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mmcirvinFinally, some clarity on something that had confused me for a while: iTunes for the Macintosh supports a number of third-party MP3 players (though not for purchased AAC files), but iTunes for Windows can only sync with the iPod. (Which is not to say you couldn't use it if you have some other player, just that you'll be hauling songs around in some more manual manner.)
So Steve Jobs' claim of complete feature parity between the two versions was not quite correct, even if you discount obviously OS-dependent things like AppleScript support. It does make business sense if you think of iTunes as first and foremost an enticement to buy Apple hardware products, but it once again raises the problem that there is no low-cost flash-based music player that integrates well with iTunes, particularly on Windows PCs. It seems like an oversight, since a lot of people are simply not going to spring for a player as expensive as an iPod. If Apple doesn't want to make a flash-based player with their own brand on it, they really ought to cooperate with somebody else who will, and get a chunk of licensing fees or something.
So Steve Jobs' claim of complete feature parity between the two versions was not quite correct, even if you discount obviously OS-dependent things like AppleScript support. It does make business sense if you think of iTunes as first and foremost an enticement to buy Apple hardware products, but it once again raises the problem that there is no low-cost flash-based music player that integrates well with iTunes, particularly on Windows PCs. It seems like an oversight, since a lot of people are simply not going to spring for a player as expensive as an iPod. If Apple doesn't want to make a flash-based player with their own brand on it, they really ought to cooperate with somebody else who will, and get a chunk of licensing fees or something.