You just saw the extent of his evidence.

As well as in your imagination.

You seem to be under the impression that backward and forward hardware compatibility are easy things:

1) That an arbitrary OS could be expected to run well on hardware made many years in the past and many years in the future, and
2) That arbitrary hardware can easily support ancient software.

Suppose you'd said this about DOS. Microsoft should support it in perpetuity! OK, then, but where are you going to buy a mouse today that supports the hardware ports that DOS knows how to handle (or would you think mouse makers would spend the effort to write MTRACKPAD.SYS so that a new Apple Magic Trackpad would work on it)? And it's not exactly free or cheap for a modern i7 to maintain 100% 8088 compatibility.

Conversely, should iOS 9 be expected to run on an original iPhone, with CPUs and GPUs many times slower, an eighth the RAM, a fraction of the storage, and utterly obsolete in many other ways? Even if the minimal core could be made to run, so many features would have to be stripped out (at great development and testing expense) that it'd be pointless.

There are good reasons for dropping compatibility. Software isn't easily made to scale down to ancient predecessors, and hardware leaves stuff behind regularly - I don't have serial ports or ISA slots on this motherboard. It's not plausible for Apple to carry iOS all the way back to hardware that almost no one is using, and it's not realistic for Microsoft to drag Windows 7 all the way forward to hardware that hasn't even been conceived yet. At some point, you just have to let go.

Does "properly" define out as "what I think"? And "blame"? Is that just code for "what I don't want"? Children are a log more fluid than one view and unless they are actually damaging their child, it's no concern of others. And no, catering to their daughter's penchant for pink is not damaging, nor is buying them pink to begin with.

Kudos to your mom. Seriously. She's exceptional and that's the point - she *is* exceptional. Those doing the complaining are not. They aren't being held down, they simply aren't being given the gratis they feel they deserve. Again, kudos.

I live in farming country. It's nowhere near 50/50 for field or larger stock work.

Ancient societies didn't have large farms as we know them, so your comparison is pretty short. The men needed to go out and hunt for the meat, the more dangerous of the two tasks.

"placebo has an efficacy itself."

MAY have an efficacy. Mostly not though. Also, many of those products claim to have certain ingredients - ginko, for example - and have been found to simply contain ground up random trash plants. Some have been found with Jimson. Not exactly confidence inducing, eh?

"Swift" was a generic noun and a generic adjective long before Taylor's ancestors started using it. I've never seen a wild dylan or ran dylanly down a racetrack, though.

Apple did not do this unilaterally. They approached the rightsholders who actually own the music - that is, the labels and not the artists - and proposed this arrangement. After much negotiation, everyone agreed that this was a solid plan and started moving ahead with it. How much money Apple does or doesn't have is immaterial because they could not legally do this without the consent of the people who own the material, and those people thought it was a fine idea and signed on the dotted line.

So yes, it's perfectly fair: not because you or I think so but because the people capable of vetoing it said it is.

I appreciate your reply, though please note that the post you're replying to was incomplete; Slashdot's lousy UI went ahead and posted it while I was in the middle of writing it. For the whole thing (revised slightly) see here: http://entertainment.slashdot....

Anyway, I don't have any qualms with rightsholders complaining about, or refusing to assign or license rights to, businesses that they disagree with. That's their choice. But the music industry is in a bad way right now. Siding with Apple might be a bad choice, but refusing to deal with them might also be a worse one. There probably isn't a good option to choose.

Most people won't buy CDs if they can buy tracks online. Most people won't buy tracks online if they can stream; music purchase is already dying if you look at the numbers. Most people won't pay for streaming if they can stream for free. And most people won't do any of those things if the cost and inconvenience is even moderate, because piracy is free and quite easy also.

(Note also that because an individual's taste in music typically ossify, once they've got a big enough collection, barring format shifts, which don't happen anymore, you basically lose them as a customer. You'd better hope that they stream instead of collecting, and that if they collect, they pay for it instead of pirate it)

Like it or lump it, this is the reality that participants in the music industry need to face. Bitching about Apple isn't going to change it.

It's not illegal. Apple either has permission from the rightsholders for the music they offer, or a statutory right to offer it, and doesn't offer the music for which they don't have permission or a right.

Well, looks like /. ate and posted an incomplete post of mine. I guess I won't try writing any posts from my phone in the future, if their UI is going to be this crappy. Let's try again, with a few revisions:

I think she's calling for a bit too much out of Apple.

Apple is a hardware company; any products or services they offer other than hardware are only relevant to them because they think it'll help them sell hardware. Apple also has a justified complex regarding self-sufficiency. More on that presently.

When listening to compressed music on computers began to take off, Apple responded by buying SoundJam MP, modifying it, and releasing it as iTunes. Mostly this was to sell computers -- making sure that people knew that Macs were well-suited to storing, organizing, and playing music files, and could also rip and burn CDs. It was also part of their complex to not rely on third parties to provide important features, and this was now deemed an important feature, with the iPod beginning development shortly after the purchase of SoundJam, and with iTunes to be the syncing software for it.

Releasing a Windows version of iTunes, and selling music via the iTunes Music Store were both just strategies to sell more iPods. Apple figured that some people would buy downloaded music at the 99 cent price point, and that some of them might even be former pirates. The store's label-mandated use of DRM would also help lock customers into the iTunes ecosystem, helping to sell more iPods.

Streaming is just more of the same; because of free streaming, many people who would buy music, or who would pirate music, have flocked to listen to music legally for free (at the expense of having to use bandwidth to stream, not having offline copies, and losing some degree of choice in what you're listening to when. Also, ads). While the iPhone is now more important than the iPod, Apple likes having people locked into the iOS ecosystem. They like having people buy iOS devices, on which music listening is still a core feature (and will continue to be, e.g. with the CarPlay platform). Streaming has become important, and like all important things, it can't be left in the hands of third parties. Therefore Apple must provide music streaming.

But music streaming is a crappy business. Almost all the users stay in free tiers; a mere handful actually pay. Apple's plan is to draw users in with a free time period and then hope for a good attach rate when the time comes for users to either cancel or pay to subscribe. I doubt that Apple will get more than 10 million paying customers (and therefore will only get revenues of around $200 million their first year, and around $300 million in later years after accounting for payments to rightsholders). Frankly, they can find more money than that in their couch cushions. Apple isn't interested in streaming for how profitable it is (read: it really isn't). And I'm sure that they know that in the absence of free streaming, most people will go right on back to pirating music again (with some returning to the iTunes Store, which suits Apple fine).

The whole point of Apple's streaming service therefore is just to keep their hand in, and to prevent a potential rival from being in a position where Apple is so dependent on the rival that the rival has power over Apple.

So can Apple pay rightsholders during the free period? I'm sure they can afford it. Although it makes no economic sense for Apple, as it would cost over $20 million per million free users, and with low attach rates expected, this could easily run over a billion dollars in payouts for a business expected to generate far far less than that. It's frankly not important enough to them to do it. Putting up with Taylor Swift whining at them, and rightsholders loudly complaining that the world is no longer stuck in the 80's and early 90's, is not too big of a cross to bear.

Apple's options other than a free trial period are a free tier, or no free anything. We already know what Swift thinks about the former. The latter is the plan that Tidal is pursuing, plus a higher subscription rate. I don't think it's going to fly. Whether or not it is a legal substitute, piracy is a real substitute, and can't be ignored. If music costs too much to get, people will gladly pirate. Hell, they'll often pirate just for the joy of it. And for a lot of people, any amount of money out of their pockets is too much. Tidal will not be able to reverse the tide of piracy, and asking Apple to follow in its footsteps will neither change the reality of the music industry nor convince Apple to actually do it, given the relative unimportance of legal music for them at this point.

So by all means, she has a right to complain. But I don't see the numbers working out in a way that will put any force behind her complaints. The music industry will have to collapse further, and be rebuilt anew, before it can become viable again, if it ever can.

Regarding Apple's complex about self-sufficiency, it's due to a history of sudden but inevitable betrayal. In 1978, Apple licensed Microsoft BASIC (renamed Applesoft BASIC) because Apple never got around to finishing floating point routines for their own BASIC. The license was for 7 years. The renewal came up in 1985, at a time when Apple still relied on the profits of the Apple II line, all of which had Applesoft BASIC in ROM. Apple hadn't ever gotten around to making a perfectly compatible new BASIC, which meant that MS had them by the short hairs. Luckily, all MS wanted to renew the license was for Apple's BASIC for the Macintosh to get canceled, which it was.

Later, MS again had great power over Apple, because Apple needed MS Office to be available for the Mac, and MS has both used this as a sword and also never quite made it as good as the Windows version. Now Apple has made their own little office suite just to have some alternative available. (It's not quite a substitute, but it's something, especially for casual users)

Then as Netscape collapsed, Apple needed a good web browser, and had to make a deal with MS for IE. The ultimate response for that was for Apple to write their own browser, Safari.

The original (Google-based) Maps program for the iPhone started as just a demo for scrolling, IIRC. It rapidly became an invaluable feature, but Google became a competitor, and withheld new features seen on Android's version of Maps from the iPhone. Therefore Apple had to develop its own Maps program. (And should've seen this coming as early as 2008)

Why did Apple get into the ebooks business? Because Amazon dominates it, and Apple saw that the iPad might make a good ebook reader. Therefore Apple had to have its own alternative option, not to seriously compete, but to make sure that Amazon couldn't kill off the iOS Kindle app, thus harming iPad sales to people who wanted to read ebooks on iPads.

Ginning up a rival to Spotify & co. is just more of the same.

Yep. The pettiness of this becomes more apparent when you consider the limited audience * royalties involved.

Allow me to fisk your first approach:

You: Hello. My project is using your project to achieve goal X, and we noticed that you are doing Y which causes problems for our task and probably others too. Y does not seem to work properly. We cannot make progress until this issue is resolved. Perhaps a better way to do things would be Z, but I didn't see any discussion of it in your documents - have you considered that approach before?

1) "and probably others too" - You have just shown that you are going to make spurious assumptions in an attempt to coerce.
2) "Y does not seem to work properly" - You have just shown that you are going to make unsupported accusations in an attempt to coerce.
3) "We cannot make progress until" - ransom.
4) "Perhaps a better way ... have you considered that approach before?" - Ill concealed condescension mixed with presumed superiority.

You follow a perfectly civil response that they will look into it with an immediate "Me: Thanks for the response. Do you have any timeline or near time plans to resolve the issue? We cannot make progress on our task until your team resolves this issue." - harassment and veiled threat to hold them responsible even though you failed to document *actual* shortcomings with Y.
Note the false civility lead-in.

Mind you, I can't make a determination on the technical aspects of your exchange because you didn't provide them. I'm just fisking your approach.

Look deeper into the issue. You failed to spot the real problem.

SJW's do not claim to be victims. They claim to champion victims even when said victims say they don't need it. Besides, the parent didn't claim any victimhood, just made observations.