Peter Oppenheimer, Apple CFO on Halo effect

STEVE JOBS: What are we going to do today, Pete?

PETER OPPENHEIMER The same thing we do every day, Steve: try to take over the world!

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, while speaking to analysts at the Morgan Stanley Semiconductor and System Conference,
bragged about the iPod and Mac mini halo effect, saying: "We've been putting the first Apple product [iPod] in the hands of millions of Windows customers around the world and when they've had a good experience with an iPod many have asked what else does Apple offer and we think this is helping us in the Mac business." Oppenheimer goes on
in this Macworld UK
article to talk about the Mac mini, viruses, and the increase in education sales for Apple.

All this is good and fine.  The iPod is a great product and it is having a halo effect. 
However, this past weekend, I discovered the Achilles heel of the halo effect: iTunes for Windows.

Last weekend, I spent nearly two hours trying to install iTunes on my mother-in-law's PC so that it could see the iPod shuffle my wife and I bought her for her birthday. The installer runs three installations simultaneously without warning you that it will install more than one thing, installing iTunes, iPod software, and Quicktime. Very annoying and taxing for a slightly older PC.  Everything froze at the end of installation. 

90% of the Windows iPod users I know love the iPod, but hate iTunes, because it is a nasty un-Windows-like piece of slow-ware sticking out like a sore thumb in their Windows world.  I didn't really understand their complaints until this past weekend. I had to give up on getting everything running because of time constraints, so my mother-in-law currently has a nice new iPod shuffle that she cannot use.  I have to return this weekend to uninstall iTunes and start all over again. 

This does not paint a picture that will win many Windows users over to the Apple side of things. Apple needs to put a lot of effort into improving the iTunes for Windows experience if they really want to fully cash in on the halo effect.