Well, after a brief...er...two year break, I guess it's time to dust this feature off. The first iMusic Tuesday feature I did was on a now-defunct website in 2002, and it was basically what I'm going to do now, just a rundown of a few interesting stories involving iTunes, the iPod, digital music, and...this "iTunes Store" thing. Actually, besides pre-dating the iTunes [Music] Store, this feature pre-dated WordPress, and I learned my blogging chops on pMachine. It's amazing how many things have changed since I started doing this, and that's what I'd like to yammer on this week. Here's some incomplete highlights from the past 5 years. Back in 2002, sans any internet music store, the way you got digital music off the internet was this thing called "Napster." You would steal download your music for free, without any restrictive DRM, and you were thankful. The iPod was a brand-new phenomenon, but I predicted big things for it, even in 2002. In the middle of 2003, the iTunes Music Store was born. And the snowball began. The 'it' gift of 2003 was the iPod, and Apple finally got that "beleaguered" tag off the front-page, if not off its back. Adding support for Windows XP and Windows 2000, now iTunes was available for almost everybody with a computer. The change at Apple, adapting to these successes, was becoming apparent. In 2004, Apple became a hardware company. An mp3-player hardware company. Mac OS X seemed an afterthought, as the iPod became the main product of the company. Even the recent release of version 10.3 Panther did little to excite the world: Apple was all about the iPod and iTunes. 2005 marked a milestone: the company now becoming more known for it's synergy of music player, music store, and pop culture, dropped the "beleaguered" title. Constant growth and gigantic market share continued the trend of Apple getting the gleam of successful company again. Riding the success, Apple got back to creating great hardware and software, putting out something nobody thought they'd ever (really) see: Mac OS X running on Intel. As 2006 comes to a close, we've seen the Video iPod, the iPod mini come and go, and the shuffle get smaller. It's a good time to be on Apple's side, and I'm looking forward to covering this beat again. Maybe I'll get some free swag or something.

Apple iTunes

status: published
lastmod: '2006-12-12T03:34:00.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
cms: wordpress
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