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Beware the Apple iPhone iHandcuffs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the future-of-gizmos dept.

Nrbelex writes "Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest "features" in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, 'fairplay'. Stross writes, 'If "crippleware" seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard "FairPlay," but fair it is not.... You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.' Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the pas, continue to go unnoticed?"

7 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Buying Apple is like getting married by LibertineR · · Score: 5, Funny

    No matter how sexy or cool things seemed early on, the day will come when you will wonder what the fuck you were thinking.

  2. Re:Anti-Apple week by bheer · · Score: 2, Funny
    Allow me to present my Apple credentials. An original LC owner from around 1993 (I think), then skipped out but back in for a 12" Powerbook when Jaguar was released. Our household has a MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a dual G5 tower, an (Intel) Mac Mini and an SE/30 for nostalgia. Pro-Apple enough perhaps?


    I find it disturbing that so many Slashdot posts feel spending thousands of dollars on Apple gear entitles them to criticize Apple. It doesn't work that way in real life, guys. Take women. I've spent thousands of $$$ on women but I still get to sleep on the couch for imagined slights.

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    Go somewhere random
  3. Buying Microsoft is like losing your virginity by Bemopolis · · Score: 4, Funny

    You do it because all your friends are doing it. So you go out, get drunk, and find the cheapest, skankiest thing you can get home to plug. And now you're actually touching it! And boy you're on it ALL NIGHT (in five minute incremements between reboots). When you wake up in the morning and take your first sober look at the 'face, knowing you could have done much better, you barely succeed in convincing yourself that it wasn't necessarily the wrong thing to do.

    Then you realize you have 17 viruses.

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    "I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
    1. Re:Buying Microsoft is like losing your virginity by hotdiggitydawg · · Score: 4, Funny

      You do it because all your friends are doing it. So you go out, get drunk, and find the cheapest, skankiest thing you can get home to plug. And now you're actually touching it! And boy you're on it ALL NIGHT (in five minute incremements between reboots). When you wake up in the morning and take your first sober look at the 'face, knowing you could have done much better, you barely succeed in convincing yourself that it wasn't necessarily the wrong thing to do.
       
      Then you realize you have 17 viruses. And a Trojan in your backdoor?
  4. Re:Don't buy it if you don't like it... by iminplaya · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's America's new game show. "Lawsuit Lotto" With millions of dollars in prizes. "Tell her what she wins, Bob."

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    What?
  5. Re:This is dumb! by nacturation · · Score: 4, Funny

    How about instead we place Sony and Apple in the same category?
      Or just merge the two companies. You'd end up with Apony. And everyone, at some point in their lives, has wanted a pony.
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  6. Re:Just rip your CD's fool by Scudsucker · · Score: 1, Funny

    I think Apple would lose a lot of flac they get over iTunes if they did sell some content without Fairplay on it.

    Considering that if about 50 people who post on Slashdot were run over by a bus and all that flac would disappear, I doubt Apple is going to change their modus operandi.