Market share figures are slightly misleading, 3% for a single computer company is doing quite well. Doing exceptional considering it's not running the OS monopoly.
Most of the market share numbers come about from large company purchases, running software that needs to fit the monopolised standard.
Meanwhile this is still a redundant argument, "Apple are a hardware company, not a software company."
I do actually, that's because i 1. don't use high polygons, I'm more talented than that, 2. I am usually using NURBS before polygons. The fact is, even with my old dual 200mhz P2 I did 3d work just fine.
Apple wouldn't go under as a result to porting OSX on x86. Other than sales of OSX generating profit (hello Microsoft's entire business model.) You're ignoring that people choose macs for more than their software, such things include it's well designed hardware, which numerous posts on this same board have talked about (no googling the net to find matching opinions there). It's like saying sony vaio's line will send sony into the red, because they cost more than cheap pc's, but can run windows like any other PC.
The fact is that the apple hardware is tested at length to be of suitable quality for consumers, it's design is an endless delight to consumers. Even the ipod sells extremely well despite being just a music player, like all those very inexpensive-by-comparison flash players. Being black and white in your logic is where it fails.
Likewise my OSX has _never_ crashed, but I did get to visit all those bad sites, treaded all over the shop like a drunk, and didn't have to bother with a NAT, firewall, virus scanner, heck i randomly open attachments full of windows virii, I'm raw on the Internet and nothings gotten in.
/. is known for having a few people in the audience with less than up-to-date information. So I'd just like to clear some things up.
- Macs don't have a $2000 start up price tag, they actually start at $799 with the eMac, for portables $1099. Those of which are better spec'ed than low-end PCs.
- The second point is that there are no more G3's from apple, it's been that way for a while, plus no apple computer is spec'd below 1GHz.
- You can not get any apple computer without firewire. (It's an odd one I know, but I sometimes see some rattle about firewire cards and macs.)
- OS X, runs smoothly on a G3 700MHz, it runs smoothly on a G4 400MHz, a G4 1GHz won't leave you waiting in any application including Alias' Maya. Hence you don't need a dual 2.5GHz G5 to 'test' OS X, a second hand mac is usually just fine to try it out. (If you look hard enough, there are people giving away old powermac G4s.)
The final mistake, which is a good one, is that developers have not ignored the 64 bit G5, the reality is that developers have embraced it, and in cross platform apps, it's actually been the PC waiting for 64 bit updates from vendors such as Adobe, this when adobe apps were updated long ago for the G5.
The logic that Apple computers wouldn't sell, if PC's ran their software is also another fallacy. PC's already run iTunes and iPods, this hasn't affected the apple market share (it's actually grown because people aren't taboo to the brand anymore).
Additionally apple don't have any monopoly on the OS market or the hardware market, anyone that doesn't -want- to buy an apple, simply doesn't, it's not like windows software on x86. In a world where large purchases are governed entirely from the bottom line, you'll find that OS X on Intel would have little effect on apple computer sales.
I suppose the flip side to this argument is that because I find Office frustrating to use, I have all text documents created in Adobe's Indesign format, then PDF. Since Adobe Indesign isn't considered a competitor to word, it's numbers aren't included as market share. For other office products, I have different software titles (e.g. keynote for powerpoint.) The difference is, we don't have to give our digital files to outsiders(reality is that not many people have to anyway), so we can be a lot more flexible on what software we use. The other major difference we have, is that the software we use, not only works, but is cheaper, and not plagued with interface bugs.
Microsoft knows quite well, that if it works, people won't upgrade. A manager will usually say 'if it's not broken, why fix it'. So don't expect any bug free software from MS's dominating products. (Something that I have always noticed, their software that has to legitimately compete is always near-perfect in function.)
Taking into account that songs on iTunes music service are: 1. 100% Legal
2. DRM, but with restrictions that people can actually tolerate.
3. Sold over 130,000,000 songs to date (in less than 2 years since it's launch)
and that:
4. iPods are legal, and support a DRM format, unlike most MP3 players out there.(There is no problem with not supporting a DRM format either, are we all suddenly theives for not encoding DRM in our fair-use music rips?)
and also that:
Apple have supported more DRM in Quicktime before MS even bothered to see it as a market.
Then I really don't see any justifcation for any of the comments made about Apple computer. Sounds more like a technique to add some attention to his announcement.
Just a quick note: Australia is in electoral times. So all the various political parties come out with their policies hoping to get voted in.
This party isn't a big player in Australian politics, so the chance of this even becoming a bill are minimal, let alone making it's way through our constitutional monarchy system to become law.
I.E. No china-like firewalls on Australian internet users anytime soon.
MS trying to turn the industry into the olden days, where linux wasn't around.
I like how the story articulates that sun is trying to avoid being a powerless drone... When it's clear they have become a powerless drone via MS, and hence are just the next step in MS's plan.
Step 1. MS get SCO to do bidding
Step 2. MS get Sun to do bidding
I notice that SGI comes between SCO and SUN in the phone book.. so yay for SGI.
Also I notice MS bought SAP. Maybe they just like S?? companies?
Another more recent (but before the original non-touch wheel iPod) are in B&O home phones, where you scroll your list of phone contacts on a very small touch-sensitive scroll wheel... and select your contact with a centre button.
The only difference in the apple design is that it's significantly larger.
On a design perspective, nothing is original, it's design brilliance however to know when to use already created design elements in contrast to making a new one (MS can you hear me?) It's also no trick that the ipod is the same dimensions as a cassette. The ipod mini.. same dimensions of a business card. (The design ethic here is: Why pick shapes that people aren't already used to having?)
I'd just like to add a few points which I feel you might be missing when you wrote those 4 points.
Your 4th point implies that it is only users of illegal copies of the Windows product that are complaining about Windows's lack of refinement. Contrary to this, by large it is the people that have paid for bona-fide copies of Windows that are complaining. After all when you pay so much for software, you expect it to work, and not fail for simple reasons. Additionally you don't expect 'service pack' updates to give birth to more problems than what they potentially solve. From that, why should a legitimate user be faced with doubts over what tracking MS may be using with their product serial number.
Now in regards to other OS choices. Windows is a legally proven monopoly in the USA & EU, there are many people who'd like to switch to another platform, but simply can't, mainly because emulation is not at an adequate level for these users and are thus trapped in by the circumstance of monopoly.
Meanwhile your logic about disallowing service to pirated copies is flawed, for the greater good of Microsoft (and everyone) they (MS) should allow all copies of Windows to receive security updates, as this is the only method to knock out those many [thousands of] drone-boxes that became vulnerable due to MS Windows security flaws.
An endless array of features used to sell new versions of Windows, now users are encouraged to update simply to acquire a product which works.
Apple can produce a near flawless OS(Apple are a hardware company, and make their money from hardware sales. Poor software hurts their bottom line.) While Microsoft a software company continually produce an OS that is riddled with both interface issues, compatibility issues(contrary to marketing) and security flaws. It's a no-brainer that this is a deliberate set up.
Yeah they're better now, but in the 80's they were notorious for going around bullying other companies with their massive patent portfolio, something which many suspect MS is planning.(With MS patenting sorting images by date for example.)
Since then however IBM have found much better ways to stay in business, one of them is by being a good IT global citizen. Simply selling products in growing fields, rather than trying to use the american justice system to stamp out a new innovation & a new way of thinking. By using the american justice system to get what you want (rather than competing for it) will only foster the growth in countries outside of the USA, and ultimately put USA behind these other countries. (An example is RIAA vs P2P, imagine what would happen if the RIAA got their way.)
With rumours of the SCO donation coming from Microsoft, I would not be surprised in the least to discover that MS is giving the orders on this one. The goal of all this is to scare users away from open source software, as they might end up in an expensive court battle. However in the end, when IBM do eventually flatten this out, it's only going to create the legal president to make short work of future challenges to related software projects.
More features are usually just a mechanism to offset how expensive the main portion of the product is. The reality is, if you strip most products down to their bare-bones functionality they'll cost about the same price.
Extra features allow the consumer to think that the price is the result of the combined total, when we all know quite well that the speakers and other features are probably crap.
They also provide a point of competitive difference, this screen is quite poor quality for 23" inches, a 23" Apple display dwarfs it's quality. So some lame consumer can think that this screen is better because it features some speakers and other crap that you most likely already have separate products for.
There are numerous things called DV boxes for the mac (and windows based pcs) that basically do the same thing through your firewire port. With the added bonus that it lets you import straight to iMovie, FCP, and any other DV based video editors. Apple also supply HackTV for free which lets you watch DV streams without doing anything to them. They also supply Quicktime Streaming Server for free which lets you take this stream and broadcast it over wifi/internet/satellite/etc in real time. The flip side of these DV boxes is that it specifically isn't a TV rec'ver, but rather just a converter for composite signal(so you need a vcr or tv with composite out to convert your cable/antenna/whatever into composite video or s-video).
Before you say, oh no i can't carry be truly mobile. The idea of watching TV portably with the ATI device is useless anyway as it already relies on a powerbrick, so the difference to the end user is minimal between using either device. (You still get pegged to a power socket somewhere.) Plus the reality is most people will just use it in their home.
The basic reason why you can't run each platforms software on other platforms at full speed via emulation, is usually due to the architecture of the chipset at the heart of each platform. For example it's very slow to emulate a PowerPC chip on an x86 platform. This is due to the x86 platform simply having less available registers, hence the software must emulate these, which is a processor intensive operation as it's no longer an on-chip operation.
The best PPC emulation on x86, I have seen so far would be the PearPC software, whose author is sadly recently deceased. However even with that, just simply booting Mac OS X was a multiple hour long task.
I think the idea is that on devices which can rec'v HD signal there is alot of image lost in the down scaling process. I'm guessing here, that the sony chip would allow you to "zoom" back to the source resolution. Anything more than that and you're playing the marketing game of something out of nothing.
Reminds me people that try to add quality to their 96kbps mp3 collection by upsampling them to 256, or recording radio then upsampling that.
The interface is the sole reason why "just an mp3 player" such as the iPod has sold so well, they cost more than their competitors, despite doing basically they same thing, and they come from a company whos computer offerings were once looked down apon by the wider community.
If it's not the interface that has served the iPod so well (over 3Million sales so far) then what do you suppose it is?
To generalise, it must also be "apple fan boys" (some 10Million at that) that use Mac OS X, and not people who have made a choice away from Windows. (check out www.apple.com/switch some day)
I love how he denies that anything like it (WinFS) exists... when there are metadata file systems already out there. A good example is the fully-functioning meta data file system in Apple's OS 10.4, sure it won't be released for public consumption until early 2005. The flip side is that it's working fine in the months old developer preview of 10.4.
So in early 2005 consumers will have a meta data file system, and since Mac OS 10.2 they've had 3d accelerated GUIs... Now if WinFS did get released in longhorn (which it won't be, according to MS.) We'd still be waiting until late 2006, for these features.
I wouldn't place too much emphasis on MS's ability to timeline a product to market. After all windows 95 was meant to have the 3D accelerated GUI, and NT 4 was supposed to have WinFS.
At this rate it'll be 2010 before WinFS sees sunlight.
I was wondering if the laser could pose eye trouble.. but that thought quickly passed when I saw the packaging.
It's not the laser that will be sending you blind. It looks like a designer snorted a mixture of sugar and speed, then sneezed every embellishment effect onto the outer box.
If you can survive the box.. then some laser isn't going to do you any harm.
It's a shame that an external designer to Microsoft would do a typical 'Microsoft', i.e. take a current product and alter it slightly.
The click mechanism on this new mouse is identical to that of the now quite-old Apple mouse design. It's a trivial thought to simply cut the mouse 50/50 to give it another mouse button, making it suitable for windows.
The side view of the new mouse is even less original, following an alteration of the curves currently used in the Apple mouse design.
The designer has been particularly unoriginal, as he'd run into the Apple mouse on a daily basis when dealing with design studios. It's not like an accountant coming to this amazing idea, it's just a rip off. Pity.
Judging from Microsoft's response to this issue. (and many similar issues in the past)
They bypass this obvious lack of security as a feature, and that the application is rather to serve as an extra barrier of obscurity to hackers, and not as a solution to the problem (which it will ultimately be marketed as.)
This unfortunately isn't an adequate mentality. Microsoft appear to make the mistake to think that hackers are as technically challenged as their regular home user base. Yes! certainly a home user wouldn't be able to craft some accidental software that rips a hole through the new security centre features. However, hackers which discover holes in Windows (Without ever seeing the source code.) have the competency to add the extra layers of dodging to their worms. This it at Microsoft's peril, as now worms can fool a system into reporting that everything is fine, in turn fooling the technically challenged home user into also thinking, that their new DDoS server is also functioning without a hitch.
Microsoft needs to understand that hackers are significantly "gifted" in comparison to their regular user base (many of which who'd think Mac OS X is another version of Windows.) They must craft their security devices such that they can not be trivially undermined, and put an end to the assumption that more easily bypassed road blocks lead to greater security.
After reading the article, I feel the author had missed the point on why there is a problem at all. From his perspective it's just about apple clamping out another provider from supplying DRM songs. Missing entirely on why people purchase iPods over competitor products. Likewise, why they purchase simple across the board DRM from iTMS, instead of more complicated, often per-song DRM from competitors.
Now follow that with the fact that Apple has an obligation to the record companies, probably promising sales to allow the 99c licensing price, this can't be threatened by 3rd parties trying to bolster their own market share, Apple have to answer to record companies, and must from that already defend their strategy to them. (Real, despite selling the same product, have made no attempt to allow iTMS's greater library of music to play on their players. -That- would be more choice.)
Probably the most important topic which the author missed was that Apple under no circumstance should be looking through their products to 'keep open' the technological backdoor that Real has made into the iPod. Apple should not have to engineer it's constantly updating firmware to support a 3rd party who reveals no details on how they broke into the iPod (other than "using publicy available information"). My point being, when the iPod gets updated (and future versions which already come with new firmware), Apple may even without deliberate direction 'break' the hack which Real has engineered to let their DRM'd songs play on the iPod.
Real has placed itself in a dangerous position of defensive catch up, if i purchased discount songs from Real (Something I can't do on my mac computers as Real's service is Windows only, Real vs Choice.) and my iPod would play them for a short while until i updated my iPod (to do things like work with a belkin photo reader or Voice recorder, or the new one-click shuffle feature), then I'm going to be angry with Real for providing a poor avenue to get their music on the iPod, not for Apple for continuing their product developement.
Real would always be playing catch up, with every round of iterations invalidating the previous round of music downloaded. No one is going to throw away their iPod and buy a portable real player, simply because it plays $10 worth of real's music.
In short the iPod presents enough choice for consumers, it plays raw audio in AIFF or WAV format and DRMless MP3 music files, if any of these competitors were worth their salt, they'd produce a DRM free file which the iPod would happily play. As well as most other players, with exception to Sony's offering which only plays ATRAC.)
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Most of the market share numbers come about from large company purchases, running software that needs to fit the monopolised standard.
Meanwhile this is still a redundant argument, "Apple are a hardware company, not a software company."
I do actually, that's because i 1. don't use high polygons, I'm more talented than that, 2. I am usually using NURBS before polygons. The fact is, even with my old dual 200mhz P2 I did 3d work just fine.
The fact is that the apple hardware is tested at length to be of suitable quality for consumers, it's design is an endless delight to consumers. Even the ipod sells extremely well despite being just a music player, like all those very inexpensive-by-comparison flash players.
Being black and white in your logic is where it fails.
Likewise my OSX has _never_ crashed, but I did get to visit all those bad sites, treaded all over the shop like a drunk, and didn't have to bother with a NAT, firewall, virus scanner, heck i randomly open attachments full of windows virii, I'm raw on the Internet and nothings gotten in.
- Macs don't have a $2000 start up price tag, they actually start at $799 with the eMac, for portables $1099. Those of which are better spec'ed than low-end PCs.
- The second point is that there are no more G3's from apple, it's been that way for a while, plus no apple computer is spec'd below 1GHz.
- You can not get any apple computer without firewire. (It's an odd one I know, but I sometimes see some rattle about firewire cards and macs.)
- OS X, runs smoothly on a G3 700MHz, it runs smoothly on a G4 400MHz, a G4 1GHz won't leave you waiting in any application including Alias' Maya. Hence you don't need a dual 2.5GHz G5 to 'test' OS X, a second hand mac is usually just fine to try it out. (If you look hard enough, there are people giving away old powermac G4s.)
The final mistake, which is a good one, is that developers have not ignored the 64 bit G5, the reality is that developers have embraced it, and in cross platform apps, it's actually been the PC waiting for 64 bit updates from vendors such as Adobe, this when adobe apps were updated long ago for the G5.
The logic that Apple computers wouldn't sell, if PC's ran their software is also another fallacy. PC's already run iTunes and iPods, this hasn't affected the apple market share (it's actually grown because people aren't taboo to the brand anymore).
Additionally apple don't have any monopoly on the OS market or the hardware market, anyone that doesn't -want- to buy an apple, simply doesn't, it's not like windows software on x86. In a world where large purchases are governed entirely from the bottom line, you'll find that OS X on Intel would have little effect on apple computer sales.
For other office products, I have different software titles (e.g. keynote for powerpoint.)
The difference is, we don't have to give our digital files to outsiders(reality is that not many people have to anyway), so we can be a lot more flexible on what software we use. The other major difference we have, is that the software we use, not only works, but is cheaper, and not plagued with interface bugs.
Microsoft knows quite well, that if it works, people won't upgrade. A manager will usually say 'if it's not broken, why fix it'. So don't expect any bug free software from MS's dominating products. (Something that I have always noticed, their software that has to legitimately compete is always near-perfect in function.)
Taking into account that songs on iTunes music service are:
1. 100% Legal
2. DRM, but with restrictions that people can actually tolerate.
3. Sold over 130,000,000 songs to date (in less than 2 years since it's launch)
and that:
4. iPods are legal, and support a DRM format, unlike most MP3 players out there.(There is no problem with not supporting a DRM format either, are we all suddenly theives for not encoding DRM in our fair-use music rips?)
and also that:
Apple have supported more DRM in Quicktime before MS even bothered to see it as a market.
Then I really don't see any justifcation for any of the comments made about Apple computer. Sounds more like a technique to add some attention to his announcement.
This party isn't a big player in Australian politics, so the chance of this even becoming a bill are minimal, let alone making it's way through our constitutional monarchy system to become law.
I.E. No china-like firewalls on Australian internet users anytime soon.
I like how the story articulates that sun is trying to avoid being a powerless drone... When it's clear they have become a powerless drone via MS, and hence are just the next step in MS's plan.
Step 1. MS get SCO to do bidding
Step 2. MS get Sun to do bidding
I notice that SGI comes between SCO and SUN in the phone book.. so yay for SGI.
Also I notice MS bought SAP. Maybe they just like S?? companies?
Plus I was actually referring more to the Windows UI than their hardware division.
Inventing a puck-like device you hold in your hand, to control a cursor on the screen, that is the brilliance there.
Work in the field for a little while and you'll quickly pick up what gets applause and what is just meh.
The only difference in the apple design is that it's significantly larger.
On a design perspective, nothing is original, it's design brilliance however to know when to use already created design elements in contrast to making a new one (MS can you hear me?) It's also no trick that the ipod is the same dimensions as a cassette. The ipod mini.. same dimensions of a business card. (The design ethic here is: Why pick shapes that people aren't already used to having?)
Your 4th point implies that it is only users of illegal copies of the Windows product that are complaining about Windows's lack of refinement.
Contrary to this, by large it is the people that have paid for bona-fide copies of Windows that are complaining. After all when you pay so much for software, you expect it to work, and not fail for simple reasons. Additionally you don't expect 'service pack' updates to give birth to more problems than what they potentially solve. From that, why should a legitimate user be faced with doubts over what tracking MS may be using with their product serial number.
Now in regards to other OS choices. Windows is a legally proven monopoly in the USA & EU, there are many people who'd like to switch to another platform, but simply can't, mainly because emulation is not at an adequate level for these users and are thus trapped in by the circumstance of monopoly.
Meanwhile your logic about disallowing service to pirated copies is flawed, for the greater good of Microsoft (and everyone) they (MS) should allow all copies of Windows to receive security updates, as this is the only method to knock out those many [thousands of] drone-boxes that became vulnerable due to MS Windows security flaws.
An endless array of features used to sell new versions of Windows, now users are encouraged to update simply to acquire a product which works.
Apple can produce a near flawless OS(Apple are a hardware company, and make their money from hardware sales. Poor software hurts their bottom line.) While Microsoft a software company continually produce an OS that is riddled with both interface issues, compatibility issues(contrary to marketing) and security flaws. It's a no-brainer that this is a deliberate set up.
I was wondering this also. Is there another part to this article that I have missed, can someone fill me in?
Since then however IBM have found much better ways to stay in business, one of them is by being a good IT global citizen. Simply selling products in growing fields, rather than trying to use the american justice system to stamp out a new innovation & a new way of thinking.
By using the american justice system to get what you want (rather than competing for it) will only foster the growth in countries outside of the USA, and ultimately put USA behind these other countries. (An example is RIAA vs P2P, imagine what would happen if the RIAA got their way.)
With rumours of the SCO donation coming from Microsoft, I would not be surprised in the least to discover that MS is giving the orders on this one.
The goal of all this is to scare users away from open source software, as they might end up in an expensive court battle. However in the end, when IBM do eventually flatten this out, it's only going to create the legal president to make short work of future challenges to related software projects.
The reality is, if you strip most products down to their bare-bones functionality they'll cost about the same price.
Extra features allow the consumer to think that the price is the result of the combined total, when we all know quite well that the speakers and other features are probably crap.
They also provide a point of competitive difference, this screen is quite poor quality for 23" inches, a 23" Apple display dwarfs it's quality. So some lame consumer can think that this screen is better because it features some speakers and other crap that you most likely already have separate products for.
With the added bonus that it lets you import straight to iMovie, FCP, and any other DV based video editors.
Apple also supply HackTV for free which lets you watch DV streams without doing anything to them. They also supply Quicktime Streaming Server for free which lets you take this stream and broadcast it over wifi/internet/satellite/etc in real time.
The flip side of these DV boxes is that it specifically isn't a TV rec'ver, but rather just a converter for composite signal(so you need a vcr or tv with composite out to convert your cable/antenna/whatever into composite video or s-video).
Before you say, oh no i can't carry be truly mobile. The idea of watching TV portably with the ATI device is useless anyway as it already relies on a powerbrick, so the difference to the end user is minimal between using either device. (You still get pegged to a power socket somewhere.)
Plus the reality is most people will just use it in their home.
For example it's very slow to emulate a PowerPC chip on an x86 platform. This is due to the x86 platform simply having less available registers, hence the software must emulate these, which is a processor intensive operation as it's no longer an on-chip operation.
The best PPC emulation on x86, I have seen so far would be the PearPC software, whose author is sadly recently deceased. However even with that, just simply booting Mac OS X was a multiple hour long task.
Reminds me people that try to add quality to their 96kbps mp3 collection by upsampling them to 256, or recording radio then upsampling that.
If it's not the interface that has served the iPod so well (over 3Million sales so far) then what do you suppose it is?
To generalise, it must also be "apple fan boys" (some 10Million at that) that use Mac OS X, and not people who have made a choice away from Windows. (check out www.apple.com/switch some day)
So in early 2005 consumers will have a meta data file system, and since Mac OS 10.2 they've had 3d accelerated GUIs... Now if WinFS did get released in longhorn (which it won't be, according to MS.) We'd still be waiting until late 2006, for these features.
I wouldn't place too much emphasis on MS's ability to timeline a product to market. After all windows 95 was meant to have the 3D accelerated GUI, and NT 4 was supposed to have WinFS.
At this rate it'll be 2010 before WinFS sees sunlight.
If you can survive the box.. then some laser isn't going to do you any harm.
The click mechanism on this new mouse is identical to that of the now quite-old Apple mouse design.
It's a trivial thought to simply cut the mouse 50/50 to give it another mouse button, making it suitable for windows.
The side view of the new mouse is even less original, following an alteration of the curves currently used in the Apple mouse design.
The designer has been particularly unoriginal, as he'd run into the Apple mouse on a daily basis when dealing with design studios. It's not like an accountant coming to this amazing idea, it's just a rip off. Pity.
They bypass this obvious lack of security as a feature, and that the application is rather to serve as an extra barrier of obscurity to hackers, and not as a solution to the problem (which it will ultimately be marketed as.)
This unfortunately isn't an adequate mentality. Microsoft appear to make the mistake to think that hackers are as technically challenged as their regular home user base.
Yes! certainly a home user wouldn't be able to craft some accidental software that rips a hole through the new security centre features. However, hackers which discover holes in Windows (Without ever seeing the source code.) have the competency to add the extra layers of dodging to their worms. This it at Microsoft's peril, as now worms can fool a system into reporting that everything is fine, in turn fooling the technically challenged home user into also thinking, that their new DDoS server is also functioning without a hitch.
Microsoft needs to understand that hackers are significantly "gifted" in comparison to their regular user base (many of which who'd think Mac OS X is another version of Windows.) They must craft their security devices such that they can not be trivially undermined, and put an end to the assumption that more easily bypassed road blocks lead to greater security.
From his perspective it's just about apple clamping out another provider from supplying DRM songs.
Missing entirely on why people purchase iPods over competitor products. Likewise, why they purchase simple across the board DRM from iTMS, instead of more complicated, often per-song DRM from competitors.
Now follow that with the fact that Apple has an obligation to the record companies, probably promising sales to allow the 99c licensing price, this can't be threatened by 3rd parties trying to bolster their own market share, Apple have to answer to record companies, and must from that already defend their strategy to them. (Real, despite selling the same product, have made no attempt to allow iTMS's greater library of music to play on their players. -That- would be more choice.)
Probably the most important topic which the author missed was that Apple under no circumstance should be looking through their products to 'keep open' the technological backdoor that Real has made into the iPod. Apple should not have to engineer it's constantly updating firmware to support a 3rd party who reveals no details on how they broke into the iPod (other than "using publicy available information").
My point being, when the iPod gets updated (and future versions which already come with new firmware), Apple may even without deliberate direction 'break' the hack which Real has engineered to let their DRM'd songs play on the iPod.
Real has placed itself in a dangerous position of defensive catch up, if i purchased discount songs from Real (Something I can't do on my mac computers as Real's service is Windows only, Real vs Choice.) and my iPod would play them for a short while until i updated my iPod (to do things like work with a belkin photo reader or Voice recorder, or the new one-click shuffle feature), then I'm going to be angry with Real for providing a poor avenue to get their music on the iPod, not for Apple for continuing their product developement.
Real would always be playing catch up, with every round of iterations invalidating the previous round of music downloaded. No one is going to throw away their iPod and buy a portable real player, simply because it plays $10 worth of real's music.
In short the iPod presents enough choice for consumers, it plays raw audio in AIFF or WAV format and DRMless MP3 music files, if any of these competitors were worth their salt, they'd produce a DRM free file which the iPod would happily play. As well as most other players, with exception to Sony's offering which only plays ATRAC.)