> While it would be great to have DRM-free OGG files, thereby eliminating licensing fees for players and encoders and bringing costs > down across the board.
The only cost for AAC is what you pay for the encoder, and this is minimal compared to what you get, which is the very best perceptual encoding and compatibility with modern devices such as iPod, PSP, HD optical disc.
AAC was designed by the music industry for the music industry. It is no surprise we like it.
> they will be selling whatever format(s) customers demand since they have no motive to help Apple lockup the hardware market.
Customers do not demand audio formats. They simply play CD's with a CD player, DVD's with DVD player, and audio files with their iPod. If you are selling audio files that don't play on iPod... good luck.
And the music industry does have an incentive to help Apple "lock up the hardware market". If a listener has an iPod they can buy a track from you and then THEY CAN PLAY IT. It's a little feature really, but Apple is the only one offering it. All other file-based music playback is computer geek only and that is a shame. Microsoft's stuff fails to play songs that the user has legitimately bought-and-paid-for and is way too hard to use also. Apple also has a system that enables a user to collect 10,000 or 20,000 or more songs while most other vendors want a hero cookie for getting 10 songs onto a phone. So an iPod user is a more attractive music consumer simply because they can consume more music.
> If EMI is willing to A) give up DRM and B) allow non-Apple retailers in the deal why would they mandate AAC?
AAC DOES NOT HAVE A CONTENT TAX A percentage of every MP3 or WMA sold goes to the encoder maker, like a DVD or a PlayStation game. With AAC, the content producer or owner keeps both the vig and the complete ownership of their audio material, like a CD or QuickTime. The MPEG-4 standard was held up for many months arguing over this part. Apple threatened not to make QuickTime MPEG-4 compatible unless this was changed to match the needs of content producers. It is a total non-starter when you suggest to a music producer or record company that they are going to pay a cut of each sale to a tool maker. We are happy to pay for tools and encoders but we don't want to hear from the tool-maker's lawyers that they own part of our newest hit single.
AAC HAS A BETTER PATENT SITUATION AAC patents are well-defined, recent, domestic to the U.S. (important to some) and incorporate practical aspects of today's music industry and the Internet, while MP3 is pre-Internet, patents are murky, it is not domestic to the U.S., and what's more the underground street cred of MP3 due to file-sharing is considered a BAD thing by the music industry, the controversial nature of MP3 is considered a bad thing to build your entire business on. Further, AAC is designed by Dolby who are a music industry staple, while MP3 is rooted in video. AAC has a better technical rep in audio than MP3 even before you hear them. If the audio quality was exactly the same, the music industry would still choose AAC due to reputation. Counter-intuitive to the file-sharer, I know.
AAC DESIGNED TO ENCODE MUSIC AS WELL AS MOVIES The huge drums, extreme sibilance, high volume, dense layers of frequencies and timbres, and very fast transients of modern music are way different than the speech, surf sounds, noises and rumbles that MP3 was designed for.
AAC 256 kbit/s BETTER THAN ANY POSSIBLE MP3 At double the bitrate of previous iTunes Store tracks, the 256 kbit/s AAC on iTunes is far better perceptual audio quality than the very fattest MP3 you can make, which at 320 kbit/s sounds like a 192 kbit/s AAC at best.
AAC IS iTUNES DEFAULT CD IMPORT FOR 4 YEARS NOW Most users don't know how to change from the default AAC encoding in iTunes to another option, so their CD collections are now AAC collections and MP3 is something that they have maybe not even heard of. One interesting fact is that 90% of the iPods in existence, ever made, where sold in the last 3 years. Napster is something that iPod users' parents once enjoyed. We are out of the "tech industry" now when it comes to file-based audio playback and well into the grandmas... there is no reason to use two audio file formats in these people's music collections, especially when the "new" one you want to add by using MP3 in 2007 is the old one, and it is fatter and sounds worse too.
The part that actually matters in this context is that AAC audio is "opener" and "freer" than MP3, which is the previous MPEG perceptual audio encoding standard, and the only other reasonable choice for content producers.
An audio producer can purchase an AAC encoder for say $25 and then use it to encode their work and there are no further fees to pay to the encoder maker and there is no restriction on how the resulting AAC audio files can be sold or used. This is not true with MP3 and certainly not with Windows Media, which both require us to pay a percentage of the sale price of MP3 or WMA files to the encoder maker.
When an audio pro or record company uses MP3 or Windows Media it is like selling a percentage of every song to Fraunhofer or Microsoft.
Windows Media is well known among PC users because Microsoft uses it in their products but it is going nowhere. Microsoft is even less respected in the music industry than they are in the typewriter business where they make all of their profits.
> converting them to mp3 and then probably deleting the AAC altogether
If it was 1995 and you were buying CD's but your car only had cassette, would you dub the CD's to tape and then throw the CD's out? Makes no sense.
The AAC audio that Apple is selling without DRM is 256 kbit/s which is indistinguishable from the CD version of the same material for the majority of the human race. Even if you make the maximum 320 kbit/s MP3 it is much lower audio quality. AAC is not just better in that it can capture more frequencies, it also has faster transients and better harmonics. It is also made to make audio pros happy, whereas MP3 was made for video people and it shows in the bass and the sibilance (which is shit).
If your car only has MP3, get an iPod for it or get a new car stereo, or burn MP3 CD's out of iTunes for the car just like people used to dub cassettes for the car. However collect the AAC and use it everywhere else.
MPEG-4 AAC audio is already the professional standard for perceptually encoded audio. It replaced MP3 audio not only in the MPEG-4 spec, but AAC has even been "backported" to the MPEG-2 standard to replace MP3 there as well. Every device that supports MPEG-4 H.264 video playback supports AAC audio. HD-DVD video: AAC audio. Blu-Ray Disc video: AAC audio. iTunes+iPod: AAC audio. PlayStation3, PSP: AAC audio. Zune: AAC audio (yes).
It isn't just that AAC has much better audio quality than MP3, which is true. It isn't just that the technology involved is 10 years newer than MP3, which is also true. The main reason that AAC is the standard is that MP3 has a so-called "content tax" and MPEG-4 does not. With MP3 you pay for the encoder, and then you pay again for every file you sell, whether on disc or over the Internet. It is the audio track from a DVD and it is not indie or Internet friendly. It may be a good way to store your CD's on your computer in 1999 but it is not good for replacing the CD for the audio industry. MPEG-4 follows the QuickTime model where you pay only for the encoder and the AAC files you create are your own to do with as you please, similar to CD. This is important not only because the music industry doesn't want to start paying a vig where none existed, but also because there is no system in place to track the vigs, it is not going to happen.
So if you are a content producer and you use AAC instead of MP3, not only does your audio quality improve, but it costs you less money also. It is very, very, very hard to beat an argument that pleases both the music people (higher quality audio) and the business people (keep the vig for yourself).
As for Windows Media... it is fucking hilarious to suggest Windows Media is even relevant. NOBODY USED WINDOWS MEDIA FIVE YEARS AGO WHEN IT WAS HIP AND THERE WAS NO iPOD. NOBODY IS USING IT NOW. NOBODY WILL USE IT IN THE FUTURE. (Yes, you made some with your 'puter. Good for you. Means nothing. You gained NOTHING.) It is ridiculous to suggest that professional audio people are going to take the extra step of converting their audio to WMA using Microsoft's ridiculously immature My First Audio Studio tools in order to pay MS a vig on every file they sell.
In the music industry, if it doesn't play on an iPod it is not an audio file. PERIOD. The iPod plays all of the standard files plus Microsoft's WAV which is just raw audio, a clone of AIFF. If you take an audio file that plays on the iPod and convert it to something that does not play on the iPod, then you have converted an audio file into a non-audio file. PERIOD. Just because you can burn 10 WMA or Ogg files to a CD-R does not mean you have made an audio CD. Maybe that is impressive in some geek circles but not to music and audio geeks and has no bearing on the music and audio market.
There is nothing at all out there to compete with MPEG-4. The argument that is being made here in this article happened around 2000 or so and it is long over. The fact that it is becoming apparent to people outside the audio industry is the end not the beginning of the process.
Dvorak complains constantly about tech that is too hard to use, badly designed, unimaginative, software that doesn't exploit hardware, poorly integrated systems. The list goes on. He complains about MS constantly and called on Steve Jobs to do a retail OS X for generic PC's.
But when he writes Apple in his articles he is always trolling. This is because he writes for hobbyist computer magazines that don't interest most Mac users and on the other hand are read by people with an anti-Mac bias, or who need to be told that their Windows purchase was money well spent. He calls in an outside audience with his Mac-focused trolls and increases his page views and provides a little Mac-bashing fun for his core audience.
However it is ringing so hollow these days now that the Mac has been a Unix with no viruses and kickass UI and multimedia for the whole 21st century and everything else just hasn't. The iPhone just by itself is more impressive than Windows Vista, let's be real.
I'm sure we could find an old article of his on smart phones from before the iPhone came out and it would complain that smart phones have too little memory, bad interfaces, bad software, crappy OS, no Wi-Fi, poor PC connectivity, and are all ugly to boot. He might even say "when is somebody going to get it and ship a smart phone that can do the real Web?"
When you buy an AppleTV, you get the box and Apple gets $299 from which they are going to make probably $25 in profit. You then go about your business of using the AppleTV while Apple goes about their business of designing products. They already made their money off you, and you already paid your share. If you want to sit on AppleTV to keep your ass warm that is your prerogative.
AppleTV is not equivalent to an XBox or PS3 where you buy the box at a loss and buy matching software titles that only work on that box... the AppleTV plays standard video so it is equivalent to a DVD player, where the hardware maker has to recoup up front because you are going to play content from many sources, even making your own. The optical disc has been replaced with Wi-Fi and a hard disk cache, and the MPEG is 4 instead of 2 but all those changes are merely due to the century. You pay a typical consumer electronics price point for a box you plug it into a TV, take remote in hand, and begin self-medicating, just as with a DVD player.
The only people who should be buying Blu-Ray and HD DVD players are the curators of museums of failed consumer electronics technologies. The idea that you're going to sell a YouTube user a Blu-Ray disc player for $500 and then all new discs at $25 a pop per title, each one bigger than an iPod, more delicate than a DVD... good fucking luck. Your next-generation DVD player is here and it is an AppleTV or something very much like it.
At $299 the AppleTV fits well into Apple's Mac lineup, where Mac mini starts at $599, so they don't have to discourage you from comparing AppleTV to Mac mini. The sub-GHz Pentium M in AppleTV is no match for the Core Duo in Mac mini, and all the other specs are similarly halved to match the price. You don't get away with anything by purchasing an AppleTV instead of a Mac mini... you get what you pay for in either case.
Actually Symantec's place on the Mac is that every six months or so they do a big FUD campaign against Mac security, trying to scare up demand for an all-purpose software package that will "secure your Mac." Their best argument is always "you never know".
I love how Symantec's current position is that Windows should stay broken and insecure so that it doesn't destroy the Windows utilities market.
> Spyware etc. targeting Windows desktops is a problem with SPYWARE, not with Windows per se.
NO, a thousand times no. Bill Gates makes this same excuse and it is bullshit.
When there is stuff growing on your product and not on your competitor's products it is not because we unfortunately we live in a universe in which stuff can grow. It is because you didn't build that thing right.
Since 1999 the Mac has had a built-in program called Software Update that checks a server at Apple once a day/week/month as the user prefers and identifies all of the updates for all of the software that came with the box, and offers to install them for the user. Since Apple publishes a new revision of Mac OS X quarterly, and this is fed through Software Update, the Mac OS is a moving target. If you figure out a way to own every v10.4.2 Mac you had better enjoy it because in a few months the whole platform will move over to v10.4.3.
When you compare that to the static target that Windows XP presented, with its hard-to-navigate Explorer-based updates which were themselves hacked, and XP SP2's life-span of like 4 straight years, it is like Microsoft is asking for it. The fact that there are more PC's than Macs only makes this even worse. They are not doing what needs to be done to serve the most basic needs of their customers.
Palm and other handheld makers had to know Apple was coming, but I guess they didn't expect them to be bringing the Unix.
If you are a hardware maker, you have to do the lowest level of the software also. It is the least you can do when all the low-level software is free. When Unix itself is designed for portability. When you can pay $0 to get a core OS and Web browser and Web server going on almost anything that you build. When you can build on top of that in so many ways without locking yourself into a particular hardware path such as antique CPU or strange memory architecture. It is for your benefit and the user's benefit. Firefox isn't just free to download on your MS Windows, it's free to include it on the hardware you build, ready to run. Even calendaring, which was Palm's "killer app" in their heyday, is now a network application. Palm doesn't need an API they just need to be the best handheld Web browser on the market first and foremost.
The cheaper it gets to make chips the more that hardware is like software used to be, coming and going all the time. The more expensive it gets to make software, the more sophisticated it gets, the more it is like hardware used to be, solid and unchanging... iterated on, but in a very responsible fashion the way you take care of the water reservoir.
The most important bits in the iPhone aren't in the CPU, they are in the 500 MB of OS X that is on there. The CPU could change next year but it will still be OS X on future iPhones. The things that make the iPhone have iPhoneness are applications of OS X. If the state of the art in handheld CPU's 10 years from now is quantum and impossible to see with the naked eye, it is likely Apple can build an iPhone out of that in a few months because all they have to do is recompile all the software on whatever new hardware they make. The new device may have nothing in common at all with today's iPhone hardware, but it will still be an iPhone just like today's iMac appears to be the same as the one from two years ago however inside you have a difference CPU architecture, different firmware, different low-level disk partition format. None of Apple's customers even noticed the Intel transition. How can a hardware vendor give up that freedom when technology moves so fast? Who would have predicted a few years ago that Intel would release a line of 2 GHz CPU's with 128-bit vector processing and low power and heat requirements, matching all the things Apple liked about PowerPC and adding x64 compatibility also? Because of OS X Apple was able to jump on Core instead of watching it happen. The Core spec reads like "PowerPC G6" it is exactly what Apple the hardware vendor wanted but they could only get it because they maintained their own core OS.
AppleTV also runs OS X. They can do a Web browser on there anytime that will be 10x the browser of anything else in the living room. The core software is all already on there... they just have to do the UI. The browser for the PlayStation3 doesn't even have JavaScript, although its CSS support is better than Explorer. Apple's WebKit is full spec, including all of CSS 2.1 and the very best JavaScript/AJAX/DOM stuff and all the security.
If I were a hardware vendor of any kind of computing device, I would have my own Linux distribution at the very least.
You're projecting your bigotry onto others. It isn't that the Apple logo is blinding people to the the fact that the iPhone sucks, it's that it's blinding you to the fact that it is an awesome product. Also the idea that you are accusing Slashdot of pro-Apple bias is hilarious in itself.
The iPhone is a Unix. The source for all of the lower levels of the software, including the core OS and the Web rendering engine, has been published. The UI is entirely done with OpenGL. The software was compiled with the newest GCC. It plays ISO MPEG-4 audio/video and MP3 audio. The email is all standards-based. The Wi-Fi is n. The TCP/IP is by BSD. It has high-speed serial and an iPod dock connector (3-day batteries are available). The built-in software is around 500 MB and includes both vi and emacs.
That sounds like music to Slashdot ears to me.
If you're reading Slashdot and you think the iPhone sucks you really have to ask yourself what your motivation is for that. Even if none of the sizzle that Steve Jobs sells to consumers is interesting to you, there is clearly steak underneath. Even the animated UI is not done with little cutaway movies but rather there is an animation engine in there.
> I don't really expect the iphone to become a big thing, and if it does it would just make iPod market drop... So I don't really think it would be > great news for apple, I am no psychic so don't blame me if I am wrong.
The iPhone is supposed to replace an iPod, it has one built in. It's an upsell from an iPod... that's good business, not bad.
> As cool as I think the iPhone is, I'm currently leaning toward the second option. Too expensive, too little demand.
You are out of your mind. Everybody already wants one. The demand is already there. Not from just the geek crowd, either.
People asked for this device. Millions of iPod users have already asked Apple for "an iPod phone" because they like their iPod better than their phone.
When comparing the price to other phones, notice that the iPhone also does not have a hardware subsidy. Instead, the service is going to be discounted. In other words, instead of getting a few hundred dollars off the phone, you will get a few hundred dollars off your service contract. So you have to compare the $499/$599 price to the unlocked price of other smart phones. There are many that are more expensive than iPhone right now, including two WinCE models that are over $700 and do not offer Web browsing or an iPod built in. Also iPhone will save the user money because its Wi-Fi will enable free access to the Web whereas other phones are always on the cell network only.
The iPhone replaces a PC in many ways that other phones don't because there is a real Web browser in there, there is real audio/video playback in there, there is real email, a real OS. Many people are going to look at it as $500 off a notebook computer.
Dell is a body with no head, there is no use talking to it.
Linux should not only come installed on your computer, it should come free with the hardware, like Mac OS X. The software install is the sizzle that sells the steak. Software features make people want to buy... but hardware makes people want to pay. Nobody likes to pay for software, especially not utility or operating system software. It's the PC manufacturer who should pay for the OS and utilities and the fact that you get that great software for free on their box is why you buy their box instead of a Dell. The reason this is news to PC makers and many PC users is that they don't know what competition looks like. They're used to getting whatever Microsoft feeds them on their new PC.
The only sensible competition in a world of commodity PC's is the software install. If the CPU and RAM and HD and so on are all going to be standardized then what's left to customize? How about the 100,000,000,000 bits on the HD? That's basically all Apple is doing. They design a great PC first, with uniform hardware and no questionable parts and the right array of ports for the life of the computer but the real magic happens when they put on the best default software install in the world, with everything from iLife and QuickTime to Apache and Ruby on Rails.
A great selling feature that a Linux PC vendor could offer is that their box boots up to a non-Microsoft desktop, but then has a virtualizer ready to go for a person to install Windows if they want to, like the Classic feature of Mac OS X.
There is a lot of work to do to get the PC market healthy again. Telling users, "here you install it" is a joke.
The time periods in ProCare are shorter than AppleCare.
My experience with AppleCare is that you're better to send the machine in via FedEx and you get it back in 3 days. The stores are so busy it is a bit of a hassle.
For that price you can get a MacBook, an iPhone, and an iPod video and still have change left over.
I would love to see a study of one FlipStart user over one year vs one iPhone user over one year. What did they do with it? How did it make them more productive?
> ou have to move up pretty far into Apple's line up to get features found on basic and mid-range PCs
> like a 3.5" harddrives
Mac mini has a 2.5" hard drive as well as the notebooks of course. AppleTV has a 1.8" hard drive, same as iPod video. Of course nanos and shuffles and iPhones have flash.
Otherwise you have 3.5" SATA drives in iMac and Mac Pro and in XServe they are either SATA or serial-attached SCSI.
Same storage as in PC's.
> expansion slots
What are "slots"? Nah, I'm half-kidding. Is there even such a thing as a "consumer PCI card" anymore? I used to use a pro audio card but it has been years since I got a FireWire sampler, which also works with notebooks.
Apple has had a workstation system with an easy-access door since 1999 and that is what you buy if you want PCI it is not hard to see that. Same as with PC's you wouldn't buy a notebook if you need PCI.
However with Apple there is a murderer's row of ports on every system and all the drivers are already there they just work. What are you going to add?
What the hell are you guys plugging onto PCI in 2007?
> and non-integrated graphics
That is a low-blow only Mac mini and MacBook has integrated graphics and that is the same as PC systems in their price range.
> You see manufacturers use whatever hardware is available for the cheapest price THAT DAY when making consumer grade laptops
I hear all the time from my IT friends about times when they would go to work on what seemed to be 30 identical computers only to find out they have 30 distinct individuals on their hands.
> Businesses are willing to pay more for the reliability and the ability to use one disk image across all the machines.
This is also why Macs have great resale value. People are willing to pay for a used Mac because you can easily find all the specs for that model online, find out if it can run the latest OS very easily and how well, and it is even easy to find out what RAM to buy for each model. Then you can buy the latest OS for $129 and it will all just work. No drivers to hunt down, no "integration" to do even though it is an old system with new OS.
Service Packs are not equivalent to Apple's major OS releases. There are minor Mac OS X releases every couple of months that are more equivalent and even similarly version numbered.
Here are Windows versions expressed in a Mac version numbering scheme:
Windows v5.0.0 - 2000 Windows v5.0.1 - 2000 SP1 Windows v5.1.0 - XP Windows v5.1.1 - XP SP1 Windows v5.1.2 - XP SP2 Windows v6.0.0 - Vista
Over that same time period, Mac OS X has run all its version numbers like an odometer, from v10.0.0 through v10.4.8 with only the 10 staying the same. That is just the OS versions, not including security patches. Panther was v10.3.0, 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, 10.3.4, 10.3.5, 10.3.6, 10.3.7, 10.3.8, 10.3.9 and then Tiger was v10.4.0. Every couple of months you have a new kernel and every known security hole patched.
The constant updates are why there are so few security problems on the Mac, and the ones that we do have are relatively minor. Even if you discover a major exploit that works on Mac OS X v10.4.3 it is only a matter of weeks until Mac OS X v10.4.4 automatically replaces the previous version on most machines. In other words, we get an automatic service pack every two months or so. The same system also delivers critical patches as they are ready. I think there have been about 50 of those in the history of Mac OS X.
What Microsoft is doing, by contrast, is unique. Hooking Windows XP onto the Web and leaving it unchanged for three years was a very unusual move.
> As if to say "Our software is perfect until we charge you for a perfecter version".
That is what Bill Gates just said about Vista in that crazy Newsweek article where he said Apple copied Jaguar/Panther/Tiger from Microsoft. You're projecting your feelings about Microsoft onto Apple.
Most people get Mac OS X for free. There was a study of this a while back. They sell very few copies at retail, and the retail copies are cheap. It is $199 for a 5-pack of Mac OS X. It is $399 for just one Windows Vista.
Most people don't even understand what an operating system is, and when they do they expect it to be free with the hardware. The fact that Apple sells any at all when Mac OS X is so much a part of each system they sell only speaks to the fact that people want it, that the features entice people. I remember I saw a demo of Exposé on Panther and I bought Panther just for that and it was worth twice as much. I saved a half hour every day just from the Exposé Desktop and All Windows features. Tiger is worth it just for Safari 2 and Dashboard, they are that good.
It is true that the Mac mini is essentially a laptop inside, but iMacs do not have laptop parts. If you pull the back off an iMac you will be shocked at how much it makes you think of a beige box commodity PC. It looks like one that has been made really skinny and a screen set into one side. The parts are instantly familiar as desktop PC parts, from the 3.5" hard drive to the big honking power supply. The biggest difference is that all the components are precisely balanced so the thing stands up on its foot, and of course that everything works.
> I've been wondering for years why no one puts out their own 'Mac Mini' clone for half the price.
Smaller is more expensive. Creating a computer with the exact hardware specs of a Mac mini in 3x the space is easy. Creating it in the space of a Mac mini is hard.
Also, Mac mini is one item. It is not user-servicable. If it fails you swap it. On the PC side, stuff like that makes people's heads explode right off of their bodies.
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> While it would be great to have DRM-free OGG files, thereby eliminating licensing fees for players and encoders and bringing costs
> down across the board.
The only cost for AAC is what you pay for the encoder, and this is minimal compared to what you get, which is the very best perceptual encoding and compatibility with modern devices such as iPod, PSP, HD optical disc.
AAC was designed by the music industry for the music industry. It is no surprise we like it.
> they will be selling whatever format(s) customers demand since they have no motive to help Apple lockup the hardware market.
... good luck.
... there is no reason to use two audio file formats in these people's music collections, especially when the "new" one you want to add by using MP3 in 2007 is the old one, and it is fatter and sounds worse too.
Customers do not demand audio formats. They simply play CD's with a CD player, DVD's with DVD player, and audio files with their iPod. If you are selling audio files that don't play on iPod
And the music industry does have an incentive to help Apple "lock up the hardware market". If a listener has an iPod they can buy a track from you and then THEY CAN PLAY IT. It's a little feature really, but Apple is the only one offering it. All other file-based music playback is computer geek only and that is a shame. Microsoft's stuff fails to play songs that the user has legitimately bought-and-paid-for and is way too hard to use also. Apple also has a system that enables a user to collect 10,000 or 20,000 or more songs while most other vendors want a hero cookie for getting 10 songs onto a phone. So an iPod user is a more attractive music consumer simply because they can consume more music.
> If EMI is willing to A) give up DRM and B) allow non-Apple retailers in the deal why would they mandate AAC?
AAC DOES NOT HAVE A CONTENT TAX
A percentage of every MP3 or WMA sold goes to the encoder maker, like a DVD or a PlayStation game. With AAC, the content producer or owner keeps both the vig and the complete ownership of their audio material, like a CD or QuickTime. The MPEG-4 standard was held up for many months arguing over this part. Apple threatened not to make QuickTime MPEG-4 compatible unless this was changed to match the needs of content producers. It is a total non-starter when you suggest to a music producer or record company that they are going to pay a cut of each sale to a tool maker. We are happy to pay for tools and encoders but we don't want to hear from the tool-maker's lawyers that they own part of our newest hit single.
AAC HAS A BETTER PATENT SITUATION
AAC patents are well-defined, recent, domestic to the U.S. (important to some) and incorporate practical aspects of today's music industry and the Internet, while MP3 is pre-Internet, patents are murky, it is not domestic to the U.S., and what's more the underground street cred of MP3 due to file-sharing is considered a BAD thing by the music industry, the controversial nature of MP3 is considered a bad thing to build your entire business on. Further, AAC is designed by Dolby who are a music industry staple, while MP3 is rooted in video. AAC has a better technical rep in audio than MP3 even before you hear them. If the audio quality was exactly the same, the music industry would still choose AAC due to reputation. Counter-intuitive to the file-sharer, I know.
AAC DESIGNED TO ENCODE MUSIC AS WELL AS MOVIES
The huge drums, extreme sibilance, high volume, dense layers of frequencies and timbres, and very fast transients of modern music are way different than the speech, surf sounds, noises and rumbles that MP3 was designed for.
AAC 256 kbit/s BETTER THAN ANY POSSIBLE MP3
At double the bitrate of previous iTunes Store tracks, the 256 kbit/s AAC on iTunes is far better perceptual audio quality than the very fattest MP3 you can make, which at 320 kbit/s sounds like a 192 kbit/s AAC at best.
AAC IS iTUNES DEFAULT CD IMPORT FOR 4 YEARS NOW
Most users don't know how to change from the default AAC encoding in iTunes to another option, so their CD collections are now AAC collections and MP3 is something that they have maybe not even heard of. One interesting fact is that 90% of the iPods in existence, ever made, where sold in the last 3 years. Napster is something that iPod users' parents once enjoyed. We are out of the "tech industry" now when it comes to file-based audio playback and well into the grandmas
AAC H
> Only "open and free" to a certain extent
The part that actually matters in this context is that AAC audio is "opener" and "freer" than MP3, which is the previous MPEG perceptual audio encoding standard, and the only other reasonable choice for content producers.
An audio producer can purchase an AAC encoder for say $25 and then use it to encode their work and there are no further fees to pay to the encoder maker and there is no restriction on how the resulting AAC audio files can be sold or used. This is not true with MP3 and certainly not with Windows Media, which both require us to pay a percentage of the sale price of MP3 or WMA files to the encoder maker.
When an audio pro or record company uses MP3 or Windows Media it is like selling a percentage of every song to Fraunhofer or Microsoft.
Windows Media is well known among PC users because Microsoft uses it in their products but it is going nowhere. Microsoft is even less respected in the music industry than they are in the typewriter business where they make all of their profits.
> converting them to mp3 and then probably deleting the AAC altogether
If it was 1995 and you were buying CD's but your car only had cassette, would you dub the CD's to tape and then throw the CD's out? Makes no sense.
The AAC audio that Apple is selling without DRM is 256 kbit/s which is indistinguishable from the CD version of the same material for the majority of the human race. Even if you make the maximum 320 kbit/s MP3 it is much lower audio quality. AAC is not just better in that it can capture more frequencies, it also has faster transients and better harmonics. It is also made to make audio pros happy, whereas MP3 was made for video people and it shows in the bass and the sibilance (which is shit).
If your car only has MP3, get an iPod for it or get a new car stereo, or burn MP3 CD's out of iTunes for the car just like people used to dub cassettes for the car. However collect the AAC and use it everywhere else.
MPEG-4 AAC audio is already the professional standard for perceptually encoded audio. It replaced MP3 audio not only in the MPEG-4 spec, but AAC has even been "backported" to the MPEG-2 standard to replace MP3 there as well. Every device that supports MPEG-4 H.264 video playback supports AAC audio. HD-DVD video: AAC audio. Blu-Ray Disc video: AAC audio. iTunes+iPod: AAC audio. PlayStation3, PSP: AAC audio. Zune: AAC audio (yes).
... it is fucking hilarious to suggest Windows Media is even relevant. NOBODY USED WINDOWS MEDIA FIVE YEARS AGO WHEN IT WAS HIP AND THERE WAS NO iPOD. NOBODY IS USING IT NOW. NOBODY WILL USE IT IN THE FUTURE. (Yes, you made some with your 'puter. Good for you. Means nothing. You gained NOTHING.) It is ridiculous to suggest that professional audio people are going to take the extra step of converting their audio to WMA using Microsoft's ridiculously immature My First Audio Studio tools in order to pay MS a vig on every file they sell.
It isn't just that AAC has much better audio quality than MP3, which is true. It isn't just that the technology involved is 10 years newer than MP3, which is also true. The main reason that AAC is the standard is that MP3 has a so-called "content tax" and MPEG-4 does not. With MP3 you pay for the encoder, and then you pay again for every file you sell, whether on disc or over the Internet. It is the audio track from a DVD and it is not indie or Internet friendly. It may be a good way to store your CD's on your computer in 1999 but it is not good for replacing the CD for the audio industry. MPEG-4 follows the QuickTime model where you pay only for the encoder and the AAC files you create are your own to do with as you please, similar to CD. This is important not only because the music industry doesn't want to start paying a vig where none existed, but also because there is no system in place to track the vigs, it is not going to happen.
So if you are a content producer and you use AAC instead of MP3, not only does your audio quality improve, but it costs you less money also. It is very, very, very hard to beat an argument that pleases both the music people (higher quality audio) and the business people (keep the vig for yourself).
As for Windows Media
In the music industry, if it doesn't play on an iPod it is not an audio file. PERIOD. The iPod plays all of the standard files plus Microsoft's WAV which is just raw audio, a clone of AIFF. If you take an audio file that plays on the iPod and convert it to something that does not play on the iPod, then you have converted an audio file into a non-audio file. PERIOD. Just because you can burn 10 WMA or Ogg files to a CD-R does not mean you have made an audio CD. Maybe that is impressive in some geek circles but not to music and audio geeks and has no bearing on the music and audio market.
There is nothing at all out there to compete with MPEG-4. The argument that is being made here in this article happened around 2000 or so and it is long over. The fact that it is becoming apparent to people outside the audio industry is the end not the beginning of the process.
Dvorak complains constantly about tech that is too hard to use, badly designed, unimaginative, software that doesn't exploit hardware, poorly integrated systems. The list goes on. He complains about MS constantly and called on Steve Jobs to do a retail OS X for generic PC's.
But when he writes Apple in his articles he is always trolling. This is because he writes for hobbyist computer magazines that don't interest most Mac users and on the other hand are read by people with an anti-Mac bias, or who need to be told that their Windows purchase was money well spent. He calls in an outside audience with his Mac-focused trolls and increases his page views and provides a little Mac-bashing fun for his core audience.
However it is ringing so hollow these days now that the Mac has been a Unix with no viruses and kickass UI and multimedia for the whole 21st century and everything else just hasn't. The iPhone just by itself is more impressive than Windows Vista, let's be real.
I'm sure we could find an old article of his on smart phones from before the iPhone came out and it would complain that smart phones have too little memory, bad interfaces, bad software, crappy OS, no Wi-Fi, poor PC connectivity, and are all ugly to boot. He might even say "when is somebody going to get it and ship a smart phone that can do the real Web?"
When you buy an AppleTV, you get the box and Apple gets $299 from which they are going to make probably $25 in profit. You then go about your business of using the AppleTV while Apple goes about their business of designing products. They already made their money off you, and you already paid your share. If you want to sit on AppleTV to keep your ass warm that is your prerogative.
... the AppleTV plays standard video so it is equivalent to a DVD player, where the hardware maker has to recoup up front because you are going to play content from many sources, even making your own. The optical disc has been replaced with Wi-Fi and a hard disk cache, and the MPEG is 4 instead of 2 but all those changes are merely due to the century. You pay a typical consumer electronics price point for a box you plug it into a TV, take remote in hand, and begin self-medicating, just as with a DVD player.
... good fucking luck. Your next-generation DVD player is here and it is an AppleTV or something very much like it.
... you get what you pay for in either case.
AppleTV is not equivalent to an XBox or PS3 where you buy the box at a loss and buy matching software titles that only work on that box
The only people who should be buying Blu-Ray and HD DVD players are the curators of museums of failed consumer electronics technologies. The idea that you're going to sell a YouTube user a Blu-Ray disc player for $500 and then all new discs at $25 a pop per title, each one bigger than an iPod, more delicate than a DVD
At $299 the AppleTV fits well into Apple's Mac lineup, where Mac mini starts at $599, so they don't have to discourage you from comparing AppleTV to Mac mini. The sub-GHz Pentium M in AppleTV is no match for the Core Duo in Mac mini, and all the other specs are similarly halved to match the price. You don't get away with anything by purchasing an AppleTV instead of a Mac mini
> But the programming whiz who once dropped out of Harvard will likely feel some sense of satisfaction.
The "programming whiz" part of Bill Gates resume is pure padding.
Actually Symantec's place on the Mac is that every six months or so they do a big FUD campaign against Mac security, trying to scare up demand for an all-purpose software package that will "secure your Mac." Their best argument is always "you never know".
I love how Symantec's current position is that Windows should stay broken and insecure so that it doesn't destroy the Windows utilities market.
> Spyware etc. targeting Windows desktops is a problem with SPYWARE, not with Windows per se.
NO, a thousand times no. Bill Gates makes this same excuse and it is bullshit.
When there is stuff growing on your product and not on your competitor's products it is not because we unfortunately we live in a universe in which stuff can grow. It is because you didn't build that thing right.
Since 1999 the Mac has had a built-in program called Software Update that checks a server at Apple once a day/week/month as the user prefers and identifies all of the updates for all of the software that came with the box, and offers to install them for the user. Since Apple publishes a new revision of Mac OS X quarterly, and this is fed through Software Update, the Mac OS is a moving target. If you figure out a way to own every v10.4.2 Mac you had better enjoy it because in a few months the whole platform will move over to v10.4.3.
When you compare that to the static target that Windows XP presented, with its hard-to-navigate Explorer-based updates which were themselves hacked, and XP SP2's life-span of like 4 straight years, it is like Microsoft is asking for it. The fact that there are more PC's than Macs only makes this even worse. They are not doing what needs to be done to serve the most basic needs of their customers.
MP4 is like 5 years old now. Consider getting with the program.
Palm and other handheld makers had to know Apple was coming, but I guess they didn't expect them to be bringing the Unix.
... iterated on, but in a very responsible fashion the way you take care of the water reservoir.
... they just have to do the UI. The browser for the PlayStation3 doesn't even have JavaScript, although its CSS support is better than Explorer. Apple's WebKit is full spec, including all of CSS 2.1 and the very best JavaScript/AJAX/DOM stuff and all the security.
If you are a hardware maker, you have to do the lowest level of the software also. It is the least you can do when all the low-level software is free. When Unix itself is designed for portability. When you can pay $0 to get a core OS and Web browser and Web server going on almost anything that you build. When you can build on top of that in so many ways without locking yourself into a particular hardware path such as antique CPU or strange memory architecture. It is for your benefit and the user's benefit. Firefox isn't just free to download on your MS Windows, it's free to include it on the hardware you build, ready to run. Even calendaring, which was Palm's "killer app" in their heyday, is now a network application. Palm doesn't need an API they just need to be the best handheld Web browser on the market first and foremost.
The cheaper it gets to make chips the more that hardware is like software used to be, coming and going all the time. The more expensive it gets to make software, the more sophisticated it gets, the more it is like hardware used to be, solid and unchanging
The most important bits in the iPhone aren't in the CPU, they are in the 500 MB of OS X that is on there. The CPU could change next year but it will still be OS X on future iPhones. The things that make the iPhone have iPhoneness are applications of OS X. If the state of the art in handheld CPU's 10 years from now is quantum and impossible to see with the naked eye, it is likely Apple can build an iPhone out of that in a few months because all they have to do is recompile all the software on whatever new hardware they make. The new device may have nothing in common at all with today's iPhone hardware, but it will still be an iPhone just like today's iMac appears to be the same as the one from two years ago however inside you have a difference CPU architecture, different firmware, different low-level disk partition format. None of Apple's customers even noticed the Intel transition. How can a hardware vendor give up that freedom when technology moves so fast? Who would have predicted a few years ago that Intel would release a line of 2 GHz CPU's with 128-bit vector processing and low power and heat requirements, matching all the things Apple liked about PowerPC and adding x64 compatibility also? Because of OS X Apple was able to jump on Core instead of watching it happen. The Core spec reads like "PowerPC G6" it is exactly what Apple the hardware vendor wanted but they could only get it because they maintained their own core OS.
AppleTV also runs OS X. They can do a Web browser on there anytime that will be 10x the browser of anything else in the living room. The core software is all already on there
If I were a hardware vendor of any kind of computing device, I would have my own Linux distribution at the very least.
You're projecting your bigotry onto others. It isn't that the Apple logo is blinding people to the the fact that the iPhone sucks, it's that it's blinding you to the fact that it is an awesome product. Also the idea that you are accusing Slashdot of pro-Apple bias is hilarious in itself.
The iPhone is a Unix. The source for all of the lower levels of the software, including the core OS and the Web rendering engine, has been published. The UI is entirely done with OpenGL. The software was compiled with the newest GCC. It plays ISO MPEG-4 audio/video and MP3 audio. The email is all standards-based. The Wi-Fi is n. The TCP/IP is by BSD. It has high-speed serial and an iPod dock connector (3-day batteries are available). The built-in software is around 500 MB and includes both vi and emacs.
That sounds like music to Slashdot ears to me.
If you're reading Slashdot and you think the iPhone sucks you really have to ask yourself what your motivation is for that. Even if none of the sizzle that Steve Jobs sells to consumers is interesting to you, there is clearly steak underneath. Even the animated UI is not done with little cutaway movies but rather there is an animation engine in there.
> I don't really expect the iphone to become a big thing, and if it does it would just make iPod market drop... So I don't really think it would be
... that's good business, not bad.
> great news for apple, I am no psychic so don't blame me if I am wrong.
The iPhone is supposed to replace an iPod, it has one built in. It's an upsell from an iPod
> As cool as I think the iPhone is, I'm currently leaning toward the second option. Too expensive, too little demand.
You are out of your mind. Everybody already wants one. The demand is already there. Not from just the geek crowd, either.
People asked for this device. Millions of iPod users have already asked Apple for "an iPod phone" because they like their iPod better than their phone.
When comparing the price to other phones, notice that the iPhone also does not have a hardware subsidy. Instead, the service is going to be discounted. In other words, instead of getting a few hundred dollars off the phone, you will get a few hundred dollars off your service contract. So you have to compare the $499/$599 price to the unlocked price of other smart phones. There are many that are more expensive than iPhone right now, including two WinCE models that are over $700 and do not offer Web browsing or an iPod built in. Also iPhone will save the user money because its Wi-Fi will enable free access to the Web whereas other phones are always on the cell network only.
The iPhone replaces a PC in many ways that other phones don't because there is a real Web browser in there, there is real audio/video playback in there, there is real email, a real OS. Many people are going to look at it as $500 off a notebook computer.
Dell is a body with no head, there is no use talking to it.
... but hardware makes people want to pay. Nobody likes to pay for software, especially not utility or operating system software. It's the PC manufacturer who should pay for the OS and utilities and the fact that you get that great software for free on their box is why you buy their box instead of a Dell. The reason this is news to PC makers and many PC users is that they don't know what competition looks like. They're used to getting whatever Microsoft feeds them on their new PC.
Linux should not only come installed on your computer, it should come free with the hardware, like Mac OS X. The software install is the sizzle that sells the steak. Software features make people want to buy
The only sensible competition in a world of commodity PC's is the software install. If the CPU and RAM and HD and so on are all going to be standardized then what's left to customize? How about the 100,000,000,000 bits on the HD? That's basically all Apple is doing. They design a great PC first, with uniform hardware and no questionable parts and the right array of ports for the life of the computer but the real magic happens when they put on the best default software install in the world, with everything from iLife and QuickTime to Apache and Ruby on Rails.
A great selling feature that a Linux PC vendor could offer is that their box boots up to a non-Microsoft desktop, but then has a virtualizer ready to go for a person to install Windows if they want to, like the Classic feature of Mac OS X.
There is a lot of work to do to get the PC market healthy again. Telling users, "here you install it" is a joke.
The time periods in ProCare are shorter than AppleCare.
My experience with AppleCare is that you're better to send the machine in via FedEx and you get it back in 3 days. The stores are so busy it is a bit of a hassle.
I can hardly believe how expensive the thing is.
For that price you can get a MacBook, an iPhone, and an iPod video and still have change left over.
I would love to see a study of one FlipStart user over one year vs one iPhone user over one year. What did they do with it? How did it make them more productive?
> ou have to move up pretty far into Apple's line up to get features found on basic and mid-range PCs
> like a 3.5" harddrives
Mac mini has a 2.5" hard drive as well as the notebooks of course. AppleTV has a 1.8" hard drive, same as iPod video. Of course nanos and shuffles and iPhones have flash.
Otherwise you have 3.5" SATA drives in iMac and Mac Pro and in XServe they are either SATA or serial-attached SCSI.
Same storage as in PC's.
> expansion slots
What are "slots"? Nah, I'm half-kidding. Is there even such a thing as a "consumer PCI card" anymore? I used to use a pro audio card but it has been years since I got a FireWire sampler, which also works with notebooks.
Apple has had a workstation system with an easy-access door since 1999 and that is what you buy if you want PCI it is not hard to see that. Same as with PC's you wouldn't buy a notebook if you need PCI.
However with Apple there is a murderer's row of ports on every system and all the drivers are already there they just work. What are you going to add?
What the hell are you guys plugging onto PCI in 2007?
> and non-integrated graphics
That is a low-blow only Mac mini and MacBook has integrated graphics and that is the same as PC systems in their price range.
> You see manufacturers use whatever hardware is available for the cheapest price THAT DAY when making consumer grade laptops
I hear all the time from my IT friends about times when they would go to work on what seemed to be 30 identical computers only to find out they have 30 distinct individuals on their hands.
> Businesses are willing to pay more for the reliability and the ability to use one disk image across all the machines.
This is also why Macs have great resale value. People are willing to pay for a used Mac because you can easily find all the specs for that model online, find out if it can run the latest OS very easily and how well, and it is even easy to find out what RAM to buy for each model. Then you can buy the latest OS for $129 and it will all just work. No drivers to hunt down, no "integration" to do even though it is an old system with new OS.
Service Packs are not equivalent to Apple's major OS releases. There are minor Mac OS X releases every couple of months that are more equivalent and even similarly version numbered.
Here are Windows versions expressed in a Mac version numbering scheme:
Windows v5.0.0 - 2000
Windows v5.0.1 - 2000 SP1
Windows v5.1.0 - XP
Windows v5.1.1 - XP SP1
Windows v5.1.2 - XP SP2
Windows v6.0.0 - Vista
Over that same time period, Mac OS X has run all its version numbers like an odometer, from v10.0.0 through v10.4.8 with only the 10 staying the same. That is just the OS versions, not including security patches. Panther was v10.3.0, 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, 10.3.4, 10.3.5, 10.3.6, 10.3.7, 10.3.8, 10.3.9 and then Tiger was v10.4.0. Every couple of months you have a new kernel and every known security hole patched.
The constant updates are why there are so few security problems on the Mac, and the ones that we do have are relatively minor. Even if you discover a major exploit that works on Mac OS X v10.4.3 it is only a matter of weeks until Mac OS X v10.4.4 automatically replaces the previous version on most machines. In other words, we get an automatic service pack every two months or so. The same system also delivers critical patches as they are ready. I think there have been about 50 of those in the history of Mac OS X.
What Microsoft is doing, by contrast, is unique. Hooking Windows XP onto the Web and leaving it unchanged for three years was a very unusual move.
> As if to say "Our software is perfect until we charge you for a perfecter version".
That is what Bill Gates just said about Vista in that crazy Newsweek article where he said Apple copied Jaguar/Panther/Tiger from Microsoft. You're projecting your feelings about Microsoft onto Apple.
Most people get Mac OS X for free. There was a study of this a while back. They sell very few copies at retail, and the retail copies are cheap. It is $199 for a 5-pack of Mac OS X. It is $399 for just one Windows Vista.
Most people don't even understand what an operating system is, and when they do they expect it to be free with the hardware. The fact that Apple sells any at all when Mac OS X is so much a part of each system they sell only speaks to the fact that people want it, that the features entice people. I remember I saw a demo of Exposé on Panther and I bought Panther just for that and it was worth twice as much. I saved a half hour every day just from the Exposé Desktop and All Windows features. Tiger is worth it just for Safari 2 and Dashboard, they are that good.
It is true that the Mac mini is essentially a laptop inside, but iMacs do not have laptop parts. If you pull the back off an iMac you will be shocked at how much it makes you think of a beige box commodity PC. It looks like one that has been made really skinny and a screen set into one side. The parts are instantly familiar as desktop PC parts, from the 3.5" hard drive to the big honking power supply. The biggest difference is that all the components are precisely balanced so the thing stands up on its foot, and of course that everything works.
> Anyone who doesn't think Apple isn't vastly more "evil" than Miscrosoft when it comes to bending the public over and taking their
...
> money is a fool.
That is why Apple's customers hate them and Microsoft's customers love them. Oh, wait
> I've been wondering for years why no one puts out their own 'Mac Mini' clone for half the price.
Smaller is more expensive. Creating a computer with the exact hardware specs of a Mac mini in 3x the space is easy. Creating it in the space of a Mac mini is hard.
Also, Mac mini is one item. It is not user-servicable. If it fails you swap it. On the PC side, stuff like that makes people's heads explode right off of their bodies.