So, is this the next front in the windows vs. mac war? ;)

I have purchased 148 tracks from iTMS and I’m not worried that I someday won’t be able to use them however I please. Most of my future music purchases will probably be through iTMS, too. Honestly, I don’t find Scoble’s arguments very convincing.

I scrolled through the first 15 or so comments to his post. I think his readers did a good job of countering a lot of his points:

quote 1:
Scoble: Yeah, the Apple stores are awesome. They are beautiful inside, but you are paying a high price for that.

Reader: As compared to, say, the low, low prices we’re paying for Windows and Office? Well, someone has to fund the red ink XBox keeps hemorrhaging.

quote 2:
Scoble: Hooking a Windows Media system to your TV makes it far more useful. If you had one of those, you’d be able to display pictures, videos, play music, record TV, capture video from your camcorder, and share that between multiple screens in your house (oh, I just gave you a major hint there). But, you’ll need to get your music into WMA format to play there.

Reader: Robert – can you point me towards some people responsible for Media Center 2004? I have a great many comments on the quality of the product, and I’d like to direct them to someone who can do something about them. Short version – finally, after owning a unit for 2.5 months, we’ve gotten 3 days of uptime w/o a hang or reboot. This product is not ready for ‘real’ users! I’m a full time computer professional and I was about ready to throw it out. In comparison, my TiVo units locked up three times over a period of FOUR years!

quote 3:
Scoble: One company licensed its OS to an entire industry. One company didn’t. Which company is most likely to free you to work with a whole industry’s range of devices rather than just its own? Oh, and Microsoft’s licensing for Windows Media is out in the open too. That’s a significant reason why there are more than 500 devices today using Windows Media, and only a handful using Apple’s AAC/Fairtunes.

Reader: AAC is an open standard. Apple didn’t invent it. It’s also a very (deliberately) weak DRM system, which can easily be circumvented. So unless Microsoft DRM is deliberately weak (is it, Robert?) I’d rather have AAC over Windows Media. I also feel more comfortable using an open format like AAC that isn’t owned by the vendor of the device.

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It definitely remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to maintain it’s market share in the legal music download biz. If they do, then products compatible with AAC will certainly emerge. If they don’t, then yeah, there may be some instances where other vendors essentially shut out AAC files, but there will always be workarounds. What? My digital car stereo of the future will only read WMA? No prob. If it’s that important to me, I’ll just get a deck that has a line in and play direct from my iPod (without having to use an FM transmitter, which Scoble aptly describes as having unacceptable sound quality–at least when you’re in a city–outside city limits, where the FM bands aren’t as saturated, my FM transmitter works quite well).

OK. Sorry. Haven’t evangelized anything Appley in a while. :)

i just changed the script so you can resize comment boxes now. :)

Here’s a good link about the state of Apple’s AAC format, and why they might want to consider licensing it out.

Aaron has stated “products compatible with AAC will certainly emerge.” — but they will NOT, without permission! AAC’s DRM has been hacked already, but the software will still only play on blessed machines.