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By Applelinks Senior Editor John H. Farr
MacCentral has just posted a brief rundown of an attempted Microsoft public-relations pre-emptive strike against iTunes for Windows. Unfortunately, they only touched the surface. Here's the original source, by the way: something called Micosoft PressPass [cough, snort].
You have to see this (wait, not yet!): Microsoft has taken the press release convention of inserting a fake quotation from an "excited" (always) executive and pushed it off the cliff. PressPass is really an extended version of this concept, utilizing a fake interview format wherein an entity named "PressPass" tosses fake easy-homer questions to a fake subject, in this case Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media Division. As a person, he's real enough, but the "answers" are as canned as what we just fed to our cat.
There's more, of course. The text on the page is absurdly large and reminds us of someone padding an essay assignment by boosting the font size. But that's not the real excitement. If you visit the page, and we hope you do, you'll find a modest-sized phohto of a smiling, neat-haired Dave Fester (no sideburns!) in a clean white shirt, below which is an invitation to click on the image for a "high-res version." (Oh, boy. They aren't kidding, either. If he had any pimples, he'd be dead.) This thing is a browser-busting 1335 x 1859 pixels, ladies and gentlemen. All we can think of is, the things those guys do for their pay.
Ah, but what does he (allegedly) say? And bear in mind this was posted the day before yesterday, just a few hours before Apple intro'd iTunes for Mac and Windows. According to Dave, iPod owners can't "access content from other services." Also, "users of iTunes are limited to music from Apple's Music Store." To our way of thinking, this is like saying "users of K-Mart are limited to products from K-Mart." Oh well.
Finally, there's this:
if you use Apple's music store along with iTunes, you don't have the ability of using the over 40 different Windows Media-compatible portable music devices.
By this time we're thinking, maybe these are his own words, because a copy editor might have salvaged some dignity here. There certainly isn't anything keeping an iPod owner and iTunes user from buying and using Windows Media-compatible devices and services, after all. But who needs over 40 different portable music devices anyway, when one or two will surely do? This is an ancient and sleazy rhetorical device, often employed instinctively by small children and senior White House officials of either party. Notice too how he (?) calls it "Apple's music store" throughout the piece, instead of iTunes -- anything to fence it off and drive a wedge.
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