Nah. In this case, it's more about Apple wanting to try to reduce a proprietary standard--that also doesn't happen to be mobile-friendly--for those kinds of tasks that could easily be done with open web standards and open video formats anymore.

Flash support on mobiles is pretty paltry ANYWAY (behind the curve, memory-hungry, power-hungry...) so I think to them it seems the perfect time to try to convince web designers and content providers to pursue another alternative while Flash is showing it's flaws. Mobile devices are only starting to embrace full web standards at all well anyway (and anything "media-rich" coming in to them is being fed through the cell-provider back end--at a premium), so while the mobiles are trying to aim for a common target, I think Apple wants to goose that target away from "proprietary desktop tech" and instead to "open, mobile-friendly schemes"... whatever should prove most adept at it.

(I'm sure they'd also consider "custom development for the App Store" to be a beneficial side-effect as well.)

Apple are being dickholes about it currently, yeah. I'm kind of hoping that a few more companies push too hard and too fast with DMCA provisions, though, so the DCMA itself is thrust forward into the public spotlight and can be gutted.

Offhand, I dislike the extent it goes to a lot more than the PATRIOT Act, and I don't like the PATRIOT Act at all. 8-P

If you've read pretty much ANY other post on here, you'd know "the reason it's still there is because of the same people who put it there to begin with, though the reasons are different now."

Yes and no. They may not think it works NOW, but they still want SOME form of control on there, so they'd still want DRM. Only in this case Apple forced their hand by not capitulating to their demands and A) licensing FairPlay or B) adopting WMV DRM schemes on iPods. The only other way to get music from everyone else onto iPods then...? Drop DRM. (The only thing the RIAA could conceivably have done is adopted THEIR OWN DRM standard and force it on everyone else when their contracts came due, but it seems they weren't keen on that.)

Now DRM remains on iTunes only because the Big Three RIAA labels haven't reworked their contract terms to allow Apple to do so, and it's pretty much the last piece of leverage they can give to others (most prominantly Amazon) to try to wean customers away from iTunes and try to reduce the kind of influence they ostensibly GAVE Apple that in return caused them to have to dump DRM to begin with. They don't like the idea of it biting them in the ass again later.

Their hand will probably be forced at some point, but they're hoping to get a few punches in first. (Or are hoping Apple will get tired first and capitulate to whatever pricing and licensing controls the RIAA wants written into their new contracts. But since the vast majority of consumers don't notice Apple's DRM or at least don't recognize the significance of it even now... I don't see that happening in the current environment.)

...and by "this stuff we just made up" you mean "a standard VESA introduced a few years back, seems to have everyone who is anyone in tech supporting it, first hit consumer products this year on Dell monitors, and where the only 'new' thing by Apple is the 'mini' plug end?"

Well of course if you go to RETAILERS for this kind of crap it's going to cost you... But why would you go anywhere but Monoprice, unless it's somewhere that's 99% like Monoprice? ;-) (Seriously, that's like saying "I should really buy this $50 HDMI cable from Best Buy!" This is Slashdot, dammit!)

I'm not sure what all the advantages of DisplayPort over HDMI are off the top of my head, but as I remember it's primarily coming from a "computing" angle (decreasing monitor interface complexity, offering somewhat more bandwidth, port-shrinking ability and ease of adoption, power consumption, transmission cable length, a full auxiliary channel for expansion possibilities...) as opposed to a "media center" angle (more concerns with color space and Dolby/DTS bitsteams...), which gives each more support in their own areas.

Since those aspects have been merging more and more it can seen as an annoying split, but it's also a pretty ignorable one when you get right down to it, at least for most consumers. (We've certainly lived just fine with split standards before, so it's not like we have to "UNIFY OR DIE!!!" now.)


Will it ultimately "go a place" or "matter?" Dunno. But I see nothing objectionable on the surface about it all. It's pretty much S.O.P. for the tech industry.

Hehe. I thought the price bump was originally going to bring the rest of the labels over, but seemingly they didn't want to go that route for the extra revenue, so Apple settled back into the "single price" model they've tried to stick to. (Or perhaps Apple reworked things with EMI quickly and stuck to it, causing the other labels to balk.)

True indeed. While the larger retailers of music have power they can wield over the RIAA, the RIAA has power they're going to wield right back.

Isn't video content pretty much as liberal? Certainly it still seems to have a lot fewer restrictions than other video DRM licenses.

And while their recent HDCP implementation is a bit poor, shouldn't one instead be seeking to boycott the parties driving HDCP itself?

FireWire hasn't been "abandoned" yet, just pulled off their lower-end laptops. If the next iMac and mini refreshes pull it...? THEN it's been effectively abandoned. (Not that the industry in general hasn't abandoned FireWire already. I know, I know... I loved SCSI as well, but what can you do? There will always be SOME options, it just becomes "not commonly available" options, so you have to struggle more. Such is the fate of not-widely-used tech.)

Meanwhile on Macworld Expo, may I point you to bynkii.com? ;-) John Welch has the best words to say on the matter.

I'm pretty sure some people said the same thing about HDMI over DVI when it started cropping up.

Will it become an overall standard? Dunno. It has some advantages, though, and since the only POSSIBLE incompatibility inconvenience is physical and can be ignored with a $10 adaptor...

Perhaps $10 is too much if you're already laying out a few grand on a new MacBook Pro, but don't worry! They'll get cheaper in time, too!

How is a license-free and royalty-free port count as "proprietary?"

"Uncommon," sure, but "proprietary?" Nopers.

I'll buy songs that exist DRM-free on iTunes from anywhere as well, but why reward the remaining RIAA labels by supporting the DRM monkey-shit they're still pursuing with Apple?

Movies/TV are unfortunately a different ball of wax, since DVD is a "protected" format. (Even if it's paltry and easily bypassed, at least the MPAA can claim that all their content is "digitally protected" whereas the RIAA releases all their content without any protection on CD. If they changed that standard, they'd have a better position to argue from.)

HDCP bullshit is indeed bullshit, but it's yet another thing that's not really the hardware vendor's decision. Why do they ever DESIRE to have incompatibility or confusion coming from content played on their hardware?

"Vendor lock-in" is pretty much the only reason a hardware company would be embracing forms of incompatibility, but that's not the case with iTunes, and obviously not the case with having to conform to HDCP demands (and implementation issues) on their laptops.

How they "voluntarily put DRM on everything?" Just who do you think was mandating the use of DRM, here? o_O

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Zune DRM-laden tracks (the subscription ones) are only usable on your Zune, which makes it as restrictive as FairPlay to iPods. And DRM-free music purchased from "multiple options" at this point will play on an iPod just as well as a Sansa or Zune.

PlaysForSure attempted to be "quasi-universal," but A) wasn't, and B) was poorly implemented, which led to C) it being abandoned in general, and by Microsoft specifically with the Zune.

The ONLY people who could get away with implementing DRM itself and not cause incompatibility problems is the RIAA itself. "You want to sell our music? Use this DRM." You can't pass that duty off to dozens of other parties and expect it to make any sense, though.

It would be if they were using the bulk of music (EMI and independents are in iTunes+, but Sony, Warner, and Universal represent the vast bulk of recorded offerings) to force vendor lock-in, but in this case it's those labels that are keeping DRM intact on iTunes so they can A) foster competition against Apple from Amazon and other customers, or B) renegotiate MUCH more favorable licensing terms for themselves than are currently in place with the DRM'd tracks.

Hence a boycott COULD be fine... but in this case it's illogically targeting the wrong people.