Stella said:
My point is, no music store, no music format should be restricted to a specific music player.
In short, your statement is morally wrong. In length:
You are making a moral judgment on what "should" be based on your opinion and perspective. Fact is, if company A wanted to sell a proprietary music format only compatible with their music player, it's perfectly moral for A to do so. Customer X may very well want to be able to find some music file and put it on his music player - if in doing so he finds that his own music player (not from company A) won't play the music provided from company A, he can go get the music elsewhere, or be a whiner that complains - "I want everybody to provide for me what I want the way I want it."
If you own a nomad or a rio or a sony or other third-rate music player (I speak with bias here due to experience), just because iTMS doesn't sell you music compatible with your device doesn't mean you can force Apple to provide what you want to buy. Rather, take a moment and wonder why you bought that music player and why you don't look to other music stores. Fact is, if there were real and major competitors to iTunes, especially, say, a competitor from the company that made your music player, you'd quit your socialist whining because you'd have an alternative.
So what you're essentially saying is this - "I want Apple to sell me music I can play on my non-Apple device, because I said so." Can't you see that is so juvenile and extremely anti-capitalist? You are essentially trying to dictate exactly how and to whom Apple sells its music. Consider this - Apple makes money by selling iPods and music from iTMS, almost hand in hand, but it is not a monopoly (there are all those other Windows affiliated music sites, if you must resort to such) and it's perfectly legal and moral for them to sell music in a (semi)proprietary format. If Apple only wants to sell music to iPod owners (which is a bit off the mark anyway), they have a right to choose to do so. It is immoral to force people to provide what you want solely on the basis that you want it - if it makes them money, maybe they'll look into it some day...but it's not for you to point a gun to Steve Jobs and force him to provide what you want.
Theoretically, on a 1 to 1 basis, it may make sense for Apple to bend over backwards to comply with your insolent demand - but you should have to pay for the downtime of the music store, the work of the people involved, cost, and a premium to balance the iPod purchase you never made...and you end up paying $376,000 for a 6-track album you could have bought in a store and stuffed into your third-rate media player to begin with. Do you get my point? Apple is not forcing you to want music from the iTMS...if you want it to play on your music player, you could get the music from a variety of providers and you don't need iTunes. If you want it from iTMS, buy an iPod. If you are the kind of person that believes that wanting something and not being able to pay for it justifies expropriation or theft, go ahead and pirate music since you're no better than a mugger or thief.
Stella said:
There is absolutely no difference ( unless you are closed minded, like the majority of users on here ) between digital music and a CD. Just different medium. You would not expect to a DVD not to work in your DVD player purely because you don't own a, say, Sony DVD Player.
This analogy is applies also to digital music - ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE!!!
You demonstrate much immaturity of thought here. Taking the "this whole forum is against me because everyone else is stupid" approach only induces comic laughter towards somebody who is rather arrogant for knowing so little, not pity for a misunderstood minority voice.
Digital music and CD's have plenty of differences, although they are in some ways even more similar than you cared to realize. Like...um, a CD contains digital music. That's right, CDs = digital music. What's this BS about different media?
Want to talk about DVD's? Ever hear of region coding? What about Blu-ray vs HD DVD? Ever try buying a DVD from a foreign country and play it in your ordinary DVD player? Think of the region-free DVD player (of which there are many) as a Creative Nomad that decided to support AAC and came with software to transfer music on your HDD on your computer in AAC form to your Creative Nomad. If you bought a region-limited DVD player, you can't demand the industry to abandon region coding, regardless of whether or not you could go out and buy a region-free player. In the case of the DVD, there is a workaround.
In the case of music files, there are almost no devices factory-built to play every music file type, so you're stuck. So? This is a simple problem of supply and demand. You say you expect all music files to be able to play on your device (hey, you could just buy the CD you know), which is only compatible with some of them. Why don't you write to the manufacurer of your music player and complain? iPod users represent a huge demand for music compatible with the iPod, and Apple supplies it, together with other companies. Supply and demand working perfectly. Compared to that, your demand, the minority demand for iTMS to be compatible with third-party devices at (most likely) a loss to Apple, is insignificant; a waste of time and money. Just because the iTMS is good doesn't make it the only - go elsewhere and enjoy the incompetence of the competition. No monopoly, just one company doing considerably better than the rest combined.
