[CodeWeavers-Announce]Announcing CrossOver iTunes Preview

[Andrew Bogott]

Hi, everyone.

    We've been working on iTunes support for several months now, and
progress has been steady, but we're plagued by speed and memory
performance problems.

    Rather than sit on what we have, we've decided to go ahead and build
an iTunes release and share it with our customers today -- we're
motivated in part to satisfy your clamoring, and in part by our desire
to have something splashy to show off at Linux World today.  Also, as a
special bonus, Huw is committing a patch right this second which is
rumored to make iTunes run much much faster, almost usably fast.

    So, with any luck, by the time I finish writing this email I'll have
a build ready to put up on our download site.  There are a few caveats,
though.  The iTunes Music Store should work fine, but we don't currently
support iPods or CD-burning.  Also, because there are still iTunes
patches going into our code at this, the very last minute, we definitely
don't have time to test support for all the other fine applications that
generally run under Crossover.
    For that last reason, this release will be a special, iTunes-only
preview.  It will install in a different directory (~/cxitunespreview
rather than ~/cxoffice) and only supports the installation of iTunes.
You should be able to safely install it in parallel with your existing
cxoffice install, but it'll take up a big chunk of disk space and may or
may not mess up your old 'CrossOver' menus.

    If you can possibly stand it, you should wait.  A proper,
upgradeable release of CrossOver Office will be out soon, and will
include iTunes support with no extra headache.  But if you're curious
and want to see how far we are today, or if you just can't wait another
second to access the iTunes Music Store, today's release might be worth
a try.  Download here:

    http://www.codeweavers.com/site/account/download_beta/

All customers with current support agreements are eligible to
download.  There are more details about the release here:

    http://www.codeweavers.com/site/about/general/press/?id=20040803


Thanks for listening!

-Andrew