October 16, 2003: Six months after opening the iTunes Music Retailer for Mac house owners, Apple expands the service to cowl Home windows PCs as properly.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs later quips that making iTunes accessible to Home windows house owners is akin to “giving a glass of ice water to anyone in hell.”
iTunes involves Home windows PCs
Launched solely on Macs earlier within the 12 months, the iTunes Music Retailer bought songs for 99 cents per monitor. Offers with all 5 main file labels, in addition to greater than 200 indie labels, made a whole lot of hundreds of songs accessible.
“The iTunes Music Retailer has revolutionized the way in which individuals legally purchase music on-line, and now it’s accessible to tens of hundreds of thousands extra music lovers with iTunes for Home windows,” stated Jobs in a press launch on the time. “Whereas our rivals haven’t even come near matching our first era, we’re already releasing the second era of the iTunes Music Retailer for Mac and Home windows.”
By this level, Apple had bought greater than 13 million songs. iTunes made authorized downloads a respectable choice for a music trade combating piracy as a result of rise of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Napster. iTunes additionally gave customers highly effective instruments to handle the content material they bought.
A troublesome name for Steve Jobs
Making the software program accessible to Home windows PC house owners ensured the continued progress of the iTunes Music Retailer.
Nevertheless, like opening iOS to builders 5 years later, Jobs’ choice to port iTunes to Home windows didn’t come in a single day. In some methods, it’s simple to see what fueled his trepidation.
In the course of the dangerous previous days of the Nineties, Apple regularly let its distinctive promoting factors develop into diluted. In the meantime, Home windows piled on options, polished its tough edges and dominated the private computing market.
iTunes and iPod: A potent combo
Now Apple had, in iTunes and the extremely in style iPod — the music participant it launched in 2001 that famously “put 1,000 songs in your pocket” — a mixture of software program and {hardware} that might coax new customers into the Apple ecosystem. Permitting both product to work with Home windows appeared like giving up a bonus.
Jobs appropriately identified that each iTunes and the iPod helped drive Mac gross sales. His lieutenants on the time — Phil Schiller, Jon Rubinstein, Jeff Robbin and Tony Fadell — noticed that, whereas this was true, Apple was not nearly Macs. At one level, Jobs stated letting iTunes and the iPod run on PCs would occur “over my lifeless physique.”
Ultimately, Jobs noticed the enterprise sense within the choice and backed down. However solely after he ran the numbers. Jobs appropriately noticed that declining Mac gross sales might by no means outweigh the acquire from elevated iPod gross sales.
iTunes: ‘The most effective Home windows app ever written’
Previous to iTunes for Home windows, PC customers needed to run software program made by an organization known as MusicMatch to make use of their iPods. Nevertheless, Jobs insisted that if Apple was going to let its stunning {hardware} run on PCs, it should management as a lot of the expertise as attainable. That meant Apple wanted to port iTunes to Home windows.
This wasn’t nearly writing a brand new app. Apple additionally needed to renegotiate with music labels to get them to associate with the rollout. As soon as the required offers have been struck, Apple started engaged on iTunes for Home windows.
iTunes for Home windows: A killer keynote
In the course of the software program’s unveiling in a Macworld keynote on October 16, 2003, Jobs referred to it — with attribute enthusiasm — as “the most effective Home windows app ever written.”
You possibly can watch Jobs’ iTunes for Home windows keynote under. It affords an important take a look at his presentation model. Plus, it serves as a wonderful reminder of how Apple helped the music trade transition into the digital period.
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