Slashdot Mirror
Apple To Face $350 Million Trial Over iPod DRM
An anonymous reader writes: A U.S. district judge ruled last week that a decade-old antitrust lawsuit regarding Apple's FairPlay DRM can move forward to a jury trial (PDF). The plaintiffs claim that in 2004, when "Real Networks launched a new version of RealPlayer that competed with iTunes," Apple issued an update to iTunes that prevented users from using their iPods to play songs obtained from RealPlayer. Real Networks updated its compatibility software in 2006, and Apple introduced a new version of iTunes that also rendered Real Networks's new update ineffective. The plaintiffs reason that they were thus "locked in" to Apple's platform, and as a result "Apple was able to overcharge its customers to the tune of tens of millions of dollars". If the plaintiffs succeed, media content purchased online may go the way of CDs and be playable on competing devices.
Actually, they do. Because the measure of "suck" has moved on.
A pile of playlists in a filesystem does not track play counts.
It does not automatically re-order when I change my rating of something on the device. Or the genre or artist.
A pile of playlists does not do any transcoding, like how I can check a box in iTunes and have all my lossless files transcoded down from my Mac Pro to fit on my phone, while still syncing tag edits, play counts, etc.
A pile of playlists is inadequate for a podcast subscription that I may listen to on multiple devices, and keep as an archive in one place but not another.
If I want to remove something from my phone temporarily, even if it's in 50 playlists, I uncheck its box in iTunes. Later if I want it back in all 50, I re-check the box.
IF I MOVE A MUSIC FILE ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE SAME DRIVE,
INCLUDING RENAMING IT,
INCLUDING CHANGING ALL TAG DATA,
it is still tracked and accounted for everywhere I've referenced it and still syncs automatically, thanks to the magic of inodes.
If you are managing your playlists directly via the filesystem, you are not some kind of "pro uz3r", you are a luddite with simple needs.