Given how poorly iTunes 9 runs on my quad-core Win7 machine with gigs and gigs of ram, I'm not particularly excited by this news. Wake me up when they've completely rebuilt iTunes. The only reason I keep it around is for my iPhone - I've switched to Zune (of all things) as my music manager, and actually quite like most of how it organizes things.
On a less grumpy note, the $99 Apple TV they just launched is pretty smooth looking, the only thing I feel grumbly about regarding that is the absence of Hulu. But that's a topic for a different thread...
It's kind of amusing how bad iTunes is on Windows, all while Apple talks about how writing for a meta-platform produces lower quality software. It doesn't even look good, IMO, at least not compared to running natively on OSX.
Well, iTunes isn't really built for a cross-platform kit, it is primarily built for OSX with a compatibility layer for Windows where needed (I think)... at least the shortcomings only really show up under Windows, under OSX it's a big app but generally runs well (speaking for myself here).
But, my point is that you'd think a company that knows how much ported/meta-platform apps suck would try to avoid it by making iTunes for Windows (along with QuickTime and Safari) look and feel less like OSX apps wedged into Windows and more like "good Windows citizens".
Granted, iTunes for Windows is pretty old, and it's possible Apple's struggles with it contributed to the decision to ban 3rd party toolkits from iOS.
(Or Apple just doesn't give a shit about Windows and is annoyed they have to cater to it at all, which is why all their Windows software kinda sucks.)
I understand that iTunes runs much better on OSX, which is why your Macbook Pro doesn't have any performance issues. I'm sure it runs great on a quad-core i7 too, although if you're running Vista or Win7, it's still not caching nor preloading the album artwork, and if you scroll through the album art, it's going to redraw the artwork. That's admittedly a nitpick on my part, but it seems like a simple thing to do that would go a long way, sort of like how they set the LED to pulse at the same rate as human breathing or whatever.
Aside: It's interesting to watch the points on my original post fluctuate. I would be interested to hear what people voting it down have to say. I do HD video and multitrack audio editing on my computer, I promise you that it's a capable enough machine for a media librarian. And I really do think the AppleTV is a good deal at $99.
On a less grumpy note, the $99 Apple TV they just launched is pretty smooth looking, the only thing I feel grumbly about regarding that is the absence of Hulu. But that's a topic for a different thread...