Well, there's nothing stopping the companies that make DAPs to have AAC support. They just have to ask Fraunhofer about putting it in their players (this is essentially the same process as having MP3 support in their players.)

Remember, Apple doesn't own the rights to, nor is the creator of, the AAC filetype. They just promote it more.

As to Apple giving the Fairplay DRM to other companies? You're talking about a company here. By doing that, they'd mind as well just start giving iPods away, because if any other DAP can play their files, that means no need to sell iPods. This isn't a hard concept.

You're missing one big detail of Apple's business model.

Apple doesn't actually make much money off of the iTunes Music Store. Most of the money goes to the nasty record labels, and a lot of the money that's left over for Apple is eaten up by bandwidth and fixed costs. The idea behind the music store is that it will lead people to buy iPods, which are quite profitable for Apple. If any MP3 player could play music from the iTunes Music Store, then there wouldn't be enough incentive for Apple to run it.

Woah - get off your high fucking horse buddy. You may not agree with how the world works - but money makes the world go round.

Well, yeah, but from a business standpoint, it's not the best thing to just get rid of the one technical reason people should use your product.

AAC doesn't belong to Apple. FairPlay does. And they want to keep FairPlay iPod-exclusive as long as possible, because they'd prefer to make $200 profit per iPod than only make about $5 on licensing for other companies' players.

Double Post:
Agreed.

What people seem to have trouble understanding, though, is that just because stealing is easier than working for a living doesn't make it right.

Double Post:
It is when the consequence for fleecing them is years and years of mistrust and poor sales. But I guess nobody in Apple has any foresight.

Double Post:
Apple should concentrate on making a good MP3 player. 12 hour battery life? 2 hours for video? No mic? No radio? No WMA support? (Come on!)

What? Are the componests of iPods free now? And do retailers take 0% of the sale?

Hahaha what? iPods are responsible for some of the biggest corperate growth Apple have ever experienced. Do you suddenly think that iPods sales are just going to drop off the map? Is this foresight? The iPods had huge battery problems and copped a really bad repa few years back yet still they outsell everything and the iPod brand itself is synomynous with MP3 players. I daresay they're untouchable.

Do you seriously think that the iPod is bad?I understand that it may not be the best in the eyes of the must act different to feel superior crowd, but you can't call it a poor quality product.

Even if $200 is a pretty high estimate, you'll do good to check the country profile of ArrowHead.

Either way, main point stands, Apple don't make shit on iTMS.

Thank god I live in Canada, best damned country in the world by far..

In Canada, we can download as many files as we want.. So long as we dont share them. a notion was thrown in court, where downloading music was almost identical as your run of the mill, standard library.

Yes there are differences, but not as many as one might think. Anywhoo..

We gotta remember here, technology advances fast.. look at how that whole cell phones with cameras started.. When the first one came out, it was pure utter shit quality, then month after month.. It got better, and now we can have an Mp3 player/camera/video camera all in one phone..

My point is, whatever curve ball the 'companies' throw us, it's us the kids (or the next generation) of techonology that find ways to exploit, tinker and share the wealth with everyone..

my take on itunes is.. Yeah okay, you got an MP3 player that only plays your kind of file format.. Well go fuck yourself, cuz as long as I can get my other sources for that exact same file in a idfferent format.. Im happy.

Music files are generated from .wav files which can be converted into .mp3 files.
Software files revert into assembly language, which can be reversed and exploited.


iTune files are made specifically for one kind of player.. Well, lets think about how this appeals to me. What good is an itune file, when I got all these other types of files to choose from?..

TAKE YOUR ITUNE, and SHOVE IT UP YOUR.. *Ahem* bye

.dc