Nate Lanxon
Nate Lanxon is CNET UK's Senior Editor of News and Features, and covers every aspect of technology for Crave. He also enjoys popular-science books, obscure Japanese animation and plays 'technical metal' on the drums, whatever that is.
Wednesday 2 January 2008, 2:16pm
Apple needs 'Save For Later' feature in iTunes Store
Apple should implement a 'Save For Later' feature in the iTunes Store that functions like the one in Google Reader.
I'm currently enjoying the final few hours of my Christmas and New Year break. After ordering several CDs from Amazon, I browsed iTunes for two or three songs I've discovered over 2007's eggnog season. Now I don't usually use the iTunes Store. But when my preferred download store for ad hoc downloads fails to satisfy my needs, I'm left with few options.
The problem is that I'm not on my home computer and I don't want to buy these songs until I'm home. In Google Reader -- the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle of RSS readers -- when I spot something I want to read later, I click the little yellow star and it'll be saved for future reading. It's a simple technology: a small, scintillating sun sitting on our screen rarely fails to grab our attention. So why in the name of all that's sacred hasn't iTunes got such a feature?
No, really. The store's got over six million tracks on offer. How in Jobs' name am I supposed to remember what random song I discovered while I was high on mulled wine? What, write it down? Email myself? Buy it here and put the file on the memory sticks I have loads of? Maybe you've been using your new Christmas crack pipe a little too much -- I want Ajax stars, dammit! This is 2008.
When flash memory is as cheap as it is, I shouldn't need to memorise anything more than my address and where to buy new underpants. Please, give me 'memory stars' in the iTunes Store.
Comments on this post
Nate, You should do what I do, activate the shopping cart in preferences and select all the songs you like from any computer thats logged in with your itunes account and you should be able to buy it later from any computer.
Posted by Imran on Wed 2 January, 2008 4:44 PM
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damn he beat me too it :)
Posted by Andy on Thu 3 January, 2008 10:15 PM
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