoked." Frankly, this unearthing couldn't have come at a better time. With Mobile World Congress about to get going in Barcelona, we're waiting on pins and needles to see what kind of music innovation is being veiled in the purported Windows Mobile 7 introduction. If you'll recall, we already heard that many elements from the Zune HD interface would be making their way onto the mobile side, and there's hardly a better time to really give iTunes a run for its money than mid-February 2010. Dig into the links below for more on the 2003 revelation -- it's a hoot, we tell ya.
@phlavor
On Mac or Windows?
Windows users have much more problems, because Apple doesn't get complete control of the entire environment like in a Mac.
People don't get it do they, I am no fan of apple or really any company, okay maybe HTC, Apple was the wake up call when they hit the market with the ipod lineup, then the new designed mac books, the new iMac designs, and then the hurricane that was the Iphone all the major players got caught with there pants down in the US mostly and Apple played it smoothly, but there is one fact that people seem to ignore the 2000's was definitely Apples decade and they flubbed it. Why, because the did not really build there market share for all that innovation they did not take advantage at all Windows was going from dumping to worse, computers and most notebooks where God awful ugly, Apple gave us style color and a good performance. So what did they get yes a higher share whoppee but there market share really went no where stop only think of the US we are talking world wide and apple is not doing nothing. After lall that they brought they only got 10% market
Yeah
The fact that so many people use itunes, and don't see the problem with it, shows you how many people don't understand computers. How does a program run just as slow on my 8gig 4ghz duel core desktop as it does on my my duel boot win7/osx netbook? Terrible programing is how.
Apple you are just lazy, fixing itunes isn't that big of a deal, just change it.
-stabby
Sent from my nexus one
@stabbytheicepic What an incredibly patronising comment! You don't have to be a computer genius to know if something works or not
@stabbytheicepic
I must have missed something...who is dueling?
Maybe the music industry noticed that Apple had a far easier to use DRM than Microsoft did.
Interesting article but iTunes has always worked really well on my PC, never seen any bugs
I wouldn't put iTunes on anything.. It is garbage.
iTunes is the buggiest pieces of software ever to come from Apple? Really, Darren? It works fine for me. I'm using it right now, you know how much CPU it's using? 1.6%. Resource hog what now?
I really don't see how you can quantify that whole rant about iTunes being buggy. And no, an article about a bug in iTunes from 2006 that Apple fixed shortly afterwards doesn't count.
@Jack
Just changed from the summary tab to the Applications tab in the ipod part of itunes. It used 35% of my cpu. To change a tab. 35%. 39% to go to the podcasts tab in the same section. It's a core 2 duo mobile cpu.
have any of you used Office on a Mac... seems to work both ways...
"altogether unlikable pieces of software to ever come from the labs of Cupertino."
I don't know who these people are that don't like iTunes so much, but I love it. wouldn't really want to use anything else for music.
@cherryboom
I disagree on the iPad, it's too limited. Hell the Dell Mini 5 is more impressive. I could be wrong though. I tend to be a logical spender and I don't have the need to accessorize, so I don't exactly hit Apple's demographic. Maybe they'll be huge, but I think it's too limited for it's size.
If someone came up to and said, look how small and thin your phone is... How would you like to have one 4 times bigger?
I'm sticking with iPad = iPod Touch for the elderly, just like the big button remotes.
It's just me, but if it's too big to fit in my pocket, then it needs all the functionality of a full computer. We will see...