Updated as of 5:04PM

Apple seems to have straightened out the server problems they had earlier today and I am officially impressed! As I write this, I am Jerry Jeff Walker's "L.A. Freeway," which I just downloaded from the Apple Music Store. This song brings back lots of great memories.

The Apple Music Store is everything that you would expect from Apple, clean, elegant and inspiring. The interface is intuitive -- if you can use a web browser you can use the Music Store. You can either browse or search, quickly and easily. Purchased music ends up right in iTunes -- no need to import a file.

I have found all the music that I have searched for: Eagles, Jimmy Buffet, Sting, Nora Jones, Faith Hill, Springsteen, Neil Young. I love the ability to listen to 30 second snippets of music prior to downloading a song. This feature will enable me to explore lots of new music without leaving home and, I'm sure, spur incremental purchases on my part.

The Music Store validates my continued loyalty to Apple and gives me yet another way to impress my PC-challenged friends and family.

-Tim

P.S. Here what the New York Times has to say.

Posted Originally at 1:27PM

Cnet: "Apple Computer on Monday unveiled its latest line of digital music products, including a long-awaited Internet music store and ultrathin versions of its popular iPod portable MP3 player."

I downloaded iTunes 4.0 from Apple's web site. I found out that AAC support required QuickTime 6.2, so I had to download that as well. I restarted my Mac to check out iTunes. The most interesting new feature is Apple's Music Store, which is implemented like a browser window within iTunes. (See screen shot 362K.)

Everybody and his brother must be trying to access the server farm, as I've had a difficult time getting through. I keep getting "504 Error There was an error in the Music Store. Please try again later."

I was able to get through for a period of time and listen to a snippet from U2's "It's A Beautiful Day." The snippet sounded great. I attempted to buy the song for 99 cents, which brought me to a registration screen. Despite repeated attempts, I was not able to complete the registration process as the server at the other end was too busy (405 error).

We're inspired by what we've seen. Hopefully Apple can get the server problems resolved, because the Music Store looks very promising.

More later.

-Tim
1:27:38 PM