This is sounding a lot like the arguments made against cars during the horse-and-buggy era. You don't like the controls elsewhere than in the... Apple-supplied... headphones, or the products they will undoubtedly license. Okay. Don't buy it. May I interest you in a San Disk, or Samsung, or a Zune? Or for that matter, in a $49 Shuffle with the controller on the face of it, or in an iPod nano?
When will the Apple haters understand that the Shuffle is not an attack on your human rights? It's just a music player, one you don't like. Big yip. Don't buy it. Buy another one. Carry a 100-pound McIntosh tube amp around on your head if you want. It's a free country, and Apple isn't interfering with you one bit. I think what seems to gall you is that it's popular.
All of your onerous examples aren't onerous. Free apps,.99 apps, that's "an apple tax"? And yes, you CAN run others. Just jailbreak it, which is now as simple as pie. It's not DRM to check that it's being run on Apple hardware. You can make copies galore. And last I checked, it's pretty easy to hack OS X on a Windows machine, with a certain hardware profile. Video is DRMed. There are things called movie studios, you know. Where do you get your pirate video? It will all run on an iPod/iPhone. The last thing? You've got a point, though the video output from an iPod isn't great. So, one out of four ain't horrible.
So, if you buy a $79 iPod, you get headphones with it. If you don't like those, you have to get an apple-licensed cable or headset or whatever. Big flippin' deal. If you want to use your already-existing expensive earbuds, just wait for the aftermarket.
If you want to spend $300 on the headset for a $79 iPod, go ahead. It won't be long before they show up, because I think a lot of people will buy these things.
In case you haven't noticed, the older iPods used a cable to control them, but they were dropped. I never used them. But the new Shuffle has *zero* controls on the body itself. No wheel or pseudo-wheel. So the controls have to be in the wire. So there has to be a chip in there somewhere. If you don't pay the licensing fee, I imagine they can tell you to take a hike. Since the market is created by Apple, they get to decide the licensing. As long as they're decent about it, what's the problem?
You can also use just about any mouse with a Mac. That's because there are standards in the industry. There are no standards in the "attach some earbuds to the player that have the control signals built in" standards, are they?
Has EFF done a complete analysis of the new Shuffle, that proves that this is "DRM," or are they just spouting off at the Doctorow?
You have many other choices, of course. You can buy any number of other players.
Can I ask you to stop the "Apple is evil" groupthink? Automatically jumping to the conclusion that whatever they do is evil because it isn't free, isn't Linux, isn't techie enough? They've come up with a new controller, which 3rd parties will adapt to just like they always have.
On these forums, I've been told endlessly that iTunes would never give up DRM, that it was all Jobs' idea, and so on ad infinitum. The truth is that Jobs adopted it reluctantly, and that he saw its days were numbered. The labels were angry enough at iTunes' dominance in the market that they gave Amazon and other DRM-free catalogs just to hurt Apple commercially. But the "Apple is evil" crowd that infests these forums insists on their vision.
As for the "this kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated from Microsoft" meme, since we're talking about the Zune here, nothing they do is important at all.
To make the analogy with another era, I was against the war in Vietnam, but I wasn't going to blow up a townhouse about it. I marched, I signed petitions, and tried to stay away from the tear gas. But there's always the people who love the smell of tear gas because they think it makes them 'better,' and 'purer.'
Apple is not always right, but there exists on Slashdot and other places (like EFF) a number of what we call "drama queens," always taking the worst interpretation of anything.
See the "made for iPod" badge on accessories? That just means it's endorsed. They'll sell it in the Apple Stores. Look around the web. There's lots of stuff that isn't authorized that works anyway.
Since the headphones contain the controls, I'd presume that the cable has to have a command set that it sends to the player. I agree, this is DRM only if Apple makes it impossible for third parties to develop adapters or headsets with controllers of their own will it be "DRM." With the first iPhone, the recessed headphone jack made most headsets useless; but it wasn't long before third parties made adapters. The second iPhone accepts any jack. If you can show that there's a unique, proprietary identifier in the new iPod that accepts only Apple headsets, then that's unfair. But it's already clear that that's not what's happening here.
Your angry response is a perfect example of the attitude of many of the "techies" here. The problem with it is evident in your reply. Look up the definition of the word "elitist." It's not "bigoted" to criticize the elitist attitude you exemplify. An attitude is not like race, sex or any other thing people can't change. It is an internal defensiveness. There's nothing wrong with being a techie, but if you make things for just the techies, you won't sell very many. A company wants everybody to buy their products. So you bury the techie roots of the technology, and make it easy for Aunt Emmy to use. That way, you become a household word, and... what's the expression? Oh, you can change the world in some small way, while making yourself a bundle.
Gee, when apple was censoring the iphone apps, all the slashdot people couldn't stand the censorship! So they released the farts, and a lot of people bought an app. Now they're part of a "problem." I guarantee that there will be an iFart on open source phones. People are silly sometimes.
I like the AP app, the NYTimes app, TV.com for complete episodes of CBS/CNet/etc. I have the Kindle reader app. Face it, there's a lot more going on there.
What's likely true is that the app store needs its own "iApp".
On the other hand, iTunes has millions of tunes on its servers. Jobs has declared that he wants to have all of recorded music available for a search. Want to complain about the chaos of the music store? I mean, they have Britney Spears there! Isn't she a one-woman fart app?
I wish all developers well, but a lot of the people here just want to bash whatever apple does, even when it listens to criticism.
"I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people."
I quoted you. It's one thing to be content with 10% of a market, because the open source solution is the one for you; in fact, it's a good percentage, given the difficulty of Linux -- much improved since I first became aware of it -- for the average joe. But the perspective of the article is that an open source phone will eventually overtake Apple. I'm saying, not likely.
As for a liar and a fraud, well, call names if that's what you think an argument is.
"I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people."
Wow, you must be the head of marketing for Linux!
Don't you realize, with one side of your face you're saying that everyone will adopt your platform, and on the other, you're saying that they won't because "90% of people are idiots." Wait a minute, you're fired from the marketing department.
As for the author of this piece of political spin, I nominate him for the position of press secretary for Rush Limbaugh.
is very simple. The App Store is, apparently, choking on its own success. Just this week I downloaded tv.com, so I can watch whole episodes and previews of CBS shows -- and it works over 3G -- and bought a book for the Kindle App.
Competitors seem to try to compete on what the company is doing today, without realizing that in a year or two, when you have your chance, Apple will have put more staff on the problem. Maybe even ended the exclusive contract with AT&T. Or given the App store its own app. Meanwhile the iPhone killer will have definitely gotten close to what Apple was doing three years ago.
It's about some guy who had an obvious anti-Apple agenda. Don't like Apple products? It's a free country. But this article was twisted unfairly to make the facts fit the conclusion. That's unacceptable to tech journalism, if it actually exists. If there's a story about the iPhone's acceptance or lack of acceptance in Japan, then tell us the facts. It's getting so bad that even Wired is as useless as Fox or CNN to the provision of information. Enough yellow journalism, whether its source is the Hearst papers of yore or the hip Wired. Stop throwing sand in our eyes, you bastards.
We forestalled the compete domination of Microsoft in the computer industry. They behaved like better computer citizens than they otherwise would have. And they should have gone along with the breakup. It would have made for a much more nimble company, with independent units that made the OS, the applications and the hardware.
I don't like the law, but it's probably illegal to hack into an iPhone. Not that I care. Change the law. Go ahead and jailbreak, though I don't want to, and very few non-geeks ever will. Nobody's actully going to get in trouble. It's just that the law in fact does say you can't do that. If a judge or two is finding an exception, then there will surely be some contrary judgments, and the case should go to the Supremes then, and don't count on those idiotic zombies understanding. Change. The. Law.
There's a reason why it was on page TWO, not the top. But our eager-beaver reporter reported the big news on page two as if it was the headline on page one.
Why don't you buy a matte overlay? About $50. I was skeptical until I got the 20" iMac in the office. It's gorgeous. We use it in video and blu-ray rendering, and we need to see the tiniest imperfection. The blacks in the glossy are better. If there's some reflection or glare, we tilt the monitor a hair, and it's gone.
Of course, things only get posted to Slashdot by the most diva-like Windows apologists. When everyone else say the new iMac, their eyes went wide.
Because it confirms my opinion: Slate is the modern headquarters of bad faith and false consciousness. And Farhad Manjoo fits right in. These people can't think, they just play with symbolic paper dolls in their heads.
By the way, the latest iWork rocks, so does iLife, it seems, the 17" MacBook Pro is a killer, and oh, by the way, iTunes no longer has DRM. Bored? Not me.
Why do you think that saving the species is a good idea?
Why do you think UP is the answer, when DOWN provides a much more affordable, immediate and suitable environment? (Subterranean living) Sure DIRT is boring. But its cheap!
You can't mean that. Of course we want to survive, and thrive. That's good. I suppose a lizard man from Saturn is indifferent, but humans can't be.
That's why I'm very leery of scaling back NASA. The moon shot was propaganda, partially, but it also unleashed a ton of new technologies and trained a generation of engineers. Of course, we could go along with the privatizing globalists, but you see how well that's working?
We may or may not find a role for men in space this generation, but space travel and investigation is absolutely fundamental for our survival as a species. And no corporation will EVER do what needs to be done, because it's not profitable except indirectly.
I love to watch the hackers go as much as anyone. But the main thing about jailbreaking was that it was important in the early days, before the App Store. I would be nice if I didn't have to sign a deal with AT&T, but it would be nicest if all the cell networks were looped together in one big Internet thingie, too. AT&T is a crummy company, but so what? They're all just conspiring to take my money and screw me over. 99% of people will buy an iPhone, take out the deal with AT&T, and load it up on the App Store. Not bad. Once this generation of phone is old stuff, you'll see it working with every carrier but CDMA Verizon, unless they want to subsidize the chip switch and get along with Steve. And AT&T, or the highest bidder, will have iPhone 3.2, which will work in 3D.
No evidence that that is taking place. The Apple store remains as popular as ever. Surprisingly, the Amazon service has not caught on that well, a surprise to me.
But all you sons of freedom here realize, do you not, that you're in effect acting as a mob turning out to shill for the labels that have granted DRM-free version for Amazon and other services, with the express purpose of screwing Apple? Why is it that Sony, Warner's et al give Amazon the DRM-free version, but withhold it from Apple?
Is it that, if the restriction-free version to the market leader, it would prove that Jobs was right and they were wrong? That it would be the death of DRM in music forevermore?
If Apple drops the DRM, then anybody could play the tunes they download from iTunes, and move it to their Zune or whatever music player they choose. You against that? Apple isn't.
I have nothing against a "complex" app on the iPhone. But you're not going to run a 3D renderer on it. You'd be a fool to try. Office for the iPhone? Forget it. Sure, there's a lot of free crap. But there's a lot of "expensive" crap there, too. The kind of apps you need are "where is a good restaurant?" "Let me copy that and transfer it at home." Things like that. Some people may want Omnifocus or something, but MOST WON'T.
Frankly, the developer in this case sounds like the music industry when their business model turns to crap. Maybe the iPhone is someplace where you have to make the case for why this or that complex app is worth buying another copy of.
Slashdot Mirror
This is sounding a lot like the arguments made against cars during the horse-and-buggy era. You don't like the controls elsewhere than in the... Apple-supplied... headphones, or the products they will undoubtedly license. Okay. Don't buy it. May I interest you in a San Disk, or Samsung, or a Zune? Or for that matter, in a $49 Shuffle with the controller on the face of it, or in an iPod nano?
When will the Apple haters understand that the Shuffle is not an attack on your human rights? It's just a music player, one you don't like. Big yip. Don't buy it. Buy another one. Carry a 100-pound McIntosh tube amp around on your head if you want. It's a free country, and Apple isn't interfering with you one bit. I think what seems to gall you is that it's popular.
Does the 3.5mm jack have a control protocol? Why, no, it doesn't. You'll have to put a... proprietary chip... in there somewhere.
Try as you might, you don't have to buy Apple, and Jobs isn't Madoff or the AIG bonus-takers.
All of your onerous examples aren't onerous. Free apps, .99 apps, that's "an apple tax"? And yes, you CAN run others. Just jailbreak it, which is now as simple as pie.
It's not DRM to check that it's being run on Apple hardware. You can make copies galore. And last I checked, it's pretty easy to hack OS X on a Windows machine, with a certain hardware profile.
Video is DRMed. There are things called movie studios, you know. Where do you get your pirate video? It will all run on an iPod/iPhone.
The last thing? You've got a point, though the video output from an iPod isn't great. So, one out of four ain't horrible.
So, if you buy a $79 iPod, you get headphones with it. If you don't like those, you have to get an apple-licensed cable or headset or whatever. Big flippin' deal. If you want to use your already-existing expensive earbuds, just wait for the aftermarket.
If you want to spend $300 on the headset for a $79 iPod, go ahead. It won't be long before they show up, because I think a lot of people will buy these things.
In case you haven't noticed, the older iPods used a cable to control them, but they were dropped. I never used them. But the new Shuffle has *zero* controls on the body itself. No wheel or pseudo-wheel. So the controls have to be in the wire. So there has to be a chip in there somewhere. If you don't pay the licensing fee, I imagine they can tell you to take a hike. Since the market is created by Apple, they get to decide the licensing. As long as they're decent about it, what's the problem?
You can also use just about any mouse with a Mac. That's because there are standards in the industry. There are no standards in the "attach some earbuds to the player that have the control signals built in" standards, are they?
Has EFF done a complete analysis of the new Shuffle, that proves that this is "DRM," or are they just spouting off at the Doctorow?
You have many other choices, of course. You can buy any number of other players.
Can I ask you to stop the "Apple is evil" groupthink? Automatically jumping to the conclusion that whatever they do is evil because it isn't free, isn't Linux, isn't techie enough? They've come up with a new controller, which 3rd parties will adapt to just like they always have.
On these forums, I've been told endlessly that iTunes would never give up DRM, that it was all Jobs' idea, and so on ad infinitum. The truth is that Jobs adopted it reluctantly, and that he saw its days were numbered. The labels were angry enough at iTunes' dominance in the market that they gave Amazon and other DRM-free catalogs just to hurt Apple commercially. But the "Apple is evil" crowd that infests these forums insists on their vision.
As for the "this kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated from Microsoft" meme, since we're talking about the Zune here, nothing they do is important at all.
They changed the controller chip. End of story.
To make the analogy with another era, I was against the war in Vietnam, but I wasn't going to blow up a townhouse about it. I marched, I signed petitions, and tried to stay away from the tear gas. But there's always the people who love the smell of tear gas because they think it makes them 'better,' and 'purer.'
Apple is not always right, but there exists on Slashdot and other places (like EFF) a number of what we call "drama queens," always taking the worst interpretation of anything.
See the "made for iPod" badge on accessories? That just means it's endorsed. They'll sell it in the Apple Stores. Look around the web. There's lots of stuff that isn't authorized that works anyway.
Since the headphones contain the controls, I'd presume that the cable has to have a command set that it sends to the player. I agree, this is DRM only if Apple makes it impossible for third parties to develop adapters or headsets with controllers of their own will it be "DRM." With the first iPhone, the recessed headphone jack made most headsets useless; but it wasn't long before third parties made adapters. The second iPhone accepts any jack. If you can show that there's a unique, proprietary identifier in the new iPod that accepts only Apple headsets, then that's unfair. But it's already clear that that's not what's happening here.
Your angry response is a perfect example of the attitude of many of the "techies" here. The problem with it is evident in your reply. Look up the definition of the word "elitist." It's not "bigoted" to criticize the elitist attitude you exemplify. An attitude is not like race, sex or any other thing people can't change. It is an internal defensiveness. There's nothing wrong with being a techie, but if you make things for just the techies, you won't sell very many. A company wants everybody to buy their products. So you bury the techie roots of the technology, and make it easy for Aunt Emmy to use. That way, you become a household word, and... what's the expression? Oh, you can change the world in some small way, while making yourself a bundle.
Gee, when apple was censoring the iphone apps, all the slashdot people couldn't stand the censorship! So they released the farts, and a lot of people bought an app. Now they're part of a "problem." I guarantee that there will be an iFart on open source phones. People are silly sometimes.
I like the AP app, the NYTimes app, TV.com for complete episodes of CBS/CNet/etc. I have the Kindle reader app. Face it, there's a lot more going on there.
What's likely true is that the app store needs its own "iApp".
On the other hand, iTunes has millions of tunes on its servers. Jobs has declared that he wants to have all of recorded music available for a search. Want to complain about the chaos of the music store? I mean, they have Britney Spears there! Isn't she a one-woman fart app?
I wish all developers well, but a lot of the people here just want to bash whatever apple does, even when it listens to criticism.
"I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people."
I quoted you. It's one thing to be content with 10% of a market, because the open source solution is the one for you; in fact, it's a good percentage, given the difficulty of Linux -- much improved since I first became aware of it -- for the average joe. But the perspective of the article is that an open source phone will eventually overtake Apple. I'm saying, not likely.
As for a liar and a fraud, well, call names if that's what you think an argument is.
"I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people."
Wow, you must be the head of marketing for Linux!
Don't you realize, with one side of your face you're saying that everyone will adopt your platform, and on the other, you're saying that they won't because "90% of people are idiots." Wait a minute, you're fired from the marketing department.
As for the author of this piece of political spin, I nominate him for the position of press secretary for Rush Limbaugh.
is very simple. The App Store is, apparently, choking on its own success. Just this week I downloaded tv.com, so I can watch whole episodes and previews of CBS shows -- and it works over 3G -- and bought a book for the Kindle App.
Competitors seem to try to compete on what the company is doing today, without realizing that in a year or two, when you have your chance, Apple will have put more staff on the problem. Maybe even ended the exclusive contract with AT&T. Or given the App store its own app. Meanwhile the iPhone killer will have definitely gotten close to what Apple was doing three years ago.
It's about some guy who had an obvious anti-Apple agenda. Don't like Apple products? It's a free country. But this article was twisted unfairly to make the facts fit the conclusion. That's unacceptable to tech journalism, if it actually exists. If there's a story about the iPhone's acceptance or lack of acceptance in Japan, then tell us the facts.
It's getting so bad that even Wired is as useless as Fox or CNN to the provision of information. Enough yellow journalism, whether its source is the Hearst papers of yore or the hip Wired. Stop throwing sand in our eyes, you bastards.
We forestalled the compete domination of Microsoft in the computer industry. They behaved like better computer citizens than they otherwise would have. And they should have gone along with the breakup. It would have made for a much more nimble company, with independent units that made the OS, the applications and the hardware.
I don't like the law, but it's probably illegal to hack into an iPhone. Not that I care. Change the law. Go ahead and jailbreak, though I don't want to, and very few non-geeks ever will. Nobody's actully going to get in trouble. It's just that the law in fact does say you can't do that. If a judge or two is finding an exception, then there will surely be some contrary judgments, and the case should go to the Supremes then, and don't count on those idiotic zombies understanding. Change. The. Law.
There's a reason why it was on page TWO, not the top. But our eager-beaver reporter reported the big news on page two as if it was the headline on page one.
Why don't you buy a matte overlay? About $50. I was skeptical until I got the 20" iMac in the office. It's gorgeous. We use it in video and blu-ray rendering, and we need to see the tiniest imperfection. The blacks in the glossy are better. If there's some reflection or glare, we tilt the monitor a hair, and it's gone.
Of course, things only get posted to Slashdot by the most diva-like Windows apologists. When everyone else say the new iMac, their eyes went wide.
Because it confirms my opinion: Slate is the modern headquarters of bad faith and false consciousness. And Farhad Manjoo fits right in. These people can't think, they just play with symbolic paper dolls in their heads.
By the way, the latest iWork rocks, so does iLife, it seems, the 17" MacBook Pro is a killer, and oh, by the way, iTunes no longer has DRM. Bored? Not me.
Why do you think that saving the species is a good idea?
Why do you think UP is the answer, when DOWN provides a much more affordable, immediate and suitable environment? (Subterranean living) Sure DIRT is boring. But its cheap!
You can't mean that. Of course we want to survive, and thrive. That's good. I suppose a lizard man from Saturn is indifferent, but humans can't be.
That's why I'm very leery of scaling back NASA. The moon shot was propaganda, partially, but it also unleashed a ton of new technologies and trained a generation of engineers. Of course, we could go along with the privatizing globalists, but you see how well that's working?
We may or may not find a role for men in space this generation, but space travel and investigation is absolutely fundamental for our survival as a species. And no corporation will EVER do what needs to be done, because it's not profitable except indirectly.
I love to watch the hackers go as much as anyone. But the main thing about jailbreaking was that it was important in the early days, before the App Store. I would be nice if I didn't have to sign a deal with AT&T, but it would be nicest if all the cell networks were looped together in one big Internet thingie, too. AT&T is a crummy company, but so what? They're all just conspiring to take my money and screw me over.
99% of people will buy an iPhone, take out the deal with AT&T, and load it up on the App Store. Not bad. Once this generation of phone is old stuff, you'll see it working with every carrier but CDMA Verizon, unless they want to subsidize the chip switch and get along with Steve.
And AT&T, or the highest bidder, will have iPhone 3.2, which will work in 3D.
No evidence that that is taking place. The Apple store remains as popular as ever. Surprisingly, the Amazon service has not caught on that well, a surprise to me.
But all you sons of freedom here realize, do you not, that you're in effect acting as a mob turning out to shill for the labels that have granted DRM-free version for Amazon and other services, with the express purpose of screwing Apple? Why is it that Sony, Warner's et al give Amazon the DRM-free version, but withhold it from Apple?
Is it that, if the restriction-free version to the market leader, it would prove that Jobs was right and they were wrong? That it would be the death of DRM in music forevermore?
If Apple drops the DRM, then anybody could play the tunes they download from iTunes, and move it to their Zune or whatever music player they choose. You against that? Apple isn't.
I have nothing against a "complex" app on the iPhone. But you're not going to run a 3D renderer on it. You'd be a fool to try. Office for the iPhone? Forget it. Sure, there's a lot of free crap. But there's a lot of "expensive" crap there, too. The kind of apps you need are "where is a good restaurant?" "Let me copy that and transfer it at home." Things like that. Some people may want Omnifocus or something, but MOST WON'T.
Frankly, the developer in this case sounds like the music industry when their business model turns to crap. Maybe the iPhone is someplace where you have to make the case for why this or that complex app is worth buying another copy of.