This year's October looks to be a big month for Apple: Mac OS X 10.3 "Jaguar" is set to be released on October 24th. And now, there's a media event slated for October 16th, where iTunes for Windows is expected to be released - music store and all.
It will be interesting to see how the iTunes Music Store fares once it hits the Windows platform. Apple still has pretty strong brand recognition in this space, despite new competition on the Windows platform from MusicMatch (a very iTunes Music Store like implementation), BuyMusic.com (of whom little has been heard about since their initial arrival on the scene), the new "legit" Napster, and the already-somewhat-established Rhapsody service from listen.com.
Of those services (none of which are available for Macs), Napster seems to be the most major threat, just in terms of brand strength alone. But since the old Napster has been gone for such a long time, and this new Napster is a completely different service, will its old audience flock back to it and stay? I imagine not. Much of Napster's old audience have moved on to other illegal services and I doubt they'll be likely to switch back to an old name just because it's legitimate now. What about those who have warmed up, or are warming up, to digital music purchases? I don't know if Napster is a strong enough name any more for many of those individuals. But it certainly is getting a lot of press buzz, primarily from its name recognition. On the other hand, iTunes for Windows looks like it will beat it to market by a couple of weeks (if the software and service are available on the day of the Apple event).
Equally interesting will be how iTunes itself fares on the Windows platform. On the Mac, it's an excellent MP3 player. When Apple first announced it, my friends and I went "so what? it's just another MP3 player." Now I can't imagine my life without it. iTunes' playlist/file management is so fluid. Prior to it, I never bothered with playlists in other applications. I'd just drag files in that I wanted to listen to. I found it annoying to have to save playlists as files and then have to track those files down. iTunes made all of that transparent. It has been the only serious MP3 Jukebox software on the Mac platform. Its interface, which has stayed fairly consistent from the first release, has become one of the new standards of measure for Apple's other products. Almost every other non professional Apple program these days compares itself to iTunes somewhere in its marketing speak, and its influences can even be seen in the new Panther Finder. The "quick-search" box, which has started showing up in other applications, is going to be a standard Widget in Panther, along with a text indexing service so that third party applications can all have this "quick search" functionality which first manifested itself in iTunes - and which makes it very easy (and fast) to find "Keep On the Sunny Side" out of a library of 2,343 songs.
Also of interest - the smaller labels are showing up on iTunes music store! Matador! Which means there are finally some Bardo Pond and Pizzicato Five albums available for those browsing through. Nice. And finally - they have some White Stripes too.