Microsoft Is Becoming Increasingly Desperate For Apple To Make iTunes For Windows 8

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windows8itunes

There’s no denying that iTunes for Windows is one of the most important projects Apple has ever done. It allowed Apple to sell iPods, then iPhones, and then iPads (as well as billions of dollars worth of movies, books and music) to owners of Windows PCs at a time when the iOS ecosystem was much more tethered to the desktop than it is today.

But iTunes on Windows isn’t quite as important as it used to be, especially now that the iPad is king and Windows 8 is here, which has cratered PC sales thanks to the general confusion around its new “Metro” UI.

Any surprise, then, that Microsoft’s having a hard time convincing Apple to update iTunes for Windows 8?

iTunes, of course, already technically works on Windows 8, but not in Windows RT, the ARM flavor of Microsoft’s latest operating system that runs on tablets like the Microsoft Surface. If you have Windows 8 on a regular machine, iTunes will work in Windows 8 desktop mode… but it’s a sub-optimal experience, and brings you screeching-and-crashing out of Windows 8’s much-ballyhooed modern Metro UI.

Yet Apple is seemingly making no steps to sizably update Windows 8, prompting Microsoft CFO Tami Reller to openly complain:

You shouldn’t expect an iTunes app on Windows 8 any time soon. iTunes is in high demand. The welcome mat has been laid out. It’s not for lack of trying.

“Not for lack of trying.” I’m sure: iTunes is apparently one of the most searched for apps in the Windows 8 store… where it can’t be found.

It’s not surprising. Mac sales are about the only PC sales these days that aren’t completely declining. Why waste time on the massive undertaking of creating a Metro iTunes app, or an ARM-based iTunes, when Apple can just ignore Windows 8 entirely in favor of the Mac? God knows that’s what PC users as a whole are doing these days.

Source: The Verge

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