When iPod was first released I was very excited. The thought of not having to carry around a portable CD played and wallet full of CD's sounded like a dream come true.
I installed iTunes on my laptop and was amazed. This thing did everything that Windows Media Player promised to do but never quite managed to accomplish. It was still early in it's life, so I had to input a lot of the information manually. But after a few hours of ripping and suffering through the manual entries, I was ready to go.
I found a 3rd Generation 15gb iPod at Guitar Center and found out that they were looking to get rid of it as soon as possible to make room for the 4th Generation models. I picked it up for cost. I even installed a CD player into my car that would allow me to control the iPod from the unit.
It was love at first sight. Everything just worked. No hassle.
But, then reality set in. I'm a Windows user living in Windows user's world. iPod was hell bent on making sure that my experience on with iPod and iTunes in that world were only mostly good. I quickly found out that my iTunes files didn't like playing nice with, well, anything. Now, I knew better than to download music form iTunes. DRM can kiss my fat butt, and at the time all iTunes files were plagued with what is probably still to this day the worse DRM system in existence. Forget playing those files on anything but your iPod, buddy.
You say your Xbox will let you stream music to it? Jokes on you. You used a proprietary format that has waged war on the rest of the universe.
You bought that app already? No. You bought the iPhone/iPod Touch version. You need to pay us extra for the iPad version that exist in the same ecosystem and is the exact same app only bigger.
What's that? Your hard drive crashed? That sucks. What? You want to download your music collection again? You say you have proof that you own those songs and that you bought them from us? You say that our database shows what you've purchased and what you haven't for marketing and advertising purposes so we must be able to verify that you paid for something? Too bad, Sam. You want 'em back, purchase them again. Our policy does not allow for multiple downloads of files. Yes, yes. We know that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all offer this service free of charge. If you want customer service that good, maybe you should be their customer.
So I took that advice.
Of course, none of these conversations actually happened, at least not to me. But you get the picture. Apple has antagonized their core audience: Windows users. I'm tired of being treated like the enemy and not like a customer. My Zune/Windows Media Audio files work on a plethora of devices, including a butt-ton of devices that are not Microsoft products. I can stream music from Windows Media Player to a PS3. I can play music straight off a Zune and into quite a few different software solutions. And MP3 works even better.
Will I go all digital one day. You bet. I'm all for it. But I'm not going to be the pawn of a company who's only desire is to ensure that I get so dependent on only their product that I become a slave to them. Microsoft, Amazon, and soon Google, all have digital distribution solutions that allow me to use their content on a variety of devices, including devices not made by them. Kindle ebooks can be read an virtually anything with a screen. Zune content can be loaded and played on a variety of 3rd party media players. When Google finally launches their service, you'll be able to enjoy your content on Android, Chrome, Windows, Xbox 360, PS3, and many more devices, including iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
Why would anyone willingly limit themselves to a select few devices when other companies media will work on those select few devices as well as hundreds of other?
That's why I'm getting out now. No more iPod. No more iTunes (except on my Mac, where all other media solutions are stamped with 666 upon being installed and are then eaten by iTunes).
2 comments:
Check out VLC Media Player for the Mac. It works great under Windows and Linux and it has a good stable Mac release IIRC (Jess uses the Mac 99% of the time nowadays).
Also, the Kindle is just awful with DRM, as bad if not worse than iTunes. Everything is managed by Amazon and you never actually see your files; the app/device syncs every time you open the app or wake up your Kindle. In practical terms, this means you have no backups of the books that you PAID FOR and if the publisher decides to yank the book from the Kindle, it deletes the book from your device/app the next time you use it and you're just out $6.99 or whatever you paid for it. You don't even get a refund. Oh, and even if Amazon did send you a copy of the file the book's in (which they don't) then it would be unreadable in pretty much every other eReader out there since Amazon uses the Mobipocket format and EVERYONE else uses the EPUB format. The Nook lacks these DRM issues, and I haven't bought any books from them, but I don't think even Apple's iBooks software (which I flat out hate, much prefer Stanza, an open source eReader for iPhone/iPad), has these DRM issues.
I looked into your claim about not being able to store a local copy of an ebook. Turns out this is false. Through Amazon's "Manage Your Kindle" page, you can download copies of your entire library to a local hard drive. It even says that the reason that you mentioned above is one of the reasons you would want to do this.
It's true that this would be nice if it happened automatically, but it is nice that they at least make their users aware of this potential problem and give them a solution to ensure that if it does, they still have access to their library of books.
Kindle books can be read on just about anything with a screen. My wife has a Kindle, I use the Kindle for Android app, we can read them on our HP, on our Mac, on her Android. If I ever bought another iProduct (which I won't) my books would accessible there, too. When I do buy an Android powered tablet or switch to Windows Phone, my Kindle library wilkl be there ready waiting for me. I personally don't care if a device that is dead on arrival doesn't recognize Kindle eBooks.
Nobody has a Nook except those looking to root it and install Android, which would then make it Kindle compatible. No one uses Sony eReader. Seriously. Nobody uses that.
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