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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."
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.
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
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...
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.