Yes, Apple refused to licence its DRM - why would it? It wanted to get rid of it, no entrench it in a multitude of different devices and stores.
The letter was written in 2007, explaining Apple's motivations from before that time.
You are dodging the question. What *specific* other types of content are affected by DRM, that either might be, or are, or have been suggested to be the subject of a lawsuit/antitrust?
I mistyped eAAC+, wherever you read eAAC, it should say eAAC+ - I missed off the + despite typing it. Go me, I should proofread.
How is observer bias represented by *receiving actual moderation*? You either get the moderation or you don't. I don't imagine getting moderated.
I also very rarely swear or go for ad hominem attacks. I discuss the points as raised. I rarely, if ever (I can't say never because I'm sure someone will dig up a post from 1999 or something) resort to what is commonly referred to as actual trolling. My post about the open formats apple uses received a couple of troll mods and a redundant mod, despite being about the 4th post on the story. There was no flaming, no argument, just "here are the formats Apple uses" (in a story about interoperability). Still, that is trolling to some people, based on the moderation I received, although it was drowned out by informative mods, sometimes it is not the case).
I have seen this happening to all sorts of genuinely normal discourse on topics that raise the spectre of troll moderation - Apple, Google, facebook, privacy issues, climate change, Microsoft, DRM, Sony, just to name a few.
Ah, revisionist history. Go look at some of Apple's early information on the topic. They never wanted DRM in the first place. The salient quote I remember is from a letter written by Jobs himself that explains that DRM was a requirement of the music industry to allow music to be sold on the store.
Then, the emergence and massive success of iTunes created a self imposed monopoly - users were only buying iTunes tracks (despite other stores selling different DRM'ed tracks) so the industry was faced with "keep selling iTunes and iPod only tracks" or "drop DRM". In reality, if they had thought ahead they would have specified the DRM scheme used rather than letting Apple roll their own (which they didn't licence to others), so that the industry could have provided a universal DRM scheme (like CSS for DVDs) to all the different online music stores, but they weren't thinking like that - they were thinking that Apple's efforts would fade into insignificance and the whole "online music download as a business model" would be quietly swept under the carpet.
So what "other types of content" are you talking about? iTunes movies?
Also, Apple has supported most of the eAAC format (the v1 spec) for a lot longer than one month. The full spec (v2) with the PS went in with the iOS4 upgrade, likely since the full mpeg4 audio bundle (with eAAC) was finally standardised in 2009, despite the eAAC+ format being a standard for longer than that. No, it's certainly not ideal if the format is well deployed (like a portable player not supporting mp3) but it is what it is. It has now been fixed.
You'll end up with a combination of troll/flamebait and informative/insightful depending on the content.
Only on slashdot can a post that equates a software company with Nazi SS guards get "insightful" and a post calling out that classless trolling as "troll" itself.
So, it's ok to say that Apple acts like SS guards, in fact, it's insightful discourse apparently! However, it's not ok to disagree with that assessment - that's just trolling! How droll.
Repeat for pretty much every Apple story that gets posted here. It really has turned into "here;s your daily dose of Apple to flame at, regardless of topic"
Yes, they "just now" added it - your assertion was that they "still couldn't" play eAAC+ files, when they actually can (and supported most of the eAAC format before that, just lacked PS, ie, the v1 spec is supported on the iPhone and iTunes before the release of iOS4). Would it be ideal for them to have supported it fully right away when the spec was finalised? Of course, but that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about correcting your erroneous statement.
Also, what do you mean "trying to attach it to mix tapes"? That was the entire ad campaign - "Rip, Mix, Burn" was the slogan. There's not "trying" about it - that was the original idea. Go and look up the ads - I am sure they are on youtube. Go revel in late 90's ad music.
And format has *everything* do do with locking in. Just look at something like.docx - originally designed to keep you stuck in MS Office (and.doc before that), or WMA, originally only able to be decoded by Windows Media Player. There are still v9 versions of the WMV/WMA codec around that you *still* cannot play back on any platform other than Windows (ie, even the Mac version of Microsoft;s official player does not support them), but fortunately they got rid of that madness with the later incarnations. So, Apple, when deciding what format to use for the iTunes store went with an open standard - AAC, so that when the DRM was gone (should that ever happen, and we now know did happen) their whole infrastructure (encoding, installed base, players, etc) would be based around it so you would have portability with your music, like the ability to take it to competing players and operating systems that support AAC. The alternative would be a music file that only worked on iPods/iPhones, which is not the case (in the absence of the DRM). You were the one who brought up lock in to the iPod, I was refuting that.
I'm talking about format because you started talking about them "locking in music" to iPods - I was merely pointing out that that really isn't the case.
"Freeing" the music was one of Apple's commercial marketing ideas on the original iMac (the multi coloured one with the built in screen and the G3 CPU) entitled "Rip, Mix, Burn". They ran a series of TV commercials about it, about how you could use iTunes to make mix CDs of your own music from (at the time, since there was no online music store) your CDs. Their goal with the original iTunes was a jukebox program (and yes, I know, not the first jukebox software, and not originally an Apple project, just have to head that off at the pass before it gets brought up) that you could use to import all your CDs and create mix CDs any way you wanted and use anywhere, likely in response (although this is just speculation on my part) to the trend of one or two good tracks being released on an album full of filler that was common at the time, and being gradually pressured out of existence now by the ability to buy tracks individually online from all manner of online music stores and services.
The "freed" music back when they ran the Rip. Mix. Burn. commercials, way back before the iTunes store even existed.
The provided a way to remove the DRM from their store downloads (although not ideally), and then later stopped selling DRM music entirely. Using an audio loop is also possible (but clearly has to be done at normal speed, rather than just burning a CD) - the analog hole is always going to exist unless it gets legislated away (HDCP on digital video connections for example). There were numerous ways get around the original iTunes DRM - I went straight to MiniDisc in the early days, back before I had an iPod, and via audio CD for my car.
Right now, their music supports any player that can play AAC files. I listen to music from the iTunes store on my Ubuntu box. It's hardly "locked" to iPods. If they wanted a completely closed up system they would have modified a format and made their own completely proprietary format that only iTunes (Quicktime), iPods and iPhones etc could read. Sort of how MS tried to do that with WMA (although I believe that too, is now opened up). They didn't go for that however, they chose an open standard format (although patented, it is an open standard) that they do not control. Hardly the moves of someone who wants to make it impossible to take your music elsewhere.
They chose to use AAc format, which (like mp3) is patented, but offered better quality for the same bitrate. The issues of using AAC on a portable player are exactly the same as using mp3 - both are patented formats not owned primarily by the device makers (Apple does not control AAC). There's nothing stopping someone making a portable player that supports music from the iTunes store, and anything that already supports AAC files is already compatible. So, not "locked" to iPods at all.
The original DRM track is converted to Wav/Aiff (I forget precisely what bit format is used) and put on the CD, sans DRM. The quality of the track at this point does not go down, as it is not recompressed in the usual meaning of the word (eg, mp3 > mp3, jpg > jpg, aac > mp3), although you could argue that any conversion step is "lossy" in some respect. The music now on the CD is exactly the same audio quality as the DRM file.
From that point, it is now up to you - it can be reripped into mp3 or aac, or into a lossless format if you choose.
What making an audio CD does for you in iTunes (or did, back when the store had DRM) was precisely that - strip the DRM. Was it ideal? No. Was it the best they could do at the time? Yes.
The DRM arms race was not optional for Apple in the sense that if they clearly weren't trying to "protect" their content, then the music industry would have simply refused to supply the content for the store. So, every time Fairplay was broken, Apple patched it up. In the meantime, they also raised the limit on the number of CDs you could burn of the same DRM playlist from 10 to 15, before you had to alter the tracklist to reset the count. Their choice could have been to not bother fixing the Fairplay workarounds, but then they wouldn't have to worry about running the store either, since they would have nothing to sell.
And you dismissed that out of hand as Apple PR, when it was a pretty even breakdown of the case at hand - Apple needs to pay GSM fees, Nokia is claiming many Apple patents in return, Apple is claiming that Nokia is undervaluing those patents.
You also threw in some jibe about "all the hard R&D" done by Nokia compared to Apple's fluffy UI and software design which is obviously "really easy" - software and UI design is just kids with crayons I guess.
I do not know which way the suit will go - the reason it has even gone this far (as opposed to the two sides settling) suggests that they need third party help to determine the values of what Apple holds, and just what a fair price for Nokia's patents is.
The way it is often presented on/. is, though, is that Apple is some evil company who won't pay up and poor, poor Nokia is the innocent party. It's much more accurate that it's two 800 pound gorillas fighting over a dinner bill.
The DMCA is not optional, if the content providers (who own the music) tell Apple (who runs the store) to "do something about" the people going around the DRM. Apple doesn't even want it there in the first place, but they have to deal with it if their supplier asks them to (or there is no content for the store).
The burning to CD option has two settings: Audio CD (strips off the DRM) and regular CD (just burns the files as they are). You could choose with a drop down selection menu which format you preferred. Apple called it "backing up" in both respects, primarily as a cover measure. Initially it would only allow you to make 10 copies of a playlist that contained DRM tracks, but you could reset this by changing the order of the tracks, or adding one, or removing one. This restriction was later lifted (when it was no longer part of the whole content protection scheme - it was really just a token "iTunes won;t allow someone to mass produce this album and distribute it after buying it once" (although obviously it would be trivially easy to just duplicate the first audio CD it made to the same effect, but hey, no one said DRM made any sense).
I am not misremembering, because this topic frequently comes up on slashdot with "facts" about how iTunes DRM worked, and why it was there, and Apple's motivations behind it.
I have also been using it since the day the iTunes store started selling tracks, back when it was called the iTunes Music Store.
It was collating the information from both sides. It presented Apple's side, and Nokia's side and then made an editorial assessment based on those two sides, and information from other sources.
It's generally how news works.
What it was not, which is what you are trying to paint it as, was a news report from an agency that is nothing more than a press release from Apple.
What about Apple's statement that accompanied downloads when they had DRM that said "We strongly encourage you to make backups of your purchases (removing the DRM) by burning them to Audio CD. Would you like to burn them to CD now?" (Don't Burn) (Burn [default highlight])
They altered the way the Fairplay DRM worked on a couple of occasions, when it was circumvented in breach of the DMCA, but they never threatened anyone, and the ability to remove the DRM via Apple's built in method has always been in iTunes, and continues to be to this day.
I bought music from the store in DRM format the day it opened, and was given that choice. I bought an album and burned it to CD and it is in my car to this day, DRM free.
iTunes dropping DRM was Apple's stated goal from the start - they didn't even want to start selling tracks with DRM on them in the first place, but had no choice - it was either no content, or DRM.
As such, they went with the weakest possible token DRM, that you could defeat using iTunes itself - something that Apple strongly encouraged you to do every time you downloaded a track.
This post above is one of the reasons I always laugh when people call for antitrust and cries about monopoly when talking about the iPhone. Yes, it has sold 100 million units since release, but it is *miles* behind Nokia.
They don't want to "freeride" - they want to pay what every other GSM patent licensee pays, not higher because Nokia wants a large swathe of Apple's patents in return.
The dispute is about the value of Apple's patents, not about Apple not wanting to pay to use Nokia's. Nokia's patents are fixed in value: it's the same amount that every other company on Earth that makes GSM-enabled hardware pays. Apple wants to pay that amount (and is entitled to via the RAND terms that the GSM patents are covered by).
That is available - if you are willing to pay for the unit. One offs (or very low production runs) are very expensive. Unless you have thousands of people who want a computer case/laptop case just like you, it is just not economical to manufacture one completely custom to you.
You can have some customisation where it doesn't affect the economics - like a bigger drive, more ram, faster cpu etc - something that won;t affect the case manufacture. There's a reason that all product lines look identical in a specific model range.
Unless the thing is designed completely modularly, it's just not going to work - I know some laptops have a swappable optical drive unit that can be removed and replaced with an extra battery, for example, but then you are getting into compromise territory - you need space, weight and design changes to accommodate the mechanical hardware for swappable units.
I like Apple a lot, and I admire the way they have streamlined their product lines, but I would like slightly more options than I have, but I'm on the upper end of the spectrum where the line is just starting to blur between "turnkey" and "spec your own down to the paint job" consumer. So, Apple's method, while advantageous, also carries disadvantages - you just can't get a Radeon 4850 in the 21" iMac - you have to go up to the 27", you can't get the quad core i5 in the 21" etc. The prices aren't enormously different (eg, between the top level 21" iMac and the lover 27" iMac is not all that much, but if you want something that only the 27" has, like the 4850 GPU, you have to get the bigger screen, even if you don;t want it).
Sure I'd like some more flexibility, but I think if Apple's store ended up looking like Dell's with literally thousands of possibilities it would just be chaos.
Slashdot is hilarious when a large part of the "humour" comes from poking fun at people who don;t know the technical names for things "omg, a woman brought her computer to me and told me the moden was broken, but she was referring to the tower! lolz!" but then can't take it if someone points out that they themselves named something incorrectly.
Would you not correct me if I called Ubuntu "Ubuntu Unix"? What if you drove an Impala and someone pronounced it "impaler" - would you not correct them? (although, if you are driving one of those, you're probably too concerned with collecting the bits that fall off it in the net you drag behind the car).
So, from now on I can just say Unix when I mean Linux? All those OSS operating systems are the same, yes?
The iPod dock connector is a standard. It is licensed by Apple, in much the same way that the GSM patents are licensed by people like Nokia.
I can make a product with an iPod dock connector and sell it with no problems, as long as I pay a license fee to use it, just the same way that I can make a mobile phone that uses GSM as long as I pay the fees to use the GSM patents.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Apple refused to licence its DRM - why would it? It wanted to get rid of it, no entrench it in a multitude of different devices and stores.
The letter was written in 2007, explaining Apple's motivations from before that time.
You are dodging the question. What *specific* other types of content are affected by DRM, that either might be, or are, or have been suggested to be the subject of a lawsuit/antitrust?
I mistyped eAAC+, wherever you read eAAC, it should say eAAC+ - I missed off the + despite typing it. Go me, I should proofread.
How is observer bias represented by *receiving actual moderation*? You either get the moderation or you don't. I don't imagine getting moderated.
I also very rarely swear or go for ad hominem attacks. I discuss the points as raised. I rarely, if ever (I can't say never because I'm sure someone will dig up a post from 1999 or something) resort to what is commonly referred to as actual trolling. My post about the open formats apple uses received a couple of troll mods and a redundant mod, despite being about the 4th post on the story. There was no flaming, no argument, just "here are the formats Apple uses" (in a story about interoperability). Still, that is trolling to some people, based on the moderation I received, although it was drowned out by informative mods, sometimes it is not the case).
I have seen this happening to all sorts of genuinely normal discourse on topics that raise the spectre of troll moderation - Apple, Google, facebook, privacy issues, climate change, Microsoft, DRM, Sony, just to name a few.
Ah, revisionist history. Go look at some of Apple's early information on the topic. They never wanted DRM in the first place. The salient quote I remember is from a letter written by Jobs himself that explains that DRM was a requirement of the music industry to allow music to be sold on the store.
Then, the emergence and massive success of iTunes created a self imposed monopoly - users were only buying iTunes tracks (despite other stores selling different DRM'ed tracks) so the industry was faced with "keep selling iTunes and iPod only tracks" or "drop DRM". In reality, if they had thought ahead they would have specified the DRM scheme used rather than letting Apple roll their own (which they didn't licence to others), so that the industry could have provided a universal DRM scheme (like CSS for DVDs) to all the different online music stores, but they weren't thinking like that - they were thinking that Apple's efforts would fade into insignificance and the whole "online music download as a business model" would be quietly swept under the carpet.
So what "other types of content" are you talking about? iTunes movies?
Also, Apple has supported most of the eAAC format (the v1 spec) for a lot longer than one month. The full spec (v2) with the PS went in with the iOS4 upgrade, likely since the full mpeg4 audio bundle (with eAAC) was finally standardised in 2009, despite the eAAC+ format being a standard for longer than that. No, it's certainly not ideal if the format is well deployed (like a portable player not supporting mp3) but it is what it is. It has now been fixed.
Just try it for a few days, see what happens.
You'll end up with a combination of troll/flamebait and informative/insightful depending on the content.
Only on slashdot can a post that equates a software company with Nazi SS guards get "insightful" and a post calling out that classless trolling as "troll" itself.
So, it's ok to say that Apple acts like SS guards, in fact, it's insightful discourse apparently! However, it's not ok to disagree with that assessment - that's just trolling! How droll.
Repeat for pretty much every Apple story that gets posted here. It really has turned into "here;s your daily dose of Apple to flame at, regardless of topic"
Yes, they "just now" added it - your assertion was that they "still couldn't" play eAAC+ files, when they actually can (and supported most of the eAAC format before that, just lacked PS, ie, the v1 spec is supported on the iPhone and iTunes before the release of iOS4). Would it be ideal for them to have supported it fully right away when the spec was finalised? Of course, but that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about correcting your erroneous statement.
Also, what do you mean "trying to attach it to mix tapes"? That was the entire ad campaign - "Rip, Mix, Burn" was the slogan. There's not "trying" about it - that was the original idea. Go and look up the ads - I am sure they are on youtube. Go revel in late 90's ad music.
And format has *everything* do do with locking in. Just look at something like .docx - originally designed to keep you stuck in MS Office (and .doc before that), or WMA, originally only able to be decoded by Windows Media Player. There are still v9 versions of the WMV/WMA codec around that you *still* cannot play back on any platform other than Windows (ie, even the Mac version of Microsoft;s official player does not support them), but fortunately they got rid of that madness with the later incarnations. So, Apple, when deciding what format to use for the iTunes store went with an open standard - AAC, so that when the DRM was gone (should that ever happen, and we now know did happen) their whole infrastructure (encoding, installed base, players, etc) would be based around it so you would have portability with your music, like the ability to take it to competing players and operating systems that support AAC. The alternative would be a music file that only worked on iPods/iPhones, which is not the case (in the absence of the DRM). You were the one who brought up lock in to the iPod, I was refuting that.
I'm talking about format because you started talking about them "locking in music" to iPods - I was merely pointing out that that really isn't the case.
"Freeing" the music was one of Apple's commercial marketing ideas on the original iMac (the multi coloured one with the built in screen and the G3 CPU) entitled "Rip, Mix, Burn". They ran a series of TV commercials about it, about how you could use iTunes to make mix CDs of your own music from (at the time, since there was no online music store) your CDs. Their goal with the original iTunes was a jukebox program (and yes, I know, not the first jukebox software, and not originally an Apple project, just have to head that off at the pass before it gets brought up) that you could use to import all your CDs and create mix CDs any way you wanted and use anywhere, likely in response (although this is just speculation on my part) to the trend of one or two good tracks being released on an album full of filler that was common at the time, and being gradually pressured out of existence now by the ability to buy tracks individually online from all manner of online music stores and services.
iTunes 9.2 and iOS 4 fully support eAAC+
The "freed" music back when they ran the Rip. Mix. Burn. commercials, way back before the iTunes store even existed.
The provided a way to remove the DRM from their store downloads (although not ideally), and then later stopped selling DRM music entirely. Using an audio loop is also possible (but clearly has to be done at normal speed, rather than just burning a CD) - the analog hole is always going to exist unless it gets legislated away (HDCP on digital video connections for example). There were numerous ways get around the original iTunes DRM - I went straight to MiniDisc in the early days, back before I had an iPod, and via audio CD for my car.
Right now, their music supports any player that can play AAC files. I listen to music from the iTunes store on my Ubuntu box. It's hardly "locked" to iPods. If they wanted a completely closed up system they would have modified a format and made their own completely proprietary format that only iTunes (Quicktime), iPods and iPhones etc could read. Sort of how MS tried to do that with WMA (although I believe that too, is now opened up). They didn't go for that however, they chose an open standard format (although patented, it is an open standard) that they do not control. Hardly the moves of someone who wants to make it impossible to take your music elsewhere.
They chose to use AAc format, which (like mp3) is patented, but offered better quality for the same bitrate. The issues of using AAC on a portable player are exactly the same as using mp3 - both are patented formats not owned primarily by the device makers (Apple does not control AAC). There's nothing stopping someone making a portable player that supports music from the iTunes store, and anything that already supports AAC files is already compatible. So, not "locked" to iPods at all.
That is precisely what it does.
The original DRM track is converted to Wav/Aiff (I forget precisely what bit format is used) and put on the CD, sans DRM. The quality of the track at this point does not go down, as it is not recompressed in the usual meaning of the word (eg, mp3 > mp3, jpg > jpg, aac > mp3), although you could argue that any conversion step is "lossy" in some respect. The music now on the CD is exactly the same audio quality as the DRM file.
From that point, it is now up to you - it can be reripped into mp3 or aac, or into a lossless format if you choose.
What making an audio CD does for you in iTunes (or did, back when the store had DRM) was precisely that - strip the DRM. Was it ideal? No. Was it the best they could do at the time? Yes.
The DRM arms race was not optional for Apple in the sense that if they clearly weren't trying to "protect" their content, then the music industry would have simply refused to supply the content for the store. So, every time Fairplay was broken, Apple patched it up. In the meantime, they also raised the limit on the number of CDs you could burn of the same DRM playlist from 10 to 15, before you had to alter the tracklist to reset the count. Their choice could have been to not bother fixing the Fairplay workarounds, but then they wouldn't have to worry about running the store either, since they would have nothing to sell.
And you dismissed that out of hand as Apple PR, when it was a pretty even breakdown of the case at hand - Apple needs to pay GSM fees, Nokia is claiming many Apple patents in return, Apple is claiming that Nokia is undervaluing those patents.
You also threw in some jibe about "all the hard R&D" done by Nokia compared to Apple's fluffy UI and software design which is obviously "really easy" - software and UI design is just kids with crayons I guess.
I do not know which way the suit will go - the reason it has even gone this far (as opposed to the two sides settling) suggests that they need third party help to determine the values of what Apple holds, and just what a fair price for Nokia's patents is.
The way it is often presented on /. is, though, is that Apple is some evil company who won't pay up and poor, poor Nokia is the innocent party. It's much more accurate that it's two 800 pound gorillas fighting over a dinner bill.
The DMCA is not optional, if the content providers (who own the music) tell Apple (who runs the store) to "do something about" the people going around the DRM. Apple doesn't even want it there in the first place, but they have to deal with it if their supplier asks them to (or there is no content for the store).
The burning to CD option has two settings: Audio CD (strips off the DRM) and regular CD (just burns the files as they are). You could choose with a drop down selection menu which format you preferred. Apple called it "backing up" in both respects, primarily as a cover measure. Initially it would only allow you to make 10 copies of a playlist that contained DRM tracks, but you could reset this by changing the order of the tracks, or adding one, or removing one. This restriction was later lifted (when it was no longer part of the whole content protection scheme - it was really just a token "iTunes won;t allow someone to mass produce this album and distribute it after buying it once" (although obviously it would be trivially easy to just duplicate the first audio CD it made to the same effect, but hey, no one said DRM made any sense).
I am not misremembering, because this topic frequently comes up on slashdot with "facts" about how iTunes DRM worked, and why it was there, and Apple's motivations behind it.
I have also been using it since the day the iTunes store started selling tracks, back when it was called the iTunes Music Store.
It was collating the information from both sides. It presented Apple's side, and Nokia's side and then made an editorial assessment based on those two sides, and information from other sources.
It's generally how news works.
What it was not, which is what you are trying to paint it as, was a news report from an agency that is nothing more than a press release from Apple.
Where was this?
What about Apple's statement that accompanied downloads when they had DRM that said "We strongly encourage you to make backups of your purchases (removing the DRM) by burning them to Audio CD. Would you like to burn them to CD now?" (Don't Burn) (Burn [default highlight])
They altered the way the Fairplay DRM worked on a couple of occasions, when it was circumvented in breach of the DMCA, but they never threatened anyone, and the ability to remove the DRM via Apple's built in method has always been in iTunes, and continues to be to this day.
I bought music from the store in DRM format the day it opened, and was given that choice. I bought an album and burned it to CD and it is in my car to this day, DRM free.
This was editorial content.
Quotes are very specifically attributed.
iTunes dropping DRM was Apple's stated goal from the start - they didn't even want to start selling tracks with DRM on them in the first place, but had no choice - it was either no content, or DRM.
As such, they went with the weakest possible token DRM, that you could defeat using iTunes itself - something that Apple strongly encouraged you to do every time you downloaded a track.
It had nothing to do with lawsuits.
What has Apple said? I read this on a UK news site, probably the BBC.
This post above is one of the reasons I always laugh when people call for antitrust and cries about monopoly when talking about the iPhone. Yes, it has sold 100 million units since release, but it is *miles* behind Nokia.
Welcome to the world of posting anything with a slightly positive take on Apple on slashdot.
It's a club also occupied by people who post positive things about MS, Facebook, Sony and Google (exception: Android subcategory).
They don't want to "freeride" - they want to pay what every other GSM patent licensee pays, not higher because Nokia wants a large swathe of Apple's patents in return.
The dispute is about the value of Apple's patents, not about Apple not wanting to pay to use Nokia's. Nokia's patents are fixed in value: it's the same amount that every other company on Earth that makes GSM-enabled hardware pays. Apple wants to pay that amount (and is entitled to via the RAND terms that the GSM patents are covered by).
So the laws of physics don't apply to your phone?
You get no attenuation at all when you put a radio-opaque object around the antenna?
Have you also been able to violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle too?
I like Apple and am absolutely convinced in AGW.
Funny that.
*always* treat a weapon as if it is loaded, that's just common sense. Always treat blanks as if they were live ammo. Never assume a weapon is safe.
That is available - if you are willing to pay for the unit. One offs (or very low production runs) are very expensive. Unless you have thousands of people who want a computer case/laptop case just like you, it is just not economical to manufacture one completely custom to you.
You can have some customisation where it doesn't affect the economics - like a bigger drive, more ram, faster cpu etc - something that won;t affect the case manufacture. There's a reason that all product lines look identical in a specific model range.
Unless the thing is designed completely modularly, it's just not going to work - I know some laptops have a swappable optical drive unit that can be removed and replaced with an extra battery, for example, but then you are getting into compromise territory - you need space, weight and design changes to accommodate the mechanical hardware for swappable units.
I like Apple a lot, and I admire the way they have streamlined their product lines, but I would like slightly more options than I have, but I'm on the upper end of the spectrum where the line is just starting to blur between "turnkey" and "spec your own down to the paint job" consumer. So, Apple's method, while advantageous, also carries disadvantages - you just can't get a Radeon 4850 in the 21" iMac - you have to go up to the 27", you can't get the quad core i5 in the 21" etc. The prices aren't enormously different (eg, between the top level 21" iMac and the lover 27" iMac is not all that much, but if you want something that only the 27" has, like the 4850 GPU, you have to get the bigger screen, even if you don;t want it).
Sure I'd like some more flexibility, but I think if Apple's store ended up looking like Dell's with literally thousands of possibilities it would just be chaos.
Linux is Unix, right?
The GPL is the Generally Public Licence.
Android is the name of the handset, yes?
Slashdot is hilarious when a large part of the "humour" comes from poking fun at people who don;t know the technical names for things "omg, a woman brought her computer to me and told me the moden was broken, but she was referring to the tower! lolz!" but then can't take it if someone points out that they themselves named something incorrectly.
Would you not correct me if I called Ubuntu "Ubuntu Unix"? What if you drove an Impala and someone pronounced it "impaler" - would you not correct them? (although, if you are driving one of those, you're probably too concerned with collecting the bits that fall off it in the net you drag behind the car).
So, from now on I can just say Unix when I mean Linux? All those OSS operating systems are the same, yes?
How's Froyo on those older Android handsets working out for you guys?
In the world of mobile phones, I think everyone is guilty of "the next best thing" syndrome. It's the new computer arms race.
The iPod dock connector is a standard. It is licensed by Apple, in much the same way that the GSM patents are licensed by people like Nokia.
I can make a product with an iPod dock connector and sell it with no problems, as long as I pay a license fee to use it, just the same way that I can make a mobile phone that uses GSM as long as I pay the fees to use the GSM patents.
So, "good luck" not needed - just click "apply" on this page - http://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/