It's been a year since the 3rd generation iPod was released coupled with a new version of iTunes that uses the new AAC MP4 format and incorporated the much written about and successful Apple Music Store.

The MP4 capability brought with it CD quality sound from MP3 sized files, thus opening the door of success for the Apple Music Store. Apple recognized that consumers were willing to pay for music, but not music that sounded worse than CD quality, and MP4 fixed all that. Previous blind listening tests that HTadvice.com conducted right before the release of the 3rd generation iPod and Apple Music Store proved it hard for audiophiles and normal listeners alike to discern the original CD file (AIF) from MP4 versions of a variety of well recorded songs played via the same device.

With the 3rd generation iPod & iTunes offering MP4 sound quality, I was finally onboard with the iPod phenomenon. While I had a strong interest in the original iPod, I was not a fan of the MP3 format, as it didn't even come close to audiophile quality. A year later my entire music listening experience is completely changed. I listen to my music collection probably 1000 times more, and I hardly ever use CDs anymore.

On top of that, with the Apple Music Store, I'm finally buying new music after 5-year hiatus in doing so. With CD prices souring over the last 5 years, and DVDs priced around the same as audio CDs, the value/cost ratio of CDs was lost on me. I bought over 100 DVDs over the last few years and maybe 5 CDs. At $15 for a CD, I only bought CDs I knew of which I would listen to almost every song. I didn't purchase CDs that only had 1-3 songs that I wanted. $5 a song is a bit pricey for anyone.

The Apple Music Store changed all that for me. With the music store I'm able to buy the entire albums that I know I'll listen to, and cherry-pick my favorite songs from other albums. Over the last year alone I've purchased over 20 CDs worth of music (200+ songs), and half that was purchased over the last 2 months as a broadband connection finally found its way into my home.

The five years prior to the Apple Music Store I averaged about one CD a year due to their lost value, but with the Apple Music Store I averaged 20 CDs over the last year alone. The Apple Music Store is a musical savior to those who feel that CD prices are still way too high, and are tired of being charged $15 for maybe 5 good songs.

Yes, not every band is available on the Apple Music Store, but most are. For holdouts like Metallica and the like, well they won't see my money anytime soon as I won't buy their albums unless they reach the $10 mark in the stores or become available at the Apple Music Store.

Opening Up To More Music
The Apple Music Store opens up a whole other music shopping experience. It's so easy to browse around and sample any song with a quick double-click of the mouse. Finding new music with "others also bought" listings opened my eyes to bands of which I didn't know their names, but definitely knew their music. While looking for one song it's easy to find a couple more worthy of purchase just a few clicks away. You can also just go click-happy and sample all types of music; possibly finding completely other genres that you otherwise wouldn't have given a chance.

At a $1 (0.99) a song, the value is definitely there. There nothing like purchasing $20 worth of music and want to actually listen to each and every song.

The Apple Music Store is online music shopping made simply reliable, efficient, and addicting. There's no overly complex navigation or pricing schemes. With the Music Store you simply buy it and own it.

Right off the bat being able to handpick which songs to purchase saved me about $35 with my first $6 purchase. I was able to buy 3 songs of a long lost and rarely stocked CD that sells commonly for $17+ at specialty record shops. Hand picking just a few more songs from CDs I otherwise would've been forced to buy the whole album, and it was just plain as day to see the empowerment the Apple Music Store offered. I've also purchased entire CDs of the artists of which I like their entire musical nuances and utterances. Simply put, the music store allows you to pay for only the music you want and saves you a ton of money doing so.

iPod's Price
I consider my iPod my portable MP4 server. Be it in the car, on the train, or at a party, the iPod is easy to take wherever I go. With a little playlist management, the iPod easily becomes a hands free DJ ready to spit out music all day and night.

Is the iPod overpriced? Not a chance. Even the smallest iPod 15GB at $299 (excluding the mini) can carry over 300 CDs (3,000 songs) worth of music, allowing you to just load entire CDs without caring if you like every song. The generous hard drive allows you to manage music without having to cherry-pick only the best songs due to lack of room. You're not forced to add or subtract music just to make the music you want fit on the iPod.

Before the iPod came out the only components with the capability of the iPod were $3000-$5000 MP3 servers which have their own software issues (not to mention they use MP3 instead MP4). Not only were MP3 servers over 10 times the price of an iPod, but also offered less sound quality to boot, and were definitely not portable.

After a full year with the iPod, iTunes, and the Apple Music Store, even the 15 GB iPod has proven somewhat difficult for me to fill completely with music, as mine is still only two-thirds full.

What The Critics Don't Get: It's MP4 Stupid
Every other service is busy selling MP3 subscriptions which just sound like crap, or others offer Windows Media files via fly by night productions that are just trying to jump on the bandwagon with zero ease-of-use, and music management that pales in comparison to Apple's offering.

Nobody comes close to delivering the whole package that the iPod, Apple Music Store, and iTunes offer. Maybe that's why Apple is just mopping the floor with them all as the industry leader by many orders of magnitude greater. There really is no close competitor and with good reason, the others just don't get it.

By offering a complete solution, Apple has shown how good it can be if all the pieces of the puzzle were made to work seamlessly and effortlessly, with great attention to detail and simplistically easy-to-use design. I've had friends who've never seen or used an iPod before that get it in their hands for the first time and just start zooming through the interface without a thought. It is literally that simple to use.

Apple has one single interface in which everything is done. Organizing, purchasing, and transferring your music is all done in the same easy-to-use iTunes interface. You can switch between everything so seamlessly that you don't have to think about how to do what you want, with iTunes you it's so obvious that you just do it. iTunes is such a well-designed interface that it gets out of the way and lets you do everything simply.

While Apple continues to improve upon the iPod, iTunes and the Apple Music Store, everybody else is still trying to catch up to the original iPod and iTunes products that came out over three years ago. Apple is easily 4-5 generations ahead in their product development cycle while others are struggling just to attempt to get out their first generation product with success.

What it Took to Deliver the Music Store
What don't the other companies have? They don't have iTunes, which is built from the best MP3 music manager ever made - Cassidy and Green's SoundJam MP (circa 1999). Apple scooped this company up and improved the software by adding Apple design style, savvy, grace and elegance on top of it all.

All the other companies sat on the fence to see if Apple's foray into the previously unsuccessful world of Internet music stores, with many still skittish from the Napster fallout. By Apple's estimates it took them about a year to create the Apple Music Store, and that was based off the existing architecture of Apple's QuickTime streaming media servers that power QuickTime's movie preview site at Apple.com (which just so happens to be one of the most traveled movie preview sites on the Internet).

That architecture alone took years to build with the Music Store taking a year to build on top of that, thus leaving Apple well ahead of the learning curve. Other companies started out only after Apple proved successful with the Music Store which only took one month after its launch to prove successful.

Competing Attempts
Other companies now want to join the bandwagon and join it fast, but that's likely to be their undoing. In the rush to sell they'll be giving up the most important item - carefully laid out design, structure, interaction, and the lack of Apple's design finesse.

In a mad rush to put downloadable music up, companies will throw whatever they can in short order up on the Internet and expect people to flock to it. Time and time again, Apple Computer has proven that no other company can match its finesse of design simplicity and ergonomics. Hence why after three years of being out, there is no better portable MP3/MP4 player than the iPod. Sure there are MP3 players that offer bigger hard drives, better battery life and other options for cheaper, but without the iPod interface and iTunes, these MP3 players are not even a distant second to the iPod.

The iPod, iTunes, and Apple Music Store combination is simply unbeatable. Other companies are attempting to beat Apple by competing against Apple in only one of these three areas, but Apple knows that the three individual products are dependent on each other and stronger due to there interconnected nature. The Apple Music Store's little secret is that it makes very little money, and is meant to supplement the value an iPod offers. Apple's huge sales gains of the iPod have surely shown the interconnected ease-of-use that Apple offers is what consumers want. Managing, sharing, and enjoying your music doesn't have to be difficult... unless you use something other than an iPod.

Unless another company makes a better player, music manager, and online store, they're simply not going to topple the Apple iPod, iTunes, and Music Store combination. To compete with Apple, someone has to offer the whole solution, not just bits and pieces.

Does Apple Have to Open iTunes Up?
The critics always find one fault to focus on, and the "closed ecosystem" argument is mighty pathetic. Especially when Microsoft is one of those voices, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. The iPod, iTunes, and Apple Music Store are great because they are so closely integrated. It's in other companies request that "Apple open iTunes" that they reveal that they still don't get it - the iPod, iTunes, and Apple Music Store are one tightly integrated product.

Why should Apple open its invention/innovation to allow others to make money off of it? If the Apple Music Store, iTunes, and the iPod weren't such a huge success, you wouldn't be hearing of any of these cries for opening them up. Others are simply trying to earn money off Apple's work, foresight, and design. The iPod wasn't something that was requested or made before. Apple looked at a horrible situation with unreliable low quality MP3s, players, piracy, and bad software, and found a way that makes it work through innovative design and vision. Nobody knew they wanted an iPod with the capability to store and entire music library until Apple released it, and the iPod's success showed Apple's vision to still be industry changing.

One could argue that iTunes is open as it's free for anyone to use, Windows or Mac. It doesn't have to be the only MP3/MP4 jukebox on a computer, and can simply leave the MP3s on your computer right where they are so other MP3 jukebox software can use them. If you buy a cheaper MP3 player or one that's not an iPod, you can use that player's software alongside iTunes if you'd like.

When you buy an iPod you're not only paying for the music player alone, but rather its ease-of-use with iTunes. Whoring iTunes to make other MP3 players look better is simply of no value to Apple. The Apple Music Store and iTunes exist for the iPod, to sell iPods, and to offer greater value to those who own an iPod.

iTunes by itself is the world's best jukebox hands down. Once anyone uses iTunes and sees the simplicity of massive music management and the ease-of-use offered, anything else seems downright clunky and awkward. With iTunes offered for free, it's a great hook for anyone to try it out, and reinforce the quality of products that Apple has become known for.

iPod Issues
The iPod is not without its faults, but Apple's Support will make you forget that. With an iPod you get one year worth of support. If something goes wrong, Apple Support is there to fix the iPod or replace it with relatively minimal effort.

Four months after buying one of the 3rd generation iPods on their release date (May 4, 2004) my unit started to restart itself and heat up a lot. Eventually it required manual restarts until it finally gave out and stopped making it through any restart at all. After trying a few tricks from the Apple Support web site I reached the end of my troubleshooting talents. So I called Apple Support, tried a few things over the phone, and they decided my iPod needed service.

Within a day, a shipping package came for me to put the iPod in a send it back out. Three days later a new iPod came, and it has worked without fail ever since.

Other major issues involve battery failure. The iPod battery isn't user replaceable and requires sending the unit out for the fix. The battery is similar to that of laptop computer, so life expectancy should be about the same: 1.5-2.5 years before the battery holds little or no charge.

Of course, some of iPods have had battery failures earlier which can be covered under the 1 year warranty, but others just outside of 1 year initially had a hard time with Apple's original "just buy a new iPod" stance. Now Apple offers a $100 battery replacement package that gets the job done. While it's a bit pricey ($65 would be more reasonable), what the iPod offers is worth every penny to get fixed. Hopefully, Apple has ironed out the battery issues and the consumer expectancy of a 2-year battery life-span will hold true.

MP4 Detractor
There are those number crunchers and complete audio snobs out there who still claim MP4 is not of audiophile quality. All I've gotta say to those is that they're listening with their brains and not their ears. Blind sound tests performed on reference level home audio systems that HTadvice.com has conducted have shown that even ardent audiophiles can be fooled by being asked to indicate whether an MP4 of AIF was being played.

Alas, for those of utter snobbery that will not actually listen with their ears, Apple offers the Apple Lossless encoder with iTunes 4.5. The Apple Lossless Encoder brings the original AIF file size down by 50% while retaining supposedly better sound quality. The lossless encoder makes songs that take up about 4-5 times more room than MP4 formatted songs. Leaving an iPod that can hold 3000 MP4s able to only hold 725 lossless encoded songs, a stark difference. MP4s convenient size and sound quality are still quite awesome for the rest of us who actually live in reality. In short, listen to your ears, not to what the tech specs say. I'm an audiophile and my music collection is staying MP4.

The iPod Changes Everything
The iPod simply changes how one listens to music and how easily your entire music collection is available. It's small enough to take with you everywhere and effortlessly integrates into your life. It's hard to imagine life without one after being exposed to the total iPod offering. Having felt the revolution I thought my wife should be able to do the same. She got her iPod just 3 weeks ago, and has had the same reaction that I had after actually "living" with an iPod. It's just cool.

A Look Back
Looking back at the HTadvice.com initial review of the MP4 format which oddly enough was written a week before iTunes launched with MP4 (which required a small rewrite to include it in the review) the initial reaction back than still holds true today - iTunes and the Apple Music Store are simply awesome. The iPod's success shows that everybody else thought so too.

Related Artices:
June 2003: Life With iPod

May 2003: MP4 Is Music To The Ears