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Why do Apple customers care so much?
December 12, 2007
There's a word for people like me--people who blindly love the products of one company or another. We call them "fanboys."
I'm an Apple fanboy. I love Apple products because they are sexy and cool. Oh, I recognize my behavior is sycophantic, but I love my Apple toys. I use them myself and give them as gifts. To date I have owned at least one of every iPod, several Mac computers, and yes, I carry an iPhone.
I've discarded perfectly good tech toys when new Apple products came out. For example, there was nothing wrong with my Blackberry Pearl. It was probably a better phone than my iPhone. With voice dial, the ability to send picture MMS messages and sync my contacts with my car over Bluetooth, it met my needs well. But it just wasn't as sexy as the iPhone. Ironically, I still carry my Blackberry for work e-mail.
Similarly, the iPod was not my first MP3 player. When I bought my iPod I knew that there were other MP3 devices that stored more songs, had better battery life, supported more music formats, and cost less money. Yet I've bought multiple iPods because, well, they are just so pretty. With all my music now in iTunes I can't imagine the pain of trying to transition to something else.
So why do I continue to buy these Apple toys when I know there are better, though uglier, options? I have to really consider...what is the hidden cost of all this beauty?
If I step outside my fanboy shoes, perhaps I would discover:
• I could buy and own songs and videos that I could use on any player...not just an iPod.
• I could have an open environment to share my media content across my other entertainment devices instead of a closed environment that locks all my content in one brand.
As an early adopter, I am buying electronic media for electronic devices and decreasing the purchase of physical media like CDs and DVDs. So what will happen when I purchase digital content from iTunes and buy a new device from a company other than Apple? Will I be able to play the new content on my new devices?
Probably not.
Consumer electronics manufacturers and entertainment giants need to put the consumers first. They need to realize that "we" consumers don't want to repurchase our media for each new device that comes along. We want beautiful products that work well together and can share media. I'd like to see technology companies, including manufacturers and content creators, start working together to create standards. When devices are standards-based, the best solutions will still win.
I believe Apple will continue to build the best portable devices for quite some time. But if it builds devices that play standards-based media, and allows other brands to share that media, then it will give consumers more confidence that the media will play on all future devices that conform to that standard. With more confidence, people will buy more electronic media.
I have a vinyl copy of Yellow Submarine. It increases in value every year. If we want consumers to have faith in electronic media, they have to believe that the content they buy will last longer than the few years we've all had iPods. Maybe electronic media won't grow in value like old records, but it has to give consumers confidence that they will be able to enjoy it for years to come.
Biography
Richard Bullwinkle is chief evangelist for Macrovision.
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the shortcomings of Apple's product. I'm a fanboy too so I can
sympathize, but he's also ignoring the facts for this piece. In
short, Apple's product managers aren't stupid, they are precisely
building the features into their products that give the consumer
value in the short term and the long term.
First of all, Apple's music format is based on standards...initially
MP3 and now AAC with FairPlay for digital rights managements.
You see, in some cases it is possible to "follow the de facto
standard" like MP3, but sometimes a company must pioneer and
try to invent something new like FairPlay (not because Apple
wanted it, but because the music industry demanded it). Is
FairPlay a standard? No, not yet, and probably because Apple
hasn't licensed the technology. But neither is there another DRM
"standard" that Apple should be using instead.
The author acknowledges there are "better" options than an
iPod. Specifically he cites they "stored more songs, had better
battery life, supported more music formats, and cost less
money". I suppose some people would argue that iPod don't
offer the most of anything, but they do offer "enough" to be
useful and valuable. For instance, my entire iTunes library is
less than 10gb. People with huge music libraries are the
exception, not me. That means iPod sizes are enough. (As for
money, that's a completely separate argument that has to do
with product positioning in the market.)
The real value the iPod bring to the consumer is ease of use.
The author acknowledges he can't imagine the pain of
transitioning from iTunes to something else. But it's not
because of the format of the music in iTunes...it very well could
be all MP3s...it's because he knows iTunes is a good product,
and integrates well with the iPod. (iTunes for Mac actually has
worked with other MP3 players from the beginning.)
But none of that seems to really be the authors main focus. He
ends with the complaint that consumers don't want to have to
repurchase their media for each device, and wants his purchases
to "last longer than the few years we've all had iPods." He is
choosing to buy FairPlay-protected AAC music files through the
iTunes store. iPods don't require it. Amazon is even selling
non-DRM music. And of course he could still purchase CDs and
rip the music himself. Lastly, he ignores the fact that if and
when he needs to switch brands, all of his iTunes music can be
burned to an industry-standard CD. (Of course it's not easy and
convenient, but it's not impossible either as the article would
lead the reader to believe by saying consumers lack confidence
in electronic media.)
side this article. It would be interesting to read about all the
proprietary lock-ins Microsoft has blessed the market with. And
then there's the "embrace and extend" initiatives that turned
open standards into Windows only "standards". Remember the
attempt to embrace and extend Java. Fortunately Sun stopped
that train before it left the station.
Yes it would be nice to see balanced stories. But that's not going
to happen. Not on c|net anyway. Apple "fanboy" indeed.
So what about DVD and other disc formats?
It took a hack to get DVDs to work properly on Linux because of your company's CSS protection scheme. What happens if it or another non-Mac/Windows OS becomes in vogue? Will you help include CSS code in every significant new OS until it becomes completely impractical to play DVDs?
Drop the copy protection. You're only punishing legitimate users, and even legitimate users have the fair use right to make backups of their titles. Otherwise, it's hypocritical to ask for freedom in one area while constricting it in a closely related field.
I completely disagree with the argument that Blackberries are better than the iPhone. I find the touch keyboard on the iPhone to be a much faster, simpler, and easier to use feature than the button ones on the blackberry. Also, looking at web pages on these other devices was very painful. Same with listening to music.
Overall I find that Apple products usually are not better because they are more stylish, but because they actually have more overall functionality and they are much simpler to use. iPods, iMacs, and the iPhone aren't better because they look pretty, they're better because of their usability and the features they offer. The only argument you may have against this is "But the iPhone can't do this and this and this..." but these features will be addressed in future software updates through iTunes, and it has way more potential to do much more than any Blackberry will ever do.
here's what you do:
First, you need the songs to be in iTunes. If they are in your
iPod and not in iTunes, get one of those apps that let you
download the songs back to the computer.
In iTunes, just burn a CD (regular audio CD) of the songs you
wish to give freedom. After they are on a regular CD, you can
rip them back into DRM-free MP3's.
This is a workaround that is probably not going to go away,
and should be legal since you own the right to own those
MP3's after buying them. This is also not the first time this has
been published - I'm not trying to take credit, just passing it
along.
We all saw the writing on the wall even going back five or six years. You can't pretend it wasn't there; there was a lot of discussion about iTunes DRM making music collections temporary (and the same discussion about other DRM schemes, not just iTunes). Lots of us advocated continuing to buy CD's or at the very least, buying DRM-free music from places like eMusic in mp3 format.
There are always workarounds for DRM (which is one of its failings), but the best choice has always been, continues to be and will continue to be to buy music in a non-DRM, uncompressed or losslessly compressed format. Right now, that means CD's.
I still buy all of my music on CD and then rip to mp3. That way I have a digital file that will work on every portable player out there and I still have an archive quality .wav file on the CD should I ever choose to re-rip. I don't really understand why anybody would buy music any other way, honestly. It's not as if CD's are humongous objects that take up hundreds of square feet of space in most people's houses. I have a collection of about 1,000 CD's and most of them are just boxed up in the attic; the rest occupy a small part of one wall in our extra room. And I enjoy having real artwork and liner notes.
Maybe someday someone will start up a store that sells lossless files without DRM and with the option to buy an extra printed art/liner notes package at a reasonable price. Until then, I can't see doing anything but continuing to buy CD's, which are still the most permanent, highest quality and most versatile consumer music format out there.
The recording industry has for years encouraged piracy by it's practice of adopting multiple standards and abandoning others. In the case of digital media, the song remains the same. All the companies come together in the RIAA to enforce antipiracy laws and sue over copyright, but they all part company when it comes to standards. They all need to get on one bandwagon and stay on it.
One question in this debate is: should the standard be open or proprietary? An open standard SHOULD mean that every player should be able to play every format, (whether it's wavs, lossless, mp3, acc), while a proprietary standard should mean one manufactured player works with it's proprietary file format (and perhaps, as a "feature", it can play mp3s as well).
I charge, here and now, the RIAA and Apple computers with encouraging piracy! As it stands, I must, in order to have all of my digital music on one player, do that which the RIAA says is "unauthorized" and calls "piracy": I need to copy the files somehow into a format that will work on my player. As for Apple (and therefore, Steve Jobs), it's nice that your iPod can play mp3s, but it wont play "playsforsure" format DRM that are on files that I couldn't get on your iTunes store. In order for these files to work on your iPod, I must copy them with the intention of circumventing the DRM so that they will work on the iPod. According to the DMCA, that makes me a pirate.
And, before any of you wish to come in and commit epic fail by saying, "no you only have to (insert stupid statement here) and then COPY"... HELLO! That's the same thing!
The consumer, in order to protect his investment, has always needed to copy these media from one format to another. People bought cassette recorders in the 80s to make copies of their LPs so they could make their records last longer, make them portable, and keep archives of all their media. A few others moved into outright piracy, but the rest of us were de facto pirates because we were copiers of media. The same thing goes on today, copying from one format to another to make them work on our devices.
The Song Remains the Same.
f--king troll. Cnet and ZD have lost all credibility with BS posts
like this.
expressing doubts, maybe even thinking that all things Apple
might not always be the best thing. For this he is pilloried and
insulted. Its this sort of thing that makes *normal* people think
some (not all) Apple fans are off their rocker. That they've
elevated an appreciation for a company to the level of a religion.
That they've willingly and purposefully blinded themselves to any
information or opinions that fall outside of their world view.
I now await the inevitable responses that accuse me of
astroturfing (like I get paid for this crap), that I've never used a
mac (I own two and have been using them daily for 4 years), or
that I'm just a jerk (I will admit to that). Because, obviously,
anyone who questions Apple must be the enemy.
Bullwinkle, conniving corporate mouthpiece that he is, then
proceeds to excrete nuggets such as, "If I step outside my
fanboy shoes, perhaps I would discover [that} I could buy and
own songs and videos that I could use on any player...not just an
iPod. I could have an open environment to share my media
content across my other entertainment devices instead of a
closed environment that locks all my content in one brand."
Set yourself up as an "Apple fanboy" in order to push your
corporate agenda with incorrect and/or misleading propaganda.
Lovely. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too! The
fact is that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called for an end to music
DRM and this is BAD for Macrovision which is obviously a place
that gives Microsoft a serious run for its money when it comes
to lack of business (and just plain human) ethics. Bullwinkle,
who's not fooling anybody, seems like just the type who'd take
that as a compliment. Nasty piece of work. How some of these
scumbags sleep at night is beyond us. Apple, of course, sells
DRM-free music from EMI and is reportedly continuing to work
to convince the other music cartels to allow them to do the same
with their music catalogs. Such music can be played on any
player that supports the successor to MP3, the superior "MPEG-
4 Audio," also known as AAC. Apple's iPod does not require use
of the iTunes Store. Apple's iTunes Store does not require use of
an iPod. Apple supports both Mac users and Windows PC
sufferers.
*snort!*
C|Net, you fsckers now owe me a new keyboard, two bottles of rubbing alcohol (or other cleaner approved for use on a monitor), and prolly a box of tissues... and tips for getting Mountain Dew out of a KVM switch.
No, really... that was one hell of a laugh. You really should warn folks in advance when you decide to launch Sarcasm Week, you know? Damn your hides...
Ironically enough, Apple is second only to Linux as a champion for open standards and in calling for the death of DRM, so I dunno *** the fool from Macrovision is yammering about.
Guess they've been pretty bored since the VCR died off...
/P
As it is, it's priced at a premium and anythign with DRM is completley disposable and anything without DRM is still subject to shifts in standards. In other words mostly disposable.
Pirated materials are all in the same boat. It's all disposable. More so since the lack of any kind of investment makes it so that peole don't worry about preserving it so much as standards change.
The problem is in the iTunes Store. Content owners require that their content have DRM (though today not all music falls under this). Apple has been forced into creating DRM that they manage (to keep patching it) in order to sell the content. So, lay blame where it should be: content owners.
Currently, the only iTS content you cannot easily remove the DRM from is video. You can burn any song to CD and rip it back. There are other means that require a Mac which don't have a generation loss. Even with video, you can get a screen/audio capture utility and capture while it's playing. On Vista, you cannot do that with HD content (haven't checked on SD / DVD content).
- Troll Troll Troll
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by close5828
December 19, 2007 10:25 AM PST
- I call it as I see it.
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