Buying music on Napster and other stores.

Question

Buying music on Napster and other stores.

I'm considering purchasing an alternative MP3 player instead upgrading to a fifth generation iPod.

This is because Apple refuses to allow music purchased from other music stores to play on iPods, so I am forced to use iTunes and iTunes support regardless of how bad it gets. It is extremely bad business practice and unfair on both consumers and rival music shops.

Can anyone help as I would like to pay for a second time the music I lost - music that Apple will not let me redownload - from another music store and play them on my iPod. As far as I know the only solution is to burn to CD and then rip the CD.

I'm hardly going to buy a Mac, which I'm considering, if this is how customers are systematically treated.

iPod 40GB Colour, Windows XP

Posted on Nov 6, 2006 4:52 PM

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Answer 1

falco223

Level 1

110 points

Nov 6, 2006 5:07 PM in response to Ian on iTunes

Replied to other one:

I agree it is kinda closed off in that respect. But there have been some court cases trying to get apple to allow other store's DRM-enabled music on iPods(or vice versa iTunes music on other players).

Here is a list of iTunes compatible players for Win:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93377
None

Here is one for OS X:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93548
Some, but read Note 1 very carefully:

To play AAC and AAC Protected songs, your iPod must have iPod Software 1.3 or later installed. Not all digital music players can play AAC songs and only iPod can play AAC Protected songs.

So that means that only iPods can play iTunes Store downloaded music.

But you are right ripping a CD will remove the DRM though you will lose quality. So you could keep the DRM music files (in case you want to go back to iTunes with better quality) and then burn a cd to get the songs to another program.

But for me I don't think I'll ever go away from iPod+iTunes so doesn't matter. But on whether to consider a Mac definetely do it I am a switcher; just this year.

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Answer 2

Nov 6, 2006 5:48 PM in response to falco223

Thanks for the links and the advice.

As a new 'convert' to Mac, I am just wondering if you had purchase licences for software that only works for Windows? I have a lot of purchased Windows software so that's a whole load or other stuff I would have to pay for again if I get a Mac, then there's the issue of a much lesser range of software for Mac.

Persoanlly I am a website designer and I know Mac has a reptuation as being the best for design work and god knows I'm fed up with losing work because of Windows crashing.

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Answer 3

falco223

Level 1

110 points

Nov 6, 2006 7:42 PM in response to Ian on iTunes

I can see why you are interested in Macs. I personally find that it is not hard to find software for OS X. There is actually a lot more than I thought when I first got my computer.

Windows versions of software will not run in OS X. (Example- If you have Office for Windows, you can't just put your cd in your mac and expect it to run, You will have to buy Office for Mac). Unfortuately. But:

You can buy windows emulators such as- (Basically win will show up as window on top of Mac)

Microsoft VirtualPC (which they have discontinued)

Parrallels Desktop for Mac
http://www.parallels.com/

There are others too.

I don't use an emulator but Parallels is supposed to be the best (It uses virtualization, not emulation, which is not compatible with older mac such as G3s and maybe G4s), and its $79, of course you have to have a win install cd.

Then there is boot camp (which I use). It is a free apple program that partitions your hard drive and installs win from your cd. When you boot win just hold the option key at startup to choose os.

It is completely native so there is no OS X in the background when you boot win. It is just on its own. It requires a reboot to switch os.

It depends on what you are doing. I only use win for gaming (not many OS X games but there are some). I use boot camp because it is natively booting win. Games probably won't run in an emulator.

If you are using win programs though it is better to have an emulator as you can quickly open win in a window.

I would definetely recommend mac to you as it is nicer. As a website designer you can get Macromedia (owned by adobe) Dreamweaver for mac. Or even use iWeb apple's easy way to create a site.

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