daringfireball.net — John Gruber of Daring Fireball debunks many misconceptions about the AAC audio format that iTunes uses. "There are some people who have long insisted that Apple?s grand scheme for the iPod and iTunes hinges on proprietary file format lock-in, and I think what they?re doing now is grasping for some way to continue making this argument."
Apr 10, 2007 View in Crawl 4
estvirApr 11, 2007
> If Microsoft were in this position--and they certainly tried to be--there would be no DRM-free deal.They've already announced DRM-free music.You fail.
kwilliamApr 11, 2007
Ogg Vorbis is great. I had no idea Xbox games used Ogg audio. My audio player (IAUDIO U2) supports it, as do several other players I know of. (Samsung, etc.) Windows Media Player can play Ogg Vorbis, just install the codec. The best thing about ogg, of course, is there is no licensing fees and it's an open format.
digableplanetApr 11, 2007
Face it. Apple produce some of the best, if not the best products in digital music. Yes, it is disposible, technology moves to fast that what I have in my hands is out of date in 3 months. There isn't an Apple conspiracy. They just make kickass hardware (and software) for digital music. Honestly, we all have used iTunes to 'purchase' music, but that doesn't mean I am restricted to retail or online retail. I still get mine the old fashion way. As long as music blows, MTV and popular media exploits and mass distributes s**tty, awful, hollow music, I will not buy it. I do buy 'good' music and that may be a bias, but a well supported one. Underground, independent, progressive music with substance. Not an artist that will vanish in 3 months. Be realistic, we all know what type of identity we encompass when it comes down to music. Music is a personal thing, we know our friends who listen to crap commercial disposible music and our friends who listen to music that has substance, meaning, and staying power. They need to change, before us.
delmonteApr 11, 2007
"Microsoft has licensed their platform to several different companies,"They did that because they could, because it was easy for them. MS can use its OS monopoly to easily create sub-markets that are tied with Windows. Companies wanted to be "Windows Compatible", and they had no choice but to deal with MS since DRM cannot be legally reverse-engineered.If the day the iTunes Music Store was unveiled, Apple announced that they would license their FairPlay DRM, nobody would have wanted a license... They already contracts with MS and its WMA DRM platform, and it was clear to almost everyone at the time that WMA's DRM would've become the standard since it was bundled into Windows, the OS with 90%+ of the market. There was no clear indication that the iPod and the iTMS was going to be that big of a success. Even when it started to be successful, most analysts were saying that it wouldn't last, and that MS would eventually prevail anyway. Even after selling 100 millions iPods, some people say that it has reach its peak...Also, licensing FairPlay would fragment the offerings, some stores would offer bad consumer experiences, some of them would fail or switch back to WMA. It would be bad news after bad news for FairPlay. If anything, MS could've bought FairPlay stores and make them switch to WMA, one after the other.Apple had to act as a monolithic entity to go against Microsoft's Windows-tied WMA format. Sometimes, you have to fight fire with fire...The best thing that could happen to consumers is that everyone (players and stores) standardizes on AAC and drop DRM, and this is what is looming over the horizon.
sykoticApr 11, 2007
@ DihukoAAC is not mainstream and for that reason is not supported by everything, I can't stand that fact. When I could get tunes from allofmp3 guess what format I chose? AAC. Only because I could get a lower bitrate that sounds better. I want the lowest bitrates that sound good because, even though hard drives are getting cheaper by the day, I don't want my TONS of music to take up more space than it does already. If another format came out that sounded better than AAC at 128kbs I would be on board for that too.I like to embrace newer formats so the old ones die like they should. mp3 has had it's day in the sun, even with the new technologies it's still mp3. If you paint a s**tty car brand new, it's still a s**tting car underneath.
ipodsweatshopApr 11, 2007
You are all missing the point. The only reason anyone would ever push for AAC over other compression is DRM. OGG and MP3 DO NOT SUPPORT DRM where AAC does. AAC at the same bit rate is inferior to OGG/MP3 as it produces larger files at approximately the same quality, but the high frequencies roll of sooner, so it's actually worse.THERE IS NO REASON OR PLACE FOR AAC OTHER THAN DRM. MP3 is just fine, but it doesn't meet a corporate agenda. And of course, they all hate OGG because no one get royalties as no patents are involved.
balancedApr 11, 2007
Picking a standard they don't control is definitely a step towards making their lock-in less restrictive, I would think.
ilgazApr 11, 2007
If you have Intel based Mac, you can't listen to Live Windows Media radio because MS has abandoned coding windows media player for OS X. In fact,if you have a PowerPC Mac,using windows media player on Tiger (10.4) is not a good idea because it was not updated for Tiger.Why did MS abandon Windows Media Player for Mac? The only client outside Windows coded by MS? Think about it. They HATE everyone who doesn't use their system. Fine, don't buy yes? It doesn't work like that on media formats. A media format should be universally playable, documented and not bound to a single company which was officially labeled as monopolist.If iPod didn't exist, even mp3'es future was in doubt. They were shipping "mp3 to wma converter", remember?