Slashdot Mirror
HP Working With Apple To Add WMA Support To iPod
iPod Afficianado writes to a short piece at Connected Home magazine in which Paul Thurrott "is quoted as saying that HP's blockbuster deal with Apple will have one
exciting side effect. The company will be working with Apple to add support for
Microsoft's superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to the iPod by mid-year."
Actually, this would be my only reason to buy an iPod, just like it was my only reason to buy a RioVolt a few years back.
I'd like to see this WMA news confirmed by a few more sources - until then I'll definatly be taking this with a grain of salt. If true however, I guess the only thing I could say is I sure hope Jobs knows what's he's doing. If he goes and supports WMA, it wouldn't be too unreasonable to think the RIAA would want the iTMS to switch to the more restrictive WMA DRM, rather than the AAC I currently favor. If the iPod is going to support WMA, it would have to support the more-restrictive DRM as well.
From a pure "bottom-line" viewpoint, it would mean a big boost to iPod sales, as those people who's entire library is WMA, or even people who use "other" online music services can now enjoy the beauty that is iPod. While not a bad thing, it's still diluting the iPod brand IMHO.
I think I'd rather see the iPod stay AAC only.
I don't know about WMA, but AAC is certainly not a format that requires DRM. I can encode files with iTunes to AAC and share them with others, no problems.
AFAIK, AAC is a completely open format. (enough acronyms?)
For now, most of my files are still in LAME-encoded MP3s, though you have a point about FLAC. The problem is that I don't have a portable player that takes FLAC...
There are some people at HP that need to get off the pipe. Fuck WMA, it is crap, total crap. I thought Apple would have told them to get stuffed. Wishful thinking here - they should get OGG support going on the iPod. That is the main reason I will not get one.
"The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin, American author
So does that mean iTunes will support WMA? I doubt it. Does it mean the iPod or iTunes will be able to play the particular flavor of DRM used in online music stores using WMA? I rather doubt that too. So what exactly does this get anyone?
And who would want to use WMA in iTunes or on your iPod, unless you were at least going to be able to play a competitor music store's goods.
And why on earth would Apple agree to opening up the iTunes/iPod combo to someone elses store?
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
They promote an alternative to WMA in the AAC format, and it seems that incorporating WMA support into the iPod would only hurt iTunes Music Store, since many of its competitors sell WMA files.
I wonder if WMA will be available only on HP's version of the iPod, and if so, will HP's device support the Macintosh?
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Vorbis, you probably mean, in an Ogg container.
Someone at Apple is planning on iTunes someday supporting ogg playback. They've even got an iTunes-ogg icon all ready for when the day arrives. Go digging around in the iTunes package (at least on OS X) and look in Contents/Resources. They've got a bunch of icons there that they use for mp3, aac, wav, etc files there. Included are icons for wma and ogg. Why would they bother creating ogg and wma icons for iTunes if they didn't plan to eventually use them?
"Belief means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzche, The Anti-Christ, 1889]
ogg vorbis is not (or rather need not) be DRM free. the ogg container format can certainly accomodate it, it's just that no one has actually implemented a DRM scheme for ogg. that's a common misconception - ogg is a container format - you can put video, audio, whatever in it (altho the original designers only wanted ogg to hold xvid video and vorbis audio, that's changed), any codec. the container format itself is extensible, and DRM can be built into it.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Secondly, another DRM silliness to fiddle with? No thanks. I'm about to stop buying anything produced by Big Music and Big Film.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I would imagine that only the HP model would support WMA. After all, if Apple really wanted to put that feature into the ipod it would have already. It's not like the engineers at Apple aren't capable of it. After all the kick-ass work they have done on that device, adding WMA would be a walk in the park I would think.
As a side note, I wonder if the decoder on the ipod is in software or on an ASIC (for lower power). If on an ASIC then the WMA decoder would be as well. Maybe that's why HP is involved, fronting the money for a new ASIC that supports both.
In any case, I would almost bet money the Apple version of the ipod is AAC excusively.
That PR page at Apple's site we saw posted on Slashdot a couple days ago had Steve Jobs touting about how great this was since it would mean more customers for the iTunes store. Wouldn't WMA support hurt that? Maybe Apple will give in and have an option on their site: either download the AAC or WMA. Hmmmmm.
HP's blockbuster deal with Apple will have one exciting side effect. The company will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft's superior Windows Media Audio
/. poll: What format do you keep the majority of your music in?
I'm not sure how "exciting" this is to the average slashdotter. It doesn't mean jack to me, considering all my music is in either MP3 or OGG.
I think that would make a good
- MP3
- WMA
- AAC
- OGG
- CowboyNeal just sings to me
Thoughts?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Windows Media Anything sucks. They are the worst set of codecs ever. The only reason any consumer uses 'em is because 1) the app is installed on the computer to begin with and 2) all the content is delivered in that format. The only reason content makers use 'em is because 1) the app is installed on every computer to begin with and 2) because of that wonderful DRM M$ shoves down our throats.
Apple's iTunes service is the BEST one. They don't need to lock people into it to get them to use it. Supporting WMA will let people who already purchased WMA music buy an iPod. It will also make it look like they have choice, even to move to another player if they buy music in WMA. Apple isn't Microsoft, they don't need to block out other choices to succeed.
Who wants to bet that over 90% of the replies blather about "Superior?!"?
Get a grip. WMA has been proven time and again to be one of the best codecs in both overall sound and in efficiency (sound per bitrate). This is a simple fact.
Now, next issue - DRM. It's here to stay and I don't have a problem as long as the restrictions are reasonable. If they're not - it's an easy solution. Don't use the service.
Finally, Ogg Vorbis. OK - we get it, it's a good codec. Big freaking deal. It's _never_ going to storm the market. It's not even that much better than WMA - most people would be extremely sensitive to hear any difference.
Oh - and WMA keeps improving. I'd take a $200 bet that in 2 years the latest WMA codecs will sound as good or better than Ogg Vorbis. And then why would anyone use OV?
You're basically marginalizing yourself if you use anything other than MP3, WMA, or AAC.
I wanted it. My brother wanted it. I own a Neuros and he now owns a Karma. Entirely because of the Ogg Vorbis support (I got my Neuros a few days before it became the first player to support Ogg Vorbis because they said they were supporting it and I said I'd buy the first player with support so I did). I spent a bit over $400 on my Neuros, which is what an iPod would have run me. Apple would have gotten my money if they had had Ogg Vorbis support because I don't use MP3.
Everyone who asks me which portable music player they should get is told the Rio Karma. Most people that ask me then end up getting a Karma instead of an iPod. And it's all because they chose to support Vorbis and Apple didn't.
My band only offers downloads in Ogg Vorbis too. I suppose that a few people don't matter, but it adds up. Rio and iRiver support it so it must mean something (they are by no means small players...remember when Rio came out with that weird device that could store half an hour of music in MP3 and only cost...). And I know that Rio isn't the same Rio that it was when it was started and they went through some bad times and all that lives on is the name.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
If a better lossless codec comes along later, all I have to do is batch process them all and save some space. No worries about finding a new original to avoid lossy reencoding.
I doubt it. Most likely, by the time a better codec is in POPULAR use, nobody will be using 16/44.1 CD audio anymore, and you'll be reripping your entire collection from SACD or whatever.
I really don't get these people who prepare for nebulous eventualities that may or may not come to pass some time in the future.
Why not just rip to 256bits/s MP3. Save yourself the time of reencoding your stuff every time you want to take it with you and save many many gigabytes. So what if you lose a few bits. Chances are you'll lose everything in a hard disk crash anyway, between now and a few years time.
There is nothing rational about preparing yourself for an event that is less probable than slipping in the bathroom and breaking your neck.
Go to Apple's website and watch the 1984 Commercial in the "20 Years of Macintosh" section. You can see an iPod on the hip of the woman throwing the hammer. I recommend watching the highest resolution and checking each frame. You'll see it.
.deviatefromtheabsolute.
Not to get picky, but how does that make sense?
big deal, I can decode many formats to lossless formats like wav/aif and then encode into the best lossy codec: ogg
They just buffer the decompressed data--or pipe it---or save it to a temp file.
Its a software feature, not a format feature. You can directly transcode many formats out there with a lot of software.
I have an iPod; I can play aif/wav on it if I want. I don't see how this is really any different, since all my software & hardware support both formats.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I probably would go so far... and what's more, from a strategic standpoint I don't see why Apple wants to do this.
People are buying iPods - not WMA players. If that's the case, it *makes sense* to tie them to the Apple store.
The number of people downloading from the other stores, when all combined and added up, do not match those downloading from the iTunes store.
So, you're tacitly acknowledging the other standard (and there are no other players that do the same for the AAC standard), and you're encouraging people to download from the other stores.
There are two potential explanations I can come up with: Apple is looking at the iTunes store as nothing more than a figurehead, it's not going to make them money and they want to transfer customers out; or two (and way out in leftfield) HP is acting as a proxy for MS so as to get the #1 portable music player compatible with WMA.
Whilst sure, WMA on the iPod is a good trick to have up your sleeve, right now it just doesn't make sense for Apple to do it...
-- james
All that I read into it is that the iPod will be able to play WMA's as it can do MP3's and MP4's (AAC) as it does now. The capability to play AAC's was added to my iPod by a simple ROM update (2nd generation 20 gig).
What's more interesting is that iTunes would have to be tweaked to to be able to know about them to be able to synch them. And if it knows about them, it should be able to play them; I can't see having the ability to organize without the ability to play them. And if it can play them, who needs Windows Media player?
What doesn't make sense is what do they need HP for? You think Apple's going to hand over their ROM code or source code to iTunes to HP? Yeah, right. I'm sure there are still plenty of people who remember how one of their PC partners ended up sticking Apple's QuickTime code into Video for Windows....
And what does HP get out of those? Companies who pee into MS' sandbox usually end up having licensing problems, or price changes on their Windows and Office licenses.
OK, here's a great scientific comparison of AAC, WMA, and MP3, and its all very easy to understand: http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20020712/2u4u -04.html
The results: AAC wins. MP3 loses only because it dampens throughout the frequency range. WMA comes in 2nd, but it chops at a much lower frequency than either AAC or MP3. Looks like it gets 2nd place only because its freely available to 95% of the computer users (M$ supporters). Not convincing if you ask me. When asked if he was concerned that Apple only has less than 5% of the market share, Steve Jobs responds by saying that its a larger share than BMW and Mercedes combined have in the auto industry. I love it!
And to add to the confusion, check out the screenshots for the Service Pack 2 preview.
Note the title bars -- "Virtual PC". He's running it on a Mac!
So WTF -- is he a Windows zealot or closet Mac user!?
Umm...you are obviously not a musician, are you?
.OGG/Vorbis. And there is a difference. .OGG just sounds better to his ears.
.OGG files available for download next to the .MP3 files on his site. He could give a rat's ass about "Free as in Freedom," to him, the advantage is that it just sounds better to his ears.
My husband is one, and he definitely can tell the difference between something encoded as MP3 and something encoded as
This is why he's got
Clown shoes? Shehyeahright...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Indeed:
End of Line.
However, I don't trust apple/msft not to drop support for mp3 in favor of their own codec-du-jour.
Ahhh. You're running non-free software! Then you must, indeed, take every necessary precaution against the vendors taking your data away from you.
If that sounds like I'm gloating/playing the fool, that's half true. But your remark did serve as an eye opener. It just didn't occur to me. It's been a long time since I've had to consider those kinds of issues.
Records often sound good, but it's not because the quality of the medium is good. In fact, it's just the opposite. Many people like the distortion added by vynal records, and most older music was written with the intention that such distortion would be added in. When you listen to the music on a CD with no distortion, it just doesn't sound as good because the original analog was mixed with the intention of getting some distortion on playback.
Sure, encoding to digital will lose you some data, and CDs aren't ideal. The use of a linear codec instead of a logrithmic one seems to me to be it's biggest mistake (this causes some problems at low volumes, which isn't exactly a strong-point for records either).
Most people who think vinyl is a better medium than CDs are under the mistaken belief that a) CD's can not reproduce an analog signal of an exact frequency (they can, up to their 1/2 the sampling frequency of 44.1KHz, ie 0 to 22.05KHz), or b) that the best records and sound system CAN exactly reproduce the amplitude of the sound wave (the signal to noise ratio of even the very best records and sound systems is not as large as the dynamic range of a CD).
Of course, as mentioned above, a more exact reproduction of the original does not always equate a better "sounding" copy.
This is a critical listening test I did for the various formats and bit rates.
As noted in response to your other post - your'e using WMP8, which uses WMA8. WMA9 should have a better encode. Heck, WMP8 doesn't even HAVE a "VBR" setting. WMP9 introduced WMA VBR and WMA Lossless. So: I'm all for your happy crushing, but at least crush using your facts. :)
... there's no real "win" here by avoiding WMA. I'm plenty happy with my non-DRMd WMA collection. I've got no DRM on any of many many thousand WMA files, and I like it like that. DRM *is* unpleasant, but equating WMA to DRM and vice versa is stupid because then you're going to have DRM running in the back door - such as via AAC. If you're going to fight DRM, fight DRM.
Re: DRM- That's an option with AAC too, so
So it really should be possible.
Litigious bastards
iPod vs iTunes... one makes Apple lots of money, the other does not.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Probably not a good idea for quality's sake.
AAC->CD->(MP3|OGG|*) loses quite some data. An explanation (OGG->MP3) here.
- Sw Usr
...at any comparable bitrate. I've listened to them side-by-side using studio quality DAC and hi-fi headphones (Grados and Sennheiser HD-580). WMA blew Ogg Vorbis away in terms of quality. I'm too lazy to compare WMA and AAC, but I wouldn't be surprised if WMA blows AAC away, too.
Oh come on now. You know Microsoft will dissect an iPod the day it's available, figure out some oddity in their WMA decoding, then issue an update to the Windows Media codecs used to encode WMAs to make them unplayable in iPods. Especially since Microsoft is coming out with their own player.
Scoff all you want, but Microsoft has done it before. Multiple versions of Microsoft Windows shipped with last-minute updates that were designed to break Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.
Microsoft has also done it plenty of times to QuickTime in recent history. Issue an update that "mysteriously" disables some function of QuickTime, requiring Apple to update QT, another update comes out and QT is disabled again, etc.
Ha, the Blaupunkt minidisc player in my car can beat up your car audio player. No, seriously, it is great and it didn't cost much because of the opinions of ill-informed people such as you. So I guess I should be saying thank you. It is easy to create discs using my Sony MDS-PC1 using the playlist editing program that runs on Mac or PC. You realize that MD is a popular format in the UK and other non-US location and Sony never gives up easily.
Yes, AAC is open, but I don't think FairPlay, the DRM component, is.
Unless Microsoft reverses their position on open source, I doubt WMA/WMV is going to achieve parity.
Thank you for making me marginally on-topic; here's a quote from Thuggott's WinSuperSite, about the task-centered approach being touted for Longhorn. Again, this is mostly off-topic, but pause for a second and consider the almost inevitable consequences:What a great idea: "Daddy, what happenned to this man's bottom? In the pictures, next to the girl showing her hoo-haa, Daddy!"
(Incidently, this mis-feature isn't even unique to Microsoft: I'm typing this on a Sharp Zaurus, which also dynamically searches for documents. It becomes clear what a bad idea this is when you mount a remote 32GB partition, and the OS blithely decides that needs to be searched too, every time you want to open a document.And don't even think about multiple files with the same name in different directories, when "task centric" means "forget distracting canonical names".)
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
It's an old marketing trick. Often when you see an ad for a car that says "incredible handling", it probably means that its perceived as having a bad handling according to surveys. Because its a subjective term most people, even those who heard about bad experiences handling this car will be positively influenced by the claim in the ad. Some will say to themselves "oh after all it's only a personnal impression, maybe it's not so bad after all or maybe they improved it". Microsoft repeatadly uses "choices" and "innovation" for such reasons. The typical MS dogma is that since standards are good, every company or group of companies that try to implement a cross-platform alternative format is just messing around with standards and introducing incompatibilities. MS accuse them of locking-in the consumers because they prevent or they cripple access to what is used in 95% of the computer OS sold today.
You have to open a different file player they say, it may damage Windows if you remove/replace their own file player they say... or they say you wont be able to play their format on other platforms because they incidently don't support it because their market is too small.
I read a post about this guy who was tired about audio codec wars. It reminded me that MS tries to get the same sentiment across: "why fight?, let's just use the same format, how about ours..."
AAC is an open format (wich you have to pay royalties to publish a player like mp3) part of the MPEG-4 consortium composed of many big players in the industry, Microsoft refused to join. It was proposed as a replacement for mp3 (MPEG layer 3), an industry standard that doesnt also happen to be owned by a single monopolistic platform vendor like WMA is. For those defending free trading, the MP3 format succeeded in starting the digital music revolution by being -not being owned by MS-, because of that hundreds of players and other applications (ie. peer to peer) were written because the format was open. MS at the time didnt see it coming, but now they are trying to kill AAC in the egg. Some had hope for something like Ogg Vorbis to be the open non-MS mp3 replacement, but like it or not, AAC on the iPod and iTunes opened a breach in the MS plan to control audio content formats. The #1 music player plays AAC and have 1/3 of the market and with the endorsement of HP and Real, this is the only chance to get a more open audio format not being controlled by a single company. Its far from finished...100 milion free AAC songs is a good start...
Frankly, I'm at the point where I consider anything by him to be an attempt at astroturfing, nothing more.
Seriously. Take a look at what the guy's done. He runs not one, but two of the major Windows "enthusiast" sites. Design elements on these two sites are so obviously taken from Microsoft that it's a miracle they haven't sued him... unless he is already on their payroll.
I'd say it's time we stopped taking him seriously, were it not for one thing: he's Microsoft's most successful marketing tool ever, in that he's actually managed to garner some measure of respect. That makes him dangerous enough to watch, even if his arguments can be easily exposed for the marketing bunk that they are.
Why in the hell would Apple need HP to put WMA in the iPod? All the would have to do is license it from Microsoft. Therrott is just trying to do whatever it takes to keep the number of hits up on his site so he can continue to get the press passes to Microsoft happenings.
The guy's site is so one-sided and pro-Microsoft, anti-Apple, and anti-Linux that he makes Fox News look "fair and balanced".
Wrong. The DRM on the WMA files from buymusic.com and from Napster 2 is easily ignored using Microsoft's own media APIs.
MORTAR COMBAT!
..to go into a codec discussion fit as I get from the posts here, so I'll add in an interessting tidbit: /.er.
There are countless slashdotters here discussing WMV, Ogg, MP3, analog records, tape, magnetic wire and whatnot and which is superiour or not, I'm not gonna be the next fool to state that I have enough expertise in the field to give a judgement over audio quality. Only a few things:
1) The german CT - afaict on of the best computer magazines in the world - tested all formats a few years ago and - being a good IT magazine - they didn't have a winner but actually recomended Ogg amongst others. They also had a listening test marathon with sound engineers, editors and world class muscians attending. Sorry, but I actually trust the CT more than I trust any
2) I have exactly one (1!) CD in my collection where the manufacturers put additional audiotracks in a 'PC' codec onto it so one wouldn't have to go through the encoding hassle. And they used ogg.
Why would they do that? Easy: Costs them exactly zilch to do it. And this is the reason I don't believe those who say Ogg is dead. It's like that Computer expert saying Linux will never be mainstream because there's no company behind it. As if that's the reason why people select other products.
Free (beer, speech, etc.) and open will allways have the edge by being just that: free and open. Ogg won't go away anytime soon and could very well become standard once all non-computer based audio thingies leave the mainstream.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca