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."

Comments

Steve, how could you?!

[ghettoboy22]

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.

Re:Steve, how could you?!

[BasilBrush]

I don't believe for one moment that he did. The only source is Paul Thurrott on winnetmag.com. He is a anti-Apple, pro-Microsoft commentator who's shown zero respect for the truth in the past. Indeed the "superior" reference rather gives that away doesn't it. Actually, did I say commentator? I meant troll.

This doesn't make sense for Apple

[Fortunato_NC]

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?

ogg playback in iTunes

[rtm1]

Apple should be opening the code base to allow for Ogg playback

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?

Re:Ogg Vorbis

[kelnos]

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.