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Allard 'Gets Real' With IGN
schnikies79 writes "In an interview with IGN, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Chief Architect J. Allard said he wants to work with competitors on the XBox 360. From the interview: 'I'm pro consumer on this one to the end,' says Allard. 'Anybody in my company who thought this was a bad idea to plug in Sony or Apple devices into this thing, I ended that conversation pretty quickly. This is the right thing to do for consumers. Once they invest $500 in their digital media library, you can't ask them to go buy a 360 music player and a 360 digital camera, and a 360...NO! They got their stuff. They're going to want to plug it in. We're going to be open here, guys. And if anything, I wish we could be more cooperative with the other companies that are doing those things. And if Sony or Apple were to call me up and say, "Hey, we want to some special things with the 360," I'm on it. I think it would not be in anybody's interest to say, we're not going to work with 360. It's good for them, it's good for us, and it's good for consumers.'"
How about the numerous tests, both independent and Microsoft-sponsored that show iPods and PSP's interfacing with the 360?
As long as the iPod has its mp3's stored in the iPod's mass storage area (in other words, so you can't actually play them through the iPod) and they actually are mp3's, and not DRM'd AAC files from the iTunes Music Store.
For both of these reasons, the 360's "iPod support" is completely useless. You can't buy a song from Apple, sync your iPod with your PC, then connect it to the 360 and play those songs. You can't even do it with your own ripped files from CD, unless you manually drag them over to a folder on your iPod, which your iPod then doesn't even know exists (but the Xbox 360 does).
The PSP support is probably different, because as I understand it, with the PSP you just dump a bunch of mp3 files into a folder and it plays them. Still, there's nothing revolutionary about being able to get these files off there. It's just transferring a bunch of files from one device to another.
which is worse: drm or a microsoft product?
That's a bit of a false dichotomy -- do you seriously think that M$ won't sneak DRM in there?
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