I don't need a massive capacity player, I just want to get my top 100/200 songs ever and carry them with me for those times I'm out.
Not only is it diminuitive, great value (probably because of the lack of screen, but the 1GB Shuffle is £10 cheaper than a 512MB Sony, and £30 cheaper than a 1GB Creative in the UK). but it is actually pretty damn good.
Will this be the first Apple hardware I ever buy? Where will it end?!
I can only agree with this comment. For a late 90's style weblog, Slashdot is okay, but in the end it is merely a popular geeky blog that directly reproduces submissions from readers without any consideration for ensuring it is accurate, or useful.
For a site that publishes a story once every hour or two, I don't see how it isn't possible to write it so that each story is (1) accurate, (2) grammatically correct and (3) useful (i.e., explaining acronyms, what something is instead of "Today sees the release of Heraclion. Get it now!").
1.25GHz G4 on 166MHz Bus | 200MHz PowerPC (603e based) (266 on HG) 256MB RAM | 64MB RAM (128 on HG) Smaller | Slightly Larger 40GB HD | No HD, No Optical Drive, etc MacOS X + Software | Bare Linux
I think that he wanted something that had some semblance of functionality for his wife.
That box is very nice if you add a large hard drive and use it as a cheap reliable quiet network storage device. Nice to stick in a cupboard, and access from your nice quiet Mac Mini maybe.
The P4 needs the bandwidth though, it suffers much more when the bandwidth is lower than a G4 or Athlon does. I'd say a 1.25GHz G4 with 166MHz FSB is a good match for a 2GHz P4 with PC2100 memory.
I configured that PC with XP Pro and some auxiliary software to make it slightly comparable to the Mac Mini in terms of functionality (and functionality is the important thing here, hardware features just allow things to be done) and it was nearly 3 times the cost of the Mac Mini. And ugly as a boot.
Also a 1280x1024 display at 75Hz takes up 375MB/s just to display, that is bandwidth taken from the PC2100 memory, whereas the Mac Mini doesn't have this problem.
It costs $1000 to configure a CappucCino SlimPro to be even similar to the Mac Mini. Not that 650MHz compares to 1.25GHz, or ancient integrated graphics compares to ATI Radeon 9200 graphics, etc. And that is with basic Windows XP Pro, and no other software that comes with the Mac Mini.
The more I look at it, the more I think the Mac Mini is an excellent product in the USFF market.
No, it uses Reaction. MUI is there for compatibility. Reaction interfaces with the Amiga BOOPSI gadget system properly, unlike MUI, however I think that MUI is more featured, then again it is a lot older.
I think that future revisions will also get Arexx
Python is meant to replace Arexx in the long term, IIRC. Obviously, Arexx has been part of AmigaOS for quite a long time anyway.
Amiga's AGA graphics (imo, the strongest part of the system) were insufficent to compete in the desktop arena
AGA was crap from the beginning. Blame Commodore for cancelling an earlier update because of personal politics. What use is a chipset that can do 128 and 256 colour screens if they are too slow to use effectively? AGA needed a 256 colour bitmapped mode which would have been quicker. 24-bit colour for PCs was still rare in 1992 though.
for those of us who take care in our programming - why would you want memory protection?
To protect your application and its data from those that do not take care in their programming - or worse, those who take care to actually create damage with software like a virus.
I mean, imagine writing a virus that looked through memory, and for each instance of "CEO, President, CTO, etc" it replaced them with "TIT, Prickhead, NOB, etc"... it'd likely make your plea for a pay rise fail.
So... your argument is that Verisign suck because they're the best?
If you use an OpenSRS reseller, then you can use the OpenSRS interface at https://manage.opensrs.net/ to manage domains in bulk. If the reseller has bothered to link them, but the interface does allow you to relink them if they aren't linked.
It is scary. I try to remember what I used computers for before the internet.
It was a combination of playing games, writing software and designing computer graphics. The graphics dropped away as pixel art in DPaint is fun, but more modern stuff wasn't the same.
I have seen a direct inverse correlation between my use of the internet, and my creativity and output on that computer. I used to program every night on my old Amiga, ruining my eyes because it was connected to a TV. I'd write games, hence doing the graphics on other nights and times.
I daresay that the people who are now giving up the internet except for required use will find their happiness and output rise as a result.
I gave up on e-mail because of spam, even with SA installed I was getting far too many through each day to a work account. I use e-mail with a personal account still, but I don't broadcast that e-mail address around. I get some spam, but not much.
At least I have IM I can use to communicate, I know if the IM has got through, and I can choose to not accept IMs from people I don't have listed.
As for the internet, I use Firefox, and I'm not a complete retard. The people in that story either should (1) not let their kids randomly download software, kewel screensavers, etc (2) take basic precautions against these infections. It isn't a lot of work. If that is too much for them, they can now go out and spend $500 on a Mac Mini and bypass the vast majority of issues.
The Mac Mini is 1/8th the volume of a Shuttle SFF system.
ONE EIGHTH! Sure, it has a power adapter as well, but that isn't much more.
So when I said you could get 10 Mac Minis in a Dimension 2400, I probably meant that you could get 30+! That is a massive difference.
I'm going to wait for the mini2 like you though. The lack of audio input is a bit of an oversight in these Skype, etc, days. And what sort of DVD player doesn't have optical audio out? Especially one with DVI out!
That, and I too have an nForce2 system with soundstorm, and even though it is nearing 2 years old it is still scarily competitive with new computers. I'm scared I won't have an excuse to upgrade for a couple more years!
Even if you price compare to a low-end Dell desktop, the Mac Mini comes out quite well priced, and it is about 1/10th the size. Sure, a 1.25GHz G4 won't compete in terms of computational power even with the 2.6GHz Celeron that was the lowest option on the Dimension 2400, but the Dell used really really shitty integrated graphics that'll impact on the performance. Of course, you have to take the cost of software into account - Macs come with tonnes, the Dell doesn't, or has crappy versions, and then a virus checker...
I'd have liked a front USB and Firewire port though, for the iPod shuffles and iPods that people will be getting/have.
AMD already sells 25W TDP Athlon 64 mobile processors. Sure, they're 1.4GHz, but that is the current core. AMD also has a 35W mobile TDP that goes up to 1.8GHz or 2GHz IIRC.
The 90nm Athlon 64s (up to 2.2GHz at the moment) which have a nominal TDP of 67W according to AMD seem to run under 40W at load according to tests done by multiple websites.
I think you need to see that AMD have come a long long way from the old Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz! Those old Slashdot jokes about hot AMD processors were out of date a year agO. In the meantime, Intel is happy to push out a 130W Pentium 4 processor in the near future.
And of course I meant the 533MHz bus Dothan at 2GHz. The faster bus does eat up a lot more power. AMD already has a large portion of the northbridge on board, and bypasses this issue.
The problem was Intel's P4 design that didn't take heat into consideration. It hit 3GHz and aside from bus speed bumps, cache bumps, and an IPC lowering redesign (Prescott) that has so far allowed it to attain 3.8GHz. When did it hit 3GHz? Was it 2 years ago? That's pretty abysmal in my opinion.
Of course, AMD has been slowed down as well, having not done many speed bumps in the past year, aside from a 2.6GHz boutique release. However AMD will probably get 2.8 and 3.0GHz processors out of the door this year.
Of course, for Apple, they've gone from 1.2GHz G4s to 2.5GHz G5s. The slow-down was earlier for Apple, and they've got over it, and hit another one. Still, those processors are from different companies.
Dual core is a logical progression, when you can do it and there is a real benefit to doing it (OS dual support, application multi-threading, etc). It can keep the power consumption lower (you don't need to push the processor to the maximum), and it spreads the heat sources out, instead of having one extremely hot core, you have two merely hot cores to cool.
The article wibbles on about GHz, but what matters is performance. Whilst benchmarks aren't ideal, I'm sure a graph of Spec Rate performance on single processor (where a processor can have multiple cores, of course) and multiprocessor has been improving steadily over that time. 2 years ago Athlon XPs were pushing 900 in SpecFP and stuff, yet high end Athlon 64s now push 1700+. Systems are getting faster! It is just the value of GHz as a useful system performance indicator is no more, and hasn't been for around 5 years to be honest. People are waking up to that.
Yeah yeah yeah, oddly enough this new core shares an amazing amount of similarities to the PIII... I wonder why, oh wait! They took the PIII core, and spent some time modifying it for low power operation. This was purely a response by Intel to Transmeta, just showing that Intel can be pushed into doing decent stuff if gently poked sometimes.
Problem One: A String Formatting Issue, URLs should be shown as "http://www.blah.com/.../www.spoof.com/register.ph p" rather than ".../www.spoof.com/register.php" and users should be shot if they can't recognise a valid URL.
Problem Two: Beta Firefox? That's not an issue then. Otherwise, who let a buffer overflow get into the codebase?
Problem Three: Surely this is more of a problem with Windows' Security model? if an OS is used essentially as a single user machine (e.g., 9x) then there is little that can be done between profiles.
There's a massive difference between designing a microprocessor with lots of different functional units, especially one that has to be compatible with a crufty ISA like x86, and compete in terms of performance and price with the market leaders, than designing a graphics core.
The "Centrino CPU" was designed by Intel you idiot, the core is a tweaked PIII with power management and other stuff, and the system interface has merely been upgraded to the P4 bus for greater bandwidth.
There's a big difference between transistors that need to operate at 600MHz and those that need to operate at 3+ GHz as well, that is where the major difference in power consumption comes in. Consider that the Pentium M uses under 20W (a lot less than a graphics card does) and competes very well with a fast P4 in many areas. It is the last extra bit of performance that costs.
The processors themselves have the codenames Banias (1MB 130nm part) and Dothan (2MB 90nm part).
These AMD processors are most likely to be revision E0 core Athlon 64s. The E0 core is said to reduce power consumption by 25% over the D0 core. If processors have a 25W TDP already in the A64M range, then AMD should easily be able to get it down to 20W to compete with the Pentium M.
Of course, the A64M will have half a northbridge incorporated into the processor, something that isn't included in the Pentium M TDP at the moment. Also the definition of Intel's TDP is different from AMD's TDP. Whilst arguments reign over the exact difference, it is agrees that Intel's processors generally run much closer to their TDP figure than AMD's.
Also, the 533MHz Dothan processor, until recently, had a 27W TDP figure, because of the faster bus.
I think that file sharing leads to greater purchases of music amongst people who have some money. I know that I download music, but if I see stuff I like in a shop, especially if it is on offer, I'll be much more tempted to buy it if I know it is good, because I want the actual product.
It probably also means that tat won't get bought, and maybe greater sales of music are down to there being better music advertised to the consumer. Instead of pop tat, there is a lot more variety of music advertised these days.
And they prove that any drop in CD sales was purely because of the economic slump, when non-essential things like CDs and DVDs are the first things to leave the on-the-spot purchase habits of people.
Or maybe the prices have dropped, making the product more desirable to the consumer.
However, they'll just say that it is the result of their "anti online piracy" actions.
Apple already had a stranglehold in "digital audio players" before iTMS was launched. That's kinda different from the usual "monopoly used to gain stranglehold in another market" methodology.
Apple can't be faulted for having a product everyone wants, that the market is defined by even. There are plenty of alternatives at similar prices, even cheaper even, should the consumer want something else.
There's plenty of competition in the marketplace, quite simply competition is meant to be better for the consumer, and right now when comparing Fairplay AAC to various WMA offerings, you can see how the consumer is getting something better with Fairplay AAC, and that product is winning in the market.
I think that Apple has a complementary offering, a digital music player, and a music store to buy music legally for that player. Apple doesn't have a strangehold on music stores (quite easily shown), therefore how can it dominate the other except by having a product that most people want?
Well, Apples website is very clear on what you can do with iTMS purchased music:
Just 99 a Song, Plus Generous Personal Use Rights
The iTunes Music Store lets you quickly find, purchase and download the music you want for just 99 per song. You can burn individual songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for your personal use, listen to songs on an unlimited number of iPods and play songs on up to five Macintosh computers or Windows PCs. And the iTunes software works so smoothly on both platforms that you can share music with any combination of Macs and Windows PCs on a local area network -- regardless of whether you're running iTunes on a Mac or PC.
I suppose the 'problem' is that it isn't "generic digital music" that is being purchased, it is "Fairplay AAC", which can only be played by devices that support "Fairplay AAC" music. It is Apple's choice if they want to license the format or not.
it is the consumer's choice to buy or not to buy from iTMS.
iTMS was created to allow people with iPods to buy music online. It is a companion service. A record company restriction (not Apple!) is that the music has to have DRM, in this case the fairly lax Fairplay. Apple clearly think of the iPod as a format rather than an instance of a digital media player. What if Philips never licensed the CD? Then you'd never have got a non-Philips CD player (yeah, the format would have died a death, but that's another issue that Apple should also be thinking about).
It is the licensing of Fairplay that is the problem if you decide you want to play music you've bought from iTMS on a non-iPod player. Obviously HP and Motorola have licences for it, with the HP iPod and the upcoming Motorola iTMS compatible phone (rumoured anyway). Yeah, so the HP player is practically a copy of the iPod, but anyway...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't need a massive capacity player, I just want to get my top 100/200 songs ever and carry them with me for those times I'm out.
Not only is it diminuitive, great value (probably because of the lack of screen, but the 1GB Shuffle is £10 cheaper than a 512MB Sony, and £30 cheaper than a 1GB Creative in the UK). but it is actually pretty damn good.
Will this be the first Apple hardware I ever buy? Where will it end?!
I can only agree with this comment. For a late 90's style weblog, Slashdot is okay, but in the end it is merely a popular geeky blog that directly reproduces submissions from readers without any consideration for ensuring it is accurate, or useful.
For a site that publishes a story once every hour or two, I don't see how it isn't possible to write it so that each story is (1) accurate, (2) grammatically correct and (3) useful (i.e., explaining acronyms, what something is instead of "Today sees the release of Heraclion. Get it now!").
That box is very nice if you add a large hard drive and use it as a cheap reliable quiet network storage device. Nice to stick in a cupboard, and access from your nice quiet Mac Mini maybe.
The P4 needs the bandwidth though, it suffers much more when the bandwidth is lower than a G4 or Athlon does. I'd say a 1.25GHz G4 with 166MHz FSB is a good match for a 2GHz P4 with PC2100 memory.
I configured that PC with XP Pro and some auxiliary software to make it slightly comparable to the Mac Mini in terms of functionality (and functionality is the important thing here, hardware features just allow things to be done) and it was nearly 3 times the cost of the Mac Mini. And ugly as a boot.
Also a 1280x1024 display at 75Hz takes up 375MB/s just to display, that is bandwidth taken from the PC2100 memory, whereas the Mac Mini doesn't have this problem.
It costs $1000 to configure a CappucCino SlimPro to be even similar to the Mac Mini. Not that 650MHz compares to 1.25GHz, or ancient integrated graphics compares to ATI Radeon 9200 graphics, etc. And that is with basic Windows XP Pro, and no other software that comes with the Mac Mini.
The more I look at it, the more I think the Mac Mini is an excellent product in the USFF market.
Still no protected memory
It's there, just disabled for 4.0.
It still uses MUI
No, it uses Reaction. MUI is there for compatibility. Reaction interfaces with the Amiga BOOPSI gadget system properly, unlike MUI, however I think that MUI is more featured, then again it is a lot older.
I think that future revisions will also get Arexx
Python is meant to replace Arexx in the long term, IIRC. Obviously, Arexx has been part of AmigaOS for quite a long time anyway.
Amiga's AGA graphics (imo, the strongest part of the system) were insufficent to compete in the desktop arena
AGA was crap from the beginning. Blame Commodore for cancelling an earlier update because of personal politics. What use is a chipset that can do 128 and 256 colour screens if they are too slow to use effectively? AGA needed a 256 colour bitmapped mode which would have been quicker. 24-bit colour for PCs was still rare in 1992 though.
for those of us who take care in our programming - why would you want memory protection?
... it'd likely make your plea for a pay rise fail.
To protect your application and its data from those that do not take care in their programming - or worse, those who take care to actually create damage with software like a virus.
I mean, imagine writing a virus that looked through memory, and for each instance of "CEO, President, CTO, etc" it replaced them with "TIT, Prickhead, NOB, etc"
So ... your argument is that Verisign suck because they're the best?
If you use an OpenSRS reseller, then you can use the OpenSRS interface at https://manage.opensrs.net/ to manage domains in bulk. If the reseller has bothered to link them, but the interface does allow you to relink them if they aren't linked.
Transfer your domain names to a different registrar then?
There's hundreds to choose from.
It is scary. I try to remember what I used computers for before the internet.
It was a combination of playing games, writing software and designing computer graphics. The graphics dropped away as pixel art in DPaint is fun, but more modern stuff wasn't the same.
I have seen a direct inverse correlation between my use of the internet, and my creativity and output on that computer. I used to program every night on my old Amiga, ruining my eyes because it was connected to a TV. I'd write games, hence doing the graphics on other nights and times.
I daresay that the people who are now giving up the internet except for required use will find their happiness and output rise as a result.
I gave up on e-mail because of spam, even with SA installed I was getting far too many through each day to a work account. I use e-mail with a personal account still, but I don't broadcast that e-mail address around. I get some spam, but not much.
At least I have IM I can use to communicate, I know if the IM has got through, and I can choose to not accept IMs from people I don't have listed.
As for the internet, I use Firefox, and I'm not a complete retard. The people in that story either should (1) not let their kids randomly download software, kewel screensavers, etc (2) take basic precautions against these infections. It isn't a lot of work. If that is too much for them, they can now go out and spend $500 on a Mac Mini and bypass the vast majority of issues.
Someone did some simple maths.
The Mac Mini is 1/8th the volume of a Shuttle SFF system.
ONE EIGHTH! Sure, it has a power adapter as well, but that isn't much more.
So when I said you could get 10 Mac Minis in a Dimension 2400, I probably meant that you could get 30+! That is a massive difference.
I'm going to wait for the mini2 like you though. The lack of audio input is a bit of an oversight in these Skype, etc, days. And what sort of DVD player doesn't have optical audio out? Especially one with DVI out!
That, and I too have an nForce2 system with soundstorm, and even though it is nearing 2 years old it is still scarily competitive with new computers. I'm scared I won't have an excuse to upgrade for a couple more years!
Even if you price compare to a low-end Dell desktop, the Mac Mini comes out quite well priced, and it is about 1/10th the size. Sure, a 1.25GHz G4 won't compete in terms of computational power even with the 2.6GHz Celeron that was the lowest option on the Dimension 2400, but the Dell used really really shitty integrated graphics that'll impact on the performance. Of course, you have to take the cost of software into account - Macs come with tonnes, the Dell doesn't, or has crappy versions, and then a virus checker ...
I'd have liked a front USB and Firewire port though, for the iPod shuffles and iPods that people will be getting/have.
$499 = £265
£265 + 17.5% = £311
Apple UK Price: £339 inc VAT.
Apple UK Extra Price = £28 inc. VAT.
Oh no. £28. That could be extra cost at customs, who knows. It isn't as bad as other Apple markups.
AMD already sells 25W TDP Athlon 64 mobile processors. Sure, they're 1.4GHz, but that is the current core. AMD also has a 35W mobile TDP that goes up to 1.8GHz or 2GHz IIRC.
The 90nm Athlon 64s (up to 2.2GHz at the moment) which have a nominal TDP of 67W according to AMD seem to run under 40W at load according to tests done by multiple websites.
I think you need to see that AMD have come a long long way from the old Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz! Those old Slashdot jokes about hot AMD processors were out of date a year agO. In the meantime, Intel is happy to push out a 130W Pentium 4 processor in the near future.
And of course I meant the 533MHz bus Dothan at 2GHz. The faster bus does eat up a lot more power. AMD already has a large portion of the northbridge on board, and bypasses this issue.
The problem was Intel's P4 design that didn't take heat into consideration. It hit 3GHz and aside from bus speed bumps, cache bumps, and an IPC lowering redesign (Prescott) that has so far allowed it to attain 3.8GHz. When did it hit 3GHz? Was it 2 years ago? That's pretty abysmal in my opinion.
Of course, AMD has been slowed down as well, having not done many speed bumps in the past year, aside from a 2.6GHz boutique release. However AMD will probably get 2.8 and 3.0GHz processors out of the door this year.
Of course, for Apple, they've gone from 1.2GHz G4s to 2.5GHz G5s. The slow-down was earlier for Apple, and they've got over it, and hit another one. Still, those processors are from different companies.
Dual core is a logical progression, when you can do it and there is a real benefit to doing it (OS dual support, application multi-threading, etc). It can keep the power consumption lower (you don't need to push the processor to the maximum), and it spreads the heat sources out, instead of having one extremely hot core, you have two merely hot cores to cool.
The article wibbles on about GHz, but what matters is performance. Whilst benchmarks aren't ideal, I'm sure a graph of Spec Rate performance on single processor (where a processor can have multiple cores, of course) and multiprocessor has been improving steadily over that time. 2 years ago Athlon XPs were pushing 900 in SpecFP and stuff, yet high end Athlon 64s now push 1700+. Systems are getting faster! It is just the value of GHz as a useful system performance indicator is no more, and hasn't been for around 5 years to be honest. People are waking up to that.
Yeah yeah yeah, oddly enough this new core shares an amazing amount of similarities to the PIII ... I wonder why, oh wait! They took the PIII core, and spent some time modifying it for low power operation. This was purely a response by Intel to Transmeta, just showing that Intel can be pushed into doing decent stuff if gently poked sometimes.
Problem One: A String Formatting Issue, URLs should be shown as "http://www.blah.com/.../www.spoof.com/register.ph p" rather than ".../www.spoof.com/register.php" and users should be shot if they can't recognise a valid URL.
Problem Two: Beta Firefox? That's not an issue then. Otherwise, who let a buffer overflow get into the codebase?
Problem Three: Surely this is more of a problem with Windows' Security model? if an OS is used essentially as a single user machine (e.g., 9x) then there is little that can be done between profiles.
There's a massive difference between designing a microprocessor with lots of different functional units, especially one that has to be compatible with a crufty ISA like x86, and compete in terms of performance and price with the market leaders, than designing a graphics core.
The "Centrino CPU" was designed by Intel you idiot, the core is a tweaked PIII with power management and other stuff, and the system interface has merely been upgraded to the P4 bus for greater bandwidth.
There's a big difference between transistors that need to operate at 600MHz and those that need to operate at 3+ GHz as well, that is where the major difference in power consumption comes in. Consider that the Pentium M uses under 20W (a lot less than a graphics card does) and competes very well with a fast P4 in many areas. It is the last extra bit of performance that costs.
It's "Pentium M".
The processors themselves have the codenames Banias (1MB 130nm part) and Dothan (2MB 90nm part).
These AMD processors are most likely to be revision E0 core Athlon 64s. The E0 core is said to reduce power consumption by 25% over the D0 core. If processors have a 25W TDP already in the A64M range, then AMD should easily be able to get it down to 20W to compete with the Pentium M.
Of course, the A64M will have half a northbridge incorporated into the processor, something that isn't included in the Pentium M TDP at the moment. Also the definition of Intel's TDP is different from AMD's TDP. Whilst arguments reign over the exact difference, it is agrees that Intel's processors generally run much closer to their TDP figure than AMD's.
Also, the 533MHz Dothan processor, until recently, had a 27W TDP figure, because of the faster bus.
I think that file sharing leads to greater purchases of music amongst people who have some money. I know that I download music, but if I see stuff I like in a shop, especially if it is on offer, I'll be much more tempted to buy it if I know it is good, because I want the actual product.
It probably also means that tat won't get bought, and maybe greater sales of music are down to there being better music advertised to the consumer. Instead of pop tat, there is a lot more variety of music advertised these days.
And they prove that any drop in CD sales was purely because of the economic slump, when non-essential things like CDs and DVDs are the first things to leave the on-the-spot purchase habits of people.
Or maybe the prices have dropped, making the product more desirable to the consumer.
However, they'll just say that it is the result of their "anti online piracy" actions.
Apple already had a stranglehold in "digital audio players" before iTMS was launched. That's kinda different from the usual "monopoly used to gain stranglehold in another market" methodology.
Apple can't be faulted for having a product everyone wants, that the market is defined by even. There are plenty of alternatives at similar prices, even cheaper even, should the consumer want something else.
There's plenty of competition in the marketplace, quite simply competition is meant to be better for the consumer, and right now when comparing Fairplay AAC to various WMA offerings, you can see how the consumer is getting something better with Fairplay AAC, and that product is winning in the market.
I think that Apple has a complementary offering, a digital music player, and a music store to buy music legally for that player. Apple doesn't have a strangehold on music stores (quite easily shown), therefore how can it dominate the other except by having a product that most people want?
I suppose the 'problem' is that it isn't "generic digital music" that is being purchased, it is "Fairplay AAC", which can only be played by devices that support "Fairplay AAC" music. It is Apple's choice if they want to license the format or not.
it is the consumer's choice to buy or not to buy from iTMS.
iTMS was created to allow people with iPods to buy music online. It is a companion service. A record company restriction (not Apple!) is that the music has to have DRM, in this case the fairly lax Fairplay. Apple clearly think of the iPod as a format rather than an instance of a digital media player. What if Philips never licensed the CD? Then you'd never have got a non-Philips CD player (yeah, the format would have died a death, but that's another issue that Apple should also be thinking about).
...
It is the licensing of Fairplay that is the problem if you decide you want to play music you've bought from iTMS on a non-iPod player. Obviously HP and Motorola have licences for it, with the HP iPod and the upcoming Motorola iTMS compatible phone (rumoured anyway). Yeah, so the HP player is practically a copy of the iPod, but anyway