ITunes

See also: Audio-Video Software

Aka: iTMS iTunes Music Store.

An MP3 player and encoder for Windows and MacOSX with the world’s most popular and successful online music store. Music can be played, cataloged and even shared on local area networks.

Declared one of the Inventions of the Year by Time Magazine (Owned by AOL/Time Warner, big member of the RIAA).

Negatively, the included MP3 encoder is garbage:

From Wikipedia: “There has been some criticism of the quality of Apple’s MP3 encoder, at least with regards to variable bit rate encoding. In a January 2004 double-blind public listening test of six MP3 encoders encoding at 128 bit/s, conducted by Roberto Amorim, the iTunes MP3 VBR encoder came last: http://www.rjamorim.com/test/mp3-128/results.html

Users are advised to encode MP3s with LAME or, on Windows, EAC + Audacity.

Also uses the proprietary DRM scheme “FairPlay” from Apple, cracked by Jon Lech Johansen (aka “DVD Jon”).

Still, one of the best audio players for Windows and OS X, there are some problems:

  • You can’t simply drag-and-drop files into the interface and have it immediately play. Must be added to library first.
  • In Windows, it installs two programs that begin at startup and take up memory regardless of whether iTunes is loaded.
  • iTunes itself takes up more system memory and RAM than many other similar programs such as VLC, MPC, and Winamp.
  • In Windows, if “CD Autorun” is not enabled, it will constantly complain.

Links/Plugins


TakeDown.NET -> “ITunes