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Update — No DRM In New iPod Shuffle
An anonymous reader writes "BoingBoing Gadgets has updated their story from yesterday on DRM contained in the new iPod Shuffle. (We also discussed this rumor last week.) It's a false alarm. There is a chip in the headphone controls but it is just an encoder chip. There is no DRM and no reason to believe that third party headphones wouldn't work with the new Shuffle. (Apple would still prefer you to license the encoder under the Made for iPod program, but with no DRM, there is no DMCA risk to a manufacturer reverse engineering it.) The money quote: 'For the record, we do not believe that the new iPod headphones with in-line remote use DRM that affects audio playback in any way.'"
So...no DRM, only ARM.
They are still trying to lock you into their crappy products, or 3rd party products that have paid the Apple tax for certification and pass those costs onto you.
Why does it always get so complicated every time Apple try to reinvent simplicity?
- There is no point, it's like a sphere -
Please stop calling authentication chips DRM. DRM = digital rights management, its for digital content, you cant physically have DRM on a headphone cord.
yes, other companies have been putting inline controls in headphones for years, but that's in addition to the controls on the unit, not instead of, most of these devices would still work just as well with standard headphones.
Blazing Spiders
No, the remote on my Sony discman (probably, IIRC the connectors were similar) wouldn't work with my SAFA CD/MP3 player, but when a classmate stepped on my Sony's remote and made most buttons useless (there were of course separate buttons for next and previous tracks, play/pause as well as volume control and remote lock instead of the ridiculous morse code bullshit) I could still use my discman with ANY headphones I had. From $2 shitty earbuds from a cheap walkman knockoff to my ER-4s, the only difference being that I had to use the controls on the device itself. Also, while the remote was still in one piece, I could again use any of my headphones with the remote by unplugging the Sony earbuds from the top of the remote and plugging the ER-4s in.
Does that clear it up? Discman: no remote, no remote functionality. Shuffle: no remote, no functionality. At least not until you buy an adapter for half the price of the player itself.
By "work just as well" i mean you'd still have all the controls available, with no controls available when using standard headphones, that's not working just as well.
Blazing Spiders
Not just that, but there's also now some sort of crypto signature on the index files the newer iPods create/read. If it's not present then the iPod refuses to recognise any of the music.
This seems to be there solely to destroy interoperability with any non-iTunes software (Amarok). Great, thanks Apple.
(Sightly OT - as linux user, with a 40+ GB music collection, mostly in mp3 format, what is the best current high capacity media player? 32GB Xen X-fi with an additional SD Card? Or is there anything else non-Apple that can store all my music?)
Those wires inside the cable are extremely tiny and are joined with nylon thread (probably for endurance) which makes those signal wires almost impossible to handle by hand. So unless you have some special tools and alot of patience I can't recommend cutting the cables.
That special tool is called fire! Half a second under flame and the nylon fibers ball up near the bottom, and the copper wires can then be twisted together. Everything has those fibers now, and you need this technique to modify everything from a cellphone charger to a bluetooth headset to a standalone DVD player.
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
Yeah, but there's a big fucking difference between doing that and locking out and suing anyone who doesn't want to pay for the certification!
If a third-party doesn't want to pay for "made for iPod" certification, then they shouldn't be allowed to write the logo on the box. But they should still be allowed to sell the product!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This entirely misses the point though - without the Apple headphones there is no way to control the iPod, You can't pause, skip tracks, change volume etc. All it does is play when normal headphones are installed.
Most (all?) other MP3 players that use remote controls on the headphone line have the remote control as a separate part which you can use with any headphones you like. Even the old iPod remotes are like that. Now you have to buy a remote control just to use non-Apple headphones, and currently there isn't one available.
It's not DRM but that doesn't make it any more attractive to me.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Like this, maybe?
http://www.scosche.com/ecom/images/news/435.12913.600x400.Adapter.jpg
http://www.scosche.com/press.room/?year=2009&newsID=435
Yes there is, the power button is a off/sequential play/shuffled play button, and is on the body of the device.
Do some research before you start whining.
> Sounds like a good argument to develop a standard rather than applaud this bad behaviour.
There is a kind-of standard which solved the problem years back, which (for instance) my old Sony Minidisc player and at least 3 or 4 of the phones I've had follow.
You have a propriety connection into the phone, and at the other end of the cable you have your clip with microphone/volume/pause/track-skip/answer-call buttons and sometimes a tiny screen, then have a standard 3.5mm jack on there. Problem solved. You can have all the control appropriate to the unit, and use whichever headphones you want.