Apple Blocks Music Sales To Older iTunes

KingFishKingFish
edited November 2004 in Science & Tech
As it had said it would, Apple Computer is forcing customers using older versions of iTunes to upgrade to recent versions if they want to purchase music online.
Later on Wednesday, Apple will stop allowing people running version 4.2 to purchase songs from the iTunes Music Store. "As of today, customers will need to use one of the three most recent versions of iTunes--4.7, 4.6 or 4.5--to continue purchasing and downloading songs," Apple said in a statement provided to CNET News.com. The company, which had warned users the move was coming, downplayed the impact of the move. "Less than 5 percent of all iTunes customers are using the old iTunes 4.2 version, so asking them to upgrade to the free iTunes 4.7 is no big deal," Apple said. When Apple released version 4.5 in April, the company disabled support for a number of programs that tried to expand iTunes music sharing beyond the streaming of music files. And with the new version 4.7 that Apple introduced last week, the company quietly disabled support for iPodDownload, a program that let customers copy music from an iPod into their iTunes library.
Source: c|net

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    Why are people getting so defensive about having to update an old piece of software <b>for free</b>? Every time this topic comes up on [H], they get all uppity and rail on Apple. Granted, [H] is not a Mac fan, but a free software upgrade is no big deal, right?
  • gibbonslgibbonsl Grand Forks AFB
    edited November 2004
    i guess it depends on what the update does :scratch:
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    People are probably mad because Apple has a history of disabling features in updates, eg. early versions of QuickTime were free and supported encoding, but newer versions disabled encoding and required you to purchase, the newest version of iTunes disables iPodDownload, making it more difficult to have fair use of content you bought, newer versions of the Classic Graphing Calculator required you to pay to use the advanced functions that were free in earlier versions, etc. I'm willing to bet that the version they just removed support for had some way to save media without DRM.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    Having researched it further, users were hopping mad that iPodDownload was disabled, but apparently Apple has reenabled use of it.
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