Creative Commons and blogging campaigner Cory Doctorow has been bashing Apple this week at the Red Hat Summit for forcing users into corner (see news story). Doctorow's keynote presentation focused on how iPod users lose any investment they have made in MP3 content if they ditch the iPod and move over to another provider such as Creative.
Apple is potentially damaging the growth of MP3 as a content medium. It may have made digital audio content fashionable with its iPod device, but if it divides the market into segments the medium will fail to flourish. If any company should know this, its Apple.
Apple made personal computers a reality, only to lock out software developers and hand a massive advantage to Bill Gates and Microsoft. Apple is now a minority computer for a minority instead of the de facto standard it could have been.
But here we see Apple making the same mistakes again, iPod may be the better standard of technology for accessing MP3 technology at the moment, but if Apple were a mature company they would realise that they cannot remain at the top day in day out and it will be beneficial to them and all users if there are common standards that all users of the MP3 media can use with ease, no matter the technology.
Apple's behaviour is a concern to content producers, owners and information professionals looking to increase access to their information using MP3. Although, if history follows its previous path, Apple will slip into oblivion again for acting this way.
Here's the thing I may be a "social outcast," but if so I was also one when I used Windows solely, my choice of computer has Nothing to do with my Social Standing.
ReplyDeleteNow as for those "other" services and MP3 player. I am on my 4th MP3 player (2 Zens and a Carbon Rio), and my first Ipod. I got my Ipod several months after switching to Mac and I was able to download songs from ItMS burn them to CD, rip them as MP3 and place them on my other MP3 player.
It was easy - a teeny bit boring because I would wait until I either downloadeda song I really liked or until I had a CD worth before burning it. Oh and ITunes (installed on my old Windows PC) converted all of my old WMAs (~100 CDs worth) to MP3, so I didn't have to rerip anything unless I wanted to.
Well almost all there were several songs, I had downloaded from various stores that had on my PC, Unfortunately, during a hard drive crash (on my PC) I lost the licenses, I was able to recover the files, but not the license. I tried to get a new license, and they wanted me to pay for the songs again! I decided that I didn't like them that much after all.
Also I was very frustrated because every song had different rights built into the DRM. I never knew what I was allowed to do with any given song. I couldn't burn some to CD, and the ones I could.. well, when I ripped them it kept the DRM. So I couldn't convert them from WMA to a universal format such as MP3, and I lost that investment. If I ever switched from ITunes or Ipod, I wouldn't lose my investment, I would only lose some time and a spindle of CDs.
Speaking from experience Apple's DRM is the easiest to live with.
Oh and BTW, nothing in this blog has anything to do with PodCasts.
I get it this is some kind of joke, you decided to see how many falsehoods,halftruths and insults you could put in 5 paragraphs.
I am very happy to be a MacGirl, and I wish I could use Macs at work cause more than likely my stress level would go down.
Someone touched a nerve... If Apple's products and services really were that good would they need such vehement defending?
ReplyDeleteBe fair chaps, writes a mac user so old he had a Classic (the ones that looked like a pop-up toaster with a screen on the side).
ReplyDeleteI don't like the way the iTunes store handles podcasts...very annoying, and try getting music you've paid good money to Jobs for to work on more than one computer.
And what about .mac eh? How do they justify the annual subscription for that?