Apple, Late To The Game, Makes The Wait Worthwhile

For quite some time now, many (though not too many; let’s not get ahead of ourselves here) wireless phone-wielding peoples around the world have been experiencing mobile music downloads. Most use carrier-supplied Web portals formatted for their supplies of various digital audio-friendly devices to perform these over-the-air transactions. Some, of course, do this job terribly. Others are okay at it. And some actually pull the process off fairly well.

Just not well enough, right?

Yesterday, though, things changed – for the better. Apple, as it seems to do time and time again, brought reason, simplicity, and class to an issue that, like many others, has thus far been addressed only half-assed by veterans (both big and small) of a particular market. This time, it’s the mobile space that’s in its crosshairs.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced Wednesday to his Moscone West audience (half employed by Apple, half uberfans of the company masquerading as journalists) that after many months of quite secretive work, his company will soon deliver a mobile solution that a great number of music fans will actually enjoy interacting with given the limitations of a portable, handheld, pocketable platform.

Yes, the iTunes Music Store, in all its 6-million-plus-track glory, will finally be made available to those who wish to purchase and download music, track by track, album by album, without having to head home or lay open a laptop to do so. No hidden service fees, no premium for the convenience. And, hey, what’d’ya know, effortless reverse-syncing with one’s main music library when the day’s done.

This news at once makes you sigh both relief and frustration. Relief that someone’s finally gone ahead and made something a whole lot of people have been wanting for a long time. Frustration over the fact that, despite having had several years to develop such a well-made piece of software, no other vendor has managed to pull off such feat. This leads one to suspect either 1) Apple’s just got a knack for putting together the most fantastic, consumer friendly stuff to date, or 2) everyone else in the market is just way too rich and frickin’ lazy to care much about the issue. Which do you think it is? Option two? I agree.

If this development brought about by Cupertino’s finest doesn’t make you think iTunes worthy of the commendation it’s already received throughout its years in the public, I dare say you’re simply not thinking straight. It’s clearly superior to anything that’s come before, and because Apple has managed to assemble this gem amidst much bigger competition (as far as monsters of the mobile realm go), I think it’s safe to claim its enemies are bound to get a whole lot angrier real soon. Which is fine. They’re currently the collective with egg on their faces. They’re the one’s that need to catch up. As long as Apple continues to do what it does, and continue to do it well, I see no reason to think Apple won’t achieve its goals in the mobile sphere. And, yes, by that I mean carving out its own very profitable, very influential slice of the entire market.

Overall, the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is a brilliant release, one that’s going to bring the company many, many more adoring fans. As objectively and unbiased as I can say so, the result of Apple’s newest piece of work is plain as day. Apple, as it does on the desktop, is now slated to offer the best mobile music download experience of anyone on the market today. The best.