Re: Amazon MP3 Store is pretty damn good, but of course there's _always_ a catch :-(

On Sep 27, 9:46 am, Tom Harrington <t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article <1i53t0y.zhi8snu51aapN%jami...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jami...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jamie Kahn Genet) wrote:



Tom Harrington <t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1i534zn.51dl2oanqm4qN%jami...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jami...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jamie Kahn Genet) wrote:

Amazon MP3 store:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163856011/ref=topnav_stor
etab_dm_hp_nav_lk/105-2523711-3309222>

To buy an album you need their special software which only runs on
Winblows or MacOS 10.4. Well isn't that just _dandy_ given I still use
MacOS 10.3 on my Macs and Linux on my PCs. WTF do they require this?
There is NO good reason :-(

I bet they did it just to piss you off. Surely there's no chance of
there being some rational explanation. In fact, they really should be
supporting 10.0, right?

Please give a concrete technical reason for any special software being
needed to download albums of LAME encoded MP3s from a website, beyond a
reasonably modern web browser. Or are you intentionally missing the
point?

I didn't say there was a concrete technical reason, I just appreciate
that there may well be one, and that statements like "there is NO good
reason" assume way too much. Every major revision of Mac OS X adds new
features for developers to take advantage of, so there are frequently
good technical reasons to choose a specific version of Mac OS X as the
baseline requirement. These are of course weighed against the likely
cost in sales due to not supporting earlier versions.

As it turns out, a cursory examination of the Amazon doanload app
reveals that it makes heavy use of the Boost C++ library
(<http://www.boost.org/>). This is a very good way for Amazon to have
most of the program's code be identical across Mac OS X, Windows, and
their planned Linux version. It also only supports Mac OS X 10.4+.

They could do it another way, but they have to consider whether there
are enough likely customers running Mac OS X 10.3 or less to justify
designing their application around those customers' needs.

In making that decision, they have an extremely detailed picture of the
likely result. They can tell what version of Mac OS X you're using by
the version of Safari you use when connecting to their site. So they
know _exactly_ what percentage of their customer base is using 10.4+ as
opposed to earlier versions. As a result the decision of whether to
support 10.3 is not arbitrary or capricious or lazy but is much more
likely to be a carefully considered decision taking into account both
their technical and business situation.

--
Tom "Tom" Harrington
MondoMouse makes your mouse mightier
Seehttp://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse/

i think that the argument "No Good Reason" is entirely accurate:
Why? would Amazon ( et al to infinity ) chose to methodically exclude
any % of the computer using community when, it would seem, that they
are ostensibly trying to sell some product, specifically MP3
files...???
The Music itself is just 1's and 0's.
What other factors come into play?
Security protocols for protecting Copyrights...???
How would that factor into the downloading...???
The only, The Only, THE ONLY reasonable reason why they are doing
this, is that they are in cahoots ( a vast world wide conspiracy )
with the computer manufactures and MS to sell more, newer computers
and the endless upgrades of software.
It's a horrible racket, and it's not 'Good Bznz', it's hurting you,
and your children, and your grandchildren for thousands of years to
come...!!!
You can't just destroy the environment a little bit to make a few
dollars, or destroy the economy a little bit, to keep the gross
national product growing...
We have to come to grips with Economic and Social Stasis, and start
building a Utopian Paradise that will look forward for more than 5
mintues into the future...!!!

.

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