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Apple's iPod Chip Supports WMA?
John writes "Chip manufacturer Portal Player in Santa Clara builds the embedded PP5002 chip in Apple's iPod (allowing the playing of AAC and MP3). It has emerged that the chip firmware, by default, allows the playing of WMA. However, for some reason this is locked by Apple."
"However, for some reason this is locked by Apple." How about because they didn't pay for it?
I think the 50% market share you refer to is the market of legal music downloads. These files have DRM that would need to be licensed from Apple (an that won't be happening for quite a while).
But that still leaves your original question: Why not support (non-DRM) AAC?
This is no different than Microsoft wanting to push their own formats above all others.
Why does everyone confuse begging the question and raising the question. Begging the question means that the personing answering the question has just rephrased the question instead of actually answering it. I think we all know what "raising the question" means.
Anyway, you have raised an excellent point!
A, I'm not only a Mac user, I used to work for them; B, Apple dropped the floppy at the height of its popularity as well, and that worked out okay for them. It's called progress. Ditching MP3 without a suitable alternative is suicide, ditching it for something better, cheaper, faster (The Bionic Man of audio formats?) is good business, and progressive thinking. Face it, 90% of Mac users will buy iPods and use iTunes simply because of brand loyalty. What Steve says is good IS good to them. If Steve-o pushes OGG, within 6 months, everybody will use OGG. But of course, he won't, since he needs his DRM fix, ineffective as it is....
The solution? Keep MP3 and AAC capability on the iPod, but *add* OGG and start pushing it. Apple is the ONE company who can make the revolution happen. Instead, the rumors are they will not add OGG (which gives greater freedom to the user), but WMA (which places greater restrictions on the user)...
And yes, I am delusional. Doctor Scooby is self-prescribing again.
well said. with the worst DRM ever implemented in a downloadable audio file, I just don't see any advantages to WMA, including sound quality. AAC sounds SOO much better because Dolby Labs actually know what they're doing.
This is probably a case of expectation. If you support non-DRM AAC, people will assume that they could use their iTunes Music Store files with the player, then be dissappointed/angry/upset when they can't put the free song they got from Pepsi on their new player.
Just as saying "We support WMA" creates the expectation of supporting WMA with DRM, so it is with AAC.
That being said, they could offer "unsupported" support for AAC. It could be helpful to sales to let it slip that the non-DRM AAC files are playable.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
With all this "if Steve did this..." is *still* no reasoning of *why* Steve would do it. iTMS needs DRM, and Apple already has the AAC+DRM combo. Why would Apple 'push' OGG, but also continue to distribute AAC on iTMS? It makes more sense to have iTunes rip to AAC (non-DRMed) for the user's own personal files to keep all files consistent. I use OGG myself (don't have an iPod, but use the iTunes plugin). I can see official OGG support as a far-fetched possibility, but I can't see Apple officially encouraging the shift to OGG.
I am Jack's witty signature line
Because the world would be a better place if people would store all their computer files in open formats that do not involve patents and licensing.
Well that's hardly a good reason to switch to OGG.
If you want to switch to OGG, fine go ahead, but expecting other people to switch because of moral reasons is silly.
It's only recently that OGG has stablized the format anyway. I was encoding mp3s back in 1996 when OGG was no where near done.