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Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

engadget.com

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Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#71

Post by wmeredith »

keltex wrote: post #18
SandB0x wrote: post #4

This is the most highly monetized social network possible. Direct advertising to your friends, with a Buy button right there in your status.

Apple really is amazing. We keep thinking they are going to go after the usual suspects like Google, Microsoft, and RIM. Now they are aiming their guns at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg must not be happy.

Indeed. I could see this getting used for a lot more than just music. Especially since it's so tightly integrated with something I already use a lot. And there's no privacy issue.

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#72

Post by leviathant »

PStamatiou wrote: post #59
leviathant wrote: post #38

Given how poorly iTunes 9 runs on my quad-core Win7 machine with gigs and gigs of ram, I'm not particularly excited by this news. Wake me up when they've completely rebuilt iTunes. The only reason I keep it around is for my iPhone - I've switched to Zune (of all things) as my music manager, and actually quite like most of how it organizes things. On a less grumpy note, the $99 Apple TV they just launched is pretty sm…

really? I've never had any performance issues with iTunes on any of my boxes. Last one was a i7 quad Shuttle SFF, and my year old 17-inch MBP now.

I understand that iTunes runs much better on OSX, which is why your Macbook Pro doesn't have any performance issues. I'm sure it runs great on a quad-core i7 too, although if you're running Vista or Win7, it's still not caching nor preloading the album artwork, and if you scroll through the album art, it's going to redraw the artwork. That's admittedly a nitpick on my part, but it seems like a simple thing to do that would go a long way, sort of like how they set the LED to pulse at the same rate as human breathing or whatever.

Aside: It's interesting to watch the points on my original post fluctuate. I would be interested to hear what people voting it down have to say. I do HD video and multitrack audio editing on my computer, I promise you that it's a capable enough machine for a media librarian. And I really do think the AppleTV is a good deal at $99.

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#73

Post by joezydeco »

Timothee wrote: post #19
simonsquiff wrote: post #10

It's interesting that this is only for music. You can see this being just as applicable for movies and tv shows - and of course apps. Presumably this is a toe in the water and they'll extend it if it works. But this certainly has lots of potential for extension.

Absolutely. The choice of "Ping" for its name, rather than a more music-centric name might indicate they're keeping the door open to extend it to the whole store. (I'll add books to your list) edit: one good reason I see to start off with music (besides the fact that it makes sense for iTunes) is that it's more common in the music industry to "follow" an artist, than it is for TV or movies. So, right from the start a…

We were just talking about this topic earlier today while speculating about a new appleTV. If all TV goes to a direct 1-to-1 streaming system, exactly how do you get people to watch new shows?

Ping seems to find that requirement exactly. Watch this get used on the TV side pretty quickly if it takes off.

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#75

Post by tvon »

leviathant wrote: post #38

Given how poorly iTunes 9 runs on my quad-core Win7 machine with gigs and gigs of ram, I'm not particularly excited by this news. Wake me up when they've completely rebuilt iTunes. The only reason I keep it around is for my iPhone - I've switched to Zune (of all things) as my music manager, and actually quite like most of how it organizes things. On a less grumpy note, the $99 Apple TV they just launched is pretty sm…

It's kind of amusing how bad iTunes is on Windows, all while Apple talks about how writing for a meta-platform produces lower quality software. It doesn't even look good, IMO, at least not compared to running natively on OSX.

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#76

Post by protomyth »

gyardley wrote: post #5

Can I please have an application that just does the one simple thing it's supposed to? I feel like soon both iTunes and GMail are going to try to order my groceries for me.

On the Mac side, there are a couple of widgets that use your iTunes library but provide a very simple / non-cluttered interface.

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#77

Post by hack_edu »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #42
chaosmachine wrote: post #35

It's funny to see them positioning it as "like Facebook and Twitter for music", as if MySpace never existed.

It really does look a lot more like Facebook than MySpace. You basically have a Facebook wall of all the people you follow, not some kind of customized site you can design from scratch, like the mess that was MySpace.

MySpace was created for and, early on, largely marketed to bands who wanted a simple page with a place to feature music. It only caught on with the public as a secondary.

Now, bands are pretty much the only people who still use the platform at all.

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#78

Post by unfletch »

gyardley wrote: post #5

Can I please have an application that just does the one simple thing it's supposed to? I feel like soon both iTunes and GMail are going to try to order my groceries for me.

In the words of Anil Dash, after this morning's announcement, "This is my favorite app for editing ringtones, copying presentations to my iPad, telling friends I'm going to a concert & watching TV!"

http://twitter.com/anildash/statuses/22732156912

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#79

Post by citrik »

patrickk wrote: post #20
keltex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple really is amazing. We keep thinking they are going to go after the usual suspects like Google, Microsoft, and RIM. Now they are aiming their guns at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg must not be happy.

I would say Last.fm is closer to the centre of Apple's crosshairs

Apple bought LaLa a while ago, that was a pretty strong sign of something like Ping happening.

Re: Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

#80

Post by DrJokepu »

gaiusparx wrote: post #60
zppx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Facebook has a client accessible in every platform out there and it is even accessible by a common browser, whereas with Ping I will need iTunes or an Apple device/software to use, also it probably will not have an API. I think Apple is just making things to profit more as a content distributor that it is becoming, Ping and the new AppleTV is just pointing in this direction, at least for me.

It is more powerful than the follows in Facebook & Twitter for artists as it leads to direct buy $$ from their fans. They will definitely pay attention to Ping. I bet it will open up to movie stars, actors and authors in future. If I'm not wrong, Ping could be just HTML pages within iTunes, as with some iTunes contents. So it is not difficult to be a standalone web app if Apple choose to.

As I explained here previously, artists don't really get paid on album sales (or mp3 sales) due to various reasons. Besides TV/Radio broadcasts, what they really care about is concerts (live performances) and concert attendance and Facebook and Twitter are both excellent tools to raise some noise before gigs. It looks like Apple understands that.
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