Apple iTunes for Windows... Soon?

Way to go Apple (if this is true).

This should not have taken this long!

Let's get this iTunes Windows thing over so iTunes can expand to Canada and other countries.
I hope once Windows thing is done, Apple will concentrate to expand iTunes (Mac and/or Windows) to other countries.

Wow, that would be huge if Apple could get it rolled out this month. If it happens while people are still not committed to another service, Apple could snag a whole lot of PC people with the slick interface we are all used to.

Cool beans.

Good. Then they can STOP distributing their direct competitor's software with every iPod!

This will be the first time a lot of Windows users will actually use an Apple application (other than watching an occasional quicktime video). Let's hope it 'just works.'

Any word on whether the licencing terms will be same for Windows as they are now for Mac?
I know there ware issues with recording lables not eager to grant same broad rights to Windows offering.

Or maybe we will just see iTunes for Windows software for now without access to ITunes store?

It will be interesting to see if Apple also includes WMA support for Windows iTunes and the iPod at the same time.

Even though WMA is a proprietary Microsoft format, it has the appearance of being an open standard since there are a number of third-party devices that support WMA. As an example, my DVD player (Panasonic) plays WMA files, my Pocket PC plays WMA files, my co-worker's Honda Accord plays WMA files and most MP3 players do as well. AAC on the other hand, while being an open standard, has the appearance of being proprietary since only Apple is pushing it (AFAIK). I don't know of a DVD player, PDA, car CD player or MP3 player (besides the iPod) that plays AAC.

This, along with Apple's poor reputation on writing Windows software (Quicktime is pretty bad on the PC side), are the two biggest concerns I hear from PC users about a potential iTunes for Windows.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for new iBooks or eMacs along with Jaguar to make the Switch.

Here's my question. Will Apple include Rendezvous sharing in iTunes for Windows. I think a big way for Apple to gain market share over Windows Media Player is to grab the college market and I can tell you that Windows users are uber jealous of iTunes library sharing. I would also love to double or triple the number of shared libraries here. It's about 15 most of the time on my campus and we only have 7,000 students including commuters

Until now the two major critics of ITMS from competitors were:

1) Not windows compatible, and

2) Only 200,000 songs, we got 250,000, 300,000, 500,000, etc...

This could mean that critic 1 finally goes down the drain.

What about critic 2?

Anyone knows how much songs ITMS sports as we speak? What is keeping them to have as much as the 500,000 advertised by competitor Napster?