“At its ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ media event early last month, Apple announced that it would be launching its iTunes Match service in the United States at the ‘end of October.’ That launch date was itself apparently a slight delay from Apple’s original plans given that support for the feature had been built into developer builds of iTunes 10.5, which was released in mid-October to support iOS 5 and iCloud,” Eric Slivka reports for MacRumors.
“But with Apple apparently pushing back the iTunes Match launch slightly, the feature was removed from the public release of iTunes 10.5 and moved to a new iTunes 10.5.1 that was released for developer testing,” Slivka reports. “Sources have indicated that Apple is close to a launch of iTunes Match, with retail store staff having been briefed on the service in preparation for its debut. But with the calendar now having turned to November, Apple has missed its public launch target for iTunes Match.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Normally, we would have very little patience, but in this case, with the unique events that transpired in October, including employees attending memorial service(s) for late co-founder Steve Jobs, we’re going to cut Apple some slack. Don’t release it until it’s working perfectly, Apple. That said, an official status update about iTunes Match would be entirely appropriate right about now.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
My question is what took so long for all the Apple blogs to even mention iTunes Match yesterday and early this morning? Odd that a minor ‘rumor’ can bring a flood of postings from the bloggers but yet this missed launch date was ignored all day yesterday when it was clear Apple was going to miss the date. Very odd.
While I’m sure all the uptight, politically minded jackasses in the world will take this opportunity to say “The sky is falling!!!! Apple is DOOMED!” I think this is no-big-deal. Take all the time you need, guys, we’ve lived without the service for awhile now. It’s just icing on the cake.
Patience fscking Shmatience. This isn’t a critical update to a broken system or desperately sought after service to replace something existing. It’s brand new. It will deploy when it’s ready. Since Match has no current peer, and does not currently exist in some other form on Mac products, who fscking cares if it’s late? Especially if it’s being delayed to make sure the damn service works.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….hmmph, what? Wassup? Damn, wake me when something exciting happens.
Nobody cares about iTunes Match. They can delay it until next year and no-one will notice.
Wrong.
apple doesn’t release updates on Mondays. it’ll launch today since its a Tuesday. notice how they are releasing unverisal version of garage band now for iphones, etc today? they could have done that yesterday, but they did it today. itunes match will be out today around around 1 or 3pm ET. They are just doing the small stuff first.
I bet they are trying to solve the merging of multiple iTunes accounts – for many people, like me, that purchases on more than one account (for me – one pre & post MobileMe – iCloud & iTunes match is of limited benefit!
My 2 cents worth!
iTunes match means nothing to me. I quit smoking decades ago.
When I updated to IOS5, I also updated iTunes and I had iTunes match, I started it, it had 3 steps to it, and I had all my music on all my devices! On my iPhone it would have a cloud with the little arrow pointing down on all the songs that were in the cloud.
Over the weekend when I would start iTunes I would get a pop up box that stated my version of iTunes would expire in 109 hours. This morning my iTunes had closed and when I clicked on the icon nothing happened, re installed iTunes now nothing about iTunes match, the iCloud icon is still there , but if I try to play, it skips down to the next song loaded on my iPhone.
Did I have a trial version of iTunes match, never had an Apple program expire before.
When Apple offers ALAC files instead of lossy compressed audio crapfiles, then audiophiles (who, we should note, buy a disproportionately higher value of audio but _only_ if the quality is there) might get on board. Until then, icloud and match are useless.
Corollary: Apple’s iTunes store appears to be reaching saturation. The only way to ensure future growth is to serve the “niche” markets with higher-quality product: ALAC.
Besides the access from anywhere, the whole idea of iTunes Match is upping the quality. Apple is saving me the trouble of re-ripping my entire music collection in 256k AAC (which to most ears is indistinguishable from CD).
I could go one better. 44K sampling of audio is well known to damage high end treble reproduction. Why didn’t the entire audio industry move to 96K sampling a decade ago?! Anyone with a computer can record at 96K. But the music industry can’t? And they can’t distribute 96K audio via DVD?
Thankfully, a few bands have been providing 96K audio without lossy compression. THAT is the future and I can hear the improvement.
But As-Per-Usual, the RIAA demand that they live in the past while maintaining their HATRED of both artists and customers. Good going Luddite Marketing Morons. 😯
Déjà Vu MobileMe. Same time of year hell as well.
I’m happily sticking with my extended MobileMe account until the Version 1.0 Syndrome fallout blows over. Maybe next year iCloud/Match.