First there was Napster, and boy did we play, then came AudioGalaxy, then Gnutella, then Bittorrent, and then suddenly the immensely evil iTunes. Why might you ask is iTunes evil? Well it's simple really, restrictions. Digital Rights Management (DRM) locks on downloaded tracks restricting users to the iweighatonPod. Arguably it saved Apple.
Apple, having royally screwed the pooch, by restricting sale of their hardware in the 1980s, had been totally done over by IBM and Intel who released free license for clone machines. The icosttoomuchPod stopped them diving into the abyss of obscurity. Then, in a truly ironic way they invented iTunes, the application and download center which, like the evil twin in Redmond, restricted consumer choice by bundling together software and functioning APIs with hardware. Then yesterday it all changed.
EMI shocked the industry by announcing it would be releasing downloadable tracks free of DRM, meaning that no longer were you restricted to using them on one particular player. Sanity has reigned free int he world of music and we are back to the way it should be, where we buy and are officially free to use the tunes on other listening devices that we own. No longer are we forced to use the ihaveacrapbatterylifePod with our downloaded music.
All that is left is to start offering music in the patent free, Ogg Vorbis format and the world will be truly normal again.
Update: It's been suggested in the comment that I have a thing against the isuckPod. It's not true, I have nothing against it, I just hate it because it sucks and I'm not alone. Let the war with Devils "I love Steve Jobs" Kitchen begin!
p.s. zeroconf/rendezvous sucks too!
9 comments:
Many people seem to be making the mistake that AAC is a proprietary apple format. This is not true. Apple's only proprietary component in the old itunes model is the 'fairplay' drm which is a layer on top of AAC.
You will be quite free to transcode your new 256kbs AAC files into MP3 or Ogg if you prefer..
I am over the moon about this, it's what I've been waiting a freaking DECADE for. I can now start buying some music again. Thanks EMI!
Except that sound recordings are protected by copyrights, not patents. But then again the virtue of property rights probably isn't something you pay attention to anyway.
err I was referring to the encoder you tit. But then again, the virtue of technological understanding probably isn't something you pay attention to anyway.
Dizzy, I get this deep down feeling taht you are not the iPods biggest fan. Can you enlighten us? :)
Whatever gave you that idea?
Thank you Dizzy. I can now speak authoritatively on oggs, lossy compression and netrek. Useful knowledge here in virgin olive country as I'm sure you can imagine.
Dizzy, it must be an Evertonian thing. I hate Ipods. Functional rectangles that look neither pretty or nice, scratch easily, and the only good thing about them (the actual software that they run) is actually nicked off Creative Labs !
Oh, Dizzy, Dizzy; the misrepresentation and omission of facts in this piece is worthy of a Toynbee article. I shall elaborate at my place later...
DK
Bring it on Apple boy! AAC sucks ass! Intel is not as good AMD! OSX is ghey! Fanboy flame war w00t!
Nich, they not only nicked a load of software, the design was ripped off straight from the original Diamond Rio (which I still own)
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