So someone has gone and started a rumor that other than Apple’s music player line receiving a much needed update, we might begin seeing iTunes kiosks in retail stores. Personally I don’t think this is all that likely and here is why.

First, one thing Apple has always been really good at is learning from its predecessor’s mistakes. I personally have yet to see a kiosk based service of any kind take off, and the target audience for such a convenience makes a kiosk kind of a backwards approach since most of their iTunes customers already use a PC to download their music.

Second, when people by iTunes tracks they get 7 uses of the song, the first obviously goes on their computer, the second, likely on their iPod or iPhone. There is currently no official two way transfer application for songs from either device, they only transfer one way, from the PC to the device, so a kiosk that connects directly to an Apple music playing device would rip off the consumer unless they could download it to their PC later.

However the supposed hardware involved in the kiosks makes them somewhat believable. They are rumored to incorporate an iPod/iPhone dock, touchscreens, the new Apple keyboards, and some sort of card reader for gift cards or credit cards. So I would be really surprised if we heard this announcement on September 5th, but hey, stranger things have happened.

Big Fat Rumor: iTunes Kiosks Hitting Stores [via CrunchGear]