iTunes 5

[Todd Masco]

Eric wrote:
> As much as I agree with all the things on the wish lists of people, I
> just want to remind you that iTunes is FREE.

I beg to differ.  iTunes is paid for by the premium we pay for Mac 
hardware and the $129 we pay for Mac OS X upgrade every 18 months, plus 
the $.99/song we pay through the Apple Music Store (no other program 
can play those songs, after all, without the us of tricks that degrade 
the quality of the music or the space it takes up).  There's no free 
lunch here.

I'm not complaining - I was happy to pay for SoundJam before Apple 
bought it -  it's just that the fact that there's no cost to download 
the binary itself is pure marketing.  iTunes and the other iApps are 
part of the value we pay for when we buy Mac hardware and software from 
Apple.

> As for the switching library thing, you might want to contact the
> author of "iPhoto Buddy".  This program allows you to switch between
> different iPhoto libraries.

That's no different from the symbolic link trick I am currently using 
(and I do believe that somebody distributes something like this).  As I 
described, there are shortcomings in this approach.  And again, I'm not 
complaining - just noting that the Apple Music Store locks us in to 
using iTunes, so in order to get those features they've got to come 
from iTunes.  I'd be happy to pay for a ProSumer version of iTunes, but 
I doubt that there's enough interest in "advanced features" to warrant 
Apple making a separate product.

	-- Todd