itunes for windows

[isus]

yea, its out.

i like apple's new banner thingy. "hell froze over" haha

http://www.apple.com

[shawners]

ITUNES for windows... only if your in the USA right?

[wonderboy2005]

well i am downloading it, but im not so sure ill use it all that much. i have never downloaded anything i cant play with either BSplayer or Winamp 2.9.

btw, does anyone here use BSplayer? if so, do you know of a plugin for winamp that has the same effect on audio as the dolby surround audio setting? i love that. i play almost all my audio thru BSplayer because of that, but BSplayer wasnt meant to be an audio player, and it isnt all that great. so anyone know of a dolby surround plugin for winamp?

[tMoD]

I'll stick to P2P.

[wonderboy2005]

i decided to do a little benchmarking of media players i had on my PC.
BSplayer:
0-9% system Resources
13.5MB Memory

Itunes:
6-15%
49MB

Winamp 2.9:
4-10%
20.5MB

Media player 6.4:
0-10%
14.5MB

test computer: Intel celeron 766, 512MB sdram, 7200RPM 60 GB HDD

opinions:

BSplayer: not the best audio player, considering it does not support .PLS files, so no streaming audio. also, some minor annoyances with the playlist. however, in my opinion, BSplayer sounded much better than winamp or Itunes, due to the dolby surround audio setting.

rating: 7/10

Itunes: this is a nice, full featured audio player. it is a jack of all (audio) trades. Itunes proves the satement "jack of all trades, master of none" though. even with 'audio enhancement', it didnt come close to beating BSplayer, or winamp for that matter. this program has many nice features, but a 'high performance' type person will notice that it comes at a cost. itunes takes up nearly 50 megabytes of ram, and eats up the most CPU cycles of the 3 programs. if you dont care that much about performance and are looking for an easy to use swiss army knife of the audio type, then this is for you. for those of you who would rather use multiple programs to save system resources, then itunes is NOT for you.

Rating: 6/10

Winamp: for most of you, i dont need to say anything. you know winamp in and out. but for those of you who dont, you might want to check winamp out. Winamp is the pinacle of audio software on the PC. you really cant beat it. there are thousands of plugins ranging from Izotope ozone, which is a very configurable equalizer, to your choice of online and/or offline games. winamp also has thousands of skins, and has the ability to read many types of streaming audio. however, the customization may be too much for the average user. there are so many things you can change with winamp, that if you dont know what youre doing, it can become overwhelming. winamp isnt too bad on system resources either. it takes up less than half the memory as itunes, and can do virtually everything itunes can.

Rating: 8/10

media player 6.4 (mplayer2): this is a great program, especially considering microsoft developed it. and what makes it even better, is that if you have any semi-recent version of windows, you already have it. all you have to do to use it is click start>run> and type "mplayer2" (without quotes). if you use it alot, just create a shortcut to it. this program will play any file you have a codec for. its simple and fast, but it isnt very customizable. there are very few settings you can fiddle with, and it is sort of an eye sore.

Rating: 7/10


MISC:

BSplayer is meant to be used as a video player. thus, it is missing many of the features that a full fledged audio player might have

Itunes actually ran 3 programs instead of 1: Itunes helper - 5656KB mem., Ipod service (i dont even have an ipod) - 3684KB mem. and finally the itunes program itself - 39,600KB mem.

The file used to test all 3 players was a VBR LAME encoded mp3 that i ripped myself.

[phalkon30]

WB, you might want to try media player classic if you like 6.4

[bmc152003]

ill stick with QCD...besides im running *cough*winME*cough* anyways you should all try qcd i used to use winamp 2.91 but sice i found qcd i will never go back. it playes all major audio formats and ogg vorbis. you can download a plugin right off their site for video. please someone download it try it out and tell me what you think! www.quinnware.com

[d-koolest]

This is awsome! With the iTunes sharing I can get all my music from my downstairs Mac on the family PC. I won't have to do two different music collections anymore! :angel

[ROMANTICGUY50]

Yay!!!!!!!!! I am most content now. Let us see...

-Only works for XP and 2000 users
-500Mhz+ needed
-QuickTime 6.4 also needed
-256MBRAM recommended
-Wow, 19MB, quite the download.

Tried it and removed it. The program prefers 256 ram. I only have 128 ram.
KoffeBean is right. I removed the whole program and said screw it. I rather use Rapsody for listening to music or MusicMatch. If I had to. For a flat rate they let u stream music Itunes doesn't. It wasn't worth the space on my hard drive.
Let those your want Itunes have it. I don't. Peace All! Have a Great day.

[d-koolest]

Well I think it is a good thing, so there.

[baghdad_steve15]

ill stick with QCD...besides im running *cough*winME*cough* anyways you should all try qcd i used to use winamp 2.91 but sice i found qcd i will never go back. it playes all major audio formats and ogg vorbis. you can download a plugin right off their site for video. please someone download it try it out and tell me what you think! www.quinnware.com

Hey! Its nice to see another person that uses QCD. It is the overall better than winamp, although it lacks a few features like the 'Library.' And if people wnat to use a music player for video, you can download the video plug-in that is much better than the Winamp video support.

So back to the topic: Itunes should have stay a mac only app because thats what made the mac so special. If Apple says fuck it and starts to make stuff for windows (like Itunes, Safari, or all the other 'I-Tools') then it will lose its edge.

[isus]

wow wonderboy... yours is using 40mb? mine is using less than 20. for all 3 of the itunes progs.

the cpu usage is less for me than winamp. and it replaces 5 other programs i use (winamp, nero, mp3gain, mp3 weasel and winlame)

very nice. almost exactly taken from osx.

[d-koolest]

Itunes should have stay a mac only app because thats what made the mac so special. If Apple says fuck it and starts to make stuff for windows (like Itunes, Safari, or all the other 'I-Tools') then it will lose its edge.

Nah, Macs already have a huge edge with the pro audio/video/animation/photoshop crowd. Besides, I think they just wanted to see what the PC audiance would do for the music store. Though I hope they don't like it too much and start converting everything like you said.

[isus]

even if apple made every iTool available for windows, it's still apple. it's still osx. windows will never be osx, no matter how hard they try (and god knows, they're trying really hard).

but i don't think apple would make every iTool available for windows, as none of them feature a huge, money-making store.

face it, apple isn't stupid. they know when they can make a bajillion bucks by just porting one thing to windows, they will.

this is like, an enticement, to come see what osx is all about. they figure if you go try out osx, you will like it, and then buy a mac. therefore, itunes is just a 'teaser', if you will.

[zoompig]

even if apple made every iTool available for windows, it's still apple. it's still osx. windows will never be osx, no matter how hard they try (and god knows, they're trying really hard).

but i don't think apple would make every iTool available for windows, as none of them feature a huge, money-making store.

face it, apple isn't stupid. they know when they can make a bajillion bucks by just porting one thing to windows, they will.

this is like, an enticement, to come see what osx is all about. they figure if you go try out osx, you will like it, and then buy a mac. therefore, itunes is just a 'teaser', if you will.

I'll agree with you on that. Even though I'm a pc user who runs both XP and Linux at home, I love OS X. I use it work and think it's phenominal. Too bad I build my own machines and building a Mac just isn't cost efficient. Z

[RJ5500]

I use a PC.

I think I'll stick with trusty ol' Winamp 2.80 with DFX 6.1. It sounds great and uses minimal system resources.

If I ever get any iPod I still won't need iTunes. I have XPlay which enables me to load mp3s onto both pc and Macintosh type iPods. When I do buy an iPod, I think I'll get a Mac version (as opposed to the Windows iPod).

I don't know, I've heard that the Mac iPods are better than the Windows ones. Or they look better, perform better, or something like that.

[isus]

(why do you have xplay if you don't have an ipod? and win ipods vs. mac ipods are the same. the hd's are just a different format (hfs+ vs. fat32)

[Malicious Intent]

Well I'm sticking with p2p, but this can only be a good thing. Helps bring the music industry up to date and provides another option for downloading music. If that Quicktime comment is true then I expect that itunes will lose sales. That is a nasty piece of software on windows. If I'm right, that rule wont last forever.
Good for Apple, being so proactive. The Windows market has been left open for a long time after itunes proved there was a large market for legal downloads. Still no one filled it to the degree that itunes for windows probably will.

[Matt]

As a teaser it worked really poorly!!! This program caused me to buy a pc instead of a mac because iTunes was not the program I was expecting. I expected it to automatically download all of the information. Give me artist information ect ect. But instead it just played my music. It did a good job doing it but nothing special. My Windows Media Player is IMHO a million times better than this. Their so called "smart playlists" are nothing like what I expected. I expected a MoodLogic sort of playlist but the playlists I get with Windows Media Player are the same as with this apple one.

I give apple credit for coming out with a windows version. And I liked the interface and maybe it looks/works better on a mac. But I think they should do something different for a pc. -Matt

[Nolanistic]

I quite like it on Windows. I use it to network all the computers I use at work. I'm on a mac and most of my mates are but there are a few dissidents that rely on Windoze for apps that don't run on Macs. We just share the music over the local network. It's also awesome at LAN parties and the like. Using iTunes DL or myTunes to download the music as well.