It’s been blogged to death, but I thought for my latest post I’d comment briefly on the iTunes Christmas. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s what happened, briefly:
iPods, which have been around for a few years now, have had snowball sales, getting bigger every year. The low-end iPods, such as the iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano, are reaching a price point that most consumers can afford now — especially as Christmas gifts. On Christmas Day, the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) unilaterally came to a slow crawl as over a million iPods were unwrapped Christmas morning.
This year for Christmas I bought my mom the new 2nd-generation iPod Shuffle. It’s about the size of a matchbook and only has a few buttons, so the learning curve is as small as the music player. I sat nearby while I watched my mom hook up the docking cradle and install iTunes. She only had one or two questions, and it was just a misread direction. I helped her redeem her iTunes gift card that I bought her and watched her pick out an iTunes “Best of” gospel music collection. She pretty quickly figured out how to sync her iTunes library with her new iPod and was jamming out to the Gaithers in no time at all.
Our experience with the iTMS slowdown was minimal, with just one internal server error the entire time. We had waited until Wednesday to sit down and learn how to use it, though. Others have claimed download times as slow as 20 minutes for one song.
Apple offers laser-engraving, gift messaging, and just before the holidays they offered special gift wrapping for iPod-gifters who shopped at the Apple Store online. The iTunes Music Store carries music, music video, TV Shows, Movies, and Podcasts for viewing on both your Mac or PC iTunes-authorized computers and the Apple iPod.