Or maybe they'll invent yet another DRM system and hope it catches on in an even more fragmented market?
Bingo. Not only will another DRM system come along, it will have the full weight of the RIAA behind it. Apple and Microsoft have enough sway to lobby for their respective DRM's but these little guys will be forced to use one the RIAA strong-arms them into using.
You don't have to authorize an iPod to play iTunes purchases do you? I recently screwed my computer up and had to format the drive. No worries...all my tunes were on my iPods. No, I don't have backups, because my iPods are my backups. The day my laptop is stolen, my desktop hard drive crashes and my two iPods explode or are stolen is the day I lose all my music.
The only problem with this is as soon as Yahoo gets popular, the RIAA will start forcing Yahoo to DRM their music as well.
Apple is only putting DRM on their tunes so as to be able to sell the tunes under the music industry's heavy-handed rules. Personally, I don't see what the fuss is about DRM, considering pirates will always say it is up to the companies to defeat piracy. When the companies do implement a solution, the backlash is inevitable, yet hypocritical. What is so constricting about Apple DRM that other DRM schemes do better? I burned a CD from an iTunes album and sent it to my son and it works just fine for him. Where's the problem? Oh, you mean the anti-drm crowd just wants to be able to upload their songs to their 1.5 billion bittorrent friends?...I get it now!
So your girlfriend bought 10,000,000 gallons of 93-octane supreme unleaded fuel then went out and bought a Turbo-diesel car and is now mad at Exxon/Mobil?;-)
First of all it most likely isn't Apple's fault. It is more likely your country's business laws. Secondly, I live in the UK, but I just choose the US store (no thanks, I'll pass on the Girls Aloud rubbish). Can you not download iTunes and use the US store from Sweden?
Perhaps they are taking a second look at their music collections and asking if they want to be tied at the hip to Apple?
Funny...this seems to be how Microsoft Windows became the dominant force of the desktop computing environment, no? At least with Apple you are getting the dominant player in the field AND a quality product.
I'm not so sure teenagers are the target audience. I'm 37 and I have plenty of money, and spend a fair share (probably $1000 last year?) on iTunes. I don't know many teens with that much money to burn. I also buy gift cards for my kids (indeed, teenagers). If you are judging by the top 10 tracks, then yeah, it looks pretty teeny-oriented, but that's just the market. It isn't just teens driving up the #1 track each week. Yes, adults buy that awful garbage marketed to teens as well. (B-bananas-b-a-n-a-n-a-s!) If you look past the first page of iTunes, you'll find a remarkably large and diverse music store with enough obscure stuff for jazz snobs like myself to keep busy for, well, ever.
Would Ford Taurus sales be growing if each year's model was the same or worse in mileage and handling than the previous year's?
Awful analogy, especially considering the Taurus has been discontinued. And even more especially (my phrase) since the Taurus was always a mediocre under-performing boringly dreadful car. The quality of the car had nothing to do with sales figures. It pandered to the 50% percentile of consumers that are afraid to stand out, so it sold a lot of cars. Ford Fleet sales had more to do with sales numbers than any tangible consumer indicator, for that matter.
Actually, you son't even hear me complaining, and I'm an audiophile. The tracks (Lou rhodes, Sara K.) sound clear to me. (ref: Sennheiser HD600 with AHA headphone amp to a Denon DA convertor).
Finally, a voice of reason. I'm a semi-professional musician, and somewhat of an audiophile as well. I challenge any of the iTunes naysayers here to a blind test. Show me you can tell the difference between a 128-bit AAC and a straight CD track and I'll stop typing. You can even use my probably-closer-to-reference-than-yours system as well: clean and plentiful Yamaha power, Paradigm Monitor 9 floor standing speakers and a powered Klipsch KSW 10" subwoofer. I sure hate to think that my $3000 home stereo investment is all for nothing, since I'm buying awful $1 iTunes songs! Since I can't hear the difference myself, who are the rest of you to complain on my behalf?
BTW, the name of Microsoft's new player is "Zune".
BTW, "Zube" means penis in Arabic, so I think it is a funny typo.
If you buy a PlaysForSure device, however, then there's at least some chance that the player you like better next year will also be a PFS device.
You have fun with your PlaysForSure (ObsoleteForSure, more like it). Do you seriously think that there will be a single PFS device for sale in two years? I'm pretty optimistic that iTunes+iPod will still be a viable option in two-years time, however.
Legitimate users of iTunes have always confounded me. What with the way they dress and their holier-than-thou attitude.
Not quite sure I'm holier than anybody, but I simply can't stand the wasted hours trying to find good (illegal) copies of music and tv shows, and weeding through all the porn/spam/malware, when I can avoid the whole fiasco by paying a couple bucks. I don't know what you are worth, but saving time and ending up with a legitimate and decent enough quality copy is worth the $1 to me.
Instead of blowing us off as some elitist snob iTunes lovers, why not consider that money isn't always a huge factor for some people? The convenience alone is worth the price of entry.
Is this the same UK that is systematically removing ALL wireless networks from public schools because of an irrational fear of RF poisoning? I wonder how much more (fake) damage UWB will do to the children? Can't we just think of the children!
My OS X spanking new Macbook Pro takes well over a minute, maybe two minutes to boot, and is slow and unresponsive until it "calms down". While most my XP comps start in 10-20 seconds, and are actually more responsive even though its not finished booting yet.
You are either lying or you have a faulty MacBook Pro. I have the bare bones MacBook 1.83 with 1 gig of ram and it takes less than 15 seconds to boot. Perhaps you got OS X and XP backwards, because my PC takes minutes to boot up, even though it has 1 gig more ram and a faster clockspeed cpu. Everything you claim is exactly the opposite from reality, to include the bit about XP being more responsive even thought it is still booting.
The key difference between Mac OS X and Win XP is that you can actually launch an app within 5 seconds of the desktop appearing on Mac OS X. My PC requires an additional minute or two just for the background items to load. I can launch iTunes in about 5 seconds after login on my Mac, but it will take well over a minute for the same thing on XP login. When you couple that with the boot times of 15 seconds for the Mac and 1:30 for XP, the boot times DO become significant, contrary to the popular opinion voiced on here that boot times don't matter.
My bottom-of-the-line Toshiba A65 laptop can do the same thing, in the same amount of time, using Windows XP in its standard configuration.
Yes, but your Toshiba doesn't boot up in 14 seconds. My MacBook does. What's all the fuss about wake-up/sleep mode times, when it takes a MacBook a mere 14 seconds to boot from cold?
Coincedentally, my MacBook boots up in to Win XP Professional in about 50 seconds. Maybe it is the EFI or the Bootcamp work around, but I think it is most likely XP. I haven't tried the sleep mode in XP, but I'm just going to guess it isn't stellar.
These boot times are measured by when the desktop appears. With OS X, the programs are usable in about 5 seconds, but I have to wait an additional 30 seconds or so before all the background items load into XP (with NO third party apps, just XP...it's all I have had time to install thus far, so I'm assuming it only gets slower from here as I add programs.)
The very successful line of Papyrus NASCAR racing games was run out of town by EA, because Papyrus couldn't afford the NASCAR licenses. EA has been dumping crap "racing" games on us ever since. The problem with this scenario is Papryus grew to be a leading simulation company that happened to make two great games based on simulation (Nascar and Grand Prix Legends). GPL is pretty much still the Gold Standard for racing simulation, even if it is ridiculously difficult. EA took the opposite approach: make a "simulation" that is so unrealistic, even your average brain-dead overweight teen-aged gamer can play for hours. Oh, and hey, look at all the authentic NASCAR sponsors! Whoopdy friggin' doo.
I don't blame EA for pandering to the middle of the road hobbyist though. It is just too bad that their might has taken away options for the more serious enthusiast auto-sim crowd. I wonder why most of us still play Grand Prix Legends? The game is obviously graphically underpowered, since it was made 8 years ago (even though it is one of the most heavily modded games I've ever seen). Eye-candy is not important when you are sliding a 1960s era Foruma 1 car around the Nurburgring at 190 mph. I've played EA games that have had the Nurburgring ported into it, and let's just say there is about as much realism involved with EA games as there is realism in Donkey Kong.
Speech Recognition is built into the OS and in my experience, actually works pretty well. I can see a lot of secretaries, typing-deficient people, bosses, etc. appreciating being able to dictate to a computer. I can also see some liability disappear as businesses "cure" carpal tunnel and other repetitive strain nonsense.
Mac OS has had usable speech recognition for at least the past 12 years, but it is hardly used. Why the sudden urgency for something businesses don't need?
I believe Bungie had been working on Halo before Microsoft devoured them... In fact, it was Bungie who made many wonderful games for the Mac. Pathways out of Darkness? Marathon? Hello? Then suddenly, MS pwned them, and now they make crappy back ports to their "original" OS... *sigh* More importantly though, how is Bungie's Halo a Microsoft innovation again?
Not only were they working on Halo before MS bought them out, they were nearly finished with it and there was going to be a simultaneous Mac/PC release. Bungie was a Mac-centric organization, known for their great games that came out on Mac only (Marathon), or on both Mac and PC at the same time (the great Myth I and II games). Microsoft needed a flagship video game for their new XBox and Halo was going to be all the rage for Mac gamers: the rest is history.
I think it's disgusting that price is the only thing that people seem to think about when deciding whether to burn fuel.
I burn the same amount of fuel, whether it is $3.00/gallon, or $2.00/gallon, because I'm not deterred by the additional $15 per tank (350 miles). If gas were more in line with the UK prices I'm used to now, I would still drive the same amount of miles, but I'd buy a small 1.3L economy car (probably diesel) instead.
"smart" traffic lights could have positive effect in lowering overall fuel consumption.
Of all the uninformed cheap shots dished out by the European crowd, I'm glad to see this thoughtful comment. This is probably one of the only legitimate gripes anyone has posted thus far about American driving habits. I can't stand sitting at a red light for 5 minutes at a huge 4 lane intersection in the middle of the night with not a single car in sight! Why do our towns insist on so many stop lights, and for crying out loud, why are the side streets not turned to blinking red lights and the main streets turned to blinking yellows from midnight to 5 am?!? Is it THAT difficult to synch lights so we don't have to stop every 500 meters?
If Americans would only organize their cities and suburbs properly, I believe that they to could very easily provide a public transportation service that eliminates the need to drive cars, almost totally, for every day purposes.
Perhaps you don't understand the design of US cities nor do you understand how US politics work. How exactly am I, as merely one concerned citizen, going to persuade the other 120,000 inhabitants of my city that busses are a good investment, even if I am right? Don't get me wrong, I agree with your goal; it just isn't realistic. The mentality of high taxation and flourishing social services (such as public transportation) is not exactly compatible with the US way of life.
There are examples of great city planning, such as Portland, Oregon. But we can't just suddenly "organize our cities and suburbs properly".
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't Apple's fault that your country has such oppressive marketing rules.
I'm simply commenting that Microsoft forced consumers to be tied-to-the-hip of Windows and it worked just fine for them.
You don't have to authorize an iPod to play iTunes purchases do you? I recently screwed my computer up and had to format the drive. No worries...all my tunes were on my iPods. No, I don't have backups, because my iPods are my backups. The day my laptop is stolen, my desktop hard drive crashes and my two iPods explode or are stolen is the day I lose all my music.
Apple is only putting DRM on their tunes so as to be able to sell the tunes under the music industry's heavy-handed rules. Personally, I don't see what the fuss is about DRM, considering pirates will always say it is up to the companies to defeat piracy. When the companies do implement a solution, the backlash is inevitable, yet hypocritical. What is so constricting about Apple DRM that other DRM schemes do better? I burned a CD from an iTunes album and sent it to my son and it works just fine for him. Where's the problem? Oh, you mean the anti-drm crowd just wants to be able to upload their songs to their 1.5 billion bittorrent friends?...I get it now!
So your girlfriend bought 10,000,000 gallons of 93-octane supreme unleaded fuel then went out and bought a Turbo-diesel car and is now mad at Exxon/Mobil? ;-)
First of all it most likely isn't Apple's fault. It is more likely your country's business laws. Secondly, I live in the UK, but I just choose the US store (no thanks, I'll pass on the Girls Aloud rubbish). Can you not download iTunes and use the US store from Sweden?
I'm not so sure teenagers are the target audience. I'm 37 and I have plenty of money, and spend a fair share (probably $1000 last year?) on iTunes. I don't know many teens with that much money to burn. I also buy gift cards for my kids (indeed, teenagers). If you are judging by the top 10 tracks, then yeah, it looks pretty teeny-oriented, but that's just the market. It isn't just teens driving up the #1 track each week. Yes, adults buy that awful garbage marketed to teens as well. (B-bananas-b-a-n-a-n-a-s!) If you look past the first page of iTunes, you'll find a remarkably large and diverse music store with enough obscure stuff for jazz snobs like myself to keep busy for, well, ever.
I'll eat my cell phone (and yours too) the day cell phones become the primary music device for anyone over the age of 16.
Finally, a voice of reason. I'm a semi-professional musician, and somewhat of an audiophile as well. I challenge any of the iTunes naysayers here to a blind test. Show me you can tell the difference between a 128-bit AAC and a straight CD track and I'll stop typing. You can even use my probably-closer-to-reference-than-yours system as well: clean and plentiful Yamaha power, Paradigm Monitor 9 floor standing speakers and a powered Klipsch KSW 10" subwoofer. I sure hate to think that my $3000 home stereo investment is all for nothing, since I'm buying awful $1 iTunes songs! Since I can't hear the difference myself, who are the rest of you to complain on my behalf?
BTW, "Zube" means penis in Arabic, so I think it is a funny typo.
You have fun with your PlaysForSure (ObsoleteForSure, more like it). Do you seriously think that there will be a single PFS device for sale in two years? I'm pretty optimistic that iTunes+iPod will still be a viable option in two-years time, however.
Instead of blowing us off as some elitist snob iTunes lovers, why not consider that money isn't always a huge factor for some people? The convenience alone is worth the price of entry.
I can't find any pinstripes in 10.4, but do remember them being kinda bad with 10.1. Haven't they been gone a while now?
Is this the same UK that is systematically removing ALL wireless networks from public schools because of an irrational fear of RF poisoning? I wonder how much more (fake) damage UWB will do to the children? Can't we just think of the children!
You are either lying or you have a faulty MacBook Pro. I have the bare bones MacBook 1.83 with 1 gig of ram and it takes less than 15 seconds to boot. Perhaps you got OS X and XP backwards, because my PC takes minutes to boot up, even though it has 1 gig more ram and a faster clockspeed cpu. Everything you claim is exactly the opposite from reality, to include the bit about XP being more responsive even thought it is still booting.
Yes, but your Toshiba doesn't boot up in 14 seconds. My MacBook does. What's all the fuss about wake-up/sleep mode times, when it takes a MacBook a mere 14 seconds to boot from cold?
Coincedentally, my MacBook boots up in to Win XP Professional in about 50 seconds. Maybe it is the EFI or the Bootcamp work around, but I think it is most likely XP. I haven't tried the sleep mode in XP, but I'm just going to guess it isn't stellar.
These boot times are measured by when the desktop appears. With OS X, the programs are usable in about 5 seconds, but I have to wait an additional 30 seconds or so before all the background items load into XP (with NO third party apps, just XP...it's all I have had time to install thus far, so I'm assuming it only gets slower from here as I add programs.)
I don't blame EA for pandering to the middle of the road hobbyist though. It is just too bad that their might has taken away options for the more serious enthusiast auto-sim crowd. I wonder why most of us still play Grand Prix Legends? The game is obviously graphically underpowered, since it was made 8 years ago (even though it is one of the most heavily modded games I've ever seen). Eye-candy is not important when you are sliding a 1960s era Foruma 1 car around the Nurburgring at 190 mph. I've played EA games that have had the Nurburgring ported into it, and let's just say there is about as much realism involved with EA games as there is realism in Donkey Kong.
There are examples of great city planning, such as Portland, Oregon. But we can't just suddenly "organize our cities and suburbs properly".