No WMA for HP iPod

finelinebob writes "In spite of Paul Thurrott's wishful thinking, Wired is reporting that HP will not support the WMA format in its version of the iPod. From the article, according to HP spokesperson Muffi Ghadial, "'We're not going to be supporting WMA for now ... We picked the service that was the most popular (Apple's iTunes Music Store). We could have chosen another format, but that would have created more confusion for our customers.' He added, 'Most customers don't care about the format they're downloading.'" Thurrott's singing a different tune lately, anyway...."

Comments

Re:but what about...

[kneecarrot]

I have it and it is the crown jewel of my electronics collection. Put it side by side any other player (yes, including the almighty iPod) and it is quite obviously superior in almost every respect.

Why *doesn't* Apple include Ogg on their iPod

[Cliffm]

What's the harm in supporting an open source format that technophiles and some audiophiles clamor for? I mean I can understand the hesitation to support WMA, as that would be propping up a competitor (Microsoft), but I don't see who else benefits from supporting Ogg except consumers. I personally would love to own an iPod, and I would like to pick and choose what format my audio is stored in. Most of my collection is in MP3. I've got a few songs in AAC, perhaps 3 songs in ogg, and to my ears it all sounds pretty good. It can't be that difficult to add ogg handling to the iPod, can it?

Bad Comparison, those aren't service packs.

[Paradox]

So sayeth Eyah....TIMMY:

Think now of every service pack Apple releases under a new animal name. Every time, it costs $130. Can you imagine what people would say if M$ charged $100, even $50 for XP SP1? People would say they have no alternative but to buy the new M$. You would have a billion lawsuits against M$. With Apple, if you have a Mac, you install Mac OS, nothing else, so no choice there either.

Comparing an XP service pack to a major upgrade in Mac OS X is like comparing a reeking old kayak to a massive luxury liner.

Apple delievers a solid product and constantly upgrades and patches their versions. Nothing forces you to upgrade. Your OS will still get security patches even if you don't upgrade. It's not a mandatory path. It's just a very desirable one.

Meanwhile, XP's update path is mandatory. If you want the security, you need to keep up. It's not just security either, it's lots of bugfixes that XP should not have had in the first place. This very seldom happens with Mac OS X. It consistently happens with Windows.