Remember the French the next time you think of Apple.

Originally Posted by Fjordor

It means that iTunes will be forced to allow other media players to play songs obtained through iTunes. This in turn means that iTunes will have the capability to convert it's media to mp3 format, rather than the Apple-designed copy-protected format.

iTunes has been able to convert files to mp3s since version 1.0

But that's not what this law is about. Technically, under French law ripping your cds to your computer is illegal, so the only music files you can legally have on your mp3 players are ones downloaded from legitimate online music stores. And by far the biggest online music store is the iTunes one. Since songs downloaded from iTunes can only be played on iPods, it's anti-competitive. The argument is that Apple use their stranglehold of the online music market to dominate the portable music player market.

Of course the fact that the iPod came along before the music store and iPods drive the adoption of iTunes eludes the French but ohwell.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Arrowhead

Irrelevant. DRM-WMA is the standard for online music stores. Apple is going against the standard and they could care less [sic - idiot] about all the newbie customers that are getting burned - stuck either with a DRM-WMA music collection and an iPod that won't play them, or a DRM-AAC collection and an MP3 player that won't play them.

News: Apple dominate both markets. They ARE the standard. That's like saying that Mac OS X is the standard OS and Windows is against the grain.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't understand why other companies can't do it themselves. Apple don't own AAC. Apple have their own audio compression, Apple Lossless and .mov, which iPod /iTunes also support. WMA on the other hand is owned by a company, Microsoft, it's no standard.

Apple didn't design their iTunes store to monopolise the market, they designed it to protect the artists rights, the same code that makes them iPod exclusives also prevents sharing of the files with multible computers. These measures were implemented to encourage record labels to license their music. This French law revokes this and Apple are worried it'll scare away record companies.

And Arrowhead, I wasn't pointing out your spelling mistake, you jsut happen to use the common grammatical mistake that I can't stand and immediately sets off my idiot detector.

Spoiler:

hint: couldn't care less actually makes sense.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

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.

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

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

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.

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.

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

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!)

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?