Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network | Hacker News Reader

Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network

engadget.com

54 pointsshadow89 comments

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.

Not an Emacs user, I take it?

I consider emacs more of OS/environment rather than an application... but I've started to become an emacs addict over the past year.

"a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"

You can always use QuickTime Player (or an antique version of WinAmp) if that's all you want.

Yes, Winamp 2.95 still is outstanding. Simple, functional, tiny footprint, etc.

Get it here: http://www.oldversion.com/Winamp.html and apply AlpineAmp skin: http://customize.org/winamp2/skins/4571

The lesson- Sometimes newer and more "features" != better.

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

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

In the case of Google, this is pretty much exactly where they are headed (by design):

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he elaborates. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Let's say you're walking down the street. Because of the info Google has collected about you, "we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are." Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are. Mr. Schmidt leaves it to a listener to imagine the possibilities: If you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you've been reading about took place on the next block.

Says Mr. Schmidt, a generation of powerful handheld devices is just around the corner that will be adept at surprising you with information that you didn't know you wanted to know. "The thing that makes newspapers so fundamentally fascinating—that serendipity—can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically," Mr. Schmidt says.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870490110457542...

What one simple thing is iTunes supposed to do? From early on it's been a multi-function program. It would be very difficult to pick out a small subset of features to point at as the core functionality of iTunes since from the early days it's been a music player, CD ripper, store, device manager, etc. Probably the last major new category of functionality added before Ping (which arguably is just an extension of the store) was video playback.

Music player + CD Ripper can be the simple thing it's supposed to do. Move the music and app store into a separate app. Move the device manager into a separate app. Move the social networking into the cloud.

Me and a friend have been trying to write a small app that only manages and plays music. Sadly, CoreAudio is proving to be a pain in the butt :(

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.

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

Also, Spotify.

Also, Rdio

Huge gaps in the catalogue.

Why does Apple care about Last.fm? Does Last.fm make hundreds of millions of dollars a year? Because that seems like the minimum action to move the dials for them now.

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

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.

i think you mean there's no privacy issue yet. facebook didn't have nearly the level of privacy hand-wringing that it does now when it was only open to students at select college campuses. but along came employers, and parents, and all sorts of other groups, and suddenly this "safe place" was full of people whose intentions did not match your initial expectations. same will easily happen to any network that reaches a certain size, ubiquity, etc.

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 smooth looking, the only thing I feel grumbly about regarding that is the absence of Hulu. But that's a topic for a different thread...

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.

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.

I think it proves their point pretty well. Cross-platform-kits equal sub-par experiences almost every time.

Well, iTunes isn't really built for a cross-platform kit, it is primarily built for OSX with a compatibility layer for Windows where needed (I think)... at least the shortcomings only really show up under Windows, under OSX it's a big app but generally runs well (speaking for myself here).

But, my point is that you'd think a company that knows how much ported/meta-platform apps suck would try to avoid it by making iTunes for Windows (along with QuickTime and Safari) look and feel less like OSX apps wedged into Windows and more like "good Windows citizens".

Granted, iTunes for Windows is pretty old, and it's possible Apple's struggles with it contributed to the decision to ban 3rd party toolkits from iOS.

(Or Apple just doesn't give a shit about Windows and is annoyed they have to cater to it at all, which is why all their Windows software kinda sucks.)

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 anybody will have people to follow while they're building their friends network.

"I'll add books to your list"

I bet 'gifting' people in your Ping friends network with music (and apps, books later on) will be a profitable feature for Ping, when Apple implements it.

Funny because I meant that in the sense that simonsquiff didn't mention the books in his comment, but you're right.

When gifting right now, I don't think you have any way to know if the recipient has or not the song/app. I haven't gifted songs too much, so I'm not sure what happens in that case. Ping might be able to avoid this situation.

Gifting will do away with those Apple vouchers you can buy to the vale of 10 bucks or whatever for your friend. Instead, you can get them the song directly.

A ready-made social network, all the network infrastructure in place, users with credit cards at the ready, owned by a highly successful tech multinational....the recommendation on APPL is 'buy'!

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.

Maybe they don't want to step on the toes of Netflix... yet.

Because it's just music, I feel like I might use it more, too. I'd feel less self-concious posting my thoughts on music I've listened to, etc. when that's the whole reason why people are there.

This vs. on facebook where people are wary of TMI and people who spam their feed, this is all about doing that.

I think this will be the most monetarily successful social network yet. While Facebook has a huge mindshare I don't think they are very good at turning that mindshare into money in their own coffers.

Apple is really good at daring to ask for money for their services. While other companies often rely on ads or even more nebulous ways of making money, Apple just asks their users to pay money.

I really like this model of paying for what I get. I means that I am the customer, and not the product.

One of these days I hope they'll add the ability for me to sync my iPhone to iTunes at home and listen to it on another PC (most specifically the office) from my iPhone via iTunes without some horrible hack and manually managing my music collection.

I was under the impression that this already worked.

You can't copy the files off (without some 3rd party software) but I thought you could browse and play via iTunes. I remember it being clunky enough that you might not want to do it regularly but I thought it worked for playing a couple of tunes.

I haven't been able to figure it out if you can. In order to see the music and actually play it (where it's not grayed out and unclickable) I have to set my music to be manually managed on my PC at home, then I need to get the iTunes library key from the file at home and inject it into the right spot in the same file on any other PC I want to listen to the music on.

I actually just stopped putting music on my iPhone because it was too much of a hassle to do every time that key changed. I just use Pandora or GrooveShark now instead.

Its going to be interesting to see what effect this has on last.fm ...It doesnt have appear to have my favorite last.fm feature, scrobbling, but I admit I use last.fm little besides that. Particular, the fact that it ties in to iTunes purchases could be very popular.

LastFm allows me to listen to music I don't own.. legally.. Doesn't appear itunes does that.

That would be a killer feature; I've got 8+ years of listening history in Last.fm, starting with an old Linux jukebox that played music 24/7 (between X11 crashes), and then with iPod and iTunes.

On the other hand, you'd have all these geeks accusing Apple of collecting data for nefarious purposes, just like many of the comments here.

Regardless, Ping looks great and I can't wait to try it out.

This is how Apple rolls and I must say I am impressed although it was expected.

They have long been sitting on one of the strongest and certainly most profitable "social" networks.

Now they have used it to do one of the most classical goals in business. Profit maximization.

I don't even think this is something other companies can learn much from as most seem to be walking around like lemmings trying to incorporate features to grow their (non-paying) following.

Be patient for growth not for profit as Clayton Christensen says.

You say it was expected, yet I heard no one predict it.

Well I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly did.

It was also known that apple where buying into this space. Will see if I can find the reference.

And I will make another prediction. Apple will have to take on Spotify once they reach momentum in the US (and I think they will with time)

In other words iTunes music is going to turn into a streaming music service at some point.

Will they really have to take on Spotify though? Mightn't the content providers look at Apple's more attractive market and just pull the plug on Spotify (which would be cannibalising their own ITunes/Ping sales)?

That might happen of course, but the question is whether they will see that or whether they will think hey! two revenue streams.

None the less I believe music will go streaming, it has to which becomes really obvious once you try out spotify (well it did for me and most of my friends who use it)

For the users it's obvious that streaming is the way to go, Spotify is golden. But for the producers? I think it's possible we might see the streaming model completely abandoned.

An interesting thought is whether they'd experiment with the rental model (pay per play) for iTunes music. Not just interesting economically but in terms of how appreciation of music might change.

> It was also known that apple where buying into this space. Will see if I can find the reference.

You're thinking of the LaLa acquisition, maybe? http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-musi...

Yes but also this.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/apples-reported-lala-...

This was one of my prediction in the "What can kill Facebook" thread.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1604211

Facebook must be crapping themselves a little - games, music, video and all the social aspects tied into a piece of software that's deeply integrated into a ton of people's lives.

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.

A lot of people already have iTunes ... not to mention with 230,000 new iOS activations a day they're coming pre-armed with massive traction.

They could take it in a whole lot of different directions but nothing about iTunes is aimed at filling some tiny little niche. Why would they bother aiming so low now?

Sure there are ways to Apple amass a large user base with Ping, but I think it is hard to fight with the extensible, and relatively open, Facebook that can be accessed from any browser, I see no point for someone that does not use iTunes Store, an iOS device or iTunes installing iTunes only to use Ping.

I think that initially Apple does want to use it to profit more with areas that they already are strong and also gather some experience running a social network, and them expanding it, maybe with user media sharing and an API. I think games and apps will be a next focus areas for Ping.

Of course it'd be a hard fight. But that it'd be a fight at all makes them 1000x more dangerous than anything else in the last few years.

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.

I check Facebook dozens of times per day. I barely ever open iTunes except when it decided to play a song I don't like.

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.

Where did you learn that MySpace was created for bands? Wikipedia states that they just explicitly copied the most popular features of friendster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#History

I'm skeptical about Apple doing a social media platform, yet iTunes is a perfect trojan horse. It might not even have to be good to succeed.

It's pretty amazing the number of things that have been smuggled into the old SoundJam: Quicktime, Webkit (occasionally Safari), the music store (expanded to video and games and apps too), Genius recommendations, and now a social network.

Ahh, good ol' SoundJam. Those were the days.

I really didn't like iTunes at first -- I stuck with SoundJam for a good long time. Until I moved to OS X, actually.

The funniest part is that the "finished importing" chime hasn't changed since SoundJam 1.0.

Do people associate using iTunes with social networking, however? Are you going to fire up iTunes to socialize with your friends on your Ping wall? Are you even going to invite your friends to your Ping contacts? Or are you simply going to keep using Facebook to post about that new album you just got that you really like?

Existing association may not matter, though. Consider that iTunes began as an MP3 player app. Full stop. That's all it was. At some point they added support for loading your songs onto portable MP3 players, but I don't remember if that was in 1.0 (this was pre-iPod).

Then they added a store, which wasn't a huge leap, but there's a difference between listening to music and shopping for music, even though one can drive the other.

Then they added movie and TV purchases. Not a huge leap from buying music, but nothing at all to do with managing your MP3s.

Then they added syncing your iPhone, which has a multitude of features entirely unrelated anything anyone did in iTunes before. But, hey, you need to sync your music, too.

THEN, App syncing and purchase.

I'm sure I'm missing a feature or two in the chronology, but you get the point.

iTunes has a rich history of having seemingly unrelated shit jammed into it. Sometimes there are alternatives for what iTunes can offer (Netflix Watch Instantly, Amazon MP3 Store) and sometimes you're locked in (iOS device sync).

But either way, Apple seems to get away with it. The trojan horsiness of iTunes gives them leverage to accomplish things that would be much, much harder for other companies.

We'll see if that holds for Ping. I wouldn't bet against it, even if I wouldn't put much money on outrageous success, either.

Hopefully iTunes 10 will at least be more performant. All this cruft has come with a cost.

I got the impression that the intended preferred way to interact with Ping will be from one's iPad/iPhone/iPod, not from desktop iTunes.

Bah, they should get their ass together and release an update to their iPods so that you could manage your music without having to use their bloated crap.

You know, like the standards that apple talk about so much.

Did Apple just shot Myspace in the face? execution style?

That was my first thought. Myspace Music is dead, it's not really about Facebook.

Ping, only accessible from within iTunes? Not a web interface at all? That is surprising to me. I can't participate unless I have an iPhone/iPod Touch/computer with my iTunes installed.

Also, he mentioned showing what my friends have purchased. I am more interested in what they are playing right now or are playing overall, regardless of where it came from. iTunes and iPods have been successful because it isn't restricted to only content purchased in the iTunes store, but now they are focusing hard on the iTunes store content only?

I can't see that this is going to be as successful as if they had a more open mind about it. What about the MP3s I buy from Amazon or CDs (or whatever) and load on my iTunes? Only tracking what comes from the iTunes store is like navel gazing. I think they miss the big picture that way.

Or maybe I am just old fashioned. :)

Yay! More bloat!

Is this available in all countries?

I really enjoyed that "open standards" event, which was broadcast via HTML5 that only worked in Safari and on Mac.

Didn't they submit this format for standardization a year or so ago? If so, you can't blame Apple that others have not implemented it.

Is that also your stance towards OfficeXML?

In fairness, it's a lot easier to implement than OfficeXML - it's basically HTML + dynamic M3U playlists + MPEG. OfficeXML is more or less a core dump of Word/Excel/Whatever serialised as XML.

No, they didn't, but lots of people got confused and thought they had. Here's Gruber making the same mistake and correcting himself:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/01/http-live-stream...

At one point I had it streaming on four different devices at once. It was awesome.

It's called "embrace and extend". The phrase was coined by some other company than Apple, though -- I forget, but they were big in the '90s...

> I really enjoyed that "open standards" event, which was broadcast via HTML5

HTML5 is a markup language, not a streaming transport. Apple used HTTP Live Streaming, which is tech they're trying to push as a new standard. It has certain technical benefits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming

I believe the VLC nightly build has support for it, but Apple's not going to go out and tell people "Hey, go use this weird beta client to access the stream."

You are right, of course. I was using HTML5 as it is commonly used as an umbrella term for everything new and standards related on the web these days in my snark comment. Interestingly enough, I tried with VLC to no avail. I liked that new nano, seems like something we ought to have in the year 2010, straight out of future.

One possible reason to restrict would be that they used the event as sort of a beta test for streaming/live broadcasting infrastructure/process.

Sort of like Gmail with the invites. Artificially restrict access, so you don't need huge scale from the get go.

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