Originally posted by sparky76
Why not add WMP to the iPod? Apple has admitted that ITMS does not make money, other than by selling more iPods. If everyone could buy their music where they wanted and still use an iPod, surely that would be better for Apple's bottom line - what it's all about after all.
Nope, this is a war and the stakes are high, and those who choose wrong will have to pay some price.
Letting MS in on iPod/iTunes hurts Apple and hurts the AAC format.
Take a look in the latest version of WMP, see any support for AAC? No? Why is that? Notice that MS isn't even bothering to support the AAC standard, and I'm not talking Apples version with fairplay. If MS was in the dominant position they would be trying to gut AAC as we speak, and it could still happen.
Given that WMA is proprietary and under the control of a single company, it means MS is accountable to noone, whereas AAC is a standard supported by a group of companies.
A couple versions down the road MS will make some big hoopla about how WMA11 has advanced DRM that only they can provide and it only works on their latest and greatest OS and all the sheep out there will blindly follow them while the rest of us are left in the dust...i'm sure MS would offer us all great deals on trading in our iPods for one of their "great" media devices though to help ease our transition...
MS is pushing content providers hard to use their WMA/WMV formats, if Apple concedes it gives MS all the more ammo to use against REAL standards. If we just sit on our hands and let MS do whatever we want someday and it might not be that far off EVERY type of media in our lives could be under their control, all CD's could be WMA only encoded CD's, all DVD's could be WMV encoded, your digital cable/satellite stream could be in WMV.
It won't be fun when every new DVD released is encoded in WMV11 and MS is still "evaluating" updating WMP for Mac after 18 months.