... but you can tell if there's a "stealth" hard link pointing to a path element, by the link count. And, yes, checking the link counts for all directories back to the root is something that properly designed software that depends on traverse checking does.
Aliases are more powerful than symlinks, and for a single-user system that's probably enough, but it would be nice if they'd consider multi-user security a bit more while they're integrating these features into an existing system.
Apple's aliases bypass traverse checking. This is not the case for UNIX symbolic links, and is a problem that Apple created when they decided to stick with the single-user-oriented HFS+ and not use the more reliable and security-minded Berkeley fast file system from NeXTStep and FreeBSD.
So, will they fix the "alias hole" while they're doing this?
You don't want a situation where someone is denied access to a file while browsing through the Finder because they lack permission to an enclosing folder, but can access that file through a Spotlight search because of permissions on a subfolder or even on the file itself. Apple's Leopard Server Sneak Peek page for Spotlight states that Leopard Server will ensure that if you cannot browse to a file, you will not be able to locate it with Spotlight. No doubt, this is a challenge for Apple's engineers.
No, really, what's your point? The fact that there's a Mac Tax doesn't make the Vista Tax any less onerous.
I've talked about the Mac Tax on slashdot before. It's the extra 40% you pay for a Mac over a comparable Wintel PC to get a box that'll run OS X legally. I'd rather pay the Mac Tax directly to Apple so I could run OS X on a Thinkpad. If they'd give me an option. As you point out, they don't.
So, again, what's your point? Two wrongs make a right? Three lefts make a right? What?
It is not just my claim, it is widespread across the net.
Many people on the net believe that black people are inferior, that evolution is a myth, and that Windows is secure. The fact that a belief is popular doesn't make it correct.
And it doesn't matter who else is whinging about it, you are the one making this claim right here and right now.
Let us now take the example or say, U2 or Cold Play. These are artists who create a of work of art, in this case its music. They are willing to sell you a copy, for your individual and personal use only, to enjoy their particular art form. Now most people are quite content with that, but there seem to be some people who believe they have the right to then give that to anyone they want to, en mass! I don't think any reasonable person would think that was ok.
I believe I have the right to listen to my copy of "Only Superstition" even if:
A hardware problem forces me to reformat my hard drive and reinstall iTunes more than 5 times.
I forget the password to my iTunes Music Store account.
I don't have Internet access.
The iTunes Music Store goes out of business.
None of this has anything to do with "theft", even in the loose sense of "violating Coldplay's copyright".
You do not have to be in favor of theft to oppose DRM.
And encrypting the music that I've downloaded from the iTunes Music Store won't prevent theft in any case.
The CD version of "Brothers and Sisters" is not encrypted.
FM radio is not encrypted.
The output of my stereo is not encrypted.
The version Coldplay sells through eMusic is not encrypted.
That means that if anyone, anywhere in the world, has an internet account and access to any of these unprotected sources... they can start handing it out on the Internet just as easily as if they had cracked the encryption on the iTunes Music Store version.
DRM does not prevent theft.
Now most people are quite content with that, but there seem to be some people who believe they have the right to then give that to anyone they want to, en mass! I don't think any reasonable person would think that was ok.
No, there are some people who believe that they should retain the ability to do that, because it's not possible to create a system that will prevent them from doing it without preventing them from doing many things that are far more important abnd entirely legal and desirable.
Not even the one you're proposing, not without:
Preventing me from listening to my music if I lose my player.
Preventing me from recording MY OWN music and giving it away.
Preventing me from recording evidence of a crime and publishing it.
Creating a police state in which it's illegal to write software without a license
And I'm not prepared to put up with that for Coldplay's sake, especially when they don't seem to care.
Hypocrisy is the act of pretending or claiming to have beliefs, feelings, morals or virtues that one does not truly possess or PRACTICE.
Nonsense.
Hypocrisy is claiming to have a belief and then acting contrary to that belief WHEN ONE IS FREE TO ACT ON THAT BELIEF. If you believe that the reasons proposed for why he is not free to act on that belief are invalid, then you need to demonstrate that, rather than repeating the same argument again.
Jobs has stated repeatedly that the only reason that the iTunes store sells encrypted music is because the labels require him to... all the way back to the opening of the iTunes store in the first place. Jobs has stated repeatedly that having the same license on ALL the music in the iTunes store is critical. These two facts COMPLETELY constrain him from making the special deal you're demanding.
JOBS IS NOT FREE TO ACT ON HIS BELIEF.
Don't bother responding to this message. If you have ANY support at all for your claim, go back and respond again to my previous message with the details. If you can't do that, don't waste my time.
Look, I used to refer to myself as a "hacker". By that, I meant that I was really good at programming. That's what most people who used the word meant. Then people started talking about guys who broke into computers as "hackers" and pretty soon I had to give up using the word the way I was used to.
What Steve was talking about was content protection technologies - restricting the ability of the user through technical means. That's what people mean when they say DRM. Anything you have to say about Steve's letter that doesn't have to do with that face of DRM is, well, it's got nothing to do with Steve's letter.
Yep, a DRM system that didn't restrict a user's abilities wouldn't get any pushback, Steve wouldn't be writing about it like this, it'd be great, but it also wouldn't exist. The only reason to statically encrypt a published document, song, or movie is to restrict the abilities of the person who buys it. Without region coding, there would be no CSS. Without the restrictions in iTunes music, there would be no Fairplay.
GSM is a red herring. GSM is a communications mechanism. It's not using a broadcast model, the call is point-to-point. Using encryption for authentication and privacy has nothing to do with anything the music industry wants out of DRM. Take out the restrictons on the end user, and there's no point to it.
BEGIN RANT [bunch of stuff about how UNIX applications and Berkeley sockets already gove you this, along with a bunch of just-this-minute hot topics]
OK, let's see. I was at Berkeley in 1980, I did a little work on 4.1C BSD as an undergrad, I've implemented the Software Tools "virtual OS" UNIX-workalike environment on RSX-11 and CP/M, ported a C compiler to the 6809 to do it there, was one of the "patchkit"-era 386BSD developers, and I ran a UNIX/X11-centric network at ABB for almost 20 years... so anyway, I know that stuff. It's certainly part of the solution in my mind as well, along with a lot of things you didn't mention like Plan 9 and 8 1/2 and Berlin. But there's two things you seem to be missing.
I'm talking about "Where are operating systems headed", not "where is Windows headed". Windows is a dead end, I don't care what junkyard it's headed for, I do care that it's almost certainly not going to get there nearly soon enough.
I'm talking about the actual physical architecture of the computer being based on the network model, internally as well as externally
That is, the OS on any given component of the computer is not necessarily the OS on the component next to it. Virtualization can give you some of this, but it doesn't get rid of the model of running one OS on the computer, and the overhead is subsantial. I'm talking about plugging in processor cards with their own local RAM, talking over a bus-speed network to adjacent processor cards, internal file servers, and video. I'm talking about running different hardware in the same computer depending on, oh, what power you've got available. I'm talking about hot-swapping CPUs. I'm talking about having your laptop automatically migrate running code to your minitower when you dock it when you get home, and then back again when you undock it. I'm talking about not having a laptop, just having an app server and repository dongle that gives you a browser-or-command-line interface over bluetooth to a PADD, or talks PCI-INSANE inductively coupled to a display processor at the library... and doing all this securely.
We're a long way from it, and as long as we're thinking about the OS as the important component, and think about "a computer" being something that's running an OS... even with hypervisors, you're on a Linux box... we're not going to get any closer.
X11 won't cut it. Even with OpenGL extensions, X11 is a horrid design for anything but UI research (which is what it was for). Something like Berlin would be better, but if it's all gotta be handled using serialised raw OpenGL objects that's fine by me.
I'm not sure if it was Sun's slogan that triggered it originally, or what, but here's an idea I've been kicking around for 20 years now, at least... why not treat the components inside the box as a network. I don't mean literally using ATA over Ethernet to the drives... use fast interconnects... but design the system as a network. Latency between components is a problem? Why, look, networks are designed to deal with that. Have one (or more) application servers, on physical processors or virtual machines, netbooted off internal file servers and talking to display servers. Don't want people pirating your word processor? Sell it as a plug-in module with its own application server and local flash image. Get that funky DRM out of the CPU and file system completely, and make it a special purpose display card. Want to run it in a window? Have the display server run as a client and do the final compositing in the Windows Media Card. Need to run that old 2007 version of OS X? Here's the display-server video driver for QE3D...
This just seems like long winded rationalization of possible motives for the hypocrisy.
You are asserting that Jobs is being hypocritical. I am questioning that assertion. I'm not saying that Jobs is incapable of hypocrisy, I'm simply questioning your assertion that he is being hypocritical in this instance.
What does hypocrisy mean?
It means expressing a belief that one does not hold.
If you believe that Jobs is being hypocritical, that means you believe that Jobs is in favor of DRM. Jobs has consistently spoken out against DRM and argued that it doesn't work, and iTunes DRM is barely a token effort: not only does iTunes make no attempt to close the "analog hole", it doesn't even attempt to close the "digital hole" and even explicitly allows you to make perfect unprotected copies of the music you purchase on CD. His words and actions are consistent with the claim that the DRM in iTunes only exists because the owners of the overwhelming majority of the material you purchase through the iTunes store insist on it.
The only evidence you provide contrary to this is that there is no un-DRM-ed music directly available through the iTunes store, and that the timing of this statement is suspicious.
We can eliminate the timing right off the bat, because Jobs has been making the same argument, publicly, since at least 2003 - the year the iTunes music store opened. This isn't a sudden change of position in response to EU actions, it's simply another restatement of the same position he's held all along. There's no hypocrisy in saying what you believe when you're challenged on it.
So what does that leave? A gap in the offerings available from the iTunes store.
Even that might be suggestive of hypocrisy if there was no possible explanation other than Steve's desire to lock us in to Fairplay at all costs. But there are multiple reasons for it... some of which have been brought up by Jobs in other contexts, others that are simply speculation. Unless you've got more than repeated vehement assertions that they're "rationalizations", I suggest you examine your own motives before worring about Steve's.
How does other people selling DRM free tunes let Apple off the hook for saying one thing and doing the opposite.
It doesn't, and I didn't claim it did. The first part of my message addressed that point. I didnt go into more detail because I really think I've already posted more than enough on that topic. The second part (the one you're quoting here) is a response to the claim that Apple is preventing artists and labels from releasing DRM-free music: they could only do that if they were a monopoly.
But since you insist on belaboring the first point, let's go back and address it again, in more detail:
Apple isn't under any obligation to provide every service that you want through the iTunes store.
If they don't provide a service, then there are several possible reasons for it.
With Apple, one of the common reasons for a restriction in one of their products is aesthetic or philosophical: a restriction that's there because it establishes Apple's "brand" or promotes their "style". Removing the user-interface to the customization hooks that that products like Kaleidoscope (in classic Mac OS) and Shapeshifter (in OS X) take advantage of is an example of this kind of restriction. Making the Mac desktop immediately recognisable through the "Aqua" theme and its successors is part of their product branding for Mac OS X.
The other reason is cost. They don't offer some feature of capability because they have decided it would cost more to provide it than it's worth. It seems likely that a generic OS X for arbitrary Intel platforms is one of those things.
It can be difficult in some cases to decide which of these is the real reason, and if you were to argue that Jobs occasionally tells whoppers about which of these two reasons Apple did or failed to do something, I could only agree. For example, Apple has said that they have esthetic objections to a generic OS X. They have said it would weaken the Apple brand. Butthey have also said they would never release a headless low-end Mac ("No ugly monitors on nice Macs", I beleieve, were Jobs' words), and of course their back-and-forth on Intel has always bemused me - I still have my copy of Rhapsody DR1 for generic Intel boxes:).
In this case - so far as I know - Jobs is not saying anything about this particular point so I'm free to speculate without fear of the Reality Distortion Field taking over my brain.
So...
The people making the argument that Steve Jobs is being hypocritical seem to be assuming that the lack of DRM-free music hosted on the iTunes Music Store is a philosophical restriction. that it reflects some kind of preference for DRM. Now... it's possible that this is the case.
It just doesn't seem likely to me. Steve Jobs has made the same point about DRM in the past, most notably in the 2003 Rolling Stone interview, so this is not a new "tactical" change of heart in response to the events in Europe... his position on DRM is the same now as it was when the iTMS was launched.
So that brings up the question of what the cost to creating a "DRM-free" zone in the iTMS would be.
Apple's business model for the iTunes store is for all music to be sold under identical conditions. Apple has repeatedly said that offering different licenses for different labels or for different classes of music is not on the table, at least in the major markets. So while they don't have an "iTMS Lite" for DRM-free music, they don't have an "iTMS Premium" for the labels to corral their 'hot' content into either.
Now, you may disagree with the importance of this "line in the sand", but the fact that you disagree with their priorities doesn't change the fact that this is one of their priorities. I disagree with a lot of Apple's policies, myself, so I'm not going to try and convince you that this priority is important. For the purposes of this argument, whether you or I agree with it is irrelevant.
The point is that it, by itself, is more than enough explanation for why Apple doesn't set aside a corral within the iTMS proper for non-DRMed content. It may not be, in your opinion, a good reason, but just because you disagree with someone that doesn't imply that you or they are lying. It just means that you disagree.
There may be others I've missed going through Apple's security updates.
I won't attempt to provide a similar list for Windows. It would go back to 1997, and be hundreds of lines long... Apple's "surface area" to this class of attacks is significantly smaller than Microsoft's, but the whole problem should be avoided.
If your logged in with a lower level account, you are required to authenticate the action with an admin level user & password a-la *nix.
UNIX doesn't require you to authenticate an action with an admin level user and password. UNIX requires you to acquire privileges before attempting the action. Mac OS X provides a helper component that allows you to acquire those privileges when you need it, but that's not a common feature for UNIX-based systems and it's not a standard part of UNIX... and I'm not at all happy about a lot of the underlying infrastructure that Apple uses there.
"Eliminating online DRM appears to us to be an overly risky move that eliminates the potential for a future digital-only distribution model free of piracy," Deutsche Bank analyst Doug Mitchelson wrote in a research note.
A distribution model free from piracy? NEVER HAPPEN. Listen to the man, he's been telling you all along:
"We said [to the record companies]: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content." (Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview, December 03, 2003)
There has been speculation that his Big 4 contract forbids this. If this is the case he needs to come clean on that stipulation.
Correction, "there has been speculation that even if his big Four contract doesn't prohibit this, it would weaken his bargaining position with them".
Otherwise, Apple disallowing bands/labels to choose to be DRM free, completely undermines his statement.
Apple isn't doing any such thing. I just bought a dozen DRM-free tracks this morning, from eMusic. What, that's not on the iTunes store, you say? That's not Apple, you say? What, you're complaining because Apple's not a monopoly?
I figured that whatever library they're using to communicate over USB, it can't be standard on Win32, as it brought the machine to its knees.
What library? The iPod is mounted as a normal FAT file system by Windows. It's not mounted with a drive letter (so it doesn't show up on the desktop - I don't know offhand if it's mounted with a junction point or a UNC path) but that's *why* Apple had to add MSDOS filesystem support to the iPod for their Windows release.
In fact, the iPod is, objectively, not all that good. The vaunted click-wheel is like Apple's other user-interface gimmick, the one-button mouse. It's cute, slick, got a good cover story, people identify with the "independant" nature of it, but it causes all kinds of problems: you can't use it without knowing what "state" the iPod is, it's sensitive to the slightest touch so you have to have a mechanism to "lock" the user interface, and it's not at all intuitive. The one thing it's arguably best at... scrolling super-fast through a long playlist... is not a common operation and not generally the best way to select a song out of a long list in the first place.
I gave my iPod Mini to my daughter, and got an iPod Shuffle instead. The d-pad interface on the shuffle lets me do everything I need to do quickly... quickly... and it's stiff enough that I can shove the shuffle in my pocket without having my volume or track change every time I shift my weight. My previous MP3 player, a flash based on similar to the shuffle, wasn't as good... but it was still better than the iPod Mini in everyday use.
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However, if MS ever left a security hole this big, the industry would have a field day with it.
NT doesn't do traverse checking by default, you have to turn it on (and then see how much Windows-95-quality software breaks).
... but you can tell if there's a "stealth" hard link pointing to a path element, by the link count. And, yes, checking the link counts for all directories back to the root is something that properly designed software that depends on traverse checking does.
Aliases are more powerful than symlinks, and for a single-user system that's probably enough, but it would be nice if they'd consider multi-user security a bit more while they're integrating these features into an existing system.
So, will they fix the "alias hole" while they're doing this?
You're the one making the accusation. You're responsible for backing it up. You're not doing it.
No, really, what's your point? The fact that there's a Mac Tax doesn't make the Vista Tax any less onerous.
I've talked about the Mac Tax on slashdot before. It's the extra 40% you pay for a Mac over a comparable Wintel PC to get a box that'll run OS X legally. I'd rather pay the Mac Tax directly to Apple so I could run OS X on a Thinkpad. If they'd give me an option. As you point out, they don't.
So, again, what's your point? Two wrongs make a right? Three lefts make a right? What?
It is not just my claim, it is widespread across the net.
Many people on the net believe that black people are inferior, that evolution is a myth, and that Windows is secure. The fact that a belief is popular doesn't make it correct.
And it doesn't matter who else is whinging about it, you are the one making this claim right here and right now.
Have the balls to actually support it.
I believe I have the right to listen to my copy of "Only Superstition" even if:
- A hardware problem forces me to reformat my hard drive and reinstall iTunes more than 5 times.
- I forget the password to my iTunes Music Store account.
- I don't have Internet access.
- The iTunes Music Store goes out of business.
None of this has anything to do with "theft", even in the loose sense of "violating Coldplay's copyright".You do not have to be in favor of theft to oppose DRM.
And encrypting the music that I've downloaded from the iTunes Music Store won't prevent theft in any case.
- The CD version of "Brothers and Sisters" is not encrypted.
- FM radio is not encrypted.
- The output of my stereo is not encrypted.
- The version Coldplay sells through eMusic is not encrypted.
That means that if anyone, anywhere in the world, has an internet account and access to any of these unprotected sources... they can start handing it out on the Internet just as easily as if they had cracked the encryption on the iTunes Music Store version.DRM does not prevent theft.
Now most people are quite content with that, but there seem to be some people who believe they have the right to then give that to anyone they want to, en mass! I don't think any reasonable person would think that was ok.
No, there are some people who believe that they should retain the ability to do that, because it's not possible to create a system that will prevent them from doing it without preventing them from doing many things that are far more important abnd entirely legal and desirable.
Not even the one you're proposing, not without:
- Preventing me from listening to my music if I lose my player.
- Preventing me from recording MY OWN music and giving it away.
- Preventing me from recording evidence of a crime and publishing it.
- Creating a police state in which it's illegal to write software without a license
And I'm not prepared to put up with that for Coldplay's sake, especially when they don't seem to care.Hypocrisy is the act of pretending or claiming to have beliefs, feelings, morals or virtues that one does not truly possess or PRACTICE.
Nonsense.
Hypocrisy is claiming to have a belief and then acting contrary to that belief WHEN ONE IS FREE TO ACT ON THAT BELIEF. If you believe that the reasons proposed for why he is not free to act on that belief are invalid, then you need to demonstrate that, rather than repeating the same argument again.
Jobs has stated repeatedly that the only reason that the iTunes store sells encrypted music is because the labels require him to... all the way back to the opening of the iTunes store in the first place. Jobs has stated repeatedly that having the same license on ALL the music in the iTunes store is critical. These two facts COMPLETELY constrain him from making the special deal you're demanding.
JOBS IS NOT FREE TO ACT ON HIS BELIEF.
Don't bother responding to this message. If you have ANY support at all for your claim, go back and respond again to my previous message with the details. If you can't do that, don't waste my time.
Look, I used to refer to myself as a "hacker". By that, I meant that I was really good at programming. That's what most people who used the word meant. Then people started talking about guys who broke into computers as "hackers" and pretty soon I had to give up using the word the way I was used to.
What Steve was talking about was content protection technologies - restricting the ability of the user through technical means. That's what people mean when they say DRM. Anything you have to say about Steve's letter that doesn't have
to do with that face of DRM is, well, it's got nothing to do with Steve's letter.
Yep, a DRM system that didn't restrict a user's abilities wouldn't get any pushback, Steve wouldn't be writing about it like this, it'd be great, but it also wouldn't exist. The only reason to statically encrypt a published document, song, or movie is to restrict the abilities of the person who buys it. Without region coding, there would be no CSS. Without the restrictions in iTunes music, there would be no Fairplay.
GSM is a red herring. GSM is a communications mechanism. It's not using a broadcast model, the call is point-to-point. Using encryption for authentication and privacy has nothing to do with anything the music industry wants out of DRM. Take out the restrictons on the end user, and there's no point to it.
And you have it.
BEGIN RANT [bunch of stuff about how UNIX applications and Berkeley sockets already gove you this, along with a bunch of just-this-minute hot topics]
OK, let's see. I was at Berkeley in 1980, I did a little work on 4.1C BSD as an undergrad, I've implemented the Software Tools "virtual OS" UNIX-workalike environment on RSX-11 and CP/M, ported a C compiler to the 6809 to do it there, was one of the "patchkit"-era 386BSD developers, and I ran a UNIX/X11-centric network at ABB for almost 20 years... so anyway, I know that stuff. It's certainly part of the solution in my mind as well, along with a lot of things you didn't mention like Plan 9 and 8 1/2 and Berlin. But there's two things you seem to be missing.
I'm talking about "Where are operating systems headed", not "where is Windows headed". Windows is a dead end, I don't care what junkyard it's headed for, I do care that it's almost certainly not going to get there nearly soon enough.
I'm talking about the actual physical architecture of the computer being based on the network model, internally as well as externally
That is, the OS on any given component of the computer is not necessarily the OS on the component next to it. Virtualization can give you some of this, but it doesn't get rid of the model of running one OS on the computer, and the overhead is subsantial. I'm talking about plugging in processor cards with their own local RAM, talking over a bus-speed network to adjacent processor cards, internal file servers, and video. I'm talking about running different hardware in the same computer depending on, oh, what power you've got available. I'm talking about hot-swapping CPUs. I'm talking about having your laptop automatically migrate running code to your minitower when you dock it when you get home, and then back again when you undock it. I'm talking about not having a laptop, just having an app server and repository dongle that gives you a browser-or-command-line interface over bluetooth to a PADD, or talks PCI-INSANE inductively coupled to a display processor at the library... and doing all this securely.
We're a long way from it, and as long as we're thinking about the OS as the important component, and think about "a computer" being something that's running an OS... even with hypervisors, you're on a Linux box... we're not going to get any closer.
X11 won't cut it. Even with OpenGL extensions, X11 is a horrid design for anything but UI research (which is what it was for). Something like Berlin would be better, but if it's all gotta be handled using serialised raw OpenGL objects that's fine by me.
While I wouldn't call "BS" on account of there being other ways to do it... that's a really cool idea.
I'm not sure if it was Sun's slogan that triggered it originally, or what, but here's an idea I've been kicking around for 20 years now, at least... why not treat the components inside the box as a network. I don't mean literally using ATA over Ethernet to the drives... use fast interconnects... but design the system as a network. Latency between components is a problem? Why, look, networks are designed to deal with that. Have one (or more) application servers, on physical processors or virtual machines, netbooted off internal file servers and talking to display servers. Don't want people pirating your word processor? Sell it as a plug-in module with its own application server and local flash image. Get that funky DRM out of the CPU and file system completely, and make it a special purpose display card. Want to run it in a window? Have the display server run as a client and do the final compositing in the Windows Media Card. Need to run that old 2007 version of OS X? Here's the display-server video driver for QE3D...
But it also lets Windows and Linux applications run at native speed on Apple hardware
Gee, you mean you couldn't run Linux on Macs before?
What does this actually mean?
I guess, as a long time 'scrobbler, I'll find out soon enough.
Yeh, I know, this is news, but... at the same time... it's not news, you know what I mean? What else were we expecting them to say?
This just seems like long winded rationalization of possible motives for the hypocrisy.
You are asserting that Jobs is being hypocritical. I am questioning that assertion. I'm not saying that Jobs is incapable of hypocrisy, I'm simply questioning your assertion that he is being hypocritical in this instance.
What does hypocrisy mean?
It means expressing a belief that one does not hold.
If you believe that Jobs is being hypocritical, that means you believe that Jobs is in favor of DRM. Jobs has consistently spoken out against DRM and argued that it doesn't work, and iTunes DRM is barely a token effort: not only does iTunes make no attempt to close the "analog hole", it doesn't even attempt to close the "digital hole" and even explicitly allows you to make perfect unprotected copies of the music you purchase on CD. His words and actions are consistent with the claim that the DRM in iTunes only exists because the owners of the overwhelming majority of the material you purchase through the iTunes store insist on it.
The only evidence you provide contrary to this is that there is no un-DRM-ed music directly available through the iTunes store, and that the timing of this statement is suspicious.
We can eliminate the timing right off the bat, because Jobs has been making the same argument, publicly, since at least 2003 - the year the iTunes music store opened. This isn't a sudden change of position in response to EU actions, it's simply another restatement of the same position he's held all along. There's no hypocrisy in saying what you believe when you're challenged on it.
So what does that leave? A gap in the offerings available from the iTunes store.
Even that might be suggestive of hypocrisy if there was no possible explanation other than Steve's desire to lock us in to Fairplay at all costs. But there are multiple reasons for it... some of which have been brought up by Jobs in other contexts, others that are simply speculation. Unless you've got more than repeated vehement assertions that they're "rationalizations", I suggest you examine your own motives before worring about Steve's.
How does other people selling DRM free tunes let Apple off the hook for saying one thing and doing the opposite.
:).
It doesn't, and I didn't claim it did. The first part of my message addressed that point. I didnt go into more detail because I really think I've already posted more than enough on that topic. The second part (the one you're quoting here) is a response to the claim that Apple is preventing artists and labels from releasing DRM-free music: they could only do that if they were a monopoly.
But since you insist on belaboring the first point, let's go back and address it again, in more detail:
Apple isn't under any obligation to provide every service that you want through the iTunes store.
If they don't provide a service, then there are several possible reasons for it.
With Apple, one of the common reasons for a restriction in one of their products is aesthetic or philosophical: a restriction that's there because it establishes Apple's "brand" or promotes their "style". Removing the user-interface to the customization hooks that that products like Kaleidoscope (in classic Mac OS) and Shapeshifter (in OS X) take advantage of is an example of this kind of restriction. Making the Mac desktop immediately recognisable through the "Aqua" theme and its successors is part of their product branding for Mac OS X.
The other reason is cost. They don't offer some feature of capability because they have decided it would cost more to provide it than it's worth. It seems likely that a generic OS X for arbitrary Intel platforms is one of those things.
It can be difficult in some cases to decide which of these is the real reason, and if you were to argue that Jobs occasionally tells whoppers about which of these two reasons Apple did or failed to do something, I could only agree. For example, Apple has said that they have esthetic objections to a generic OS X. They have said it would weaken the Apple brand. Butthey have also said they would never release a headless low-end Mac ("No ugly monitors on nice Macs", I beleieve, were Jobs' words), and of course their back-and-forth on Intel has always bemused me - I still have my copy of Rhapsody DR1 for generic Intel boxes
In this case - so far as I know - Jobs is not saying anything about this particular point so I'm free to speculate without fear of the Reality Distortion Field taking over my brain.
So...
The people making the argument that Steve Jobs is being hypocritical seem to be assuming that the lack of DRM-free music hosted on the iTunes Music Store is a philosophical restriction. that it reflects some kind of preference for DRM. Now... it's possible that this is the case.
It just doesn't seem likely to me. Steve Jobs has made the same point about DRM in the past, most notably in the 2003 Rolling Stone interview, so this is not a new "tactical" change of heart in response to the events in Europe... his position on DRM is the same now as it was when the iTMS was launched.
So that brings up the question of what the cost to creating a "DRM-free" zone in the iTMS would be.
Apple's business model for the iTunes store is for all music to be sold under identical conditions. Apple has repeatedly said that offering different licenses for different labels or for different classes of music is not on the table, at least in the major markets. So while they don't have an "iTMS Lite" for DRM-free music, they don't have an "iTMS Premium" for the labels to corral their 'hot' content into either.
Now, you may disagree with the importance of this "line in the sand", but the fact that you disagree with their priorities doesn't change the fact that this is one of their priorities. I disagree with a lot of Apple's policies, myself, so I'm not going to try and convince you that this priority is important. For the purposes of this argument, whether you or I agree with it is irrelevant.
The point is that it, by itself, is more than enough explanation for why Apple doesn't set aside a corral within the iTMS proper for non-DRMed content. It may not be, in your opinion, a good reason, but just because you disagree with someone that doesn't imply that you or they are lying. It just means that you disagree.
And I'm not sure what the point is with that link. It's referring to a patch almost three years old and therefore certainly incorporated in 10.4.
The point is that the patch does not fix the underlying problem, it just papers over it.
Has this actually happened?
May 2005
Mar 2006
May 2006
There may be others I've missed going through Apple's security updates.
I won't attempt to provide a similar list for Windows. It would go back to 1997, and be hundreds of lines long... Apple's "surface area" to this class of attacks is significantly smaller than Microsoft's, but the whole problem should be avoided.
If your logged in with a lower level account, you are required to authenticate the action with an admin level user & password a-la *nix.
UNIX doesn't require you to authenticate an action with an admin level user and password. UNIX requires you to acquire privileges before attempting the action. Mac OS X provides a helper component that allows you to acquire those privileges when you need it, but that's not a common feature for UNIX-based systems and it's not a standard part of UNIX... and I'm not at all happy about a lot of the underlying infrastructure that Apple uses there.
A distribution model free from piracy? NEVER HAPPEN. Listen to the man, he's been telling you all along:
There has been speculation that his Big 4 contract forbids this. If this is the case he needs to come clean on that stipulation.
Correction, "there has been speculation that even if his big Four contract doesn't prohibit this, it would weaken his bargaining position with them".
Otherwise, Apple disallowing bands/labels to choose to be DRM free, completely undermines his statement.
Apple isn't doing any such thing. I just bought a dozen DRM-free tracks this morning, from eMusic. What, that's not on the iTunes store, you say? That's not Apple, you say? What, you're complaining because Apple's not a monopoly?
Then you could label them with some catchy name for non-DRM and/or higher bitrate.
Like 'podcast' maybe?
I figured that whatever library they're using to communicate over USB, it can't be standard on Win32, as it brought the machine to its knees.
What library? The iPod is mounted as a normal FAT file system by Windows. It's not mounted with a drive letter (so it doesn't show up on the desktop - I don't know offhand if it's mounted with a junction point or a UNC path) but that's *why* Apple had to add MSDOS filesystem support to the iPod for their Windows release.
In fact, the iPod is, objectively, not all that good. The vaunted click-wheel is like Apple's other user-interface gimmick, the one-button mouse. It's cute, slick, got a good cover story, people identify with the "independant" nature of it, but it causes all kinds of problems: you can't use it without knowing what "state" the iPod is, it's sensitive to the slightest touch so you have to have a mechanism to "lock" the user interface, and it's not at all intuitive. The one thing it's arguably best at... scrolling super-fast through a long playlist... is not a common operation and not generally the best way to select a song out of a long list in the first place.
I gave my iPod Mini to my daughter, and got an iPod Shuffle instead. The d-pad interface on the shuffle lets me do everything I need to do quickly... quickly... and it's stiff enough that I can shove the shuffle in my pocket without having my volume or track change every time I shift my weight. My previous MP3 player, a flash based on similar to the shuffle, wasn't as good... but it was still better than the iPod Mini in everyday use.