Friday, February 09, 2007

This Apple is a bit Sour

Im frankly bemused by the recent announcement by Steve Jobs of Apple that he would be happy to remove DRM restrictions from iTunes if the record labels would let him. He says it would be better for consumers...

Sorry Steve, thats bullshit.

This DRM (Fairplay as its called on iTunes) is what prevents people from using their iTunes songs on anything other than your iPods. And that has NOTHING to do with the record companies. Have you ever made any attempt to even allow other MP3 player manufacturers to licence it so consumers can use iTunes tracks elsewhere? (As the record companies quite rightly pointed out today) Nope. Quite the opposite.

When I buy a new MP3 player I am forced to buy Apple or lose every song ive ever bought from iTunes. Not only that but I have no way of copying that track i've legally bought to a normal MP3 so I can play it on a personal MP3 player.

Steve, stop posturing for credibility. You are fast becoming worse than Microsoft. DRM is absolutely unfair on consumers, and I for one am bloody fed up of it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

absolutely nothing to add. mojo rising elsewhere....

Anonymous said...

Well said Rob ...

I recently was asked by a client what I thought Apple's weakness was to which I replied, "Steve Job's ego" ... because as much as he is a visionary in alot of ways, his desire to be seen as such [and to now make as much cash as he can - even if it means exploiting the iPOD phenonemon] is quite possibly the biggest danger to that companies fantastic recent growth.