{"id":41485,"date":"2009-11-13T11:31:48","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T16:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theappleblog.com\/?p=35699"},"modified":"2009-11-13T11:31:48","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T16:31:48","slug":"apple-launches-itunes-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/41485","title":{"rendered":"Apple Launches iTunes Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is one of those items I find so hard to get behind, rather like the infrequent (boring) updates to MobileMe. But here goes; Apple has ever-so-quietly launched a new web-based front-end to their iTunes music library titled \u201ciTunes Preview.\u201d It allows a visitor to view lists of music available on the iTunes Store via their web browser. There you go. That\u2019s kinda it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to assume 99.999 percent of our readers already use iTunes, and are probably intimately<\/em> familiar with the drill by now; you\u2019re reading a web page and you\u2019re presented with a link to some music, tv show or maybe an app inside the iTunes store. You click the link and, after your browser does a brief Redirection Dance, iTunes pops-up, opens the iTunes store and, as you\u2019d expect, dumps you out on the correct product page. Which is nice.<\/p>\n

Except, this isn\u2019t the case if you don\u2019t have iTunes installed. If you\u2019re one of the few people left in this crazy world who doesn’t have iTunes installed, clicking on one of those links previously dumped you (again, after the spastic redirection dance) on a web page commanding you to download and install iTunes. Which is not nice.<\/p>\n

Well, all that has (sort of) changed. iTunes Preview exists as something of an interim step designed to partially improve the overall user experience, and partially to get the last remaining holdouts among us to install iTunes. See, despite the \u201cPreview\u201d part of its name, iTunes Preview doesn\u2019t let you actually preview<\/em> anything beyond Music. And then it\u2019s not actually a preview. It\u2019s just track-listings and user reviews. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to listen to a bit of music before you part with your cash, you\u2019ll still need to install iTunes. And, in case that wasn\u2019t totally obvious already, the webpage provides ample linkage to get you downloading Apple\u2019s venerable media software.<\/p>\n

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As it stands today, the value and usefulness of iTunes Preview is limited. I guess it’s sort-of useful if all you want is a user-friendly link you can stuff into an email to your significant other (To: Other Half, Subject: Buy me this for xmas). But I\u2019m scraping the bottom of the barrel here in search of really worthwhile functionality. Right now, iTunes Preview verges on being almost entirely pointless. Sure, browse music by artist or album, view metadata like track duration or artist bios, and even find related artists\u2026 but anything more than that is reserved for the real<\/em> iTunes.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s early days. Who knows what Apple might do in the months and years to come? Is this, for instance, the first step toward freeing users from iTunes, in anticipation of a day when that bloated, lumbering beast will be replaced by a suite of modern, slimline, specialized apps?<\/p>\n

Nah, probably not. The music in iTunes might have been liberated from its DRM-shackles, but everyone forgets that iTunes itself<\/em> is, for most people, one giant walled garden. With one hundred million<\/a> active credit card accounts tied to the iTunes ecosystem, it\u2019s unlikely Apple will want to break it apart any day soon without a proven, easy and established migration route to its successor(s).<\/p>\n

iTunes Preview might<\/em> be the start of something interesting, but it just as easily might be nothing more than the result of a user-experience \u201ctidy-up\u201d by the iTunes dev team, an idea that languished at the bottom of their \u201cmight be nice\u201d wish-list for the last few years and just got executed by their newest interns.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re keen to try it out, you\u2019ll be pleased to learn it works on all the major browsers and is available right now. I’ll get you started with this link to the Michael Jackson artist page<\/a> so you can see for yourself how it works. You can also access more content from the iTunes Charts<\/a> page. But don\u2019t get excited — there\u2019s really nothing to see here, folks.<\/p>\n

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