30% Apple

[Matthew Gillen]

On 02/17/2011 12:51 PM, Jarod Wilson wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2011, at 10:56 AM, Matthew Gillen wrote:
> 
>> On 02/17/2011 10:13 AM, Dan O'Donovan wrote:
>>> It's also worth noting that Apple seldom make choices that result in a loss of experience for ... their customers 
>>
>> Really?  Does iTunes/iPod support open formats like Ogg or Flac?  No.
> 
> Do most (non-lug-subscribing) users care that relatively esoteric
> formats aren't supported? I'm going to go with "No".

10 years ago you could have said the same thing about how most people
don't care if their connection to a given website is secured with SSL.
Just because "most non-lug-subscribers" don't know enough to care
doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

My point was that in the long term, having patent-encumbered formats as
consumers' only option is harmful to the consumer.  It increases costs
for content producers, which has all sorts of negative effects.  As a
Fedora guy, I'm kind of surprised you're making this argument.  Don't
you get sick of people complaining that they can't listen to their music
collection with an out-of-the-box Fedora install?

>> Sure, you can replace the firmware on your ipod with rockbox or the
>> like, but that's not exactly the Apple experience, is it?
> 
> Does Ogg or Flac playback decode in hardware or software? If its in
> software, well, that's a compelling reason for not supporting it right
> there -- it'll slaughter battery life.

But they already support multiple formats (MP3, AAC, WAV, etc).  So I
don't buy that it was too technically difficult to support it with
hardware, or that they have mp3-specific decoding hardware.  The ipod
Touch uses a 'custom' ARM processor.  I would guess that the 'custom'
part there has more to do with the integrated graphics and I/O than with
special decoding instructions...

> Is supporting more things badly really better for most (non-lug-subscribing)
> users than doing less things very well?

Depends on how narrow your point of view is.  If you don't care about
future content creation, and are happy supporting MPEG-LA with every DVD
you buy, then I guess it is better.

Matt