iTunes typo causes widespread speculation
Sometimes the strangest things get blown out of proportion online. Take the Apple parody in GTA IV for an example of when I’ve done it, but this weekend MacNN and TUAW kind of lost their minds over a typo in iTunes.
See last week Apple celebrated the 5th anniversary of iTunes, and in the page in iTunes talking about it they claimed to have “10 Million songs” in the iTunes library. Later, that number was reduced to 6 million songs.
That’s the whole story.
Still these two articles have titles like “Apple backpedals on 10m iTunes song claim” and “4 million iTunes songs disappear”
Really? “4 million iTunes songs disappear”?
We bloggers need to calm down and drink a little less coffee, me thinks.
Comments
Phil
May 5th, 2008 at 8:49 am
well making a 10 out of a 6 is not exactly what i’d call a typo. hitting the 5 or 7 instead of the 6, or typing 66, 56, 65, 57, whatever – you get the idea. that’s a typo, something you accidentally spelled wrong. but to make a 10 out of a 6 by mistake – i’d like to see how that happens. so i think it’s safe to say that whoever put the 10 in the text actually meant to do so.
i can still agree with you on your actual point – there’s no big deal to this. someone made a mistake and it was corrected. that happens; maybe he was misinformed, maybe he was exaggerating. who knows? but hey, anything can be made big if you’re a blogger and out for site hits.
Michael
May 5th, 2008 at 9:33 am
@Phil
Yeah, I was thinking that maybe 10 million is the world-wide number of songs – since there are a great number of songs that only appear in certain countries, and whoever typed it in was actually typing in the entire world-wide library, instead of the regional amounts – that could be completely wrong, though – who knows?
Mike Peter Reed
May 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Perhaps just a rounding error ….
Constable Odo
May 5th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
OK. How about calling it an editing mistake. I doubt if the larger number was intentional. I see price mistakes in newspapers on occasion and retractions or corrections are usually made. I don’t see how the iTunes number of songs mistake should be such a big deal. Apple is doing very well overall and this minor bump will disappear in a week unless constantly fueled by those parties jealous of Apple’s success.
Bryan
May 5th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Everybody wants to knock the big dog off the porch…Screw ‘em.
Derek Hagen
May 5th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Not less coffee. Less egocentrism, less dishonest trolling for hits, less lying for attention, less nihilism, less bullshit.
Michael
May 5th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
@Derek
Tell us what you really think!
Bryan Thomas
May 5th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
That isn’t a big deal… Chill out TUAW and MacNN its nothing to to crazy about.
Hey there’s another Bryan!
Michael
May 5th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
@Bryan Thomas
You guy’s haven’t noticed each other before? You’re both regulars. For a while I wondered if you just didn’t post your last name sometimes.
krye
May 6th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Do you think the guys working on the iTunes code are the guys counting the songs? No. This is a classic example of one department not communicating with the other. And when they do, it’s the wrong information. Anyone who has a job should know that this happens everyday.