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Apple has missed iTunes Match launch date

by Steven Sande Nov 1st 2011 at 1:30PM

Did you notice this morning that it was November 1st? Did you also notice that iTunes Match isn't working yet? Yep, Apple missed a deadline date, having "promised" that the new iTunes service would be available "by the end of October." That date was set at the October 4, 2011 "Let's Talk iPhone" event by Apple's Senior VP of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue.

iTunes Match is a US$24.99 annual feature that scans your iTunes library for titles, matches them with copies in the cloud, and then offers you the best possible recording to replace whatever copy you may currently have in iTunes. It acts as kind of an "online music locker" to store high-quality renditions of any music you may currently own.

The feature has been in wide use by developers, who were asked last week to make sure that they turned off iTunes Match on their various devices before October 27th as the cloud data was going to be wiped. In addition, the beta version of iTunes 10.5.1 that contained iTunes Match expired yesterday, which was a bit of a shock to some developers who weren't happy about having to revert to an earlier version of iTunes.

The service appears to be close to launch, as retail staff have been instructed in how to use iTunes Match, but they definitely missed the month of October as a deadline. As one commenter at The Loop noted, "Did they say what year?" Let's hope we don't have to wait that long for iTunes Match to finally make it to our devices.



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Did you notice this morning that it was November 1st? Did you also notice that iTunes Match isn't working yet?
 

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gooniebird

I'm very much looking forward to this service and was wondering myself why it wasn't activated on time. However, I just finished ripping the last of my CDs about 10 minutes ago, and would rather have a robust, working service than something that is unstable and buggy.

Especially if something went wrong and I'd have to spend another 10 days ripping CDs. :)

November 02 2011 at 9:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
darbronnoco420

Have you used Siri around 5-6pm.... I can hardly connect. I think their servers are getting hammered during the rush hours. I have had problems with iCloud being slow as hell too. Now Imagion adding on uploading of millions of songs (besides the ones it identifies) and we have a big mess coming. I would imagion they are scaling since they got hit a bit harder than they havd originally planned. I still want to know how itunes match will work after I cancel the service. What happens to my music? Will all the music that I ripped no longer work? That and for crying out loud allow up to combine apple id's. I'm tired of having a bunch of different accounts.

November 02 2011 at 11:27 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin

I've been using it in beta, and I'm looking forward to the finished product. Some aspects of the beta have been less than smooth, so I'd hope they iron those things out before releasing it as a product.

November 01 2011 at 11:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ben93

Probably too busy would be my bet... http://goo.gl/qloeq

November 01 2011 at 7:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
crankcaller

I'm confused to what this will do on launch.
Does it let you download the files to your mac once they are matched?
In the way iTunes tells you about stuff you can download,
or does it just allow you to stream them?

November 01 2011 at 4:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to crankcaller's comment
tatonka8181

The way Apple describes it, is that you will be able to download the file .. imagine having your entire itunes library available all the time. You select a song and it will "instantly" start playing but will be downloaded in the background. The next time you want to listen to the song, it is already available directly on your machine.
This of course is mostly interesting on secondary computers or mobile devices where you don't have the original library available anyways.

T.
T.

November 01 2011 at 5:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alexius

This was a really snarky post, to be honest. In light of recent circumstances with the loss of Steve Jobs, I don't see how you can be this tightly wounded over one deadline. How did this post manage to get put up?

November 01 2011 at 4:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Alexius's comment
tatonka8181

Not to be disrespectful .. but playing the Steve-is-dead card is really going overboard. As if Steve had have anything to do with the iTunes Match development team. He has been involved in the grand strategy, not leading the dev team, driving them to meet deadlines, nor did the employees lay awake at night mourning. Come on.

Not that I believe it is a big deal missing the deadline (disabling the dev accounts seems a bit odd though).

I actually liked the post, not really that critical .. mostly pointing out the obvious.

T.

November 01 2011 at 5:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jojjjj222

I think Steve was working on it

November 01 2011 at 3:56 PM Report abuse -2 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to jojjjj222's comment
Erik Rogers

No, I'm fairly sure he was 110% absorbed in the iPhone 5 + Apple HDTV concept.

November 01 2011 at 4:22 PM Report abuse -2 rate up rate down Reply
Joseph Finn

Maybe they're concentrating more on the issue with songs and podcasts supposedly transferring to iPhones and iPods but being grayed out and unplayable since iOS 5 came in.

November 01 2011 at 3:55 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
Robert Marrero

As long as they don't start using Valve time! :)

November 01 2011 at 3:45 PM Report abuse +3 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Robert Marrero's comment
Erik Rogers

Or Blizzard time...

November 01 2011 at 4:22 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
Aaron Swindell III

Did you notice that Apple lost a very valuable leader in October? And did you notice that they took time to grieve their loss? I think we can forgive them "missing" this deadline in light of these circumstances.

November 01 2011 at 2:53 PM Report abuse +3 rate up rate down Reply
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