And back to my occasional topic of obsession:

[mmcirvin]

Finally, 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.

Comments

That won't be changing, apparently.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

It's possible that you're referring to the same source, since I'd pick you for a Gizmodo (http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/009990.php#009990) reader, but according to this recent Cnet news article (http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-5103279.html?tag=nefd_top), Jobs isn't interested in changing that:

Jobs rebuffed the idea that the iTunes music store should work with MP3 players other than the iPod, or conversely, that Apple's iPod should work with other music download services.

"Why should we work with another music store when we are working with the Microsoft of music stores?" Jobs said. "I'd rather spend our engineering dollars on enhancing the iPod and the iTunes music store."

Likewise, as pootrootbeer noted recently, Mac's aren't up to Microsoft's place when it comes to the direction taken by the Media Center edition, and Jobs said they wouldn't be trying hard to catch up, either:

"Asked about Apple's interest in selling Macs that could serve up the video recording abilities Microsoft offers with its Windows XP Media Center Edition, Jobs joked that Apple was instead focused on melding the computer with a toaster.
[...]
Jobs said that he doesn't see such products creating a big market.

"We're not going to go that direction," Jobs said. "There is a small audience that likes this."

I was thinking that, as a gamer, Jobs and Apple couldn't do more to alienate me (which is lame, because as a gamer I spend more on a PC than I rationally should), but they seem to be trying. Though I don't have XP, I do have the hardware and some software (http://www.snapstream.com) that does some of the same things as XPMC, and I like that my PC is more closely integrated with my TV-- when I get cable and a big empty hard drive to make the whole operation more practical, I'll do without my VCR entirely.