Quickie, off-the-cuff reaction to today's iPod/iTunes announcements

@chuckb84 you cant blame Apple for DRM. If anything they wanted to dump it before MS did. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ In fact I think Jobs letter to the world prevoked the music companies that now award Amazon DRM music but not Apple. Which of course just hurts them because if Apple could sell it they would make more money with its in stall base.

@Waethorn - "Your definition of the plural contradicts the definition of the singular." Which is exactly what you did above - "Standards aren't always what some governing body says it should be though. In the context of web standards, the real "standard" is that brought forth by Microsoft, since IE has the most marketshare and has been adopted worldwide in more businesses than you can shake your fist at!" --tayme

"A consumer might only need the features of free Open Office, or iWork at $69 but must spend $150 + for Office just to be compatible." Last time I looked, they sell Office Home & Student 2007 RETAIL at Staples for $100. That's the copy that's good for 3 PC's. That's ~$8.33 for Word/PC, if you want to break each app into separate pricing. I think that's affordable for most. Better start saving your pennies.... "iWork at $69" I have yet to see any other program that supported Pages documents, if you want to look at it that way.

Best news on this list was that Steve Jobs is okay. (Note that this would have been true even if he announced that, hm... OS X would be going open hardware or something outrageous.) Honestly, I don't see why people were so down on his health. If you are worried about Steve Jobs health, then don't invest in Apple. Simple as that. Don't go shouting that the man is going to die. The iPod thing on the other hand, was obvious. The Zune has a good form factor in its flash-based players. Apple saw this. End of story. Now what are we supposed to do with the Laser? Wasn't Microsoft supposed to have a mouse related thing?

@shark "I'm sure your comment will win you a lot of support from your socialist friends." Does J@k @$$ run in the family or are your panties in a knot? You missed the point completely, even more so by using an analogy that involves automobiles. The automobile industry is full of standards. I mean simply a 10mm wrench works on both a Porche and a Lotus. I never said MS should give out the code for Office for everyone to copy. Not at all. Nor Apple or any other vendor. However should use a standard document format, and that is what the governments of the world want. If Office is so great and priced right then why not support the open doc standard???? Reality is many companies and individuals would move away from it, unless the price came down. Waethorn can quote student prices all day, or find a link to some deal, but day to day prices say from a big distributor like CDW, Office is still more expensive. And all of its more expensive than OpenOffice. Now I think Office is way better than OpenOffice that is for sure, and I would probably pay for it. However if the was a true document standard I bet you would see more competition for sure.

bettieblu, Yes, the automobile industry is full of standards, but it's not a 10mm nut that defines the Porsche or Lotus or an Audi. It's technologies like quattro, which is proprietary. The reason that exchange is so popular is not because Microsoft forced customers to use it. Where I used to work earlier, we actually moved from an in house commercial product to Microsoft Outlook because it was better. Even in my current company, we moved from Lotus Notes to Outlook. It's not because Microsoft forced us to. It's because their technology was better. BTW, I don't know why you had to take cheap shots at my family.

Hey man if you cant take it dont start labeling people. You don't know I am socialist any more than I know your J@k @$$. To your point a file format does not define Microsoft Word. The program its features, capabilities, and quality do. Have the best scripting language (VBA vs Applescript) or best grammer checker or whatever. Compete on that, and let users have a standard file format.

@Waethorn "OpenGL is a legacy API that only outdated 3D rendering apps and John Carmack use." Hmm. John Carmack is actually a pretty good endorsement of OpenGL! On this point of standards, we really should try to find some common ground that has nothing to do with Apple, Microsoft, or any other single company. Microsoft has historically used this to force their products on people who don't want them. Office and Exchange are the best examples. I don't CARE if you want to use Windows/Office/Exchange, etc. I care A LOT if Microsoft uses proprietary data formats to foist their crap on people who don't want it. To make the WinDudes happy, I feel the same way when Apple does it. Open standards and data interoperability are the keys to everyone getting to use what they like, without the heavy hand of Microsoft (for office apps) or Apple (for music). We have this thing called the "internet" and it works well for everyone. Why? Mainly because the data transport and description layers do NOT CARE what computer is on the end of the wire (tcp/ip and HTML, etc). This success is hard to argue with. It is a common interest of all computer users to support open file formats and non-proprietary transport protocols. The comment earlier has it -precisely- correct: Microsoft and others can compete on how they let you manipulate the data (ie, the features in Word, Excel, etc), not by locking you in via a proprietary format. You do all realize that, if you go back far enough in time, Word will not read its own files? Furthermore, the distance you have to travel in time for this to be true is not that far! This is totally unacceptable. My Phd thesis was done with a thing called "TeX". Twenty four years later, I can still read those files (not that my thesis really matters to many people at this point!). You can't trust your data to one company. This statement is independent of which company you are talking about. For example, my major reticence about Google docs is trusting them as custodians. Sure, they say "Don't be evil", but that's a slogan, not a guarantee. You can't trust Microsoft on this issue, or anyone else. OPEN data standards are the beadrock on which all computing advances must rest. I can't believe this is even slightly controversial. It's obvious....

Is it really so bad to be called a socialist anyway? As for the open file formats of office 2007, they are quite overdue. The trouble that I see with proprietary file formats is that there's the possibility of whatever software needed to read/create the files, may one day not be available. You could then end up in a situation where you have loads of important files, that have become useless. I bang my head against walls about this reagularly, as the facility where I work has loads (and i mean LOADS - several exabytes) of multi-track audio data "backed up" in proprietary file formats, from SADiE, RADAR, ProTools workstations etc etc. Now that we've moved from SADiE systems, we have to keep a limping old machine around to be able to retreive archival copies. Soon, RADAR will also be retired, and yet, we'll have to keep the hardware around just to read the old data. Had they all used standard WAV files, or AES31 (which of course never existed back then) then we could still open them in any system forevermore. THAT, as I see it, is the main "against" argument for proprietary file formats. Hell, just ask Abbey Road, who've got a load of archival materials from various sources, that they can't play any more.

The new iPods. 120 Classic iPod. They dropped the 160 Gb because it wasn't selling, the 120 split the difference so today you get 40 Gb more for the same price. Truly the iPod classic has been played out, the click wheel interface is at the limits of what can easily and seamlessly be incorporated into a small device. New nano. The new nano is better than the fat nano, I always thought the fat nano looked awkward. The new one is a return to the Gen I nano design. The addition of a accelerometer makes the display actually useful for watching video clips. I would still argue that it is too small of a screen for anything other than a thirty second joke clip. Bang to shuffle is simply a way to show that the accelerometer is in their. New iPod Touch. Still a much better product than ANY zune. True web browser, the best interface of any portable media device. and now significantly cheaper. The new zunes. The zunes have in some ways caught up to the classic iPod and iPod Nano, and in some ways surpassed them. The overall user interface still lacks a click wheel, which I still believe is an excellent way to scroll through a lot of information. But overall the zune and iPod UI are both quite good. Many users on this site hate and I mean hate iTunes. The hatred borders on pathological. That being said, I believe both the software for the Zune and iTunes have enough features to manage even large music collections. The zune has an FM tuner. This feature has been missing, since the creation of the iPod. Much to many people's chagrin. I do actually think the idea that of hearing a song and being able to either download it immediately or mark it for later download is actually a good idea. I will however reserve judgement for the feature because poor implementation could be a deal killer. A good feature done badly, is in some ways worse than not having the feature at all. iTunes still doesn't support a music rental option. (On a side note, I really hate how both pundits, and the music industry call the schemes a subscription. If it were a subscription you'd actually get to keep some or all of the songs you download. If I subscribe to a magazine, I don't have to return the magazines when the subscription lapses.) I personally don't feel that the rental option offers much a value for the consumer, at the current prices. Perhaps if the price were dropped to 1/2 what it currently is it would, the value of two million possible downloads would overcome the fact that you don't own anything. So in the final analysis the Zune has two good features that the iPod classic and nano doesn't. Wifi ability to buy songs on the fly, and an FM tuner. (The first zune wasted it wifi capability on being able to squirt a DRM laden song to other non-existent zune users.) One of these can be overcome with an add on, the other can't. Is this enough to cut into iPod sales? No because the pricing is the same and the additional features are not compelling enough to cut into the iPod sales features. This is especially true since Apple seems to be focussing its efforts on the touch. Which although it still lacks an FM tuner, has a better interface, and more features than the zune can't touch. (pun intended) In addition the touch has an entry level price thirty dollars below the zune. The issue of Standards. For those that think that MS is a developer who promotes standards, please don't make me laugh, ALL technology companies have used proprietary formats to try to tie consumers to their products at one time or another. Truth be told, in some ways you don't want standards at the formation of any new technology, what you want is the market to determine which technology is going to win. Thus, when screw machines were first invented a large number of different types sizes and strengths of screws nuts and bolts came into being. Over time though, standardization helped to create a market place that benefited consumers. So today you can walk into any hardware store an purchase a standard bolt that will meet certain standards. Now if you argue that the MS .doc format is a standard, fine. But did MS publish the standard? They do now, but they didn't. I'm not arguing that MS should be forced to publish the code for office, I am arguing that if MS wants to call .doc a standard it should have to publish the specs for it. Now in the case of office .xml there is some controversy if MS published enough information for competitors to make a word processor that can actually be 100% compatible. Finally, I love how Waethorn argues that AAC isn't a standard, first in my mind a standard is something that any company can implement nearly perfectly (I say nearly simply because absolute perfection is impossible.) For example, the .mpeg 2 video standard, is a standard because ANY company can create a device that will play mpeg video. Thus, Apple can create a video player, Microsoft can create a video player, Real, etc. All they have to do is pay the licensing fee, (clearly not all standards have or need a licensing fee.) Thus, since AAC is open and implementable by any technology company it is a viable real standard. Second I would argue that a true standard exists only when it is controlled either by a consortium of companies, governmental body, or an industry trade group. When a single entity controls the standard and has the ability to change the standard at any time, than it really isn't a standard. One of the benefits of standards is that the evolve slowly, and this slow evolution can only be guaranteed by a system that requires input from a variety of stake holders. Third, since standards evolve so slowly, they should only be implemented when the technology is sufficiently mature. Thus, although a .doc standard would have been nice in 1992, doing so would have retarded the development of many good features in word processors. Thus, although I despise active x controls and many of the defacto standards that MS implemented in IE, I honestly feel that the internet and .html was not sufficiently advanced enough to fully adopt standards that would have allowed for the types of technologies that have been developed on the internet. That being said, the various technologies have matured enough, and MS refusal, or foot dragging is simply an attempt to maintain market share at the expense of consumers. Regards Joe Dokes Joe Dokes

What? What? I don't don't understand stand! Nope tayme, it was just an echo post. It happens when the moon is in the 7th house, and Jupiter lies west Mars...