As for the Mini-Store. When I saw it I thought “Crap, man…” then I turned it off. I’m rather heavily with Gareth on this… who cares? What are they going to do with the knowledge that I played “I Don’t Wanna Live Without Your Love” from Chicago 18 four times in the last 3 days?

Try to sell me Chicago MP3s?

God save us from that fate worse than death.

got me there, it actually does sound cool.

Maybe PowerBook is dead now…

How about the PowerBook Core?

Stop complaining and get used to it, get accustomed to change (especially those of you who are having a hard time understanding apple’s change towards intel). Most importantly, there will be a lot of change this year. so get ready.

However, I’ll agree from a personal standpoint that it’s annoying and ugly, and made me like itunes a bit less than I used to. And the fact that the ministore does collect this information without telling me makes me trust Apple a bit less.

So there are real consequences.

Fair point, but consider this:

Apple is well aware that there has been something of a reaction to this (amongst, at least, the blogosphere. Most others don’t care). Apple is also well aware that people now believe the problem has been solved, on account of this assertion.

It would, therefore, be incredibly bad PR if it were to be subsquently discovered that they – or a third party facilitated by them, i.e. Omniture – were in fact collecting data and making some use of it. They might point to the fact that they had made no official statement, but one could readily submit that they made no statement to the contrary when the news went round that they were not collecting data.

In any case, foolish as this inclusion rather was, the whole argument is rather academic anyway, as a simple View…Hide MiniStore solves your problem.

It strikes me that if privacy advocates spent less time pursuing matters quite so trivial, they might gain a little more credibility amongst the world at large. If I ran around here screaming bloody murder and saying that some big corporation was “collecting data on us”, people would grunt, say “Oh, so what’s new…”, and move on.

If you run ethereal, you know that iTunes sends a stream of your data not only to Apple but also to servers run by Omniture, which is — wait for it — a data collection service. This isn’t really seriously contested by anyone who’s looked at the TCP and HTTP packets.

What’s still up for debate is whether Omniture is able to uniquely identify you based on the data it receives from iTunes.

I personally don’t like it, like most targetted advertising. It’s not offering services, it’s trying to create a revenue source that doesn’t necessarily exist. trying to create a need and fulfill it all in on hit.

When I go to a gas station I am pressured to buy things from advertisments on the pump, in the store windows, on the store floor, walls, ceilings, and bathrooms. My home used to be a relatively safe place from advertisments.

How long until my computer wakes up from the screen saver and yells across the room to let me know that a new cd is available for purchase.

This is the kind of thing that starts off innocent in the guise of a company trying to convenience a client but I think its a much more sinister invasion of privacy that will only expand if given the chance.

I really, really don’t think this matters. There’s privacy concern and there’s paranoia. (Though I would like to see it turned off by default, just because most of the time it’s a waste of space, though I think occasionally it’d be really cool to have similar things suggested. But for those times, I could click the button.)

If I opened photoshop and saw a frickin google adsense my next move would be an attempt to blow up the world.

I’m sick of un-welcomed intrusions.

Also I would mention that if you go into user pref’s and disable itms hit ok then go back into pref’s and enable it. The itms banner ad will go away and you can access itms the way you used to be able to.

Apple is quickly earning itself a spot in hell if you ask me.

You’ll get used to it, it ain’t that bad. (Just wait for the PowerMac name change!) ;o)