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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."
This is the same chip used by other MP3 players other than the iPod, which begs the question, why aren't more people supporting AAC on their players. >50% market share should be justification enough, nevermind the subjective debate of which format has higher quality.
This isn't as simple as Apple not flipping the iPod WMA bit just to flip off Microsoft,
although that's the implication in the article.
Well yeah, the chip supports it. but that's just a small part of the total system.
Apple would also have to integrate WMA into iTunes for Mac and Windows.
To really do it right, it might be added at a lower level into Mac OS X as well.
That now ties Apple into paying M$ royalties on iTunes and iPod, perhaps even
OS X, and having to continually disclose to M$ on the number of units sold and to who.
I think that Apple would want to avoid any further entanglements with M$ if they
can be avoided. They know well what happens when you dance with the devil.
Apple has probably suffered more from Microsoft's abusive practices than anyone.
And one more thing... Drop the constant whining about OGG. Please.
From a November 1997 Wired article:
"...January 1984 launch, Gates shifted gears and decided to put Excel onto the Mac first. "We bet on the Macintosh, hoping Windows would come in sooner rather than later," Raikes remembers.
It was a big wager, indeed. Gates committed fully one-third of Microsoft's programming resources to the Macintosh, putting Jeff Harbers in charge of the project. "We were complete Mac fanatics," remembers Harbers....
"I remember having a meeting with Ballmer and the [Microsoft] Mac team," Gates says. "We were all saying, 'Jesus, you know, Apple may not do this well.' And Ballmer said, 'Well, we can help them. But we have to assume they're staying awake at night worrying about these same things.'"
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.
;-) Despite all that, I wouldn't doubt that Dolby still knows quite a bit more about what they're doing.
:-)
In all fairness, M$ does spend plenty of money on non-software R&D, including the salaries of very smart engineers who know how to design audio codecs. I live in the Seattle area, and one of my family members is involved with the local section of the AES (Audio Engineering Society). They had an all-day seminar recently about "Sampling, Conversion, and the Limits of Hearing" (I unfortunately didn't get to attend), and one of the speakers was an engineer at Microsoft. His bio says he's only been there for a little over a year, so he probably didn't influence the current WMA codec(s) much. And maybe they hired him to help improve the WMA codecs, because they didn't know what they were doing when they did the last ones. But MS must have more of a clue than you give them credit for. BTW, I have no personal opinion about WMA quality because I've never encountered it. I do, however, have an opinion about its DRM scheme...
Microsoft may be evil, but they do spend money on that kind of research and they do know what they're doing, at least in this area and at least since this guy was hired. Perhaps that's because Gates most likely leaves this guy and his colleagues alone--he's not dictating codec design like he dictates Windows' design.
If you are so inclined, you can probably find the info about this presenter and the seminar using Google, but I won't link to it (don't want to kill their probably-low-capacity server, among other reasons). Sorry.
Coupla years ago, I helped write the microprocessor reference manuals for the PP5002C.
There's nothing WMA-specific about the chip. It's (as the above poster noted) basically two ARM7 cores, cache, and some I/O logic that makes it especially well-suited to low-power devices.
Portal Player did not design the PP5002C for the iPod; it is equally well at home playing AIFF, mp3, AAC, whatever - another WMA-compatible player could as easily use the PP5002 as a CPU - but an extremely capable little media CPU is all that it is - there's nothing WMA specific about the PP5002.
I've had several friends who have been ready to iPods, only to ditch it due to lack of WMA support. The way they see it, there is only one player that supports ACC, and many more that support WMA, and they don't want to invest in a format that's not going to be around for a while (the whole Beta-Max vs. VHS quandry). Want to compete better with WMA, Apple? Then you must, MUST find more companies to support your format. Either that, or break down and support WMA. Either one of those will make the iPod look like a more versatile player, and more people will buy into it. Until then, their losing customers...and it will start to matter after a while..
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean