Kevin Bostic
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.
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14 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?
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.