Everyone knows by now that the most visible feature of the iPhone’s recent software update is the iTunes wi-fi music store. When I first saw that, my thought was “ho hum”…I mean, I’m excited that Apple is changing the mobile game and updating devices with new features, but I had very little interest in buying songs from my phone.
Ha. Apple clearly knew better than me.
They completely nailed the interface. It works, it’s fast, and it’s fun. I was sitting around over the weekend, just browsing through the store. Tapping the “preview” buttons, tapping the “buy” buttons…it’s all so easy. And being one tap away from new music, on your device, is something that’s very cool – and cool enough it’s a little hard to explain exactly why. And knowing it will sync back to your PC, and there’s no downside to buying on your phone vs. buying from your desktop, really takes the last bit of worry away.
So nice work, Apple. You gave me a feature I didn’t want, made it easy for me to play with it even though I wasn’t interested, and you convinced me.
It really is hard to ignore the impact of Apple’s hard work. Integration is the key. Integration into our lives, rather than some painful growth sticking out of our sides like those other products. :-)
I am disappointed that there is no access to podcasts via this interface. That’s the one thing I would really use it for, as I like to listen to newscasts, but if I haven’t synced recently, they quickly get out of date. But of course, allowing the downloading podcasts would not provide profits to Apple…
I like the integration of iTunes as well and I certainly would like to drive home with the refreshed afternoon versions of the podcast I listen to. On a slightly different topic, do you all get the feeling we are going to eventually be charged for an update (like Leopard or some other nice application that Apple comes up with)? Thoughts