I can’t believe it hasn’t even been 2 weeks since I scored that broken iTunes 2.0.4 CD and already I managed to find another one. I was just saying how rare they were. The seller had it posted for $15 bucks, but I put in an offer for $10 and he went for it. Score!

I sent him an email asking him to make sure he didn’t skimp on the cardboard, as the last once broke in the mail because seller sent it in a flimsy envelope.



Not a scratch!



I fired up my 1999 Bondi Blue iMac since it has OS 9 on it.



I then popped in the iTunes 2.0.4 CD.



I then double-clicked the installer.





It’ll ask you if you want to install it for OS 9 or OS X. I guess there was no auto-detect back in the day.



The usual license-agreement stuff.



Click “Install”, and you’re off to the races.





Once the install was complete, it was good for a reboot.



I fired it up and walked through the initial setup.



And there it is! iTunes 2.0.4 in all its glory. The last version to support OS 9.



Complete with mini-player.



Now that’s an “About” box!



Maybe you need to see it on the machine to appreciate the enormity of it. That has to be the biggest “About” box I’ve ever seen!



I popped in a CD to try out a little .mp3 ripping.



The iMac isn’t on the internet, so the attempt it made to connect to the CDDB failed. No matter. I just wanted to see how long it took to rip a song. It ripped it at 1.9x. Wow, that’s slow! It took a little over 3 minutes to rip the first song. I cancelled it after that. I’d seen enough! At that rate, it would take 37 minutes to rip a full CD.



I had forgotten how long that used to take. I remember back in the 90s when a 2X-4X drive was the norm. There were times when I’d cue up a CD to rip or burn on the way out the door to work so it would be done by the time I got home. I wouldn’t want to sit around for an hour waiting for it. My Mac Pro now rips/burns a CD in like 3 minutes. How times have changed!

iTunes 2.0.4 even had a visualizer back then. It makes for a pretty sweet screensaver.



I’ve played the occasional video file on the iMac, but this is probably the first time Ive actually played a music CD on it. I have to say, I was not impressed with the audio quality of the speakers. Is it because this thing is almost 15 years old? I can’t imagine they were this bad. Even as far back as 1998, I had a set of $200 Altec Lansing speakers with a floor base on my PC. My computer sounded amazing. It was a Pentium II 350 with specs on-par with this iMac, and it was boomin’! Maybe I’m just spoiled, but there’s no way I’d ever be able to listen to those tiny little tin cans!

In any case, it was cool to see iTunes 2. How far it’s come. Sometimes I forget it’s as old as it is.