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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."
Yeah! Screw all those "free", "open" formats! We WANT to be paying a licensing fee for closed formats as long as we can! I don't care if OGG beats MP3 in many tests for sound quality at the same file size! Screw quality, I wanna support Apple Corporate!
If Apple really is the great innovator, the mover-and-shaker who first supports a new technology and pushes it into the limelight, then let them do so now by supporting OGG (although they're already not the first, though they'll claim to be). I'm tired of hearing about how they were 3 weeks ahead of the PC on installing CDRoms as standard, and that makes it "their innovation". My ass. If they're as good as you say they are, and if they care about their customers as much as everybody here thinks, then know now that they could drop the price on the iPods by not having to pay the MP3 licensing fee. TRUST ME, if Apple tells the Mac users OGG is great, 100% of the fans will convert all their MP3's to OGG before sunrise the next day. And if Apple's gutless, they can run both side by side and let the people choose. In a few years, MP3 and its mandatory licensing fees will largely be gone, replaced by OGG. All it would take is some good PR, which is really what Apple does best.
And if you really don't see how saving money by choosing an equally good or better technology for a better price is good business for both Apple and the consumer, you've got your Apple Astroturfer underwears on a little too tight and you should start thinking like a consumer again instead of an Apple PR distributor or sales flunkie.
No offense to your +5 informative or anything but that has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted. What I posted is that Apple should create an open plugin system for the ipod so that other (good) file formats could be supported. I didn't say anything about this current chip.
Don't go telling the mods that though, they need someone to modbomb totally unfairly. As far as they're concerned, I must be a mac basher. The irony is that I'm typing this on my ibook.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Well actually they can't be your friends if they use wma, friends don't let friends use wma.
Jonathanjk.com