Interesting article in The Guardian, covering the old WMP vs AAC argument:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1331527,00.html
Whatcha think?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1331527,00.html
Whatcha think?
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Microsoft 'plays for sure'
- Thread starter geese
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They're right.
They always say Apple has almost the entire legal download market and harddrive based music players, which is great except that the market is so small!! What happens when downloading songs is the STANDARD way of acquiring music? What happens when almost EVERYBODY owns an mp3 player of some sort? Even the mp3 player market is small. When the market explodes, will Apple still be ahead? Not by this margin, no.
I have a feeling Apple's music endeavors will end up like Palm, and Palm had other people making PDAs with the Palm OS. Apple won't allow anyone else to make their player or use FairPlay. If Palm was so open with their stuff and couldn't survive MS, Apple's iTMS won't either.
If Apple licenses out, then maybe.
They always say Apple has almost the entire legal download market and harddrive based music players, which is great except that the market is so small!! What happens when downloading songs is the STANDARD way of acquiring music? What happens when almost EVERYBODY owns an mp3 player of some sort? Even the mp3 player market is small. When the market explodes, will Apple still be ahead? Not by this margin, no.
I have a feeling Apple's music endeavors will end up like Palm, and Palm had other people making PDAs with the Palm OS. Apple won't allow anyone else to make their player or use FairPlay. If Palm was so open with their stuff and couldn't survive MS, Apple's iTMS won't either.
If Apple licenses out, then maybe.
I think the guardian should have looked into the audio side of mpeg 4, the format will be the mobile fav and has AAC for the audio.
As I understand the drm side of things is just a bolt on. everyone will end up using AAC and not a windows or sony format.
As I understand the drm side of things is just a bolt on. everyone will end up using AAC and not a windows or sony format.
I can't wait for some anal lawyer to argue that "Plays for Sure" is not a warranty that the product will certainly work. Personally, I'd avoid a slogan like that like the plague... but Microsoft has plenty of money to buy favorable court decisions, so why not.
I think that if we're going to be stuck with DRM at all, there should be a single interoperable DRM standard, designed independently by some standards body that is NOT Apple or Microsoft, and that any player manufacturer or music store who wants to play in the digital music space should have to implement to it. I've seen a few signs that things might finally be moving in that direction.