I'm confused, so if a company doesn't buy the chip from Apple can you or can you not control playback with their headphones? Can someone point to a reference rather than all this hearsay?
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No DRM in Headphones for New iPod Shuffle
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I'm confused, so if a company doesn't buy the chip from Apple can you or can you not control playback with their headphones? Can someone point to a reference rather than all this hearsay?
Because not everybody has the time to scour the earth looking for each and every injustice ever perpetrated by man.
Some people just want to listen to their music. Maybe some like to stare at the plug on the bottom of their MP3 player and ponder the reason for its existence; I don't. As for "reducing buying choices", the massive sh*tload of third-party iPod accessories in existence accounts for fully 21.3% of the Earth's total weight (ok maybe not that much, but you get the idea.) Go to Best Buy, go to Wal-Mart, hell...walk into a freaking truck stop and there are shelves full of "Made For iPod" crap. Saying that there is little selection of accessories for iPods is like saying there's a world shortage of Coca-Cola. What we can say about the proprietary Made For iPod is that it choked off the business for everybody else...I remember seeing only about 3 different Zune docking stations last time I went into Best Buy...which is okay because Microsoft has only ever sold about 3 Zunes anyway.
The company needs to use Apple chips to get the Made for iPod/iPhone tag. The company doesn't need to use Apple chips for compatibility; they're free to reverse-engineer the protocol. Reference is on the first page of the thread, IIRC.
The controls for the new Shuffle are on a little dongle thingy on the headphone cord. That interface is controlled by this chip. If you don't have the chip (or design your own without ANY help from Apple who is not going to tell you how to do it so you can avoid paying them the license fee) then you don't have control of the Shuffle. Without control of the Shuffle, it's a worthless POS, more or less.
Here's the rub, regardless of whether you believe 3rd party companies can easily make their own or will be allowed to make their own control chips. most of the best headphones out there are made by headphone companies, not iPhone accessory companies. People can't seriously believe that you're going to have a good selection of QUALITY headphones when a given company now has to offer a SEPARATE MODEL VERSION of a given headphone design JUST to accommodate this control mechanism (that should have been independent of the headphones with a female jack on the end instead of requiring REPLACING the CONTROL MECHANISM every single time you need new headphones). I mean just from a green standpoint, WHAT A WASTE of resources. You could have millions of useless control dongles in the landfills because the cheap-o ear buds get tossed or wear out. What's the point in that? What's the point in making headphone manufacturers turn out control mechanisms just for the Shuffle or occasional iPod Touch user when Apple could have provided one with a lousy female connector jack for ANY headphone in existence??? The control mechanism should be Apple's job. Headphones should be the job of headphone manufacturers!
Explain THAT to me without using concepts of making ARBITRARY MONEY for Apple and you'll have convinced me that Apple is groundbreaking and not just GREEDY. Apple's system is completely arbitrary and designed to net more license fees on objects that have NOTHING to do with computers or Apple technology. Headphones have existed long before Apple itself and now Apple is attempting to force headphone manufacturers to pay them a fee so their headphones will work with the Shuffle (and possibly other future iPod products).
Where does it end? Will Apple next put a chip or connector on their computers that requires a special monitor or adapter (sold by them only of course) to use with regular monitors??? Oops! Too late!
Are you surprised yet? Should anyone ever be surprised that Apple is becoming greedier than Bill Gates and Bernie Madoff combined these days?
No no no! I must have it all wrong. Apple is simply being INNOVATIVE and they deserve that money. How dare companies like Psystar try to muscle in on some of that action? Apple invented the computer and they deserve to control every facet of your iLife. They should watch you through your iSight (tm) and make sure you are doing everything the Apple way and wearing Apple approved clothing and accessories! Otherwise your iCar might not start and your iToilet might not flush!
And don't even think about using words like "podium" because it has the word "pod" inside it and EVERYONE knows that "pod" =
Next Apple will be suing various coffee makers for using "coffee pods" without paying Apple a license fee or getting their permission to use that clearly Apple part of a piece of a name.
Are they free to do that, or would Apple sue them? The only reference I see says "clones could conceivably be made" which doesn't mean that Apple says it's OK with them.
As long as they don't slap on the "Made for iPod/iPhone" label, Apple won't hunt them down. There's a plethora of accessories that lack that label. Apple just doesn't advocate using those accessories.
But did any of those accessories reverse-engineer Apple-manufactured chips?
Probably. I wouldn't know the details, but there's a rather large assortment of accessories without the Made for iPod label, especially outside the US.
