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07 May 2006
Enclosures for any MicroContent
The iTunes MusicStore is now also used to distribute PDF-files. I assume these PDF's are enclosures in RSS-feeds. The advantage for Apple is that they can use the whole service structure of the MusicStore for payments and customer management. And this can be extended to any content type, think also of selling applications, images (think pr0n) or eBooks. Or maybe any other type of MicroContent as well. Maybe the selling of recipes, reviews, cartoons, etc is also worthwhile if you use micropayments. In principle it is all possible. I am however not happy that they use iTunes for this. I see iTunes mainly for time-based MicroContent, such as audio and video. However PDF's are something different. And iTunes is not a generic RSS-reader either. If they start selling or distributing other MicroContent types, they should create an iMicroContent with an integreated MicroStore, which can be used for distributing and selling other types of MicroContent. Anyway, this is an interesting step of Apple. Curious at what comes next.[Inspiration Steve Rubel]