Okay, I have been meaning to go on this rant for quite a few days now ever since Steve Jobs announced a new range of iPods at ”The Beat Goes On” special event (see Engadget’s coverage).  One of the new features supposedly allows you to see what is playing in Starbucks while you are there, and allows you to buy those tracks through iTunes. Okay, so what?! Really I thought Apple is usually so much better lately at generating exciting buzz. The reason I think this is stupid is because how many people do you know who actually care what Starbucks happens to be playing? I don’t know about you, but some Starbucks stores here in New York City can be so busy that you can hardly hear anything anyway, let alone care what is playing.

I thought that the whole point about going digital and something that Apple has embraced and pioneered so well with iPods was that everyone can take THEIR favorite songs to go, listen to them anyhow, anywhere. That means you walk into Starbucks with your iPod on and actually listening to your own music, thank you very much. How many people would turn it off and say “hey, I wonder what is Starbucks playing right now, it might be so much cooler than what I’ve got on my own iPod.” I don’t know if it’s just because Apple wanted to be associated with Starbucks all of a sudden, or what is going through their head, this isn’t worth marketing as a plus in my opinion, very year 2000. Don’t get me wrong, though not a big Apple user at all I greatly admire their product line and I think many many companies (including my own) can learn a thing or two from it. But that doesn’t mean Apple can’t do things even better, in fact people think it’s so good that’s why it hurts so much when they don’t finish the job.  Which brings me to my next point…

And Why Not Internet Radio?

Okay here is where my bias of running Internet Radio for a living takes over to bring Apple to task.  Think about it: Apple releases iPods which can use WiFi and detect what song is playing allowing you to buy them - that means the technology is already in those iPods (and iPhones actually) to do the very same thing for Internet Radio. The iTunes player has a Radio section with many web radio stations listed - now wouldn’t it be that much cooler if you could listen to a radio station in Starbucks, or anywhere, which shows you what is playing and offers to let you buy it over iTunes. True, not everything will be available on iTunes, but the software can easily tell you when it is. All the metadata is there already, iTunes player on the desktop shows you what is playing, they know the track, they can use exactly the same technology as this Starbucks music nonsense. On top of that, it doesn’t even have to be just the Radio section, it could be any stream you choose to open yourself.

And Speaking of iTunes Radio - is anyone home?

Last but not least, this shows a continuous pattern on behalf of Apple to shun its Radio section on multiple levels. Here is what is wrong with their service, and I know this first hand as I have many channels listed there.

• The submissions process is hand edited, and can be quite biased. This means there’s a lot of good stuff in there, but a lot of good stuff missing from around the web. I think there’s barely one person working on that at Apple.
• iTunes supports AAC format for downloads and tracks, but DOES NOT support AAC streaming from Shoutcast or Icecast servers (don’t know if Darwin server even does that, who uses Darwin for Internet Radio anyway). Yes, imagine the emails I get from our listeners “hey, itunes works with AAC, why is it your streams aren’t working?” - sorry Johnny, Apple doesn’t care to fix AAC streaming.
• iTunes player does not yet support AAC-HE (aka AAC-Plus) which would allow huge cost savings for streaming to the masses. With that format you can get pretty much same quality of sound at half the bitrate.
• iPhone supports WiFi, but no access to streaming radio section.
• Now iPods support WiFi too, but no access to streaming radio (you get Starbucks soundtracks though, nice!).

To be fair and in Apple’s defense I can think of one semi-solid reason why they don’t want to have streaming on their units yet.  That reason is that streaming experience is subjective and while it works great for some, in a wifi scenerio a lot of people are bound to get hiccups. Apple might be afraid that rumor will spread that their units aren’t working right or aren’t reliable, when in reality it’s the streaming radio providers, or a bad WiFi connection that would be to blame. However, with that said I would think the average user online is already becoming aware of what lagging means. People watch poor quality videos on YouTube (even on phones), why not let the user figure the experience out on their own, don’t decide for them. Further, this doesn’t explain why Apple won’t add AAC streaming support to the iTunes player. The verdict simply is that Apple doesn’t seem to care about Internet Radio at all and some people friendly to insiders have confirmed this to me on a few occasions. Some day I hope it will happen, but it appears it might be years away. In the meantime I hope their new WiFi units iPhones and iPods work out nicely and encourage Apple to add streaming support.