iTunes Match

If you want the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It’s built right into the iTunes app on your Mac or PC and the Music app on your iOS devices. And it lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve imported from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.²

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it on any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

This I decided was a ‘must-have’ feature, so when I installed IOS5 and was prompted to set-up iCloud, I religiously upgraded to 50GB of storage for an additional £70 a year, thinking this would include iTunes Match.

I was misled.

iTunes Match was due to be rolled out by the end of October 2011 but Apple has missed this deadline. Oh and compare and contrast the US iCloud features site and the UK version. See what’s missing? Yes, that’s right: no iTunes Match.

Apple. Epic. Fail.

What you get for at least $500 – so £500 in the UK, then – will be a glorified ebook reader with the ability to look at photos or browse the web and send e-mail … provided you’re at a WiFi hotspot because it doesn’t ship to start with with any 3G connectivity (and won’t at that price either).

What’s worse is that, like an ebook reader, it’s not exactly pocket sized either.

Now if you’re in the market for an ebook reader that’s twice the price and that brings the option of web browsing where there’s a WiFi hotspot – and with no USB ports a 3G dongle is not an option – then you might want to consider it. For me, I’ll make do with a 3G phone for portability and the ability to look at photos, play music or films, and send e-mail and browse the Internet, or I’ll use a cheap netbook like the one I already have that does a similar job for half the price.

Thanks, but no thanks, Apple.

“Your account is set up and enables you to purchase and download immediately.”

And that’s precisely what she then did: buying a load of music files from Apple’s iTunes Store.

Now if there were to be any comeback about the purchases (for example, if the payment method was with a stolen credit card or similar), I don’t really want the shit hitting the fan here. So I changed the password on the Apple account just in case and have now gone looking to find a way to close the Apple ID but to no avail.

Changing the password required me to click a confirmation link sent by e-mail to the spurious e-mail address, so that made me wonder why, when setting up the Apple ID, did they not require a confirmation link to be clicked to confirm the e-mail was indeed theirs?

That’s a pretty basic concept: for example when users sign up to the vBulletin message boards I operate, they have to confirm their e-mail addresses before they can operate their account.

Why doesn’t Apple do this?

And why can’t you close an Apple ID/account?

I have e-mailed them via their web form to ask…