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."

Comments

No control for Apple

[Mr. Darl McBride]

Apple are offering MP3 because you pretty much have to offer that in a portable player or people won't buy it. Past that, Apple are pushing their secure digital standard, and would like for you to pretty please use that everywhere. It doesn't benefit Apple to do anything to back Microsoft's standard, or anyone else's for that matter. This is the same reason you don't see a plenitude of other BSD-type licensed CODECs in iTunes. They could add Ogg support in a day if they wanted.

This is no different than Microsoft wanting to push their own formats above all others.

Re:It's more complicated than that

[DoctorScooby]

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.

Re:What about playing AAC elsewhere

[Oculus Habent]

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.