[gratner]

Typical baby Apple zealots:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1549873,00.asp

 

[lindrone]

Eh... good stuff

 

[Dylan]

It's a well done article but I'm not ready to embrace WMA like the author. So far, MS does have the more consumer friendly policy but this is only because MS doesn't have the market advantage to leverage. History certainly shows that once MS has leverage they use it in restrictive ways. If MS owned the encoder market what do you think would happen to those licensing fees? I've read that MS is making an "OS" for portable players. Once MS has enough leverage it would be in character for them to lock it down so the best features or future versions can only be used on players that license the MS player OS. This is the typical MS way of increasing market share and reducing innovation.

I'm not an Apple fanatic and I don't like their closed DRM either. But I think it's foolish to expect MS to be the champion of consumer choice.

As a practical matter, I thijnk Apple has the best store/software/player system today and the DRM is easy enough to remove from the downloaded files. And I give Apple a lot of credit for creating the first good, legal online music service.

 

[pank2002]

a good read.
I don't like either iTunes or WMA, but between them, I would choose WMA any day!

 

[e-r0ck]

i never really understood why people chose either one. i mean, the itunes store being easy to download from is neat n all, but why would you want to go with a format that restricts you so much? i just dont get it, i suppose.

 

[Krishna]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dylan It's a well done article but I'm not ready to embrace WMA like the author. So far, MS does have the more consumer friendly policy but this is only because MS doesn't have the market advantage to leverage. History certainly shows that once MS has leverage they use it in restrictive ways. If MS owned the encoder market what do you think would happen to those licensing fees? I've read that MS is making an "OS" for portable players. Once MS has enough leverage it would be in character for them to lock it down so the best features or future versions can only be used on players that license the MS player OS. This is the typical MS way of increasing market share and reducing innovation. \

Actually MS is only making and operating system for portable video players (which seems to suck, although the players are very cool) and not for the portable music players, or atleast they haven't said anything about this.

On the topic at hand, I really don't care aslong as it doesn't affect me. If the music sounds good, plays well, and doesn't carry spyware its alright with me. Ofcourse thet fact that itunes only sells 128 AAC tracts can deter the first two criteria.

Oh! And I don't understand why some people become so emotional, and defensive of products and companies. I mean these companies only want your money, and don't really give two cents about you. If they had the chance they would rob us all blind(by hypnotizing us with ultracool products that is).

 

[lindrone]

Quote:

Originally posted by Krishna Oh! And I don't understand why some people become so emotional, and defensive of products and companies. I mean these companies only want your money, and don't really give two cents about you. If they had the chance they would rob us all blind(by hypnotizing us with ultracool products that is).

Very, very well said... I guess it's more of a human nature to want to believe that a certain "big brother" is eventually out looking for your own goods.. when in reality they're all looking at their revenue and bottom line.

Apple is no less evil than Microsoft by any means... they're just much better at marketing themselves as something else.

Microsoft is no less a giant than a few bad software releases away from bankruptcy (imagine if they completely screw up a version of Office or Windows and no one upgrades for 5 years)...

In the end, it's just about what works. What works for me is buying CD's (from definitely no less evil record companies) and rippin' them myself into full quality AIFF files for my iPod. I'll never pay for compressed materials.

 

[TonyTripleA]

I was a WMA fan... yep, but then I got the etys... now I'm not so sure. AAC seems to do a better job for my ears.

To be fair I was using 128kb/sec rips, and I cannot compare them the AAC at 224kb/sec. But, strangly, my ears don't seem to appreciate higher rip rates on WMA like they do with AAC. Of course this could just be me (subjective assessments are always fraught with bias) or it could be the comparision through my low quality creative speakers.

I guess as a WMA fan in the past the thing I would like to emphasis is not be be wedded to any particular format. Take the best your ears can use at any particular time.

As I hopefully develop more trained ears I fully expect to switch to lossless but heck, what a job to re-rip all those cds... ahhh!

In any case, I do think Itunes does a better overall job of management than anything else I've seen. Windows media is not as cleverly managed, and smartplaylists are just that in itunes.

Cheers,

TonyAAA