Apple adds download later option to iTunes 11, iOS 6
Apple recently added a number of new download options for customers of its iTunes Store, including a way to save music and video content for later downloading.
iTunes customers selecting movies, TV episodes and Season Passes, and completed seasons will now get the option to download the content immediately or to download it in the future through the iTunes in the Cloud feature. The new option also applies to music box sets and other music content which could take more time to download than a single track or album.
When a large purchase is made, a pop-up window will offer a user the option between "Later" or "Download." If "Later" is selected, the content is moved to the Purchased section, allowing customers to download at their leisure.
Apple's documentation (via Macworld) on the feature says that it requires an iOS device running iOS 6 or later or a Mac or PC running iTunes 11.
The option is available for users in countries where iTunes in the Cloud has support. A full listing of those countries is available on Apple's site.
iTunes customers selecting movies, TV episodes and Season Passes, and completed seasons will now get the option to download the content immediately or to download it in the future through the iTunes in the Cloud feature. The new option also applies to music box sets and other music content which could take more time to download than a single track or album.
When a large purchase is made, a pop-up window will offer a user the option between "Later" or "Download." If "Later" is selected, the content is moved to the Purchased section, allowing customers to download at their leisure.
Apple's documentation (via Macworld) on the feature says that it requires an iOS device running iOS 6 or later or a Mac or PC running iTunes 11.
The option is available for users in countries where iTunes in the Cloud has support. A full listing of those countries is available on Apple's site.
Comments
A fine addition. I'm thinking it should have been there earlier, but it's interesting that I hadn't thought of it until after the fact…
Couldn't you always do that? If you wanted to re-download something or interrupt your download, it lets you. It seems like it is mostly the alert message that is new. What am I missing?
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Originally Posted by mstone
Couldn't you always do that? If you wanted to re-download something or interrupt your download, it lets you. It seems like it is mostly the alert message that is new. What am I missing?
But when you buy something free or on sale on your iPhone, for instance, you now don't have to go in, cancel the download or delete the download if you don't actually want it on the device.
Digital media providers should always allow you to re-download your media. The transmission costs are truly trivial for the companies that have big clouds. Companies that charge for the right to download more than once deserve condemnation (like the $9.95 fee Adobe used to charge for the right to download three times rather than once).
The media company doing the best job -- albeit across a limited range of product types -- is Steam, I think. You can put your games on an unlimited number of computers. You don't need a constant connection for most of them. You can delete your local content and re-download it whenever you want if you're upgrading or reallocating your disc space. Etc.
I think the problem has been that folks may want to shop for music and movies on their phone or pad, and make purchases, but prevent the download from beginning because they don't want to consume the bandwidth on their cellular plan. They want to wait until they're on a free data source (home or work network) and let the download happen there. Alternatively, it is possible that they're shopping for movies at work on lunch break, with the employer's blessing, but are prohibited from making large downloads at work to protect the institutional bandwidth. I'm sure there are other reasons, too. It's nice that Apple makes this an easier process now.
F*ck "download later," they need to fix the fact that when you buy stuff on AppleTV it doesn't download at all. If I buy a movie on the AppleTV, it stays in the cloud and doesn't show in my iTunes library at all (unless I have that "show cloud purchases" turned on, which just confuses everything). Even if you turn cloud purchases on in iTunes, you still have to right-click and do some other junk to even be able to download it, then you have to go back and turn cloud purchases off again.
The download/purchase experience is also completely different depending on what kind of device you are using to access the media.
- If I buy something on my phone, I can listen/watch it on my phone but I can't transfer it from that phone to another device.
- If I instead buy something on my computer and sync it to my phone, then I can transfer it to another device from the phone. WTF?
- If I buy a movie on my computer, it downloads into iTunes and can be synced anywhere but if I use AppleTV in the living room, it remains in the cloud.
- If I add something to my wish list on the AppleTV, it's a completely separate and different wish list from that in iTunes and neither one updates the other.
- There is no way of adding anything to the wish list at all, if you use the phone to purchase.
It's all a giant ugly miss-mash. Especially the AppleTV interface which looks like a dogs breakfast.
Seriously, even iTunes with it's super-ugly recent makeover, looks better and shows off my content better than the Apple TV GUI.
Apple TV has almost the same interface that the iPod had back in 2004.
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Originally Posted by Arlor
Digital media providers should always allow you to re-download your media.
Thank you for commenting on something that has absolutely nothing to do with this article. By the way, Apple does let you re-download your media.
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Originally Posted by Superbass
This is being done to remove barriers that impulse buyers have. Not enough space? On the road and don't have a good connection? Don't worry, we'll charge your credit card and wait until you've got space. Of course, once you've got enough space/fast enough connection maybe you won't want/need it anymore.
I like it! Good business sense.
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Originally Posted by BestKeptSecret
I like it! Good business sense.
Totally. There are tons of impulse buyers in the digital realm, as can be seen with services like Steam - their published statistics show something like 65% of games purchased have never been played -> every time there's a sale on, people just go nuts and buy tons of products they'll probably never use. They can wait to download as long as they want and have terabytes worth of "purchased data" just waiting for them whenever they get around to it. If they had to carry home the boxes, maybe they wouldn't do the same thing and if they had to download the games immediately they definitely wouldn't, but the digital realm helps them spend that money and feel good about saving a bundle on the games they'll never play. I'm sure the same happens when apps/tv show complete seasons/movie bundles go on sale, too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Superbass
This is being done to remove barriers that impulse buyers have. Not enough space? On the road and don't have a good connection? Don't worry, we'll charge your credit card and wait until you've got space. Of course, once you've got enough space/fast enough connection maybe you won't want/need it anymore.
This can be done to apps... that 50 Mb limit on 3G connection is just stupid.
I need a way to buy apps above the 50 Mb limit and download later.
This is needed in the AppStore too! This should have been added years ago, so if you're mobile w/out data or if an app is too big, you can still get it for free if you clicked to download when it was on promotion!