Microsoft Woes

[stickmaker]

I am about ready to go to Seattle and kick MS' managers in their corporate assets.

I wanted to take a music file to work on CD. I copied the file to CD, everything fine. But then I couldn't get the disk to eject. I tried pushing the button. I tried right-clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer and selecting Eject. I re-opened and re-closed every Application even remotely connected with the task. Nothing. I finally shut all applications and rebooted. Then the CD drive would open. By this time I'm already late for work.

On my work machine I check to make sure the file really is there. Yep. I try to play it. WinMP doesn't recognize the file format (M4P). Microsoft's online help can't find anything on the file format; never heard of it, sorry.

So not only does Windows make me late getting back from lunch, when I finally do get to work I have this piece of music which is perfectly playable, but Windows refuses to even admit it exists.

Guess I'll have to wait until I get back home this afternoon and try to convert it. (I'm not allowed to install software on my work machine.)



Stickmaker

Comments

[annathepiper]

Just by Googling around, I see that m4p is in fact an Apple format. It is in fact a protected format that's propietary to iTunes. (It's the format that iTunes downloads its paid music in--I've got the same format on the albums I downloaded from iTunes myself.)

So if you want to bitch about Microsoft not being able to play it, bitch at Apple first. It's their format, not Microsoft's.

(And are you really surprised that Microsoft isn't going to be playing music in the format of their biggest rival?)

If you want to convert it to something that Windows Media Player can talk to, the solution is easy. Burn the tracks to a CD out of iTunes, then re-rip them into Windows Media Player.

[solarbird]

Specifically, burn it as a music CD for use in ordinary CD players, not just copying the file.

Stupid Microsoft Tricks

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn't blaming the format problem on MS (well, not directly :-). It was just an added aggravation heightening (or lowering) my mood.

And, yeah, I figured out I should have burned a CD instead of copying a file, all on my own, after I discovered the problem.



Stickmaker

Re: Stupid Microsoft Tricks

[annathepiper]

Gotcha. Just as a general FYI, the .m4p format is the "protected" version of .m4a, which is the AAC format on Windows. (Why Windows gets .m4a as a suffix when that same format over on a Mac is .aac, I couldn't tell you.) The "protected" bit is because you've downloaded those files off a paid music store.

The new MSN music store does the same thing, I've discovered, with a "protected" version of the Microsoft format .wma. I downloaded a few free songs off the MSN store, and I can't load those into iTunes. So this thing works both ways.