businessweek.com — Apple Computer Inc. has struck a defiant stance with Scandinavian regulators, staunchly defending its right to make its iPod the only portable music player compatible with songs purchased from the company's iTunes music store.
Aug 3, 2006 View in Crawl 4
skellenerAug 3, 2006
I never gave a crap that IE was bundled to Win. They should have never actually tied it directly to the OS, but that was their own decision. But the fact that they strong armed companies to include Win on machines was 100% wrong. That was forcing people to pay for Win when they may not have wanted it. That is monopoly abuse. I don't see Apple forcing anyone to use iTunes or an iPod. You can own an iPod and never buy a single song from iTunes. You can use iTunes and never buy an iPod. You can skip iTunes and iPods all together if you like and buy something else. There are plenty of choices of where to get your music. You are not forced to ever pay Apple if you don't want to.
laughingman11Aug 3, 2006
No... Steve Jobs didn't invent DRM nor was it their idea in the first place to release DRM'd music.It was the music industry's, plain and simple. DRM has been around a long time before Apple released the iTunes Music Store. Windows Media Player, for those of you who remember, came configured by default to rip CD audio into only protected WMA audio... you had to dig around to turn off the protection, and you couldn't choose MP3 because Microsoft wanted you to use WMA.Apple, on the other hand, released the iTunes player back in 2001, and it had no such restriction on CD audio DRM. It ripped to MP3 at full speed (rather than crippled to 2X like MusicMatch was doing at the time) and burned at full speed too. It wasn't until Apple's release of the Music Store along with the contracts with the RIAA that iTunes became DRM-ridden. It should also be noted that with audio CDs, you'll still rip your own CDs to unprotected MP3 or AAC in iTunes, different from the iTMS.
geekeeAug 3, 2006
@hawaiiantegI own an iPod. I cannot buy any legally sold popular music online for my iPod from anyone except Apple. It is not because other people do not want to sell me this music. It's because Apple does not want me to buy music online from anywhere else. Why Apple fans keep defending this practice is beyond me.
dcmacheadAug 4, 2006
What I hear repeatedly is Apple's monopoly, which is inaccurate. There are several competitors, but Apple happens to be the one that everyone uses and/or works the best. Consumers have a choice, but most of them happen to pick the iPod/iTunes solution as opposed to the competition.
jasqwertyAug 5, 2006
Wow, pissed off fanboys I see...Oh well, how sad.
jasqwertyAug 5, 2006
"this is because the iPod itself doesn't index the music and build its music database on its own."Then it doesn't work retard...Any other player I've tried allowed me to play any songs I copied to the player.
isepicAug 6, 2006
Microsoft created an OS, and included Internet explorer, and notepad, and all kinds of other apps - everyone bitched - what's the difference? I mean hell, OSX is locked in more than windows, yet everyone bitches about MS including APPS on the OS, but no one bitches about OSX incluing s**t like itunes and Safari, AND you can only (legally) use OSX only on apple hardware to boot!