Apple's I-Tunes Versus Microsoft's Windows Media Player

It seems in this day and age that many people cannot even function without hearing some sort of music for a length of time. Music is as popular as ever, new bands are coming out daily, hits are being synthesized left and right, and car stereos are still blaring all over the roadways. But lets get a little more personal than the roadways and the music industry itself. Lets talk about the way in which you listen to your favorite bands, artists, and songs on a daily basis.

If you're reading this at home, chances are that you own a personal computer, whether it's a desktop, laptop, Mac, or whatever. How do you listen to your music? Many people whom have desktops use Windows Media Player, as it is the default player on the systems these days. While this is a good player, I believe there is something better than Microsoft's Windows Media Player, and guess what, it's also free.

You have probably heard of them by now. The player is called 'iTunes", and it is a very impressive music player as well. iTunes is absolutley free to download, however you can buy songs from your favorite artists right out of the iTunes Store.

When using iTunes you can, like Windows Media Player, play movies, music, and even watch television. It seems to me that iTunes makes it's a lot easier to navigate though. On Windows Media Player there are all of the minimizing and opening boxes leading into further detail about the song you're listening to. But Apple's iTunes places icons at the top left and makes everything a lot more simple.

Microsoft's Windows Media Player does have a higher point than iTunes. Windows Media Player is much easier to use when it comes to burning music onto discs, so you can travel with your music in your car. But not many people use cd's anymore. Instead, many people use iPods and other MP3 players that can hold multiple gigs of music, whereas a cd can only hold about 60-80 minutes tops. iTunes directly helps you with any problems you have with your iPod, giving you links to places such as "iPod Help" and "iPod Service and Support".

Lets get into looks now as well. Apple's iTunes is much more comfortable to the eye compared to Microsoft's Windows Media Player's color scheme, which has hardly changed in a long time. There are ways to change, but I am talking about the default colors. Apple's iTunes is nice and white and a light gray/blue. The counter at the top of Apple's iTunes looks much nicer too. As the song you're listening to progresses the timer on the left of the bar increases, telling you how far into the song you are. But then there is another counter on the right side of the bar, which tells you how much longer you have to listen to that specific song.

Transporting music to your iTunes player is easy as well. If you insert a CD, the iTunes picks it up and asks if you'd like to import it. If you move the music to another folder ever, iTunes tells you that it's not in the same spot basically and asks you to browse for it. If you put it somewhere, you most likely remember where you put it before. I suggest putting all of your songs into one folder on your desktop, and always save your songs there from now on.

It seems as of right now Apple is more "in tune" with what people like to use when it comes to their personal entertainment, especially pertaining to music. If you would like to download Apple's iTunes for free go to www.apple.com/itunes/, click Download, which is under the first tab that has an apple figure on it. After that it says "Download iTunes X Free" (X = the current version). Right now the version is up to 7.1.1. Simply follow the instructions from there and you'll have your new player in no time!

Questions/comments? E-mail me at chem1calburn@yahoo.com or simply message me via Associated Content.