have been wondering for some time why Apple won’t just freaking add ogg,flac, or any other Xiph formates to iTunes and iPods. It just hit me, it really is quite obvious; they want people to use their own proprietary formats. They don’t want people to be able to control their music because that is bad for their profits.
I need a new mp3 player (I have a 4GB ipod mini now) so I looked around a little bit, and I couldn’t find anything that is as nice as an ipod but also supports Xiph formats. Some of the Archos stuff is really cool but they are expensive and I can’t find them in stores so I can try before I buy. If there is anyone out there with one of these or something better please let me know about it. The other route is to just get an ipod and deal with it or install linux or what ever that firm wear thing is. I have done both of these things with my current ipod, but I got ride of them to save space.
Anyway, I digress. Apple wants to force people into their hardware, software, and music store. I for one only buy music on cds because I am a simi-audiophile and only willing to pay for music if I can get it in a lossless form. Apple, according to Slashdot, is preparing to offer a lossless iTunes store. I, of course, will still not buy this because the music will be DRMed (DRM= Digital Restrictions Management) and only available in Apple’s format; I won’t buy music that I may not be able to use in the future.
Die for the metal not the format.
December 25, 2007 at 9:51 pm |
You can put Rockbox on any of your iPods up to Gen 5.5. It’s very lightweight compared to iPod Linux. Rockbox can play ogg and flac. rockbox.org
December 25, 2007 at 9:56 pm |
That was the firmware I was talking about. I just forgot what it was called and I didn’t feel like looking it up.
January 6, 2008 at 6:56 pm |
Jetaudio.
Neuros.
Shame on you for owning an ipod in the first place.
January 6, 2008 at 7:58 pm |
You will be happy to know that I just bought a new ipod.
January 7, 2008 at 5:19 pm |
I didn’t get a chance to look at those two things before I posted my last response.
Jetautdo: I’m assuming you are talking about the audio player program from Cowon. I would rather use on of the many media players made by the open source community. But, If I had the money I would buy a Cowon A3.
Neuros: these are cool but not at all what I’m looking for. They are definitely a good alternative to an appletv
February 13, 2008 at 8:01 pm |
[...] for more codecs in QuickTime/iTunes/iPods, or at least allow third party codecs to be easily added Third position doesn’t do this justice, however I am more concerned about numbers 1 and 2 than…. I believe that is still true but I would also like to see divx, WMV(as much as I hate it), and [...]
April 11, 2008 at 1:30 am |
Yea, I really wish they would just support it already….i have a massive collection of flac’s and am going to be forced to convert them to applelossless probably if apple doesn’t take their heads out of their asses soon! Anyway…the Cowon A3 is the only player I have seen that will play both apple lossless and Flac’s natively….not counting rockbox or those type of things. But there is a program for mac called “Max” which will convert a flac to an ALAC in a few seconds, so not such a big deal…theres one just like it for windows too…forget the name though…Maybe I’ll just get the cowon and save myself the hassle??
April 11, 2008 at 2:56 pm |
From what I understand ALAC is a derivative of Flac. The quality should be just as good (it is loss-less after all) but I like Flac because it is an open standard.
July 8, 2008 at 2:40 am |
DRM = Digital Rights Management
July 21, 2009 at 7:58 am |
The unfortunate thing is Apple is going deeper and deeper into their proprietary I-only-play-with-myself philosophy. Lets just take a look at how they ruined the html5 and tag specifications: they claimed the ogg format is encumbered by patent restrictions (or lack thereof) and lack of hardware acceleration which is not a difficult thing to do.
If only Apple would get back in the habit of using open source standards when possible, they seem to be regressing from this idealism. The last major project that I know of that put out was Webkit which was a fork of KHTML. As much as we can hate on Apple, I still love CUPS <3
July 21, 2009 at 2:27 pm |
Playing with yourself is fun and all but it doesn’t compare to playing with others. Maybe one day they will get bored of playing with themselves and decide to play with other people
.
I don’t see Apple changing their practices any time soon because monopolistic practices are very profitable and I doubt they will get in any legal trouble for them any time soon (though they should).
Indeed cups is nice.