Songbirds and Cuckoos

There’s been a lot of backlash this week in the mainstream news about Apple, iTunes and the iPod. From sweatshops in Asia to more of Europe beginning to demand an opening of Fairplay DRM and iPod access.

Believe it or not, I think this is actually a good thing. Apple has some fairly crappy quality control in its manufacturing processes. With entire websites dedicated to tracking defective macbooks to thousands of people begging for help on the net, there is little doubt that there are issues stemming from the design to the production facility. Remember the iPod Battery Problem? Yeah, me too. With more people focussed on quality control issues and Apple’s manufacturing process, we might see some resolution to these issues. If their factory workers get a reasonable wage (adjusted for local economy) and have a sensible work schedule, they might be producing a better product.

Also this week, in some stealthy news releases, Microsoft has “leaked” news of its iPod killer. (Someone should trademark that phrase and make a billion dollars). Complete with the requisite blurry photos, Microsoft’s timing couldn’t be any better. Could it? Oh, and Bill Gates is leaving. Yeah. Interesting timing, no?

Here are some scientifical graphs.

Note that both stocks are in a slide. See Microsoft’s big drop back in April? That’s the world reacting to their incredible slipping Vista release. Or maybe to IE7. Or their fuggly new version of Office. Or their lack of an iPod.

The DRM issue is more prickly, and I for one wouldn’t mind seeing it removed from the world. It’s nice of the governments of the world trying to give its citizens access to the music they want on the platform that they choose, but really, shouldn’t they be more concerned about, say, companies shipping rootkits on CDs that take over a user’s computer and reports information back to home-base? (aka, sony) Or a Windows that phones home to make sure it’s still authorized? Every day?

As long as these products meet some “fair” expectation of security and privacy, I see no harm to them. It’s when companies turn into dicks and start taking control of your computer that I begin to object. Would I like to see Windows Media support on an iPod? Not really. I don’t care about that format. I don’t want another format. Would I like to see OGG or FLAC support on my player? Not really. AAC, MP3 and ALE (Apple Lossless Encoding) are reasonable alternatives to those formats.

Enter the Songbird Media Player. An iTunes alternative based on open source software. Get some iPod support in that thing on OS X and you’ve got a fully-feathered alternative to iTunes. If you don’t use DRM, you have no need to support it. If you don’t buy from the iTMS, you don’t have any DRM’d tunes. There are plenty of stores online that will sell you music in full quality FLAC or high-bitrate MP3s without any DRM at all. Check out Magnatune and Bleep.com for examples of that. I’ve used them both and highly-recommend them.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, DRM, Entertainment, Microsoft, Music