The best example would be the Logitech Harmony remotes. These things control, well, everything.
What? They control my devices that connect via Bluetooth, with an infrared transmitter? They control my ethernet-connected devices with the same IR remote? That is pretty amazing, but somehow I don't think it's true.
The shinier the Mac, the higher above that number it goes. They make the cheapest models black for a reason.
Say what? You actually pay a "tax" on the Macbook if you want black, it's the most expensive model. And for a while (don't know if it's still true) the cheapest iPod Nanos were all silver (the shiniest color) and you had to fork out more if you wanted a black one.
Apple could have used one of the other DRM techniques that were already available then.
Oh right. That wouldn't have been burdensome at all. Paying money for someone else's software (none of which was written for Macs at all, only Windows. Putting your company at the mercy of someone else's (crap) software.
Seriously, those other DRM schemes were total shit. Full of bugs, owned by nasty companies, single-platform. Why the hell would Apple put any measure of trust in those programmers and their bosses? Have you seen the typical quality of ported software from developers who don't have experience on the Mac?
So yes, it benefits Apple very much to have their own DRM.
Yes, it is better to have their own DRM than to use someone else's. But it is even better for them to have no DRM at all. How many iTunes Store sales do you think they lost in the time that the store offered DRMed tracks only? I'd guess it's not an insignificant number. And the costs of implementing the DRM - and then providing customer support for it are pretty high. If Apple benefits from DRM so much, then why are they trying to get rid of it on the music they sell?
Again, the only evidence you have that supports this assertion is what Apple says it wanted.
Do I need to cite evidence that DRM costs money, and is a pain in the ass the maintain? And Apple's assertion is a lot more evidence than you have - exactly none. I also have Apple's actions as evidence, which are consistent with what they were saying.
This despite the fact that the DRM is obviously adavantageous to them.
Obvious? So where's your evidence. I'd say it's obviously a disadvantage. Since you are the one accusing Apple of lying, and are the one saying that Apple is trying to do something totally contradictory to its public actions, then the burden of proof lies heavily on you.
If DRM is so advantageous to Apple, then why did they ask music companies to start selling songs without it, and then go ahead, and do exactly that? Sounds like your argument is nothing but a chip on the shoulder for Apple, with no substance at all.
rofl i had a 20gb zen that supported more formats than even modern ipods and had a near identical wheel interface (albeit a side wheel) that apple copied at least a year before the first ipod came out any technical lead must be a figment of your imagination.
Bullshit. you are the one imagining things. If it were released before the first iPod, then it used USB 1.1 for its transfer. Trying to transfer 20GB over USB 1.1 is painfully slow. iPods had the much faster Firewire. Also, it would have used a laptop 2.5" drive - so this thing would have been massive compared to the iPod which used a miniature hard drive.
If you think vastly faster transfer speeds and a much smaller form factor aren't important technical aspects of a portable music player, then you're deluded.
as with the iphone it was years behind on release and will be years behind forever.
Uhhh, which other phone had a multi-touch interface and something like MobileSafari before the iPhone? None of them? Oh.
So, you educate people. Or at least make some sort of attempt at awareness, rather than this bullshit of ignoring the issues and pandering to industry. The only reason people don't care is because of ignorance. And fighting ignorance also has the benefit of helping in many other areas apart from "energy policy". Heck, the fact that you call it "energy policy" amounts to a huge blindspot in your own thinking.
The point is that there are so many better players out there than the iPod - more storage, more features, more formats supported, less DRM, replaceable batteries and a lower price point to boot
OK, so which are these "so many better players" that you speak of?
And taking your specific criticisms:
* More storage - you can get iPods with plenty of storage, but storage doesn't really matter much, because almost anything these days has enough storage to last through typical usage scenarios.
* More features? That's useless if you don't want the features, or they are difficult to use.
* More formats supported? But if they don't support DRM, then that is also fewer formats supported, isn't it?
* Less DRM? Almost every player has support for some kind of DRM, the only ones that don't tend to be cheap-and-nasty units with very few features.
* Replaceable batteries? I don't see how having a bulky, low-performance AAA battery is an advantage over a compact, high-performance lithium battery. Nor do I see the advantage in flimsy battery covers or doors.
* Lower price point? iPods are pretty competitive price-wise. If you're paying a lower price, you're likely not getting anywhere near the quality, features, or ease of use.
yet millions still buy the iPod, why? Because it's fashionable.
Did you ever think it's because they enjoy using them, and they are reliable and easy to use? That matters a whole lot more than a long list of features. After all, these players have one primary function - to play music. I don't choose a car based on whether it has a built in BBQ grill, I choose it based on how the car performs, and how ergonomic it is.
Why do you automatically jump to the assumption that it's all about fashion?
There's simply no other reason to buy an iPod because they don't hold anything over other players, it's not like iTunes is exactly any easier to use than other portal music device software.
Actually, it is like that. Not many other players are both as easy to use, and also as fully-featured as iTunes. How many other players offer seamless access to the world's leading online music store, right in the application? How many do playlists as well as iTunes?
Apple's primary method of shifting products is the fashion angle, followed by their proprietary OS and other software that people may prefer. It's certainly not cost/technical merits the products are purchased on as you can get higher spec with equivalent quality (but not style) cheaper elsewhere
Ignorance. When it was released, the iPod was far and away the most advanced player on the market. This was long before any "fashion" associations with it. Its popularity pretty much spread by word-of-mouth, as it blew away all the competition. Competition has caught up recently, but the iPod had a huge technical lead on the rest of the market.
You constantly tout these "higher spec" products with cheaper prices, but you never give a single example. Why is that?
No it's not. With the number of cups of coffee that McDonalds serves, that adds up to a lot of injuries. With so much possibility of injury, every degree of temperature is a big deal, and McDonalds has a duty to minimize the risk. But instead they chose to flout any risk.
I was reading along, came across your post and thought; "Hey, why is this guy injecting a non-sequitur post about copyright infringement into a discussion about Burma?" but then I remembered to look at my browser window's title bar.
We will need everything we got including wind, thermal, biomass, nuclear, and good old black gold just to keep up with the inevitable buildout of the third world.
Not necessarily. Once upon a time people thought the depended on the oil from whales. Or they relied on horses for transport, and firewood for heat. Needed horseback messengers to send a letter.
Things change. Often dramatically. People who say they know what will happen in the future are usually wrong when talking about anything longer than a few years.
No, it's not infinitely hard. It just needs to scale to more systems. It's far from an unsolvable problem. And if it's "easy" to do it for 1,300 people, then why isn't it just as easy to do it for the next 1,300, and the next 1,300 after that and so forth?
So, why is the only alternative coal? There are other things like wind and solar, you know. I don't get why people think that the only options are either nuclear or dirty coal. Well, I do get it - they're being disingenuous to push an agenda, and deliberately ignoring other options that would complicate their argument.
when France has been using a safe, zero-carbon power generation system for decades as well.
Wait, you're not talking about nuclear, are you? Because there's no way nuclear power generation is carbon neutral. It takes plenty of fuel and carbon emissions to dig up that uranium, transport it, dispose of it, and to built the power plant and infrastructure. Zero-carbon? Hardly.
Sounds more like you're describing industry and government. They are only interested in milking fossil fuels for all their worth - and then getting government contracts to "clean up" their output. If they listened to environmentalists, emissions could be cut for a fraction of the cost (or for a profit) - but that's not what the men who run powerful industries care about. It's all about the gravy train of massive infrastructure projects (which often cause more problems than they solve).
Why would you have to sync it every day? Even relatively small players have enough storage to play continuously for several days without hearing the same song twice. Since people typically only use their players for maybe 2 hours a day - you could go for months in-between syncs without repeating your music.
That doesn't benefit Apple. And once again, Apple didn't want the DRM it is only a burden on the company. But the labels insisted.
This wasn't very long ago, have you forgotten the history so quickly? Remember when, after Napster was shut down, Apple basically became Enemy #1 of the music industry when they launched the "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign? Apple was publicly advertising the activity of making "unauthorized copies" of music CDs - an activity which the RIAA and labels would like to see outlawed. If Apple was all about DRM and lock-in, then wouldn't they have added DRM to their CD ripping features of iTunes? Microsoft attempted that one with Windows Media Player.
And for fuck's sake, Apple jump-started the online music store business. One reason the labels allowed Apple to do this, was that they considered Apple a small player, so if anything bad happened, it wouldn't affect much of the market. Remember iTunes was Mac-only as this point. The music labels had no idea that iPods would be the runaway success that they were. They thought they would always be able to strongarm Apple. But that all backfired on them. Now they are retaliating against Apple, because their own pro-DRM policies painting them into a corner when it comes to selling content for iPods.
Strategically, I believe what Apple were trying to achieve was to stop the growth of Microsoft proprietary media formats. Apple doesn't care so much if your media has DRM or not, but the last thing they wanted was Windows Media (or even Real for that matter) dominating the landscape. It has actually been remarkably effective. They've gone from a time when Quicktime was installed on fewer and fewer machines, and the web was filled with Real and Microsoft media formats, to having people eagerly using Quicktime-based products - and almost nobody ripping their media in WMA or WMV formats any longer. Now MPEG-4 dominates, which is an excellent outcome both for Apple and the consumer.
The iPod lock-in argument doesn't really stack up, when you consider that you can easily use an iPod without buying any DRMed media at all, and most people do. If anything, it's a negative effect on Apple, because it makes people more reluctant to buy content from the iTunes Store.
So basically, DRM doesn't benefit Apple, Apple have consistently argued against it, publicly and privately - yet you still somehow believe they have some sort of covert hard-on for DRM? Sorry, doesn'
t make sense.
but they chose the iPod over the Zune or one of the millions of other players to make a fashion statement.
How do you know this? I suspect you are psychologically projecting. It's a pretty typical nerd thing. Anything that's popular, or anything that's attractive must just be an empty fashion thing. True nerds choose things that are ugly and unpopular!
Did you ever think they might be popular because people enjoy using them? I never met anyone who bought it for fashion. Most I know bought it because they tried a friend's and really liked the way it worked, and it changed their music listening habits.
At the very least, people are buying iPods because everyone else is doing it, which itself is a form fashion statement.
No, it's not. It might be following fashion, but "making a fashion statement" is about doing something different and daring - like wearing sandal with socks when everybody else is wearing Nilkes.
I'm going to get bashed by Apple fanatics, but if people were buying based on features, they wouldn't be buying iPods. The iPod is nice, but feature-wise there are better players.
Such as? And don't you think things like form factor and user interface count in purchasing decisions? A list of features is useless is something is not easy to use. But in any case, the original iPod was by far the most advanced player on the market. It was the smallest hard drive player, and the only one with high-speed Firewire transfers. Hell, many players were still using AA or AAA batteries at the time!
There's iTunes lock-in, but even that isn't a big issue anymore because there are ways around their DRM, and there are other music sellers.
people don't use iTunes because of lock-in, they use it because they enjoy using it, and it makes things easy. This was actually the biggest failure of other players. They came with craptacular software.
That more or less leaves "fashion statement" as the reason for iPod popularity over other players.
Only if you ignore the actual reasons that most people buy iPods.
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Not if Steve Jobs has an unpenetrable bunker located in a parallel time-stream. Then his will be the only home left to dominate digitally.
What? They control my devices that connect via Bluetooth, with an infrared transmitter? They control my ethernet-connected devices with the same IR remote? That is pretty amazing, but somehow I don't think it's true.
Say what? You actually pay a "tax" on the Macbook if you want black, it's the most expensive model. And for a while (don't know if it's still true) the cheapest iPod Nanos were all silver (the shiniest color) and you had to fork out more if you wanted a black one.
Ahhh, so it's jealousy that's the issue. Got it.
No. Microsoft has "Microsoft Windows" as a trademark. It does not own any trademark on the word "Windows" alone.
Oh right. That wouldn't have been burdensome at all. Paying money for someone else's software (none of which was written for Macs at all, only Windows. Putting your company at the mercy of someone else's (crap) software.
Seriously, those other DRM schemes were total shit. Full of bugs, owned by nasty companies, single-platform. Why the hell would Apple put any measure of trust in those programmers and their bosses? Have you seen the typical quality of ported software from developers who don't have experience on the Mac?
So yes, it benefits Apple very much to have their own DRM.Yes, it is better to have their own DRM than to use someone else's. But it is even better for them to have no DRM at all. How many iTunes Store sales do you think they lost in the time that the store offered DRMed tracks only? I'd guess it's not an insignificant number. And the costs of implementing the DRM - and then providing customer support for it are pretty high. If Apple benefits from DRM so much, then why are they trying to get rid of it on the music they sell?
Do I need to cite evidence that DRM costs money, and is a pain in the ass the maintain? And Apple's assertion is a lot more evidence than you have - exactly none. I also have Apple's actions as evidence, which are consistent with what they were saying.
This despite the fact that the DRM is obviously adavantageous to them.Obvious? So where's your evidence. I'd say it's obviously a disadvantage. Since you are the one accusing Apple of lying, and are the one saying that Apple is trying to do something totally contradictory to its public actions, then the burden of proof lies heavily on you.
If DRM is so advantageous to Apple, then why did they ask music companies to start selling songs without it, and then go ahead, and do exactly that? Sounds like your argument is nothing but a chip on the shoulder for Apple, with no substance at all.
Bullshit. you are the one imagining things. If it were released before the first iPod, then it used USB 1.1 for its transfer. Trying to transfer 20GB over USB 1.1 is painfully slow. iPods had the much faster Firewire. Also, it would have used a laptop 2.5" drive - so this thing would have been massive compared to the iPod which used a miniature hard drive.
If you think vastly faster transfer speeds and a much smaller form factor aren't important technical aspects of a portable music player, then you're deluded.
as with the iphone it was years behind on release and will be years behind forever.Uhhh, which other phone had a multi-touch interface and something like MobileSafari before the iPhone? None of them? Oh.
So, you educate people. Or at least make some sort of attempt at awareness, rather than this bullshit of ignoring the issues and pandering to industry. The only reason people don't care is because of ignorance. And fighting ignorance also has the benefit of helping in many other areas apart from "energy policy". Heck, the fact that you call it "energy policy" amounts to a huge blindspot in your own thinking.
OK, if we reduce our energy consumption, then we both reduce emissions, and save money. Pretty simple, really.
OK, so which are these "so many better players" that you speak of?
And taking your specific criticisms:
- * More storage - you can get iPods with plenty of storage, but storage doesn't really matter much, because almost anything these days has enough storage to last through typical usage scenarios.
- * More features? That's useless if you don't want the features, or they are difficult to use.
- * More formats supported? But if they don't support DRM, then that is also fewer formats supported, isn't it?
- * Less DRM? Almost every player has support for some kind of DRM, the only ones that don't tend to be cheap-and-nasty units with very few features.
- * Replaceable batteries? I don't see how having a bulky, low-performance AAA battery is an advantage over a compact, high-performance lithium battery. Nor do I see the advantage in flimsy battery covers or doors.
- * Lower price point? iPods are pretty competitive price-wise. If you're paying a lower price, you're likely not getting anywhere near the quality, features, or ease of use.
yet millions still buy the iPod, why? Because it's fashionable.Did you ever think it's because they enjoy using them, and they are reliable and easy to use? That matters a whole lot more than a long list of features. After all, these players have one primary function - to play music. I don't choose a car based on whether it has a built in BBQ grill, I choose it based on how the car performs, and how ergonomic it is.
Why do you automatically jump to the assumption that it's all about fashion?
There's simply no other reason to buy an iPod because they don't hold anything over other players, it's not like iTunes is exactly any easier to use than other portal music device software.Actually, it is like that. Not many other players are both as easy to use, and also as fully-featured as iTunes. How many other players offer seamless access to the world's leading online music store, right in the application? How many do playlists as well as iTunes?
Apple's primary method of shifting products is the fashion angle, followed by their proprietary OS and other software that people may prefer. It's certainly not cost/technical merits the products are purchased on as you can get higher spec with equivalent quality (but not style) cheaper elsewhereIgnorance. When it was released, the iPod was far and away the most advanced player on the market. This was long before any "fashion" associations with it. Its popularity pretty much spread by word-of-mouth, as it blew away all the competition. Competition has caught up recently, but the iPod had a huge technical lead on the rest of the market.
You constantly tout these "higher spec" products with cheaper prices, but you never give a single example. Why is that?
No it's not. With the number of cups of coffee that McDonalds serves, that adds up to a lot of injuries. With so much possibility of injury, every degree of temperature is a big deal, and McDonalds has a duty to minimize the risk. But instead they chose to flout any risk.
How was it implied?
There's no such thing as a zero-carbon energy source due to the construction needs e.t.cAnd that was exactly my point.
Who said they are? I didn't.
I was reading along, came across your post and thought; "Hey, why is this guy injecting a non-sequitur post about copyright infringement into a discussion about Burma?" but then I remembered to look at my browser window's title bar.
Or at least something to shave with.
What? Since when did the US have any army or navy people left to deploy elsewhere?
Not necessarily. Once upon a time people thought the depended on the oil from whales. Or they relied on horses for transport, and firewood for heat. Needed horseback messengers to send a letter.
Things change. Often dramatically. People who say they know what will happen in the future are usually wrong when talking about anything longer than a few years.
No, it's not infinitely hard. It just needs to scale to more systems. It's far from an unsolvable problem. And if it's "easy" to do it for 1,300 people, then why isn't it just as easy to do it for the next 1,300, and the next 1,300 after that and so forth?
So, why is the only alternative coal? There are other things like wind and solar, you know. I don't get why people think that the only options are either nuclear or dirty coal. Well, I do get it - they're being disingenuous to push an agenda, and deliberately ignoring other options that would complicate their argument.
Wait, you're not talking about nuclear, are you? Because there's no way nuclear power generation is carbon neutral. It takes plenty of fuel and carbon emissions to dig up that uranium, transport it, dispose of it, and to built the power plant and infrastructure. Zero-carbon? Hardly.
Damn environmentalists?
Sounds more like you're describing industry and government. They are only interested in milking fossil fuels for all their worth - and then getting government contracts to "clean up" their output. If they listened to environmentalists, emissions could be cut for a fraction of the cost (or for a profit) - but that's not what the men who run powerful industries care about. It's all about the gravy train of massive infrastructure projects (which often cause more problems than they solve).Why would you have to sync it every day? Even relatively small players have enough storage to play continuously for several days without hearing the same song twice. Since people typically only use their players for maybe 2 hours a day - you could go for months in-between syncs without repeating your music.
That doesn't benefit Apple. And once again, Apple didn't want the DRM it is only a burden on the company. But the labels insisted.
This wasn't very long ago, have you forgotten the history so quickly? Remember when, after Napster was shut down, Apple basically became Enemy #1 of the music industry when they launched the "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign? Apple was publicly advertising the activity of making "unauthorized copies" of music CDs - an activity which the RIAA and labels would like to see outlawed. If Apple was all about DRM and lock-in, then wouldn't they have added DRM to their CD ripping features of iTunes? Microsoft attempted that one with Windows Media Player.
And for fuck's sake, Apple jump-started the online music store business. One reason the labels allowed Apple to do this, was that they considered Apple a small player, so if anything bad happened, it wouldn't affect much of the market. Remember iTunes was Mac-only as this point. The music labels had no idea that iPods would be the runaway success that they were. They thought they would always be able to strongarm Apple. But that all backfired on them. Now they are retaliating against Apple, because their own pro-DRM policies painting them into a corner when it comes to selling content for iPods.
Strategically, I believe what Apple were trying to achieve was to stop the growth of Microsoft proprietary media formats. Apple doesn't care so much if your media has DRM or not, but the last thing they wanted was Windows Media (or even Real for that matter) dominating the landscape. It has actually been remarkably effective. They've gone from a time when Quicktime was installed on fewer and fewer machines, and the web was filled with Real and Microsoft media formats, to having people eagerly using Quicktime-based products - and almost nobody ripping their media in WMA or WMV formats any longer. Now MPEG-4 dominates, which is an excellent outcome both for Apple and the consumer.
The iPod lock-in argument doesn't really stack up, when you consider that you can easily use an iPod without buying any DRMed media at all, and most people do. If anything, it's a negative effect on Apple, because it makes people more reluctant to buy content from the iTunes Store.
So basically, DRM doesn't benefit Apple, Apple have consistently argued against it, publicly and privately - yet you still somehow believe they have some sort of covert hard-on for DRM? Sorry, doesn' t make sense.
How do you know this? I suspect you are psychologically projecting. It's a pretty typical nerd thing. Anything that's popular, or anything that's attractive must just be an empty fashion thing. True nerds choose things that are ugly and unpopular!
Did you ever think they might be popular because people enjoy using them? I never met anyone who bought it for fashion. Most I know bought it because they tried a friend's and really liked the way it worked, and it changed their music listening habits.
At the very least, people are buying iPods because everyone else is doing it, which itself is a form fashion statement.No, it's not. It might be following fashion, but "making a fashion statement" is about doing something different and daring - like wearing sandal with socks when everybody else is wearing Nilkes.
I'm going to get bashed by Apple fanatics, but if people were buying based on features, they wouldn't be buying iPods. The iPod is nice, but feature-wise there are better players.Such as? And don't you think things like form factor and user interface count in purchasing decisions? A list of features is useless is something is not easy to use. But in any case, the original iPod was by far the most advanced player on the market. It was the smallest hard drive player, and the only one with high-speed Firewire transfers. Hell, many players were still using AA or AAA batteries at the time!
There's iTunes lock-in, but even that isn't a big issue anymore because there are ways around their DRM, and there are other music sellers.people don't use iTunes because of lock-in, they use it because they enjoy using it, and it makes things easy. This was actually the biggest failure of other players. They came with craptacular software.
That more or less leaves "fashion statement" as the reason for iPod popularity over other players.Only if you ignore the actual reasons that most people buy iPods.