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New iPod Firmware Locks Out RealNetworks Music
rishimathew writes "Apple Computer has quietly updated its iPod software so that songs purchased from RealNetworks' online music store will no longer play on some of the Mac maker's popular MP3 players." You may remember the backstory: Real found a way to allow their DRM-restricted music to play on iPods, Apple protested, and there was a little back-and-forth. You asked Rob Glaser about the situation, and he said Real had a "comprehensive plan", whatever that means.
Yep. Apple fanboys have successfully defended "no freedom" and "digital rights management" and scored themseleves "+5 insightful".
Way to to, Apple fanboys !!!!
You guys amaze me.
(shakes head)
May I remind you that thousands of people paid hundreds of dollars each for their iPods, with the expectation that they would be able to play the music that they legally bought and paid for on it? Now, all of a sudden, Apple is taking a step away from that premise and towards iPods being an "Apple-approved-music-only" device. And you don't see anything wrong with that? Get over your fanboyishness and look at the big picture.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
You're not a dreamer!
Just last week I was trying to play some songs that I've purchased on my '83 monte carlo.
My plan was to rev the engine really high to reproduce the base, rattle the trunk for treble, use the horn for midtones, and rig the muffler for the vocals.
But alas! No, nothing works. Fscking Chevy has disabled me to play purchased music on the hardware I OWN!
I think other chevy users will join me in hating chevy!
(ps. tip to mods... it's called sarcasm, not trolling)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
This all comes down to good business sense. Real wanted to negotiate with Apple to open up their DRM.
Real did not bring enough to the table to convince Apple to do so.
So Real decides to hack Apple's DRM.
In what way is Real acting ethically at this point?
Apple defends its rights by patching the vulnerabilities in their DRM.
In what was is Apple acting unethically at this point?
By not responding to Real's threat, Apple would be opening themselves up to lawsuits by the shareholders for not protecting their intellectual property rights.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Go ahead, try it...
"Anti" then "trust"...
How sickening is it when you have a company like Apple who has championed innovation over anti-competitive behaviour, suddenly move to the other side of the bus as soon as the monopoly works in their favour.
Shame shame shame on you Apple. You don't need to play this game. You've innovated your way to hundreds of millions in revenues. Now you're playing like Microsoft, and guess what, you've lost me as a customer. Think I'm going to re-download all those songs from the iTunes store? Not bloody likely! I'll pirate them, or wait for a reverse engineer hack to convert them.
You're actually holding the *consumer* responsible for shopping for the best deal. (Which was Real's music store). Guess what, you and the entire music industry should be bloody well stoked that we were shopping *at all*
Looks like its back to free music for me.
Shame on you Apple. Shame.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Microsoft is a monopoly. Apple is not. I think that changes things a bit.
I think iTunes sucks. I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but when I see iTunes get lauded on this site as a playlist godsend, I shudder. Apple is a trendy company that makes trendy products. Unfortunately all of them don't work as well as the iPod, but the fanboys will use whatever is fed to them.
You realise how stupid you sound basically asserting that anyone who disagrees with you is a fanboy, right?
I whole-heartedly prefer iTunes to WinAMP, but it doesn't make me fanboy... it just means that I don't really like WinAMP. If I called you a WinAMP fanboy, would that make any sense?
Nope.
How this dudes opinion got modded up to insightful is beyond me. If I said "I Linux to Windows." would that get modded up? No... oh wait, this is /. - of course it would.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Your just being disingenous.
.. seriously ? Microsoft Word, Open Office umm .. im stretching here.
.. MiniDiscs, CD players etc
.. iPods, Creative, Samsung, Dell .. and the million flash ones.
How many word processors are out there
How many music players are there
How many digital music players are there
Yeh REAL good comparison. Idiot.
Funtage Factor: Purple