All Links Must Be To Web Pages

Jeff Atwood posted a rant about the iTunes Music Store requiring iTunes to be installed in order to access it. In particular, he didn’t like how a link to something on the iTMS resulted in an error page if you didn’t have iTunes installed.

Is it so unreasonable to expect links in your browser to resolve to, oh, I don’t know, web pages containing information about the thing you just clicked on? Is there anything more anti-web than demanding users install custom software to display information that could have just as easily been delivered through the browser? It’s an exceptionally compelling argument but there’s one small flaw. If you’re not sure what it is, just drop me an email.