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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.'"
Is the real story.
/. for lying, and then a second time for admitting they lied.
What disappoints me is that Boing Boing get on the front page of
The real story is Boing Boing is an unreliable site: who'd have thought that on the interwebs there would be dishonest sites *shock* *horror*!
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
What I mean is the standard 3.5mm jack is simple, and works brilliantly for it's intended role. So why mess with it?
"Made for 3rd generation iPod shuffle" is fairly simple, but 99% of people would have no idea what generation their iclod is (/. crowd aside).
"Plug these in, hear music" is even more simple, and how it should be.
- There is no point, it's like a sphere -
If a company wants to make an MP3 player with buttons on the headphone cable, instead of on the device, why is that evil?
- It isn't standards compliant. When standards disintegrate the consumer pays.
- It promotes vendor lock in. It isn't inter-operable with other equipment. Consider digital SLRs. Once you buy into a brand and you've invested in enough equipment you're stuck with that brand unless you sell it all and start again.
- People who are replacing an older model may not realize there is new lock in until they've actually bought the product.
Why is everyone going mental? So you can't use the headphones you already have, so what? Just buy a different MP3 player!
When a market leader pulls this crap, others do too and pretty soon all the MP3 players you can buy have this "feature".
Lots of people don't care much what headphones they have, they just wanna listen to music while exercising, and they want a small light device to do that.
That's nice. They get what they want. What about those that do care about the headphones? What about those who can't use ear buds due to hearing or ear problems?
By the end of the month there will even be a handful of other headphones to choose from.
- Not if there's a patent on the tech and Apple wants to lock them out
- If they aren't locked out there's a licensing fee which drives the price up of all the headphones
There's no standard way to control a device from a standard headphone jack
Sounds like a good argument to develop a standard rather than applaud this bad behaviour.
you'll be buried in lawsuits if you do it the same as someone else is doing it, so a new approach had to be made
Don't you see there's something very very wrong with that? At this point it's not innovative so why are people afraid of being buried in lawsuites? Sounds like an argument for IP law reform.
Why is this such a big deal? We're stifling innovation by making a scene over stuff like this.
This is innovation? Seriously? Controlling a player externally via a proprietary cable? Really??? If this is considered innovation, there's a real problem.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This is a complete inverse logic here.
"Made for X" is inverse of "make it simple" (aka works with 99.8% players in the market). For all intents and purposes, that 3.5mm jack on the shuffle isn't standard at all. They could have made the connector in a say, magsafe style and call it a revolution. In either way you need an (unreleased) adapter (to connect normal headphones) or "made for X" headphones to use the shuffle properly. This is analog to putting apple "enhanced" usb ports on apple computers. "Well it works great if you have apple hardware connected to the usb ports, but if you want to use your usb printer/memory stick/whaterver, you should buy just this small adapter (link to apple store)." It is a lock-in coupled with royalities (which are transferred to you and me) plain and simple.
How fun would be to go into a store wanting to buy some pair of earphones, but you have to buy only sony XLX branded ones because you only have compatible sony player. Or you want to buy that excellent sounding Shure headphones, but alas, those work only with yamaha pianos. Or you want to buy computer keyboard for your dell, but the store only has "made for hp" ones.
I don't want to live in that world, world of lock-in (I'm not saying that there is no lock-in today too, quite the reverse), high prices and most of all completely unnecessary and artificial limitations. But lock-in is ultimately for consumers good isn't it?
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
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.
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