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BusinessWeek on Opening Apple's iTunes DRM
hype7 writes "BusinessWeek is running a very interesting story on Apple's foray into music, with a different bent to everyone else's. BW suggests that, instead of opening the iPod up to the world, Apple should instead license its DRM - 'Fairplay' - to anyone who wants to start up a music store. The upside is obvious: it would mean that Apple's music format, AAC, would become ubiquitous; Apple could quite feasibly make money on licensing fees (say 1 cent per song sold); and, it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format. As the iTunes Music Store isn't running at a profit (or forecast to make a big one), having the Music Store clones eat into Apple's existing market share wouldn't be a problem; all these stores would be doing is building a bigger potential market for the iPod."
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| | < FROM THIS DISEASED MOUTH
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| )(__/ \__)( | AWRY BE THE WORDS AND OPINIONS
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(_ ^^ _) NO HEED OF THEM.>
\__|IIIIII|__/
|-\IIIIII/-|
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.::::TROLL-KORE FOREVER!!!
.::::I hate you, I hate your country, and I hate your face.
For the nth time, AAC is not "Apple's DRM technology." It is part of the MPEG-4 specifications. More info here.. To quote:
AAC was developed by the MPEG group that includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia--companies that have also been involved in the development of audio codecs such as MP3 and AC3 (also known as Dolby Digital). The AAC codec in QuickTime 6 builds upon new, state-of-the art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) audio encoding to QuickTime.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
While Apple's competitors have embraced WMA, they hardly relish the thought of their business becoming heavily dependent on another standard that Redmond controls.
So they're going to give up one proprietary standard (Microsoft's WMA) for another one (Apple's AAC)?
Correct me if I'm wrong about AAC being proprietary.
...that is a novel (and arguably appealling) tact for Apple to take, it certainly would not be true to their typical behavior (at least not while Steve Jobs is at the helm). Apple likes the 'go it alone' route, regardless of any benefits to other routes.
And of course, one has to wonder if 'ubiquity' would actually happen regardless...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Then again, why bother with DRM at all? My Dell Jukebox cost me less per GB, has a longer battery life, doesn't have any DRM, at least none that I'm aware of, it lets you use it for data storage if you want, and I don't get my sexuality questioned every time someone sees me use it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
> Correct me if I'm wrong about AAC being proprietary.
You're wrong. Read the MPEG4 spec.
I agree with this article. Adding WMA to the iPod is ludicrous (as is Rob Glaser's plea to add other support....Real.....get real!). However, licensing the DRM to AAC that Apple uses would nothing but grow the iPod marketshare because no one could complain that the iTMS is the only place to buy music for the iPod.
However,.......based on Steve's stubborness and protectiveness of Apple, I am not going to hold my breath on this one. Having clones to Apple hardware is one thing and I can understand Steve killing that idea but this is so totally different. Steve readily admits that iTMS is not a breadwinner. But Steve is a just a bit too protective still to license FairPlay.
Here's to hoping.....
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
On the other hand, Microsoft's WMA is proprietary no matter how you slice it.
The only reason iTunes has DRM in the first place is because the major labels insist on it: they like their paying customers to have more restrictions than the folks that are getting it for free, makes sense right?
Every fumbling attempt the record companies make to control and restrict music blows up in their face. Case in point, the new, bannedmusic.org which is using a BitTorrent installer packaged with a specific torrent to spread music that's run afoul of the current copyright regime. They could have made money licensing this stuff, but now there ain't nothin they can do about it.
Make it so players can use the codec for FREE.
this will make the AAC format as common as Mp3 and take over the world like a wildstorm.
But, I highly doubt that apple has the leadership that would make such a smart decision.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Therefore Jobs will not go for it. This has been Apple's history. Didn't they used to go after people selling legitimate apple ROMs just because they weren't running on Apple's computers (Emulators and such - go Amiga). It would make a lot of sense, but it would be a real departure given Apples history.
You're wrong. AAC is an open format. http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4aac/stan dard.html
The obvious problem is that what incentive is there for someone to open a music store with encrypted songs that are only playable on the iPod?
Musicians already have ways of submitting their music to the iTMS.
Any large conglomerate opening a music store online is generally stupid or on the "music store" bandwagon, or both. Apple pretty clearly does it because it's a selling point for iPods, and with their early appearance on the scene, they have a good chance to dominate the market until such time as it does become profitable.
So what earthly good does licensing FairPlay do for anyone?
It doesnt say that AAC is Apples DRM.. it says that Apples DRM is called 'Fairplay' and licensing that to others would increase usage of the AAC FORMAT.
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Basically what you're trying to say is that Apple has stuck to the AAC standard 100%, and anyone wanting to make an online music store for the iPod family would only need to encode the tracks to that standard ?
That does not sound like anything Apple would do, they have a known propietary background.
--
I know apple probbaly wont agree, but looking at the sucess of OSS, doesnt it make sense for them to simply open iPod and release its source code, so anyone with lots of time to spare can write interseting and useless plugins.
These will ultimately result in the iPod becoming more popular
An apple a day keeps MS away
That's not Apple's decision to make, since they aren't the owners of AAC. And they're apparently smart enough at least to know that, unlike, say, you.
Click here to read about Cory Doctorow's problems the iTunes DRM.
This is wise-wise-wise advice. However, why stop there? Why not make the entire DRM system a sub-set of QuickTime and get acceptance for other non-audio formats as well? QuickTime is the high-end standard and with the new Pixlet format apple already has a HD leg-up on other folks.
-_-
UnFairPlay.
Whaaah. We can't sell our crappy WMA's to iPod users. Whaahh.
AAC is NOT an Apple format. It is an open standard that Apple happens to use. Apple can't license AAC. it doesn't own it.
Is it just me or has companies like Apple managed to sneak DRM in under our noses while at the same time tricking us into thinking they're cool?
And really, 99c for a song isn't even that great of a deal. That makes a 15 song cd = $15.... Which essencially is the same price it was before. Not only that but you end up with an inflexible lossy-encoded file.
What really bothers me about this is how it floods the entire market and drowns out any independant artists who are actually giving away mp3's for free, while trying to make money by actually playing music. That's what most of us really want to see anyway -- the actual live band.
If you're not working you shouldn't get paid. I don't get paid for taking a picture of the work I did and then force-selling it over and over to idios at the mall.
I fail to see what Apple stands to gain from a ubiquity for the AAC format. 1 cent royalties are all well and good but won't mean anything if no one's buying from the mom&pop iTune shops of the internet. Unless these lessees can provide content that I want that I can't get anywhere else (say from iTunes), I won't be buying from them.
And if you're thinking that they would offer songs for a lower price, I doubt that would be possible. Apple isn't making anything selling them for $0.99, a smaller business can't hope to sell anything for less than that. I'd wager that they would actually charge MORE for their content.
with all the complaining people do about Microsoft because they are a monopoly, they are ready to support and relish the idea that Apple could be a digital music monopolist just to "stick it" to Microsoft.
Check his view. Even THE Apple geek loathes Apple for their lock-in and DRM crap, and so should anyone. Just because it'S Apple doesn't mean "their" DRM is fine, while "other's" is bad.
How would licensing FairPlay to other hardware manufacturers sell more iPods? Oh it wouldn't? Oh then I guess that's not gonna happen.
AAC can be the next audio standard, but FairPlay will not be the DRM standard. An industry DRM standard will have to be devised and then every digital music seller and player must support it. Then iTunes and iPod can continue to simply be the best digital music experience around.
Apple owns the DRM, but they certainly don't own AAC.
The only advantage (to Apple) would be that it would require QuickTime to be installed on every computer that used Fairplay. This may or may not be advantageous to Apple, depending on just how little money they're making on the iTunes Music Store.
The obvious disadvantages would be potentially fewer iPod sales and losing more money if indeed ITMS is a loss-leader.
It's probably a good option in the future if iPod sales start cracking. I wouldn't be surprised if they're looking into it.
My Dell Jukebox... doesn't have any DRM, at least none that I'm aware of
Wow, you're an ignorant tool. In addition to MP3, the Dell supports WMA, which indeed has DRM-- if you want to use any of the WMA-based online music stores, guess what? Those tunes you buy are DRMed. And you act like the iPod can't also handle non-DRMed formats like MP3, WAV, AIFF, etc, which it can. I've got 6,400+ songs on my 30GB, all MP3.
Your better battery life argument is tired. Unless you commute from say, L.A. to Tokyo every morning, both devices should have enough juice to get you through the day.
I can also use it as a hard drive if I want, and even boot my Mac from it. If you're gonna take shots at the iPod over features it doesn't have, then maybe you should actually know what features it doesn't have, you asshole.
Enjoy your cheap knockoff.
Most albums on iTMS are $9.99.
If you only want one song, say Ice Ice Baby, you pay 0.99, without having to by the whole CD. (Yes, you can probably find this CD used for free...)
This is a case of which is the lesser evil, wma or m4p take your pick.
AAC is proprietary. You must purchase patent licensing if you want to legally use the format.
Cheatsheet for this article:
AAC -- must licence from MPEG
WMA -- must licence from Microsoft.
MS DRM -- must licence from Microsoft.
Apple FairPlay -- can't licence from anyone.
So, please, let's quit pissing-n-moaning about "proprietary" -- this is all business.
That's basically why QuickTime gets installed with iTunes, although most users never notice it until after the fact.
I'm almost tempted to believe that iTunes is a trojan horse for QuickTime, allowing Apple to sneak it onto everyone's computer. Very smart idea.
I think that Jobs has his own plan in mind, though I hope he's included "flexibility".
Option 1: Stay Alone
This basically has the iPod and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) working only together. So far, this situation has proven to be the case, and it's working pretty well: the iPod is the #1 selling MP3 player out there, it's making Apple a butt load of cash (and when you try to carry money in your butt you'll know what I mean), and iTMS is the #1 online music sales system by far - 50 million songs sold compared to Roxio's 5 million. Even comaring apples to , er, apples, just within the 6 months since Napster has been out Apple has made 5 to 1 sales.
If this continues, then eventually Jobs can force out all of the "for profit" music shops out there, and boil it down to just the "for advertising" places, like Wal-Mart, Coke, and Microsoft (which would really be looking to make Windows Media Audio the default standard).
From this, Apple makes AAC the next MP3, and their DRM becomes the "de facto standard" - even though nobody else can use it. Apple makes all the money, and they like it.
This will only come true, however, if Apple keeps a huge lead. What happens when Microsoft (MS) unveals their own online music store (didn't originally they tell folks like Napster that they wouldn't? Well, nevermind that....), sells songs for $0.50 each, takes a hit on profits, and basically acts like they did with Internet Explorer. (Ignoring any antitrust issues - not that Microsoft ever has had to in the past.)
So that goes to Option 2: License the DRM
I have the feeling that Jobs will release this if and only if iTMS and iPod sales start taking a dive. It's his "ace in the hole" to keep iPod sales alive. All it will take is him going to the other stores, making an offer, and then everybody can use the iPod with any service. Sure, it could hurt iTMS removing the one thing that makes it different from everybody else - but Apple is about the hardware.
But what happens if someone like Dell or Gateway come out with their own MP3 player that starts to make the iPod look like yesterday's bulky cell phone? That's when option 3 kicks in:
Option 3: License WMV for the iPod
This one only happens when things are dire and Apple feels they finally have to put in their chips.
The question is, how likely is either option to be? I can see Option 2 and 3 as "someday, maybe" futures. But as of right now, iTMS and the iPod rules the roost, and as long as Apple keeps that up for another 12-24 months, everybody else just in it to "make money selling music" will be so marginalized it won't matter. We're more likely to see Pepsi style promotions than anything else - though Apple had already keep an eye on possible cracks in their popularity: McDonald's may have dumped a iTMS deal in favor of a Sony Online Music one already, though of course nothing is official yet.
2 years I think the dust will be settled. Until then, I'll keep saving up to buy my wife an iPod mini. Hey, if nothing else, they're cute. And she still buys lots of CD's.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Apart from the debate regarding switching one proprietary format for another, Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme is still the most lenient which is a good reason for people to support its wider use, especially in comparison to Microsoft's alternative.
> Make it so players can use the codec for FREE.
I guess you're referring to Apple's Fairplay DRM part. But AAC is a patented format, to implement it even without DRM, you also need to pay a share to Dolby. I doubt Apple is going to pay other developers their license fees.
Feh, the iPod sucks anyway. Who cares about fancy colors or buttons. It is heavier than most and has a bad battery.
DON'T ARGUE WETHER ACC IS APPLE's PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY!!! I come her for intelligent conversation, and bikering over a really dead subject for the nth time is a waste of time.
AAC is not apples
Fairplay which is wrapped around it is
Yes/No, Ogg Vorbis/FLAC is/isn't better
Okay, with that out of the way, please talk about something new!
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
When will the ipod support ogg... never?
They want to win with iPod.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
Just so you all know, Winamp, being the awesomely versatile player it is, CAN play AAC songs with Fairplay DRM attached, with this convenient plug-in. Of course, there are many limitations still, but that's proprietary DRM for you.
You can chart and discuss the plug-in's progress here. The older, "officially released" version of the plug-in with brief descriptions and reviews is here.
BTW, Winamp 5.03 is already out, in case you weren't informed.
Whatever, AAC is doomed to be less popular than WMA and Mp3 until it becomes 100% free for me to write a player that supports that format. WMA is a distant second to Mp3 and is only catching up because MS allows companies to make their devices WMA compatable for zero dollars and ZERO cents thuas making it compatable with portable players. It still can not touch MP3 in popularity though. AAC is a horribly distand almost last place near FLAC and OGG and is only growing because Apple themselves is offering content in that file format. if they were not offering content in AAC then it would be completely dead...
apple as the opportunity to create a standard in a way that they tried with quicktime (which is still a distand third and being displaced with xvid/divx into fourth with Real Media)
Steve Jobs historically makes bone-headed decisions.. Apple would be king right now if they made the decisions to open up their goodies years ago...
So stick that in your pipe and smoke it mister troll.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's just about the stupidest thing I've heard yet. Make the codec free, so any player can use it. Uhhh. Ever heard of the iPod? Do you have any clue how much money Apple's making off of it? Giving away the codec would completely undermine iPod sales.
Apple does have the leadership to avoid making such a dumb decision....
I wouldn't really call that a smart decision - but nice try.
From what I understand, iTMS was not put together for a profit - margins are too low to really make much of a profit, it's there simply to boost iPod sales, which it has been quite successful at doing. Making the iTMS a non-iPod-only store, kind of kills the purpose. Now, the idea is that if they offer the best store around, which they do, people will want to purchase an iPod so they can use iTMS store - rather than purchasing *insert iPod ripoff here* so they can use *insert iTMS ripoff here*. It's just another bonus of buying iPod.
Also, think about return customers. If your iPod dies and you've been buying AAC formated files for the past year - do you want to buy an MP3 player that doesn't support AAC?
"So we help youj and Prince HumperGates suffers?"
"Humiliations galore!"
"Let's go!"
(yes, I know these aren't the exact words... work with me here)
*snerk* Yeah, Apple sure has suffered lately under their boneheaded, non-visionary leadership.
Hell, if they get any worse, their competitors are going to have to start going out of business just to keep from humiliating Apple...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I hope Apple doesn't do this, because it will make it much harder for them to drop DRM in the future. Instead of doing as they should by pressuring the RIAA members to allow DRM-free downloads, Apple would implicitly support DRM to protect their new revenue stream. The RIAA needs to realize that DRM doesn't work, and that those who purchase the music generally don't infringe anyway.
I'm going to guess that Apple probably legally can't license the Fairplay technology. I imagine that the RIAA probably has Apple locked into some super restrictive contract that makes it so only Apple can use Fairplay, even though they made it.
After all, (outside of Apple being Apple), why wouldn't they have done it already?
Somebody needs to tell Corey that the three authorizations aren't so that he can give one or two away. If he wanted his mom to have an iTunes account, he should have set her up on a separate account.
Wow you must be a fucking retard...
hey dipshit... why is MP3 so damn popular???
oh that's right because of the $30,000 developers fees and NDA's you have to sign... NOT
maybe if you pull your head out of your ass long enough to look around you might get a fucking clue.
Look retard, 9 times out of 10 when they're talking about AAC they mean FairPlay. This is one of those cases. So shut up and stop trying to "win" on a technicality.
As soon As apple licenses their DRM, what's to stop makers of other Digitial Music Players from licensing the DRM to create players that PLAY songs that use Apple's DRM (i.e. those downloaded from iTunes)?
That would be a bad move...
Apple has sold about 30 million songs through the iTunes music store. All told, if they had licensed their FairPlay technology and let someone else open a store and sell those 30 million songs, they would have raked in a cool $300,000 dollars at a penny per song.
Apple is already losing money through the store, and while outsourcing it would have staved off costs, they'd still be very much in the red. Imagine if they now started operating their money-losing store in competition with another money-losing store. Gee, lots of winners there, aren't there?
What it comes down to is they need every penny they can from their own store, and competing with someone else for a crowd they now have a monopoly on won't work -- even if it does sell more iPods, it's going to chip away at their image of being a simple, single source. One application, one portable player, one store, one sign-on, etc. etc.
boo frickin hoo.
why aren't they on his iPod?
He can afford to buy a new Powerbook every 10 months but can't afford an iPod?
OK, now that I've said all that, it IS an interesting perspective on DRM as a whole, if Cory - as a literate, knowledgeable computer user- can screw things up, so can all the regular jamokes who are pretty clueless.
I like microcars
All hail FatWallet:
Here are some legal (in Russia!) MP3 download sites - most flat fee:
allofmp3.com
This site is locally legit and songs can be downloaded for as little as $0.01 per MB. That's around 3 cents per song.
DELit
Unusual emphasis on hard rock and metal acts (east European and Russian youth apparently worship metal acts)
3MP3.ru
$4.55 per month for unlimited downloads.
And you are not stuck with the typical iTMS low-quality 128Kbit file. Most of the Russian sites let you choose your quality and give you the option to do "online encoding" where you can select the settings you want. When the pop up screen shows up you can hit switch to advanced mode toward the bottm and you get the following options:
You can choose between the LAME or BLADE codec and 128, 160, 192, 256, and 320 kbps for each (constant bitrate). Or you can choose LAME variable bitrate at 128, 160, 192, or 256.
If you enjoy these services, 3MP3 should be your first stop to see if you can find what you are looking for at the lowest price. Then I'd move to allofmp3, followed by clubmp3.ru, and then DELit.
Cue the "In SOVIET RUSSIA" trolls now...
Da Blog
right?
because when Apple Corp LTD (the Beatles) haul your ass in court for breaking 25year old contracts and trademarks for the third time you think the Judge is gonna have sympathy for repeat offenders ?
get that cash out because profiting to the tune of millions because you broke contract is just going to make the settelment even more expensive
as long as iTunes lets you burn audio cd's it doesn't matter. AAC is suuposedly not a lossy format. so, create an audio cd, then re-rip the cd in non-DRM format. big deal. a couple of extra steps. i have bought music from iTMS and burned a cd for the car. sounds pretty good to me. now, if i had a $3000 stereo, all kinds of eq's and mixers, and a sophisticated ear for music, well then, i might notice a difference. but i can't. thus any DRM technology that let's you do that is useless. but what it does do, is put the burden on the end user. which is fine but should have been done from the get-go.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Yay, you paid a substantially more money for a different, metro-looking USB HDD that plays music than he did. Congrats, you're an idiot.
I don't think the article meant to open the iTMS to other players. What they meant was to allow other stores to sell FairPlay DRM'd files. Apple could license the FairPlay wrapper for media files, and not the decoder for players. This would have the effect of making the iPod compatible with all music stores, thus increasing sales of the iPod.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
"Is it just me or has companies like Apple managed to sneak DRM in under our noses while at the same time tricking us into thinking they're cool?"
I don't think the DRM is the real issue but the licensing of the songs with the music industry. Apple has a license that no other company has gotten. The other DRMs could do the same thing the Apple one does but they don't have the same license agreement. Even if Apple gives the DRM out the compeditors would still have to get a license agreement like apples to do what they do.
Evolution or ID?
1. Offer all selections from your catalog without any DRM. Note that this does not mean you necessarily have to choose between, say, AAC, MP3, and OGG -- just that the format should be unprotected.
2a. (Music store): Spend all of your energy expanding your catalog to make the most comprehensive repository possible, and make sure the files are properly encoded, tagged, and available on reliable, fast connections. Apple has already nailed the search interface, so no huge revolutionary improvement needed there. Also, put in strict privacy protections -- the RIAA's recent actions have probably turned some folks away from online purchases due to the vague, unspecified fear that they might be tracked and/or sued. The record industry's recent behavior doesn't exactly instill confidence, especially since if I know that if I walk into a brick-and-mortar store and buy a CD with cash, that transaction is totally anonymous.
2b. (Record label): Spend all of your energy making sure that it is practically easier to find a song from a reputable online store than through some random FTP server, KaZaa, etc. Note that this very specifically does not mean suing everybody in sight -- at most, maybe you flood those places with blank or corrupted files. But fundamentally, you want a technical and economic solution, not a legal one (which just pisses off your customers).
I would make the argument that if these things were done, music copyright infringement would essentially disappear tomorrow. Maybe not 100%, but (assuming good marketing and a bit of time for it to "take" in the marketplace) enough that it would no longer be a significant issue financially.
One obvious sticking point is that much of the record industry is run by backwards-thinking troglodytes who couldn't wrap their heads around this if they tried. But is that the only reason? Or are there at least a few execs who would be smart enough to understand this, if they just had the intestinal fortitude to try pulling it off?
Thoughts?
-Brian
You need a life if you are going to get all riled up over such a completely insignificant topic.
YOU'RE EXTREMELY REDUNDANT.
Sure that the terroriste Sharon and his Dog Bush boing down, But the really sentens is that the dirty sharon will dead by the hand of heros of palastin,and they will cut his head and put it on the principal door of AL QODS.
What does Apple really win by making iTMS clones ubiquitous? Right now, they control the entire experience and dynamics of one of the most popular (non-p2p) music systems available. People buy iPods in order to use iTMS. What do open iTMS clones do but dilute the brand, experience, and goodwill they've already built?
Otherwise he never would have said this:
I like microcars
.controlling music, etc...
you have the 'right' to remain sileNT, & pay through the nodes.
lookout bullow.
Fairplay may not be an issue for the rest of the world. Purchasing music from iTMS is not an option outside of the USA, and there do not seem to be any plans from Apple to change this.
I would love to be able to purchase online music from iTMS or a compatible store for the iPod. Licensing Fairplay would be an excellent way to get better market share in the rest of the world...
You're saying that people buy the iPod because they want to use the iTMS. I think people use the iTMS because they have an iPod.
The choice of codec isn't part of the sales pitch. Nobody buys an MP3 player for the AAC/FairPlay codec/DRM -- it's far more likely that people would AVOID buying an iPod BECAUSE it doesn't play WMA, which is available nearly everywhere BUT the iTMS. iPods limit your online purchasing choices.
WalMart and other places are cheaper, some have more songs, some are as well laid out or better. But if you have an iPod, you NEED to avoid Windows Media. Thus iTMS. And opening their tech to other players will draw more people into the iTMS, and thus the iTMS might even become profitable.
But the iPod sells for its coolness and harsware specs, not its AAC. To me, at least.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
It's actually quite remarkable how blind product-label-devotion can cloud peoples' judegment.
I guess this is why AAC was just recently chosen by the DVD consortium to be the standard for audio in the ROM portion of DVD-Audio disks. (That's been one of my major gripes with DVD-Audio -- you can't rip the songs to your computer currently, because there's no software out there designed to do this.)
Yeah, right, AAC is dead. Never mind that the latest iTunes rips into AAC by default. (You have to go into preferences to switch audio import to use MP3 instead.) Never mind that the iTunes Music Store outperforms all other legitimate digital music distribution methods, and their format of choice is AAC with FairPlay.
I guess that's why Quicktime is doing just fine? Seriously, talk about a reality distortion field -- yours seems to be worse than Steve Jobs'. Xvid and DiVX are still the purview of the 133t, although there are more DVD players on the market now that will play videos encoded in these formats. So they are gaining traction and mainstream acceptance; but most players that support these formats are cheapies from China, where video piracy is rampant, and the build quality leaves something to be desired.
Incidentally, AAC and Quicktime are linked inextricably with MPEG4, which is a current and future video standard. DiVX/Xvid leverage the MPEG4 standard.
Quicktime is not just a niche format. It's everywhere. Most sites that serve up movie trailers do so in Quicktime format. Quicktime is almost always offered as an option for sites that support multiple video formats. And AAC wasn't "created" by Apple -- it's an open standard that they adopted.
So what you're saying is that your entire post is really just an excuse to slam Jobs and Apple, and has nothing to do with anything else. Obviously. Since real facts don't bear your arguments out.
Funny, you sound like the Troll in this case. Pity I used up my moderator points a couple days ago.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
*bzzzt*
Incorrect. WMA is not free to build into your device: WMA Licensing
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
Your entire post would make a lot of sense if it weren't for the fact that Apple doesn't own nor control AAC. They have no choice in deciding the license terms for AAC, so it's not their call to make. I don't see what their opportunity is when they don't call the shots.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Mod up!
You do if you're a photographer.
Then I guess that all software should be free.
Oh wait...
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
Although there are several difference between the model and consequences, this sounds like when Apple tried to allow Mac Clones. It turned out to hurt them, so they stopped licensing that. Apple likes to provide the whole experience--they don't want someone buying a really cool iPod to just be frustrated with a sub-par online music store. By having control over all aspects of the iPod experience, they can ensure Apple quality standards, which are admittedly high.
-- n
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Apple owns neither AAC or fairplay. They license both. Don't people actually look for the facts any more?
Also, from the article: "There isn't a single type of electronic device that hasn't suffered from shockingly rapid price devaluations."
Except of course for Apple's hardware.
So the slashdot summary is just plain wrong, and the article is yet another "How Apple should really be run." Same old garbage. Move along, nothing to see here.
And as everyone has discovered who uses the service, iTMS isn't for buying albums. It's for buying singles. This way you get the one song you wanted on the album for $0.99 instead of $15, and that *is* a hell of a discount. Even if you find CD singles, they're much more than $0.99.
So for the majority of the world that (by definition) buys pop, iTMS makes sense. My wife just got 12 songs for $12 that would have cost over $100 in a store. I don't use it because I like older rock where 90% of an album didn't suck, but the service helps a large segment of the population.
You forgot: MP3 - must license from MPEG
I never said it was dead, you are taking what I said out of context and twisting to get that out of my comment.
AAC HAS the ability to become the defacto standard but only if industry get's behind it and removes the barriers to widespread adoption.
If AAC is left as a obscure itunes and ipod format then yes it will die a horrible miserable screaming death Only by widespread adoption will it become the foreruunner... and keeping it a closed format will only serve to keep the adoption rate slow.
maybe next time you will finish reading my post before you decide to put words in my mouth.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Call me crazy, but most alternative/rock/pop music I don't want to hear live. Not because I don't like it, but because they play so damn loud. It's completely insane the volume levels that most bands seem to strive for. It's so loud you can barely hear the music. I often do play music (CD, iPod or otherwise) pretty loud, but I'm in control of the volume and can set it really loud for songs I want to hear that way, and not so loud for others and all the while retain most of my hearing. Convince the damn bands to play quieter and I'll go to more concerts. Short of that, little money is to be made from me at concerts, the money is all in recorded music.
--- What?
I'm almost tempted to believe that iTunes is a trojan horse for QuickTime
In those terms Windows is a Trojan cavalry.
Nope. How about you let me handle this:
Note1: as you can see, Alex Salkelver at Business Week clearly didn't do his homework before writing that article.
Note2: the folks at Veridisc are astonishingly incompetent at e-business: they own neither veridisc.com (unrenewed, squatted, not work-safe) nor fairplay.com (unowned, parked)
ogg/vorbis...Yeah, whatever.
You don't really think that Apple would have ever gotten the recording industry to buy into no DRM, unlimited use, and free trading, do you?
It's about the money, it's always about the money. Technical excellence is for geeks (look at Betamax); ease of use is for consumers (look at Windows). Consumers don't care, they want it when they want it and will accept fair restrictions in lieu of no restrictions, when the latter is not easy or not available.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
iTunes and iPod will be history once Microsoft comes up with the Windows Media devices and it's own store. It will make it part of the OS and may install it through Windows Update Services.
Historically, they don't know the meaning of the word open, and that's why they're a niche market now. When the IBM-PC was taking over the whole market because of clonemakers, apple tightly guarded both their hardware and software.
MS is the company who cleaned up on IBM's openness because they made DOS, but in Apple's case, they should have opened the hardware and make their money on Mac OS. If they had, they'd be a much more dominant player in the market today.
It's the same thing with their codec, they should license it because it's in their best interest, but they won't.
New news forum for Canadians - CanadaSpeaks
Make it so players can use the codec for FREE. this will make the AAC format as common as Mp3 and take over the world like a wildstorm.
Take that up with the MPEG consortium; you know, the people who actually control AAC (also known as the MPEG 4 audio layer format). You may have heard of one of their other products: the MPEG 1 layer 3 audio format, aka mp3.
I quoted almost your entire post, and thus, I read the entire thing. I'm not taking anything out of context. How could I? I quoted you in your entirety.
You wrote "AAC is doomed to be less popular than..." (I'm not going to finish the sentence, as I already quoted it elsewhere, in its entirety.) I interpret this to be just like every other "foo is doomed" statement you read around Slashdot -- that is to say, someone's trying to proclaim a standard to be dead before it actually is. Then again, you don't seem to be very good at detecting sarcasm, and there was more than a little sarcasm implicit (and explicit!) in what I wrote.
In short, I'm not the one with the reading skills deficit.
There's nothing obscure about AAC -- iTunes and the iPod are market leaders now. Your statements and arguments make no sense. They have no internal logic.
There's nothing "closed" about AAC. Anyone is free to license the format. It's a part of MPEG4. Apple has nothing to do with that. FairPlay can be licensed, too, but nobody in the industry wants to bother, and every other manufacturer wants to rely on WMA and its far-more-restrictive DRM technology. This isn't what consumers want. That's why consumers have voted with their wallets and are buying songs from the iTunes Music Store, and why consumers are buying iPods.
So please, quit your whining about how I'm twisting your words. I understand perfectly well what you're saying. I just disagree with your thesis, such as it is.
Yes, clearly, it's all the customer's fault that the manufacturer's equipment has failed.
In point of fact, I have an iPod. I have a Powerbook. I listen to them at different times. But you *can't* synch an iPod with another PowerBook -- IOW, if I wanted to keep my iPod up to date with the machine I was using while my PowerBook was in the shop, I would have to allow iTunes to delete all the music on the iPod, including my bought-and-paid-for iTMS singles, and replace it with only those files that could be played on my spare CPU (i.e., my MP3s and not my AACs).
I went to some lengths to ensure that my data was available to me while it was in the shop: in particular, I have a rotating backup to two different external drives, and a spare Powerbook I use if mine goes in for service.
My files were there, online and accessible, in a machine with the same OS, applications and versions. They were there, in my music player. The files that I bought and I paid for and went to great lengths to preserve, on hand, online and ready to go.
And they wouldn't play. Not because of any lack of foresight on my part. Not because I lacked the right equipment. But because Apple has deliberately reduced the functionality of its equipment, devoting engineering dollars and introducing new failure modes into a technology that not a one of its customers desires: none of us woke up this morning and said, "Shit, I wish there was a file format just like MP3 except b0rked in some really spectacular and inconvenient ways."
I'm as big an Apple apologist as you'll ever meet, but it's ridiculous to blame the user for the manufacturer's deliberate introduction of flaws into its technology.
You have no evidence that Veridisc is compatible with Apple Fairplay. In fact your sorry slashbot ass just made that up.
I definitely think that Apple should license FairPlay to other online music stores, but not other hardware or software players just yet. Why? It's a matter of perception. I'm sure there are people out there who won't buy an iPod because they learn that it can only play iTMS songs (out of all the other legal download stores, ignoring any MP3 stores). If Wal*Mart and any other "me too" store also sold FairPlay music, all of a sudden this wouldn't be a problem--iPod users could buy online music from any number of places. iPod users would have a choice.
Now, would Apple lose some iTMS revenue? Probably, but big deal. iTMS is a loss-leader for selling iPod, which has been pointed out many times here before. I bet, though, that Apple would continue to be the industry leader in terms of selling songs to iPod users because they have such a clean, easy-to-use interface and seamless interoperability between the player, the store, and the iPod.This is something the standalone FairPlay licensee stores would not be able to offer. They could compete on price, or selection, which Apple competes based on ease-of-use and style (which would not be Mac vs. PC all over again because Apple would still control the iPod hardware).
So it would be win-win. Apple would have more stores selling music for its iPod, which would make consumers more comfortable in committing to iPods, and Apple would be able to maintain the near-excellent user experience for customers who stick with the iTMS.
Your favorite sig sucks
What if Apple not only licensed the DRM, (= more music = more iPods = more $) but also sold it in bundled with Xserve technology?
Make it so an Indy music producer just has to copy songs to a "publisher" program which encodes and makes available on-line.
They could spec a Xserve Music Server that an Indy music producer could buy (Xserve RAID etc) all pre-configured and easily managed (even sell remote management support so Apple supports the thing). They customize the variety of e-Commerce templates and copy music to a program that will encode it and add it to the library.
Now Apple can support Indys AND keep their own music library "clean".
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
BusinessWeek can suck my slightly "not equal in size" nuts and hopefully not get any hair caught in their teeth.
I wish Apple would get it's finger out and bring quality computing to the masses but they've never even tried.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
There's also the trivial exercise of using iTunes to burn a CD then re-ripping the music. Of course the music has then been lossily encoded twice, with different encoders, so it's sorta like listening to a copy of a tape of a FM broadcast.
You haven't done this before, have you? The sound quality is lower, but it's not *that bad*. I would compare the original to CD quality and the re-ripped / twice-encoded version to FM radio quality (and really, no worse than most of the less common pirated MP3s floating around in cyberspace).
Here's what I noticed about the quality difference:
I started off with a song bought via iTunes... sounds great via my iPod and via the stereo connected to my PC. I burnt a playlist of my songs to CD. I then ripped the songs back into iTunes, encoding as 192kbps AAC. Playing back the song, it sounded just as good as the original... or so it seemed to me at first. I then played the original.... a-hah!... in a back-to-back comparison, the original sounds much better... but its not something you will really notice otherwise.
damn, you sure nailed that stupid commie. i'd trust anonymous coward posts more than i'd trust 210 google results any day of the week. obviously that guy was a troll. he went back in time four years and planted a bunch of stories about veridisc and apple just so he could troll on slashdot.
I agree that hating everything that is born out of Microsoft is "player hating", but as the owner of a couple of Apple and PC boxes (Powerbook, G5, and two self-made PCs), I can honestly say that until you really use a Mac day in and day out, you may not find the value in the bundled software and the (overall) quality of the hardware.
Also, Apple has one major advantage over Microsoft in my eyes -- they aren't a monopoly. I do worry about having the media and the operating system that organizes & plays it under the same company's control.
I was a huge fan of Emusic when it was unlimited. I understand why that business model couldn't last, but I don't like the subscription model with limits.
I would have stuck around had they just switched to a $0.25 per song, or at least let you carry over unused songs from one month to the next. I used to "binge" download from Emusic. I wouldn't grab anything for 6 to 8 weeks, then I would download 10 - 15 CDs.
And Apple also licenses the MPEG-4 file format, which is based on their own QuickTime file format.
My video compression blog
> You're saying that people buy the iPod because they want to use the iTMS.
> I think people use the iTMS because they have an iPod.
ABSOLUTELY. The iPod was the draw for my wife, not the Music Store. She's never even been on it. She either downloads music or burns it off our cds, but she thinks buying music online is a scam when you can buy a CD or single and have album art and a backup for life. Plus she's 30, so she hates nearly everything that is coming out nowadays. But if she WAS going to buy music online, she'd definitely want a selection of stores to choose from! There's no competition if your iPod lets you only buy from one store!!!!
To emulate the _Simpsons_' "comic book guy".
And also so dreadfully inconsistent with Apple's corporate approach (they're a hardware company). It's almost like all the endless idiots who want Apple to "commoditize its OS for x86 machines"... ain't gonna happen.
Buy Text Processing in Python
they obviously don't understand modern business principles. What you are suppose to do is let people use it for free, then when it is used by everyone, start charging them at that time.
I like microcars
Even if licensing out the iTMS format to other online music stores would theoretically drive more people to buy iPods, there's one factor that everyone's forgetting: user experience.
Apple doesn't want just any joe schmoe with a smelly t-shirt selling songs for the iPod because Apple wants to maintain a level of quality with the entire user experience, from the purchase of songs on iTMS to the browsing of their songs on iTunes to the uploading and management to the seamless integration between the store and iTunes.
Thx in advance,
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Your computer must be authorized using iTunes and you must have iTunes installed.
Geez people, how stupid are you? This is just Microsoft paying off journalists to allow them to "Embrace and Extend" Apple's technology. So say apple opens up fairplay, allows Microsoft to start it's own music store, then Microsoft decides, "you know what we'll sell WMA files alongside the entire Apple library" blammo, apple might try to sue (years later - de facto standard so who cares?), in the meantime Microsoft has coopted Apple's own service and they drop AAC support.
Joseph Elwell.
You slashdot fucks reveal yourselves! your cheap cock sucking on the dick of anti-microsoft is now known! You support a closed format such as AAC, because it will "stick it to microsoft"
pot/lettle black indeed! Maybe it's time you cheap little scum suckers got of the floor, took ESR's dick out of your ass, and looked around! Microsoft WON already. get over it. You zealots are nothing more than morons with loud voices
Apple could quite feasibly make money on licensing fees (say 1 cent per song sold);
Nah, 7 cents per song.
It's worth the extra money for a nicer [insert Apple product name here].
I'm a 2000 man.
double n = 2*10^36;
According to Forbes, Apple developed it themselves:
Admittedly a non-technical description.
I think it's far more likely that Apple simply bought ought this "VeriDisc" company. Going by their web site (now accessable via IP address only) they haven't done anything since 2001...
I'm highly suspect of anyone who claims that Apple "licensed" FairPlay from a company which now no longer seems to exist...
Opinions are not facts.
Moron.
The incentive is that the songs would play on other devices... The drm would be open, the songs could be on any device, or software audio player that supported the drm.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein
Oh, wow, a bunch of Applefag circlejerk sites. Quite a reference you got there.
another moron who does not know that AAC is a better encoder than MP3
You're calling me a moron? Why don't you prove to me that 128Kbps AAC sounds "better" than ~192Kbps Lame VBR MP3. Otherwise you're just talking smack.
Da Blog
Oh yeah, AAC won the listening test over here too : http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/9217
/. at great length. If you look at the "winners", you will see that none of them "won" by a greater margin than their inherent error bars or confidence measures. Therefore it is incorrect and unsupported to say that any particular codec "won". Have you ever taken elementary stats?
You know these particular "results" were discussed recently in
Da Blog
Would it be fair to say, then, "AAC is at least as good as the others, and therefore good enough?"
GPL Deconstructed
You LIKE bursting bubbles. If you really hated to do it, you wouldn't have typed out that post. ;)
My neuros plays ogg and mp3, holds my entire music collection, and cost half as much as an IPOD. :)
it would just happen to stick it to Microsoft and the Windows Media Format
I'm reminded of what one Linus Torvalds once said in the same vein:
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.
You license AAC from Via Licensing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dolby Lab.
The quality of its product aside, Dolby is the Microsoft of its industry. It is good in that it creates a 'standard', bad in the sense that it makes other audio formats (DTS) hard to compete.
It took me less than two minutes to discover that the IP address for Veridisc(TM) is http://64.244.235.240/ As reported elsewhere in this thread, this site has not been updated in several years.
Five minutes more digging let me to Circle Group Holdings, the parent company. Their site seems to be up to date, and claims to own a majority interest in Veridisc(TM). See http://www.crgq.com/HTML/eMentorComp.html; although clicking on the Veridisc(TM) icon just takes you back to the IP address given above.
Microsoft may be the prime example, but when I think Vendor Lock-in, I think Apple.
One of the biggest fallacies of the computer world is this: license your IP, so you can become like Microsoft.
This is just dumb. Name 5 vendors that decided to license their core technology to the competition and are successful. I can think of one: Intel. Intel licences x86, mainly to prevent anti-trust issues.
One example on the unsucessful side is Palm. Palm survives, but is far from successful. It's PalmOS license caused massive cannibalization in its core hardware business, and became so bad that it basically bought its licensee/competitor. Doh!
Why should Apple open up the iPod or iTunes? To me, it sounds like industry executives are playing politics - Apple is bad, because they won't share. In other words, Apple is kicking our butts, and we're trying to change the game.
Why don't those vendors just convert their stuff to MP3? Audible.com has no problems selling content to iPod owners and non-iPod owners. WTF?
Why not make the entire DRM system a sub-set of QuickTime
It is. The DRM isn't built into iTunes. It's built into QuickTime.
and get acceptance for other non-audio formats as well?
Aha! Brilliant idea. Apple needs to create a server product for distributing licenses and allow people to encrypt and protect their own media. Hell, why stop with media? I'd love to be able to encrypt and protect the documents my business generates using FairPlay-type technology.
Yeah, right, AAC is dead. Never mind that the latest iTunes rips into AAC by default.
For the record, it's not just the latest iTunes that's had AAC as the default encoder. In fact, it's been that way ever since Apple unveiled AAC several iTunes releases ago.
OMA 2.0 is already being added to MP3, but I think adding it to AAC would be a much better idea. If I have to deal with DRM to purchase music downloads, I'd much rather buy open standard AAC's that use an open DRM standard that is also being used on my cell phone and PDA.
Well, I'm glad I do not live in your alternate "reality"! Over here in the mainline Apple is doing pretty well with iTMS. Perhaps you should slide over, we don't even have arachnid overlords that demand sacrifices every other fortnight.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This will only come true, however, if Apple keeps a huge lead. What happens when Microsoft (MS) unveals their own online music store (didn't originally they tell folks like Napster that they wouldn't? Well, nevermind that....), sells songs for $0.50 each, takes a hit on profits
[...]
So that goes to Option 2: License the DRM
I have the feeling that Jobs will release this if and only if iTMS and iPod sales start taking a dive. It's his "ace in the hole" to keep iPod sales alive. All it will take is him going to the other stores, making an offer, and then everybody can use the iPod with any service.
[...]
I think you can tie these two ideas together quite nicely to predict a path - Apple is waiting for Microsoft to release it's own music store. Then when Napster and friends realize they've been had and are doomed, Apple can step in and say "you can licence Fairplay and use AAC or be consumed by MS".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think you are right that they want to maintain a level of quality - but I think that could be handled in licence negotiation, where they would mandate songs would have to be at least such and such a bitrate or else the licence to distribute Fairplay songs would be revoked. The nice thing is the users could still keep using the songs they bought...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
mod this AC up... there's finally another person here who gets it!!
It seems likley to me it's the same, but why no press releases mentioning Apple, or indeed any mention of Apple at all anywhere?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My problem is that I don't have an interface to it. I'd love to see Apple release an iTunes for Linux. Short of that, I'd like to see a web interface to iTunes that supported Mozilla well. Short of that, I'd like to see someone license iTMS and build a third-party web interface to iTMS.
Doug Alcorn
I suppose they could use any compression scheme, but I imagine that they intended to stick to the mainstream - that is closer to MPEG - simply because it was the sort of thing with which people were familiar. If they had adopted something that seemed less familiar in name, people, including the tech writers, would have been less enthusiastic.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
if they had licensed their FairPlay technology and let someone else open a store
If Apple had let someone else build the store, it would have sucked. Apple excels in streamlining the user experience. Apple is why iTMS rocks.
Duh.
It makes me incredibly sad that Apple hasn't already done this. I'm not sure whether Apple is just following their already debunked closed-products strategy as they always have, or if they have actively been trying to get companies like Walmart on board. It doesn't really matter now. The cat is out of the bag. ALL other legal music download services run by major brands are using Microsoft technology.
I feel like I'm watching the betamax debaucle in deja vu. You cannot bet against the likes of Walmart. You just can't. People want, expect and deserve a choice of music stores.
Apple owns over 50% of the legal download market, but fencing its customers in has made it too easy on Microsoft.
If Apple has been courting the other music stores, it might not be too late. iPod has enormous momentum and they could leverage that. A year down the road though, when these two incompatible standards are confusing and annoying customers, it will definitely be too late.
Just like with Betamax VHS, there will only be room for one general standard. The other standard will have to focus on nice markets like professionals or tech elitists.
What's sad is Apple may be letting too much ride on the HP deal. The HP deal doesn't change the fact that FairPlay and the iPod are closed. I really hope we see more deals soon. Deals may be more important, for the company, than products right now.
Ultimately, iPod should be opened, but I'm not expecting Apple to move all to quickly. It took them 4 generations of iPods to make one that will play paid-for songs on both a registered Mac and a registered PC. In the short term just getting Fairplay into the other music stores MIGHT be enough.
If they don't they may actually compromise FairPlay as a trustworthy Digital Rights Management System. If enough people feel like they are forced to break the DRM by re-ripping their paid songs into an unprotected format, it could compromise Apple's relationships with music companies.
Let's hope the iPod phenomenon buys them enough time to do the right thing: take a leadership role and make Fairplay into the standard that the market needs.
Mac Reality Check
Any analysis and suggested direction for Apple is likely to be fatally flawed if it only looks at music and iPod Sales. Apple's strategic decisions must take their entire business into account. The folks at Business Week act as if they've forgotten that Apple also sells Macs! In bringing Windows users iTMS, iTunes and the iPod, Apple is showcasing its abilities. The level of care in Apple designs is reflected in many subtle things that cannot be appreciated by reading specs. I'm certain that Apple appreciates the value of giving Windows users some direct postive experience with Apple products.
Aside from leading some users down a path bypassing an Apple-favorable experience, some or perhaps all of these competing music stores will likely provide poor Mac platform support, or none at all! That not only doesn't promote Mac sales, it discourages them. To overlook these factors and say that Apple should actually support these stores puts the Business Week analysis in the league of April Fools' Day material.
The flawed analysis reminds me of what's wrong with many of the products and services that compete with Apple. They generally meet key specifications, yet they feel like they were made by people who didn't look at the whole picture.
Somehow I don't think apple would go for this. By porting iTunes and iTMS to windows, I have the suspicion that they were not only trying to bring the iPod into a bigger market but also trying to convince people to buy into the mac way of thinking. Granted, this hasn't really happened (yet) but by licensing FairPlay to other companies, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. It may not eat into their profits right now, but they'd loose their presence in the market, and this eventually would eat into profits. Besides, the last time apple licensed something out (Mac OS), they nearly went bust.
AAC 128 is not low-quality, it's far superior to MP3 128. It's more like 192 mp3
Really? Prove it. Or are you basing this on your own perceptions? Personally, I couldn't say what 192 Kbps CBR was like because I usually do ~200 Kbps VBR Lame MP3s or ~180 Kbps Oggs. However, if you are happy with 128 Kbits then more power to you - I simple prefer the higher "resonance" I can hear with around ~200 Kbps VBR losssy compression.
Da Blog
Quicktime gets installed with iTunes because, at least under OSX, the functions which handle the encryption and decryption are in the file /System/Library/Frameworks/QuickTime.framework/Ver sions/Current/QuickTime (which is a shared library.) Try "nm QuickTime | grep DRM" and you'll see the functions there.
This allows not only iTunes, but the Quicktime player and any other application which uses the Quicktime API (like Toast, with their "Save as AIFF" button, hint hint) to decrypt these protected files, in order to play them or to burn them to a CD.
I know this, since I've been tracking iTunes since its inception. Before that, I was a SoundJam MP user. (SoundJam MP was the application that became iTunes; Apple bought the rights to the software, and hired the main developer behind SoundJam.) When I'm ripping a CD, I have to make a conscious decision now whether I want to use AAC, which sounds better at lower bit-rates, or whether I want to use MP3, which I can burn to mix CDs for use on certain players that support MP3 CDs but not AAC files thrown into the mix.
But my post was already pretty long, and I didn't feel like digging through release notes to figure out exactly when Apple added AAC support to iTunes. So yes, you're right, but my omission was due to laziness, not ignorance.
Incidentally, one feature of SoundJam MP which I miss in iTunes is the ability to skin the application. SoundJam had some nice skins, including a bonus "jukebox" skin (made to look like a 50's jukebox, complete with cheezy bubble effects) that they made available to paying customers. But I guess Apple's very anti-themeable-interface these days.
Actually, there was no mention of DRM being applied to the files stored in the ROM portion of DVD-Audio discs. The files will be in AAC format, but no mention has been made of Apple's FairPlay DRM wrapper. Indeed, FairPlay encodes information about the purchaser and locks the file to that person's account; thus, FairPlay-wrapped AAC files wouldn't make sense for inclusion in a read-only optical disc.
Yes, the AAC files will be lossy, but making them available is better than making nothing available to the purchaser of the DVD-Audio disc. Besides, the vast majority of people wanting to "rip" tracks from a music disc (DVD-A or CD or whatever) are going to encode those tracks using one of several lossy formats -- MP3, AAC, or WMA. Making pre-encoded versions of these tracks available in AAC just cuts one step out of the process. (It also eliminates choice, but when space is at a premium, you want to go with something reasonable and cross-platform.)
Which is why the DVD consortium is now suggesting that discs be pressed with a ROM portion containing AAC-encoded versions of the music tracks. Of course, the ROM session is optional, but... hopefully, more record labels will include this. As for SACD, you're right -- there are currently no tools available to rip from SACD, and most DVD drives won't be able to even read the high definition layer of a SACD disc. On the other hand, many SACD titles ship as hybrid discs that contain a layer of Red Book compatible CD audio, playable on a conventional CD player; assuming that the firmware on your CD/DVD-ROM drive is smart enough to ignore the SACD-specific stuff, you can rip from the CDDA layer just as you would from a normal CD.
Apple leases a lot of its technologies, but largely for peripherals. I don't know for certain, but I would guess that the things Jobs feels most protective of are those that he makes the most money off of, I.E. the boxes and the laptops. Without that reliable base profit, and considering Apple's small market share, bankruptcy would be right around the corner. Apple does what it has to do to stay in business in a Windows world. -B