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Cory Doctorow On What iPhone's Missing Headphone Jack Means For Music Industry (fastcompany.com)
Rumors of Apple's next iPhone missing a headphone jack have been swirling around for more than a year now. But a report from WSJ a few weeks ago, and another report from Bloomberg this week further cemented such possibility. We've talked about it here -- several times -- but now Cory Doctorow is shedding light on what this imminent change holds for the music industry. Reader harrymcc writes: Fast Company's Mark Sullivan talked about the switch with author and EFF adviser Cory Doctorow, who thinks it could lead to music companies leveraging DRM to exert more control over what consumers can do with their music.From the article:"If Apple creates a circumstance where the only way to get audio off its products is through an interface that is DRM-capable, they'd be heartbreakingly naive in assuming that this wouldn't give rise to demands for DRM," said Doctorow. If a consumer or some third-party tech company used the music in way the rights holders didn't like, the rights holders could invoke the anti-circumvention law written in Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Steve Jobs famously convinced the record industry to remove the DRM from music on iTunes; is there really any reason to believe the industry might suddenly become interested in DRM again if the iPhone audio goes all digital? "Yes -- for streaming audio services," Doctorow says. "I think it is inevitable that rights holder groups will try to prevent recording, retransmission, etc." Today it's easy to record streamed music from the analog headphone jack on the phone, and even to convert the stream back to digital and transmit it in real time to someone else. With a digital stream it might not be nearly so easy, or risk-free."Doctorow shares more on BoingBoing.
Ultimately DRM boils down to even more labels not wanting their music to be heard. There's a simple answer to that, don't listen.
If you don't want to produce good quality CD music uncompressed playable through an awesome amplifier to a standard pair of headphones without any bullshit circuitry in between, then by all means don't produce it. There's enough music in the world that we don't need to jump through hoops if we can't hear your stuff.
Until they can beam the digital signal direct to your brain (cochlear implant, anyone?), at some point the signal is converted to actual sound waves to be heard by your ears. Or a microphone.
Paying $29 for another dongle.
Today it's easy to record streamed music from the analog headphone jack on the phone, and even to convert the stream back to digital and transmit it in real time to someone else.
Unless they propose to beam music into my brain through a digital only chip then the analogue hole will ALWAYS exist on music. This isn't a monitor where the digital signal is the last easy point to intercept the signal. There aren't 2.3million individual points to accurately record and reproduce. There's just 2.
If you have a signal that can move two magnetic transducers, I can trivially pump that signal into a recording device after any DRM takes place.
But I won't, I'll simply copy the CD instead. Keep your locked down piece of crap.
So, I guess Cory Doctorow has never heard of a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC), eh? Once a signal is converted back to analog (which it still has to be to be amplified and heard by us non-digitally-enabled humans), it is once more free for the taking.
And unlike video, where you can play all sorts of games with resolution, etc, you can't decimate audio data nearly as much.
Also, if this happens, there will be about 5,000 adapters to use analog earbuds/headphones with the data stream; and again, there's that pesky DAC... So, in reality, this is nothing more than a tempest in a DRM-free teapot.
Don't buy an iPhone.
Or any other phone, starting next year.
- You need a small adapter for your regular headphones. This can get lost. So don't lose it.
- They can fit a slightly bigger battery in the phone, so it will last slightly longer
- The phone can be thinner.
- Headphone port will no longer break if you yank the cord sideways. It will no longer get plugged up with pocket lint.
- You can get noise cancelling headphones that are powered by your phone instead of a separate battery
- Charging while listening remains a question? How can you do it? Wireless charging built in? Y-adapter?
- Apple will sell bluetooth earbuds
- People who want attention will complain and make up stories about DRM
- Other people who want attention will complain and make up stories about headphone lock-in (even though there's an adapter for traditional headphones)
- Other people who want attention will complain about the horror of paying $12 of an adapter when they just bought a $600 phone
- Other people who want attention will complain because it's Apple and everything they do is bad
- Other people will defend because it's Apple and everything they do is awesome
- Next year, no one with any practicality will care that much because there's a $12 adapter for regular headphones.
I don't have an apple product, most of the music I listen to today, comes from spotify/pandora, which has to be compressed I'm sure to make it not suck up a ton of data, and it's usually played through bluetooth into the shaker sound system in my Mustang. That, and my hearing pretty much rolls off around 13k, if that! So, I'm NOT "pixel peeping" for sound. And, the music I listen to is old school rock, blues, country from the 70's. All originally recorded in analog. Now, given that, if they start invoking DRM into what I listen to, I'll just put a ton of MP3's back on my phone.
When I heard that the iPhone was "missing" the headphone jack, my first thought was "good call".
Here you have this insanely popular electronic device that people have with them at all times, and what's the number one complaint about it? No, no, /. friends, no, it's not planned obsolescence. It's "this thing dies if it so much as looks at water."
Well if you're going to try to take care of that problem one thing you might go for right away is getting rid of that crazy big hole in the top that by its very nature of design is all about exposed metal contacts.
I guess you could get all crazy in your head about DRM and shit but as someone else points out, at the end of the day however the sound is delivered it must end up being converted into a signal that can be used by standard speakers or headphones.
The only way around that is if Apple plans on making it so you have only two options:
* play the sound directly through the iPhone's built-in speaker
* send the sound via some Apple-proprietary encrypted cousin of bluetooth to one of Apple's own special speaker systems that if they get large enough to entertain a party probably cost many thousands of dollars
If that's the direction they're going to go I'd like to imagine it's going to be a complete failure because people don't have the money or wherewithal to spend on special speakers from Apple (the computer company, not the music company).
But then again you only have to know a handful of Apple users to understand that they would do exactly that, and would be glad to go broke doing it.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
All it takes is one popular vendor to cater to media groups and then it will only be a matter of time until all devices of the same class have to be compliant with no analog outputs for XYZ media app to run. Of course this is what starts to happen when companies begin to profit from media instead of/in addition to their own products. It's like some huge force coming in with a wrecking ball.
Speakers will always be analog so the easy workaround would be to source "digital speakers" that utilise a single high quality full-range driver, snip the leads to the driver and hook up a LOC and record the analog level coming out of the LOC. There will always be an "analog hole" which can be used to bypass any and all DRM.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The media content industry has already done away with analogue video output jacks. Now they are focusing on audio.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
In which a a stereo bluetooth speaker is paired with a pair of bluetooth microphones, encased in a soundproof case. To make DRM music non-DRM, simply play it to the bluetooth speaker and record to MP3 from the bluetooth microphones.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
A very interesting article. But people fail to understand that there are other phone vendors besides Apple. Unless all of them remove the jack, then we have no problem. Apple has a problem. No user in his right mind would consider buying a jack-less iPhone. I bought my first phone just because of the integrated MP3/radio player, not the ability to make calls. That was secondary. I never heard anyone say anything good about Bluetooth transmissions. So let's see if Apple pulls it off, but I doubt it.
It's sad how people go off the deep end, and try to make everything about their personal crusade, like Cory has. People will be able to use headphone adapters, and even if that wasn't allowed, the signal can be intercepted at the earbuds.
Joe Six-Pack doesn't care, as long as "the approved interface" let's him hear the music.
He'll happily pay, and pay, and pay again, if that's what it takes to hear his top 40 tunes.
That's what the **IAAs are counting on.
If Apple creates a circumstance where the only way to get audio off its products is through an interface that is DRM-capable...
Idiotic statement. There is ALWAYS a bulletproof way to get audio off any device that can play it. It won't be a perfect copy but until they can outlaw speakers we can always just do what we did when I was growing up and record it by putting a mic up to the speakers. Works just fine unless you are a snob about it.
He's literally ignoring that Apple was the only company to ever fight against DRM in their products. Every other company just said, well they're they rights holders, they can do that.
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman yesterday rejected in no uncertain terms Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs' suggestion earlier this week that the major music label companies should abandon digital tunes copy protection.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
No removable storage. Less headphone jack than a Galaxy. Lame.
...someone who gets it.
Gets what, exactly? Because Cory Doctorow doesn't "get" it at all.
So my comment was modded "Troll", but NOT the one I was REPLYING to?
I've had 3 iphones in a row, going back to the first one.
If the next one doesn't have a headphone jack, and there's an Android phone out there that does, I'll switch. I don't think I'm alone, either.
There will be phones with headphone jacks out there because people want them. People want to be able to use any headset. People don't want to carry adapters around.
It's a cash grab that delivers no additional value to users.
company... removes headphone jack.
Seems legit.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Yeah, so Apple is going to not only ditch the analog TRS connector, but also going to get rid of the DRM-less Bluetooth A2DP standard we've all been using for years, because they want to throw their entire music strategy in reverse and go BACK to DRM, inviting useability hassles and customer complaints, and instantly making their devices incompatible with 100% of all playback devices on the market today?
Seems like a legit strategy. Or a lot of paranoid hand waving.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
incites*
they'd be heartbreakingly naive in assuming that this wouldn't give rise to demands for DRM,
No, they'd be lying. Does anyone believe that they have not already received demands for such DRM? Surely, they've been receiving such demands for years.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Have fun with that god awful latency and random drops. BT isn't ready for prime time at all. I've got a Nexus 6P and the signal routinely fails to transmit in my car, and heaven help me if I get a phone call. Also don't try to watch video on anything other than low latency BT, because it's a noticeable delay without the low latency, which is, of course, more expensive and not perfect.
Stupid fuck.
First, who cares about "latency" (do you even know what that means) when there is nothing to compare the delayed-signal to? If we're talking about music, the audio could have 30 MINUTES of latency, and you wouldn't know it.
As for random drops? Get a decent headset/phone.
I don't have bluetooth in my car; but I used my old iPhone 4s with a rental car with Bluetooth (a Kia Elantra?), and in a week of use, experienced zero dropouts or other idiocy; so now what?
And according to rumor, Apple is using low-latency BT. So, no problems with video-sync.... NEXT!
Apple knows that this is going to be a controversial feature; so I am completely sure they will get it right.
It depends on the transport being used for the Bluetooth audio. If you're using the ass-old first generation SBC codecs in the A2DP profile, yeah it's terrible. If you're using the new aptX stuff in Bluetooth 4.0, it's better.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Every person who buys an iPhone with no headphone jack will end up paying an extra amount of money for some shitty dongle or even shittier iPhone Beats by Dr Drm.
Consumers will be the losers in a war with no win condition. As many people have mentioned, it will simply be ripped after the port instead of at the port. Meaning all of this industry re-tooling will do nothing against imaginary pirates, and plenty of measurable harm for poor sods who pay for the things they want to license.
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May just require some tools. If they think they can lock down music completely, then they are mistaken.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No you are.
Ever watch a video with BT lag? It's unbearable.
That's the problem we're talking about here, troll.
For me the choice is to either get a phone with a headphone jack or replace the whole entertainment system in two vehicles. I'll be looking for a phone with a headphone jack.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Don't buy an iPhone.
Or any other phone, starting next year.
I don't think the industry is going to move that fast.
That said, my current phone has a headphone jack that just collects dust. I use bluetooth everywhere.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Apple has in NO way EVER been a technology leader. They have never invented any of the technology that is used in their products, and never will. It was only a matter of time time until they screwed up so completely that they removed themselves from the technology equation completely.
There will be phones with headphone jacks out there because people want them.
That's what they said about QWERTY keyboards on phones, and now look where we are.
MFI program is Apple 'drm'. Apple can dictate the capabilities and the headphones that connect directly to the port. Think about Apple owning beats.
Bluetooth audio has no DRM. And they certainly allow a bunch of NON-MFI-Approved cables and adapters already.
Apple understands that this is going to be a sensitive feature, marketing-wise; so I doubt seriously, in their position as marketshare underdog in the phone market, whether they would even begin to think they could get away with a dickish move like requiring DRMed earbuds/headphones, even if they wanted to (which I honestly don't believe they do).
which drains the battery even faster and requires a second battery (for the bluetooth receiver). All this for no benefit.
Ever watch a video with BT lag? It's unbearable.
Even if the (noninteractive) video is delayed by exactly the number of frames to compensate for a particular Bluetooth audio device's lag? That'd affect pause and seek controls, but not the majority of playback.
Apple actually tried to sell a set of amplified speakers back in the heyday of the iPod, and it was a dismal failure. Not because they sucked (they didn't); but because it just wasn't the right product for Apple.
Apple has since bought Beats. What does that change?
It was 1985. I was 5. I got my first boombox -- i.e. ghetto-blaster. It ran either through mains or via 12 D-cell batteries. It had detachable speakers -- each the size of twenty iphones. It had dual-cassette players. It had am/fm radio.
It had a record button.
Push the record button, and it recorded whatever what playing -- cassette or radio.
It had high-speed dubbing.
DRM exists within the audio player, good for it. Your desktop speakers have no such intelligence. Between the two, is your sound card. Any decent $20 sound card, and just about every on-board sound device, has no trouble recording whatever it's putting out.
Play anything you like in Windows. Grab any recording software, and hit record. Choose the source as the "output mix" from your sound card.
This ain't new. Thirty years ago, I recorded live radio. Since then we've had napster, altervista, ftp, bbs, and torrents. You can take it all away with DRM if you like. Play anything you want off of youtube, and hit record. It's not difficult.
And it all comes down to the very same thing. It's not your music when you use my equipment to play it. It's that simple.
.
Music Industry and game streamers
What about them? the Music Industry says they don't have the rights to rebroadcast that music in the game be them doing on there own or even as part of the people who are making the game.
Also they are forcing bars to pay Jukebox fees for pinball games that are playing their music.
With a digital stream it might not be nearly so easy, or risk-free.
The earpieces are still Analog voice coils. Splice into the line 3 inches past the 'drm / digital block' and solder the positive side into the 3.5 mm jack and leave the ground disconnected to prevent ground loop hum.
You were saying?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Get off their dick.
How is what I said untrue?
Ever watch a video with BT lag? It's unbearable.
Even if the (noninteractive) video is delayed by exactly the number of frames to compensate for a particular Bluetooth audio device's lag? That'd affect pause and seek controls, but not the majority of playback.
And how much "latency" are we talking about, here? Yes, even a hundred milliseconds is very noticeable with video/audio sync; but less than about 50 ms. and most people wouldn't even notice. Less than 20ms and almost no one notices.
Then there's low-latency Bluetooth...
I still play vinyl records. You can have the music I purchased when you wrest it from my cold, dead ears.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How do you think the sound is played today? It comes in digital format, and then it is converted just before putting it in the headphone jack.
Now they will do it on the ear bud side, but it is still the SAME process.
It is not mitigation, it is the same signal! But some inches away sure...
Sounds like your Nexus 6P is garbage. Should have sprung for a real phone.
I listen to to music through BT with my iPhone 10-15 feet away and it's always rock solid. Headphones, Big Jambox, little Jambox, no problem. It's not the technology itself but the cheap, crappy implementations of it on inferior phones that's the problem.
Or buy a $10 device that streams bluetooth to a headphone jack for both vehicles if your stereo isn't bluetooth capable.
And you wonder why you got moderated Troll!
It's "technically" trivial to use the analog hole for video at any commonly-used-in-TV resolution.
It's just very expensive. But you only have to do it once. Or, more precisely, someone has to do it once, then distribute the results.
A very expensive way that is all but guaranteed to work is to put the video through a very large display (projection-TV anyone?) then sample every pixel with a good-enough, fast-enough (and small-enough) sampler.
Now, "good-enough, fast-enough, and small-enough" translates into very expensive, at least right now. But the principle of the thing is so simple that even the DRM-industry executives should be able to understand it.
Now, this method won't work for copying non-video data, but if they are worried about lost sales of movies and songs (vs. books, games and other software) then it's probably the video and audio that they are worried about protecting the most.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Back in the 90s and even into the turn of the century, Microsoft had a pretty laissez-faire attitude about piracy. Back then, they could afford to, and they knew every pirated application and OS strengthened their position in the market. But when they began to reach saturation and the quarterly reports weren't showing the same rate of growth, they got pretty serious about piracy with the hardware activation and criminal cases against pirates. And when that failed, well, that's why we have Office 365 and a free Windows OS with nightmare invasive telemetry that's nigh-impossible for most folks to remove.
Apple has now reported, what, two quarters of consecutive slowed growth? No big deal; it's the biggest company in the world, and profits are still rising. But you can bet the folks at the top are feeling the squeeze. I'm sure they've got plenty of stuff in the works. Maybe it'll do well. Maybe not. But we all know that Apple plays the long game. If they do drop the analog jack, it won't have been because they just wanted a slimmer phone. At least part of the reason - and in my opinion, the primary reason - will be because it gives them more control over their market. More control over the lucrative accessory sales (including adapters and third-party licensing), and another lever of control should those two quarters of slow growth turn into four or eight. They won't want to implement DRM, and I very much doubt they'll ever do it for standard MP3 sales. But streaming? New releases? Exclusives?
Again, they won't want to; it's hostile to the consumer, bad for their brand, and expensive on the tech support end. But after a period of slow growth, a few product stumbles, and a handful of high-profile restructures or executive departures, I think you can count on them to make those long-game bets start paying off.
So then, your entertainment systems don't do bluetooth, which is another tech that fanboys like to crow about. That's very interesting. Just how OLD are these cars and their entertainment systems anyways?
Seriously, it's not 2003 any more.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Apple didn't do anything. The industry decided to undermine the monopoly they handed Apple on a silver platter.
Meanwhile, ALL of Apple's other content is still quite DRM infested.
It's like you are all trapped in 2003 and music is all that there is.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
to completely eliminate me from ever being a potential iPhone customer.
Oh, ho ho! macs4all (973270) is all proud of himself despite having a micro penis because he registered a username on a website that requires absolutely no proof of identity, allows multiple accounts, and allows anyone else to do the same. He's so awesome!
By the way, rimlicker, some of us have been using Slashdot since day 1 and never registered a username because we don't feel the need. You, on the other hand, are a narcissistic hipster who felt that pushing the Apple brand was so important that you needed to choose a username to do so. In that light, you're far worse than the anonymous commenters you think you're superior to.
So then, your entertainment systems don't do bluetooth, which is another tech that fanboys like to crow about. That's very interesting. Just how OLD are these cars and their entertainment systems anyways?
Seriously, it's not 2003 any more.
I bought my primary set of headphones in 2002 for a considerable price. No chance in hell I'm going to chance it because of an ephemeral phone.
This development reminds me of the things predicted this article from 2001. The article itself was written about Napster, but it's written in the vein of all the bad things that could happen *in the future* after Napster is gotten rid of, and the banning of analog inputs/outputs was a large part of it.
Now, his timeline was obviously way too fast, but moving analog headphone jacks would fit into his vision -- he does talk about the "hoarding of analog speakers", after all. (Which is kind of ridiculous, as ultimately, even a set of speakers with a digital interface ultimately has an analog speaker making the actual sound, but whatever.) If analog sound outputs do go the way of the dodo (Apple's move certainly doesn't take us there, but it could be the first step in a several decade process that does) ... then a complete DRM path like we're seeing with a lot of HD video now might actually happen.
In a similar vein, RMS The Right to Read dystopian short story (written about software and reading freedom rather than sound countent, but still similar) may actually be coming closer to reality, though he set his time frame further ahead -- 2096, 100 years in the future -- so we can't really say he predicted it or not yet.
I am quite disappointed at the imagination of phone makers. A single headphone jack is one too few. How cool would it be to have two people listening to the same song/movie/video on a single device?
The commercials would write themselves:
Hipster girl on the train, headphones in, bobbing head to the beat, soundtrack playing her tune. Directly across, hipster guy headphones in, tapping his foot, soundtrack plays what he is hearing. Eyes meet, head inclines, eyebrow goes up, pointedly looking at device askance. One shows their screen to the other, the other follows suit. Guy comes and sits next to the girl, shows her the two plugs on his phone. Girl unplugs her headphones and plugs in to the guys phone with him. Shot from outside the train shows heads bobbing in sync, then leaning together, now head on shoulder. Soundtrack crescendos, train pulls off screen, phone company logo center screen. Print money.
Instead what we get is more control, less usability, isolating experiences, etc. It's like the whole idea of the modern mobile device is intentionally set up to separate people, rather than bring them together. For a communications device that is pretty ironic.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
My car is from 2012, it doesn't support bluetooth.
They will still pirate lower quality films and music. DRM is useless. You can always just record the output and with the proliferation of higher end audio and video recording it seems DRM would loss more sales than it would gain and not stop piracy at all. It also costs money to implement and maintain. Perhaps most important is that people tend to hate it.
Is that like guaranteeing that it might be true?
--- What?
Apple isn't stupid, arrogant maybe, but not stupid.
But in many instances arrogance can lead to stupidity. Puck Mouse anyone? Metal cased phones that ground out the cellular antenna if you 'hold them wrong'? Phablets that bend at unexceptionably low pressure values?
Apple make a lot of nice things but that doesn't prevent them from doing some very stupid things. They usually get their act together at some point but that has sometimes meant abandoning the path they were on and going back to what worked.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Apple may not care about DRM one way or the other but they do care about people bypassing their cash generating MFi program and their proprietary lightning connector and using the "audio" jack as a data connection interface. I'm sure they're still trying to figure out how to make Square pay the fee.
Bullshit. Apple looks the other way on NON-MFI devices ALL the time. Or do you really think all those $2.99 Lightning cables on Amazon are MFI-registered? Wait, you're probably stupid enough to actually think they are.
You can buy a spindle of the chips required to make a Lightning cable at less than $0.50 a chip at a quantity as low as 1000 units. The price obviously decreases with volume. Then it's another $10,000 to join the MFI program. So, yes, I bet you could ship a $2.99 lightning cable from China to the US if you have the right volume.
The usual argument is that with DRM you don't own the media. Well when I buy a song from iTunes it doesn't have DRM -- I own the media. When I pay for a subscription service. I pay for it knowing in advance that when I stop subscribing. I no longer have the right to listen to it.
Don't buy an iPhone.
Or don't use it to listen to music. Which is what I plan to do. I have a 5s, which I plan to upgrade to the 7 once it's out. Why? I'd like to have Apple Pay, and I was within the contract period when 6 was out, and didn't wish to shell out cash then. But that won't alter my usage. As it is, much of my iPhone memory gets eaten up by the WhatsApp messages I exchange w/ family, so I've chosen not to stage music there. I have a separate iPod and iPad, and not just that, I download from YouTube the music videos I like and then play them whenever I like. In the car, I have XM Radio, and I switch b/w that and the iPod.
Seriously, there is no way I could use my iPhone for music - just my family communications consumes a lot of it. All the pics and videos I have is approaching 5GB
To make people rebuy those expensive headphones? You're goddamn right.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I've never found one of those devices that didn't affect the sound in some way. The audio quality sourced from my phone through a cable seems to always sound better then the sound from bluetooth. I invested money in my phone with audio quality as part of that so I like to hear it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Not that they should be ashamed, but it amazes me how Apple can turn its back on a large segment of device users. Why wouldn't I still have my sound system from 2006 if it still sounds good? I guess this is the part that Apple users don't necessarily understand; that some people don't switch as soon as the next shiny new thing if out and that is why Apple caters to the people who have that kind of money to spend on things.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Precisely! I mean, imagine if Apple had actually created and implemented it's own DRM standard, then it would be just like every other company. Except that it controlled the DRM experience from beginning to end...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That's what they said about QWERTY keyboards on phones, and now look where we are.
Yeah let's look. LG have 3 current phones out with a QWERTY keyboard. Blackberry have a few as well.
All of them are selling like a vegan gluten free cake at a diary convention, because ultimately there was only 4 people who gave a crap about them, you and the 3 people who modded you up.
I couldn't care less either. It was a usability crapshoot from day one and I don't miss them. I'm inclined to think that the common headphone is something people are far more attached to.
Just get the next iPhone SE variant... not all phones need to be the same.
- These characters were randomly selected.
MFI program is Apple 'drm'. Apple can dictate the capabilities and the headphones that connect directly to the port. Think about Apple owning beats.
Bluetooth audio has no DRM. And they certainly allow a bunch of NON-MFI-Approved cables and adapters already.
Really? What cables and adapters? Because other sources say otherwise, and - since I have developed MFi products before - I know you must have an actual MFi authentication chip in order to negotiate with iOS to enable basically anything. Getting the chips requires enrolling in the MFi program, providing Apple with full details of what you want to make (and it better be compliant with the 1000+ page spec updated every 2 months), show that it passes all MFi certification testing, and then you can buy your MFi authentication chips (rather, your manufacturer can - you, the brand or designer, cannot - it is bought only by the manufacturer).
Now, you can get grey market chips (buy out overstock units) but that's a dicey market to deal in because it's not a steady supply. So you choice is play ball with Apple or don't play at all.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And it's still lags behind CD quality...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
When iTunes first came out, nearly all of the music was DRM'd. And then to compete with Amazon Music, they killed it. Why do these people fear that Apple is trying really hard to reintroduce it?
As Joe Rogan once said on News Radio: "this is the Internet. You can't take the pee out of the pool."
The record labels lost the DRM war over 6 years ago, when Apple abandoned all DRM for iTunes music. Apple still has almost 65% of the purchase & download music market, so they basically get to dictate the terms to the studios.
In fact, that's why the movie studios have been so unwavering in their demands for DRM on video content (as well as the fairly absurd pricing model). They are doing everything they can to prevent the same thing happening to them that happened to the music industry...
You didn't need to buy new hands to use a touch keyboard though
Are you sure about that? My hands can't tell whether or not the thumbs are centered over the keys of an on-screen keyboard. With a physical keyboard, I could touch-type while keeping my eyes on the text I'm writing rather than the keys. It's ironic that a "touch" screen doesn't allow "touch" typing.
I like to upgrade and have a reasonably current device. iPhones have served me well. Taking away a headphone jack would constitute them ceasing to serve me well.
He's literally ignoring that Apple was the only company to ever fight against DRM in their products. Every other company just said, well they're they rights holders, they can do that.
Yeah, "they" can't do it, well, unless it benefits Apple's bottom line. You're forgetting about the DRM build in to their charging cables.
He's literally ignoring that Apple was the only company to ever fight against DRM in their products.
No. Steve Jobs did that. And Jobs is dead.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Every iPhone for sale right now comes with a headphone jack.
Some Android phones for sale right now do not come with a headphone jack.
Yet somehow it is Apple that is at fault for removing headphone jacks.
The nice thing about Android is that with USB OTG that most mid-to-high end phones have these days, there's an open interface to attach pretty much any kind of hardware. Including, say, a headphone jack receptacle.
Bingo~
It just leads to the top selling product of the digital to analog converter. And as long as this exists (and it will exist for a long time, because most headphones are analog) there is no DRM on this.
Oh, there are iPhones with 64GB, if not 128GB at the upper end. It's that the entry level phones are the ones w/ 16GB. Similarly, 5GB is the free storage that one gets on iCloud, but any more than that and it starts costing you.
I solved this issue by disabling iCloud for photos, and using my OneDrive instead, where I have 30GB due to my purchase of Office 365. To be honest, the only reason I have an iPhone is FaceTime. So there is one phone number that just my family has, so that we can FaceTime. Other than that, I have an Android phone that I use for work, and a Vonage number that I access from either of the phones.
Because his point is valid and valid pro-Apple points around here often get modded troll?
That said, ditching the audio jack that's been standard for literally over 100 years, that's used everywhere, that people have come to know and trust, and that is literally the de-facto standard headphone interface across the entirety of the audio industry (and, more importantly, the recording industry) would be an entirely braindead move and I absolutely do note believe for one moment that Apple would actually do it.
Then again, they've been steadily convincing me they've gone completely braindead for the past 5 years or so...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Please enlighten me as to what DRM I have on my Mac?
I'll be waiting with baited breath over here.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You're not very bright, are you?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The original Sony Walkman featured two headphone jacks. It didn't prove to be very popular and it wasn't carried forward. Of course, that was also 35 years ago.
What are you doing? I haven't used a 1/8 mechanical plug in years. Why does this even matter?
There will be phones with headphone jacks out there because people want them.
That's what they said about QWERTY keyboards on phones, and now look where we are.
I'm confused by the keyboard comment. Where are we as I type on a qwerty keyboard on a Blackberry Q 10 running Android and has Blackberry World Amazon Apps and Google Play all functional with a few deeply dependent Google Apps that will not work. (Google Hangouts for one).
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything........ ever.
He's not ignoring anything. Read his original essay on Boing rather than the Fastcompany summary. From his piece:
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Correction .... Company that spends billions to acquire headphone company which sells it's wireless headphones at a $100 premium .... removes headphone jack.
The same people that buy iPhones b/c they are made by Apple are the same people who buy Beats by Dre b/c of all the hype behind them. It's a brilliant business move. Will definitely sell more wireless Beats once this phone comes out.
Brighter than you, as it appear.
Jobs had is own ideas about how Apple should do business. If you really used to use Apple products on the last 10 years, you should had noticed how things changed course slightly before his death.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org