| Wednesday, October 29, 2003 |
23:51 - The meme spreads
http://makali.livejournal.com/197902.html
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A friend of mine has come to a few conclusions about iTunes:
So what've I been doing with iTunes? Well firstly I've been learning to forget about pretty filenames and well-arranged sound files. The point of iTunes isn't that it helps to organise your file system (though it can). The point is that it completely replacesyour file system when it comes to music. With iTunes you aren't supposed to care how files are named, or arranged; it does all that for you, but incidentally — on the side, as it were — it keeps things tidy behind the scenes at the files/folder level too. It's quite a thing to get your head around. But then you have to take a step back and ask what the point of the exercise is.
Previously I'd been using MusicBrainz to maintain ID3 tags and arrange my music into folders with my own nice naming scheme. All very tidy. I ended up with a very neat folder system with files arranged by artist, and named by artist, album, track number, and then name. That means when I browse the folders, I see albums grouped together and I can do things like drop them onto winamp to play them in order. At the root of it is the same system I use for everything I do on my computer, and it's not my way of doing things, it's the computer's way of doing things, and I've simply fooled myself into thinking that it's convenient. What you forget over time is that these are "detail oriented tasks". You spend ages arranging things just so, editing tags, moving files around. What for? There're are always exceptions that break the system; like a compilation CD by various artists. Suppose I want a track from that CD - do I look for the artist who sang it, or under "various artists"? It's not a big problem, but it's something that computers were created to deal with for us. Using the file system restricts you to a single way of organising your files, and any other request breaks the system. These are things that sap my attention, and attention is my big limited resource. I have more and more to do, and less attention span to spend on doing it.
Why, yes.
Apple's trying to introduce a new way of thinking about what a computer is for, and what it does, and how the user is supposed to approach it. Of course, most users aren't going to spend all this time analyzing how the software works and thinks; they're just going to use it, and either like it or not like it, and keep it or ditch it accordingly. But apparently iTunes is different enough in this kind of philosophy from how typical Windows software operates that various people are predicting a rather seismic shift in how Windows apps will start to be written in coming months and years. Whether customers demand it, or developers start seeing a new angle to shoot for in the design space, it's a very real possibility.
And besides, as we can see, some people are getting it.
Also:
But that leads me on to my third and final sucking-point for iTunes: it's very much biased towards the legal usage, which is something that Windows users don't often see. Now I'm not accusing Windows users of being thieves, while Mac users are model citizens. But the proportion of warez users is higher in Windows - to the point that it's a user base that free software actually caters for in its design. Mac users get the lap of luxury and succumb gradually to Apple's siren song - spend, spend, spend. It's usually worth it, but it does change who you are as a person. Mac users really do think different(ly). See, winamp works really well with a huge collection of random music files, while iTunes works much better with an album collection that you own, that you've imported. I mean, to the point where iTunes very cutely allows you to drag and drop album cover art onto the browser, to attach to the current album, which will show whenever you play the track in future. The line is a little more blurred now that Winamp has a "media library" that works quite a lot like iTunes, but who the fuck uses that anyway? It's hidden behind the lightning bolt, as if it was an embarassment. Anyway, when the music comes from ... let's say "diverse sources", with patchy tagging and strange filenames, then iTunes isn't so perfect any more.
As many have noticed. I'm sure it's a little awkward for people to try to find fault with Apple for pandering to the paying consumer audience rather than the nudge-nudge-wink-wink audience, but that's exactly the nature of this schism that's being suddenly brought into the light. Yeah, everybody knows Macs are more expensive-- and that's not just the purchase price, it's also a general threshold of tolerance and expectation for how the computer interacts with your life. The Windows world, with its rock-bottom component-by-component systems and its intensely competitive gadget market and its wave after wave of ware-so-free-they-pay-you-to-use-it, thinks of computers as being something you use to the minimum extent that you have to pay for it, and virtue is found in gaining more utility for free. But the Mac world is much more willing to treat computing as a service-- not in the sense of "renting software" and such bonehead concepts, but in the sense of paying for premiums, purchasing class upgrades, making deals with a firm handshake rather than a clandestine nod and smirk. Many find this attitude to be elitist and snooty, and for good reason-- it's the same reason people distrust aristocracy. And they way Mac users look at Windows users is very much the same way that well-heeled Republicans view the hoi polloi, at least in all the stereotypes. Let them eat cake! Small wonder there's resentment.
Anyway-- the whole article is quite well thought out; there are a few incorrect bits (no, QuickTime does not rear up and poke at you to upgrade it to Pro every time you launch iTunes; and as for copying files to your consolidated iTunes Library folder, what about turning off the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to Library" checkbox?), but overall he's nailed it, I think.
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Brian Tiemann
