ambivalent comment

Since blasphemy is fun, I will agree that Apple’s open-ethics suck and that yes, it did crash and burn in the ’90s b/c of greed and trying to lock its users into proprietary hardware and software, etc. Now it’s doing the same w/the iPod and iTunes, and it really really sucks. I agree.

That said, I love my mac and I hate windows. ;-)

Perhaps it’s just rationalization, but I think it’s important to consider why Apple has done what it’s done. First, it tried to control everything in its hardware/software b/c it didn’t want to go the way of Windows which was to please the lowest common denominator and build systems and software out of chewing gum and scotch tape. It wanted quality, not quantity. And the fact that Apple has always been a small company (relatively speaking), I think is a product of many conscious decisions to pursue quality rather than profit. This is especially true w/its hardware. Apple could easily produce a $400 laptop that looks kind of cool but is flimsy and crap, and they could sell boatloads of them and make lots of money, but they won’t do that. It’s not really about the money, it’s about the pursuit of goodness.

Yeah, I’m a totally cult devotee.

But, and so, w/the iPod, it’s different. The path Apple is taking is being dictated by the music companies – they require the DRM and all the stuff you hate about the iPod and iTunes. This is Apple’s Faustian bargain: We will hobble our users and hardware to make it really hard for people to share and do what they want w/their music; in exchange, you (the music companies) will license your huge catalogs of music to us so we can sell them at the iTunes Music Store. If you want to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, you could say it is doing this b/c it wanted to break the deadlock we were all in before the iTMS came along where users were just file-sharing and had no way to legally buy music online and the music companies were getting increasingly pissed and resorted to all kinds of ever-more draconian legal maneuvers to protect their crumbling dynasties. So Apple didn’t do this for Apple, but for the users, to blaze the trail, knowing that if it could just prove the concept of the pay-per-download model, others would follow and eventually all the DRM and whatnot won’t be as important.

I don’t believe that, either, exactly, but it’s a nicer story than simply saying Apple’s a bunch of greedy bastages.

Your Rio looks cool. J9 has been using something else that’s quite cool, I can’t remember what, but it records voice memos and I think you can plug a mic into it for interviews and it has an FM tuner and you can record direct from radio, etc. All much much better than an iPod. Sad, really, b/c the iPod *is* cool; it could just be so much cooler….