What can a single consumer do in this clash of giants? We need a new ‘Microsoft’ to wrestle the iPod hardware from the claws of iTunes.

I personally love my Apple laptop and am planning on buying another one soon, but I’m not under any illusions about what I mean to them. Their shareholders come first. So far it’s worked out that they can please me and the shareholders at the same time, but that’s mainly because I won’t buy an iPod and don’t make very much use at all of iTMS.

It isn’t just teenage boys rooting for iPods, it is middle-aged middle and working-class people who don’t realize that iTunes is anti-competitive.

Johnny Walker: haha, yes, I did want to ask him, but I figured he got enough email from important people to deal with without answering my questions It did seem appropriate when I posted it but I guess you are right, the post is not anti-DRM.

Jon: Go ahead and delete my off topic comment, if you wish.

I have a friend who is such a MacFaithful that someone could do a case study on him. I took my Zune around to show him, so he could make his own mind up, and he LITERALLY refused to look at it. It’s scary.

I think it’s funny that Microsoft and Apple continue to pretend that Windows (ie. “PCs”) and Apple computers (“Macs”) are in competition with each other. It’s the biggest lie, and both companies seem happy to perpetuate it: It conveniently makes people forget that Microsoft just produce software, and somehow makes them think that PCs = Windows. It also, most dangerously, helps some people forget they’ve got a monopoly. For Apple it makes them look like the underdog to the company everyone loves to hate (“fighting the machine!”).

Microsoft are the company that should have never existed, or at least, in their current state. Some idiot allowed them to keep control of their own software and a gateway to Hell was opened. Imagine this: DVD Player manufacturers have to buy the software from software Company X to put on THEIR machines – but software Company X still owns the software. Over time, Company X gains a market share (a majority of DVD Player manufacturers use their software for their machines), and they use this advantage to get DVD discs to use features that only their software supports. Soon only DVD discs that are made for Company X’s software are available…. And no-one else can ever produce other DVD Player software, because they’re all encoded to work with Company X’s software.

That’s what has happened with PCs. Although MS have gotten much better, and have apparently started stepping up to the plate in terms of offering something their users actually need/want, they’re still incredibly bureaucratic and make stupid mistakes. They need a REAL competitor, not a fake one like Apple.

I don’t want to troll, really, I agree with you largely here, and I’m hoping that the rumors about Amazon entering the DRM-free mp3 market are true, but I’m not so sure that, all of a sudden, the record labels have decided to go DRM-free!

but …

just like apple don’t you also support DRM (http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/02/1845254)? sure, you will break the fairplay monopoly but not the ipod music sales monopoly because no monopoly exists, emusic for example sells mp3s that work fine on ipods.

please do not get me wrong. I have the upmost respect for you and the reverse engineering work you have done in the past. I just am a bit confused as to why you entered the DRM market.