Briefly: MS desktop search, iPod giveaway, ...

It doesn't matter how much Walter Mossberg prefers the iTunes scheme over subscription schemes. Overwhelming majority in the world, especially those in developing countries with much less average income, prefer subscription schemes because a flat rate buys them unlimited numbers of music. With the current iTunes scheme those people are at complete loss because they couldn't afford to buy all the songs they want even at $.99/song. Here we are talking about thousands of songs, not just a few albums.

Apple needs to change their music store concept to combat harsh competition from subscription-based services, or it will be just a glory of the past.

99% of the digital music is either from CD's or P2P networks and it will stay in de plus 90's for a long long time. People in the developing countries generally don't even have the money for iPods or to pay for music. De music they do buy is very local en very unlike what is offered by iTunes or others at this moment. U also need a robust internet connection and new PC's to justify a Subscription system.

Subscription-based services are nice at 5$/month but this won't hold, there losing money just offering it. At the moment the service is also not simple enough, the mix in the music owned is confusing the user. There also hooked to the service, if someone wants to move to a competitor they have to re-download and reorganize all there stuff.

i'm sure Apple will offer a subscription-based service if necessary and i'm sure it will have the best user experience. Until then, keep limewire running :)

And a question, can one use the subscription-based music professionally like in a cafeteria or for DJ's?

Try re-reading your post to see where you made some mistakes. I'll help you out. "Overwhelming majority in the world, especially those in developing countries with much less average income, prefer subscription schemes..." And who the heck told you that? Show me the study. Sure they prefer chaper alternatives, but what proof is there that they are subscribing to music? And that they are doing so more than buying them?

"a flat rate buys them unlimited numbers of music." A flat rate buys you nothing. It RENTS you music.

"Apple needs to change their music store concept to combat harsh competition from subscription-based services." What harsh competition? Where is it?

Dude, this is not a finatical defense of Apple on my part. But if you are going to argue for or against something, it's important to get your facts straight. Or at least making it known that it's just your opinion and not try to pass it off as fact.

The developing world is hardly the target market for online music regardless of distribution method (subscription or purchasing). Not only is the service cost prohibative--$9.99 per month or .99 per song is well beyond the means of most of the world's population--, the hardware way to expensive, and internet services sketchy but there's also licensing issues. The music industry would never allow their property to be licensed in parts of the world where potential profits are in question and the potential for piracy huge. If industry can't agree on licensing in Australia you think they're ready to flip the switch in China?

"Microsoft this week made public its answer to Mac OS X Tiger's Spotlight desktop search tool..."

Another flamebair article by Macnn editors. People were into search before Spotlight was announced, much less Tiger being shipped.

Microsoft bought Lookout in June of 2004 and it has been in public (beta) since then.

Not everything revolves around Apple.

I'm glad everything doesn't revolve around Apple. Then we'd have the people that actually like windows whining things like 'the can't be the cheapest so they have to be the best' like some daily mantra.

Competition is good, being the best and inexpensive to boot w/o crashing is one of Apple's strong points.

Apple had the whole metadata/filesystem/search thing mapped out before 10 beta was released. Who cares what M$ bought:? That's one of the biggest problems they have. If you design the Filesystem and think about data access at the same time then you design your own 'desktop search' that works better than anything else. If you can't innovate you buy someone elses limitted search tool and you just keep adding on things to make your os look like it works better.

In the end longhorn becomes a 15 year old car with an aftermarket stereo that breaks its phone and clock, a new digital am/pm only clock velcroed to the dash, cheap seat covers, clip on mirrors w/o defrosting, and four different colored replacement body panels from all the times it crashed.

I'll take the shiny new metal ones.

Here's come Mr. Apple-never-copies-anything-from-anyone. Next you will have Steve jobs inventing automobile, sliced bread, and fire,

Fact is a number of ccompanies: Microsoft (Lookout), Google, Yahoo! (Copernic), and QuickSilver all have excellent products out and working way before Apple. Spotlight is a good, but it certainly was not the first and not necessarily the best.