Apple's New iPod - Evolutionary, not Revolutionary

Looking towards the future - iTunes 4

The most popular feature of the new iPod actually has nothing to do with the hardware or the firmware of the unit, but rather the Mac music manager software - iTunes 4.

The reason iTunes 4 has been given so much attention is because of Apple's iTunes Music Store. The iTunes Music Store is accessible directly from the iTunes application, and allows you to search through a library of around 200,000 songs. These songs are all officially licensed from the record labels that own the rights to them and you can purchase any song for $0.99. The song is then transferred to you legally and you then own the song.

All music downloaded from the iTunes Music Store is encoded in Apple's own AAC format, which is a MPEG-4 derived standard meaning that file sizes are smaller than MP3s while supposedly retaining identical levels of quality.

The iTunes Music Store has been a marketing success for Apple, however it has yet to be seen whether the sales through the store will continue to be strong. Currently the iTunes Music Store is only made available to Mac users, which is definitely not a large enough segment of the population to make the store a success. Apple has seen some relatively decent sales in the first couple of weeks of the store's operation, however there is no data to support continued profitability without tapping into a larger market.

Apple is apparently working on a Windows version of iTunes but there is no timeframe set for when we can expect Windows support for the software. One inconvenience that Windows users may run into is the lack of AAC support in Windows MP3 players, and we can't see most users using the iTunes software as a replacement for Winamp in order to play those AAC files. What we'll need in order for this to work is good AAC support in something like Winamp before the Windows version of iTunes debuts. Regardless, Apple needs to work on releasing the Windows version of iTunes as soon as possible in order to capitalize on a larger market before the competition does.