The Mystery of the “iTunes Beta”

Real or not. I think not.
I stumbled across an odd link while viewing MadVille today. The headline read “iTunes for Windows Reaches Alpha (Screenshots)”

I’ve been a PC user for over 20 years now, however in the past six months I’ve grown to be a HUGE fan of Apple’s OS X. Especially iTunes. Apple’s version of a media player is by far the best and most thorough MP3 player i’ve ever seen. With the recent addition of iTunes Music Store, it’s gotten only better.

I’ve been ready for a PC version of iTunes since they announced it. Soon after a link on Fark.com popped up referencing a job offer on Monster.com for a developer for the program.

Of course, after viewing the link I clicked on it immediately, hungry for any future development of this program. What I found was an article on TopTechTips describing an author who claimed to have gotten an early Alpha leak of iTunes for Windows. The screenshots looked piss poor, and looked almost Photoshopped. So I started investigating further.

The article states that they were “able to obtain a copy of this alpha software for internal testing” and that “the software lacks many features currently available on the Macintosh version.” Okay, expected with an alpha version of a program. I was starting to believe the guy.

I read on in the forums to several users crying foul over the legitity of this program. The author was adamant about it though, even going so far as to pull out hex code and analyze it. However I finally reached a link a user posted in the comments referring to a software programmer by the name of MrAqua creating this for the Aqua Soft programmers group (they also make Y’s Dock, a mimic of OS X’s dock app.)

I followed the link to a forum posting from MrAqua himself including a link to an “aqua emulation concept.” By the way, this was posted in November of 2002.

I downloaded the program and ran it (there was no install). Much to my amusement, it was the very same program that ArtificialCheese had boasted was a real Apple leak. How can a leak of a program created by a PC user back in November be an early leak of an Alpha version for a project that was just officially announced a month ago, and has just recently hired developers for?

And the guy wonders why everyone is crying “FAKE!”

Cuz it’s fake.

Link: The Mystery of the “iTunes Beta”

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Bob Blanston said:

I can’t believe people like you. You pick and choose words to quote, and then try to make Brian look like an idiot. Even more, you yourself don’t pick the right words.

Brian himself says that he questions the validity of the application. He swore up and down only that the file was a real executable, and that he didn’t photoshop anything. He never promised it was a true leak from Apple.

And this article titled “The Mystery of the “iTunes Beta”"…this is just another example of you blatantly ignoring what Brian said. Brian said it might be an alpha. Are you retarded? Can you read?

Maybe you should pay attention to what you’re flaming before you flame it.

Commented on June 18th, 2003 at 9:56 pm.

Haggis said:

Maybe you should read closer yourself, Bob. I re-read the whole article, including any comments, and nowhere does it say that he doubts if it’s real. The only thing he argues is that A) He has it, and has installed it on his PC and B) that it is not Photoshopped. Never once does he question if it’s actually from Apple or just an experiment from a creative programmer.

He never DENIES the that it’s an “Alpha leak from Apple.” He repeats it several times throughout the article. See for yourself.

Commented on June 18th, 2003 at 10:18 pm.

Haggis said:

Okay, looks like Brian has found the same conclusion I came to and has followed up his article in the latest comment.

My objective in this article was not to make the guy look like a jerk. I appreciated how far he went to prove the validity of the program, but he just didn’t research far enough. I was excited about the prospect of getting an early version of iTunes for the PC, and was disappointed when I found it was false news.

It just goes to show you how something so small like this can blow up if the information is wrong. I’m just trying to help clear it up.

Commented on June 18th, 2003 at 10:36 pm.

CJ said:

Looks like you did a pretty good job of investigating. What got the other guy so fired up? Calling you retarded is not only childish, but also wrong considering your investigation proved true.

Commented on June 18th, 2003 at 11:45 pm.