This is very exciting. I've always bought MP3s from Amazon exclusively because I knew for sure that all Amazon's files are DRM free. With this move by iTunes, it's likely that I'll be picking up some albums on iTunes now if I can't get them in MP3 format from Amazon. Before, I would just live without the music, or buy the CD and rip it.
> With this move by iTunes, it's likely that I'll be picking up some albums on iTunes now if I can't get them in MP3 format from Amazon.
And you won't be able to get them at iTunes either, they use a latter variant of the MPEG codec. (AAC, perhaps you heard of it.)
The good news is that AAC is gaining momentum as a player format. Both the Wii and PSP play it with some SanDisk players supporting. Heck, even the Zune supports it now...
Glare is one problem, but I find seeing my reflection in the screen extremely distracting. Something about that human face keeps pulling me out of the "zone" while I try to code.
PS: I don't know of a better word than "zone" so I hereby name that state Zem, it's like Meditation with the added creativity of Rem sleep. Feel free to start using it in everyday speech.
I plug mine into an external keyboard and mouse at home and at work, but still use the laptop's keyboard and trackpad out of habit most of the time. I think I gravitate to the consistent interface of the laptop rather than the differing setups at home and work. There must be some human interface research on this. That or I am weird.
Glossy screens are a killer if you like working in areas with lots of natural light or sunlight.
Try wearing a white tshirt, sitting in partial sunlight, and using a glossy LCD>
Having said that, I find that smaller screens are fine with glossy - like my Acer Aspire One netbook. The bigger the screen, the more of a problem it is.
Perhaps it affects people who prefer a light on dark color scheme as opposed to dark on light. Glossy doesn't bother me at all, but there is a lot of white on my screen.
Quote: "The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. ... This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store."
They had a part of their library drm-free for a while now. I find it more surprising that they changed their position on their pricing scheme. Didn't they even cancel their deal with NBC because they were not willing to allow flexible pricing on their videos last year?
$0.30 a song. A significant amount of money for me (and it doesn't detect most of my tracks; I've run one too many ruby scripts on my iTunes Library file). Not worth it.
It doesn't use the tags, it looks up your account history. The MacBook Pro I'm sitting in front of doesn't have any of the music it's offering to upgrade to iTunes Plus.
I thought it was worth 99c when I bought it. I don't think it's going to be worth $570 just to strip off a DRM feature that doesn't actually bother me.
Ah, I thought you were replying with regard to the question "Anyone care to guess how low online music will go?"
In the case of upgrading, I don't disagree. Sorry for the wrongful callout, it just drives me nuts when people have thousands of songs and listen to music all the time and say "it isn't worth paying for."
Tell me about it. Mine was $430 and I had a serious double take. On the up side, a decent chunk of my music was purchased with the gift cards you get from having an Apple Visa card.
You see, I carefully didn't use the word "steal" to avoid the copyfight pedantry, but that wasn't enough for you. "Copying" commercial music that you didn't pay for is unethical, just like "copying" a typeface family, "copying" a website design, or "copying" and black-labeling a GPL'd software package.
Tonight at the super table, think about being the hackers on the opposite side of this, trying to make a company around viable DRM technology. Gotta pour a little drink out for them... :)
I know I paid for a DRM track; its just bittersweet that I'd have to pay for the same song again to not have DRM. That nets Apple 0 good/evil points in my book.
You don't have to have it without DRM, and you don't have to pay if you want it to not have DRM. What you're paying less than full price for is a completely different bitstream that happens to be encoded from the same original source. It's not unlike getting a credit toward a CD because you happened to own a tape of the same music, which I think you can agree is a rather novel concept.
Well I just voted with my dollars and upgraded my whole library. It finished surprisingly fast considering their servers must be getting hammered right now.
When you bought the music, you bought it under the DRM agreement. By paying for it, you said you thought it was worth it. And your payment paid for Apple's servers as this happened.
Yeah, it stinks that you have to upgrade. But they aren't forcing it. I'm keeping my DRMed tracks the same until I have a reason to remove the DRM. It's not costing me anything. And I know this is a one-time deal, that I'll never have to pay extra for future tunes.
I'm not paying to upgrade because I know it will cost Apple more $$$ to support my DRM tracks. I figure at some point they'll want to turn off their DRM servers and I can only hope they will have a free upgrade path to iTunes+.
What do you expect? They're letting you redownload songs that you already bought. They've sold how many million DRM tracks? So now they just turn on their servers and, without charging, let you redownload every song you've ever bought from them? That would kill their server. I doubt even iTunes could support that all at once.
The pricing helps Apple in two ways: it keeps their server going, and, by adding a charge, it discourages everybody from doing it at once, which means iTunes doesn't break. I understand your frustration, but Apple's doing a good thing by making this available. Complaining is fine, but don't act like Apple's the villain for negotiating an end to DRM in the largest store on the planet.
You're speculating about Apple throwing up prices to prevent their servers from getting "killed". Why do you think they distribute iTunes media on a CDN?
You're also being a bit presumptuous on your accusations of me thinking Apple is "Evil".
Some of this is probably for accounting purposes as well. It's the same as when the wireless-G drivers on some device were released after the fact - apple charged existing owners $10 to upgrade so as to not fall afoul of laws regarding earned and deferred incomes.
Based on how FairPlay works, and how quickly the conversion happens, I think itunes probably just gets permission from Apple's servers to permanently decrypt the files: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#How_it_works
That is the guidelines for news submissions, it doesn't say that discussion and comments on submissions can't discuss any topic users find interesting. I think it was related and on topic to the thread.
There has been several threads on HN about what music people listen to while programming.
