iTunes WiFi Music Store Launches

While we did inform you about its announcement earlier this month and filled you in on pretty much all of the important details concerning its functions and whatnot, we thought you?d like to know that the iTunes WiFi Music Store has officially gone live. It is accessible via both the iPhone and the iPod touch.

Apple certainly isn?t bringing to the fore something that other businesses in the tech sphere haven?t done themselves. The iTunes WiFi Music Store is hardly the first mobile download shop to debut. Others have been around for quite some time, in fact. Yet, it?s worth noting that Apple?s new offering is clearly the best to date. For that reason alone, it deserves a special mention.

Just to brush up on what the iTunes WiFi Music Store allows you to do. First, Apple?s been smart about restricting use of the mobile portal to hotspots working the 802.11 protocol. As the iPhone is only equipped with an EDGE-friendly chipset, not one compatible with high-speed HSDPA or EV-DO networks in the US, and the iPod touch has got nothing but a WiFi antenna, it makes absolute sense that Apple bring the WiFi Music Store to consumers only as advertised: as a WiFi Music Store. Besides, if you?re downloading quite a bit of data, you?ll likely want to use the fastest possible Internet connection anyway. Pulling a full album worth of bits off a Web server without a solid, super speedy bridge can?t be a pleasurable experience, even with 3G at hand. And Apple?s nothing if not adamant about giving its customers wonderful, feel-good experiences.

So as long as you?ve got your device linked up to a hotspot, you?ll be good to go, and your only limit as to how much you sample, purchase and ultimately download is how much free space you have to hold all that media. Oh, and by the way, you?re not going to find television shows and movies and things available for download directly to your mobile handset, at least not yet. Apple?s sticking with audio-only for now. One step at a time, people.

Want to take the iTunes WiFi Store for a test drive? Download the requisite software update(s) to your Mac or PC, pair your iPhone or iPod touch to the computer, and give it a go.

Note: Do keep in mind there have been quite a few bad bits of news floating around the blogosphere about Apple?s insistence that iPhones be locked and loaded with the AT&T SIM cards provided with the devices for the newest updates to be successfully installed. If you?re the proud owner of an unlocked iPhone, it?s just about 100% certain that you?ll need to revert your handset back to its original state before plugging in that USB connection. If you don?t, bad things can and most likely will happen that you won?t enjoy very much at all. And Apple cares about your enjoyment, they do. So be good and do as Papa Jobs says.