Being smarter than Dad about technology is cool. Doing dishes - way uncool.
[snobby nitpick]
It’s “Eroica”.
[/snobby nitpick]
And Beethoven didn’t have an iPod, he was deaf.
Well you can shove your civility right up your ass! 
I was a bit snippy in that last post. Sorry right back at you.
Argent Towers, again I was a bit snippy, but you did come across as a bit of a snob (as you admit). I do agree with your underlying point, but the delivery was totally off.
mmrealtime, you amuse me. I can’t wait for the rant on soccer moms who circumcise their children using the snipped claws of kitten while driving 15 miles under the speed limit in the fast lane in an SUV while talking on the phone without brushing the snow off their roofs. Not to mention the pan and scan DVD playing while that’s going on.
rayh, :smack:.
You forgot to add that they’re smoking and tossing cigarette butts out the window.
Your tinfoil hat reference is inappropriate. I am not making a ridiculous claim of some impossible scenario.
it represents a POTENTIAL strangle hold on the distribution of music, provided the iPod continues to eclipse all other music playing hardware, and iTunes maintains its position as a closed corporately controlled entry point for music that can be distributed on the hardware. This will only NOT happen if people make alternative choices. What I am seeing , particularly with respect to the article I sited in the OP, is a disturbing trend.
Consider my expletive directed at you earlier retracted. I was really angry that you stomped on two other kind and gentle posters, not me in particular.
I will come clean and state that my hatred for Apple is deep seeded and stems from a 10 year largely unwanted relationship with the company, and the ongoing company of legions of the cult of mac, constantly bombarding me with the latest farts and burps from the great white whale.
OK so you’re concerned that Apple is going to monopolize digital music distribution, despite the fact that we have innumerable gigantic corporations actively hoping to compete with them. In case you haven’t heard, a few plucky upstarts like Yahoo, Real, Microsoft, Sony, and Napster all have electronic music services, and there are plenty more out there as well.
Tell me, if you want to purchase some digital music, what’s forcing you to use iTunes? A handful of exclusive tracks they offer? The competitors all offer exclusives as well. But for the most part, almost everything you want is available on all the biggies, and if you so desire, in your local record store or on Amazon.com for that matter.
OMG wait Amazon is monopolizing the ordering-CDs-by-mail-so-you-can-stick-it-to-Apple market! :eek: You may be right, there’s no escape!!!
Are you really so thick that you think iTunes will eventually be the only way you can buy a new song?
Apple? Seeds? Yuk yuk yuk!
at 90% market share of MP3 players, they may not be the ONLY way, but its easy to see the destination from here, and hardly unreasonable to assume that the other large distributors will simply aquiesce to Apple eventually, as long as it made economic sense.
Again, “Thick” is hardly an appropriate adjective for my premise.
And the truth comes out. Look, I don’t know what the legal definition of a monopoly is, but it seems to me that if my company sells all of the Underwater Wombat Cleaners–100% of the market–that’s still not really much of a monopoly is it? It’s a niche. Digital music is still a niche. mp3 players are still a niche. The majority of music is bought on CD and played on CD players. Until that changes, I don’t see a problem. You’ve taken your own personal distaste for a company and perverted it into some totally tenuous pit thread. Why don’t you pit them for the reasons you hate them instead of pitting them for the reasons you’d like to hate them.
good eye, biffy the pun slayer!
chuckle, well put…I concede. The iPod is the greatest thing ever invented. Shame on me for dissenting. I will succomb to the customary lobotomy.
No one ever thinks their tinfoil hat theories are THTs.
For this one to work, all the major record companies have to fall in line with Steve Jobs. And that’s as ridiculous as Disney falling to him…
Oh, wait a second…
iTunes will be the only way to buy music for 99 cents per track. Everyone else will be selling them for less.
The unnecessary and misguided hyperbole hurts my eyes! It’s like staring into a supernova of stupid!
Such as?
Meaning, what additional functionality does requiring the database for playback provide?
I can understand some people’s need to have an automatically generated list of favorite tracks, bookmarks in audiobooks, or… uh… whatever. But there’s absolutely no reason that I can think of to requiring the iTunesDB, and therefore iTunes (or some equally lame imitator), to play anything.
Note, I’m not knocking the dude who wrote the Python script I use for my Shuffle; it’s an ingenious solution for those of us who think it’s dumb to use a music store to transfer files to a removable hard drive.
Seems like bloat to me.
It’s a matter of personal taste, but I like it that XMMS is my music player, Grip is my ripper/encoder, GnomeBaker is my CD burner, none of them try to be anything else, and none of them can fuck up my mp3 player if I remove it at an inopportune time.
On a more objective note, have you seen the system requirements for iTunes? 256MB? For what it does, that’s just stupid.
You’d figure Apple people would be able to get the concept of “less is more.”
Indeed.
This has to be the most ironic statement Ive ever read. Well worth the read.
I should have stopped at sentence #1. Too much inertia…couldnt stop it.
This thread makes me feel old, too… I remember when I was called a brainwashed idiot for using a Mac. Some things never change.
Cite? Even if you define MP3 players as ‘devices dedicated solely to playing MP3’ rather than ‘devices capable of playing MP3s perfectly adequately’ I very much doubt they’re anywhere close to 90%, given that flash memory MP3 players are approaching the price point where you can get one for 3 cereal cupons.
Maybe if you define the market as ‘top-end glossy trendy high-design fashion accessory MP3 players that agitate the bile of mrrealtime’ they are approaching a monopoly. However that entire market is coming under threat from Sony Ericsson and Nokia with their “$800 3G broadband cell phone with integrated mobile TV and MP3 downloader/player*” devices. Which have the added bonus of being able to play selected MP3’s REALLY FUCKING LOUDLY whenever someone sends a text, or calls, or the phone detects that the level of ambient noise is below 78db, or whenever the owner is scheduled to have a bowel movement, or some other random dickhead-defined irrelevancy occurs.
*4 hours usage with optional 19Gw/Day external battery semi-trailer