Josh, with all due respect I think this post is wrong on a number of levels

1)Its our choice.
Yes, but only if people were informed about what they are getting in to. I work for the CTO of a multinational, he really knows his stuff, yet he was very suprised when I explained the full extent of the iTunes DRM model. Once informed he chose -not- to purchase an iPod even though his BMW is equipped with a dock. The average person on the street does not know they are entering in to a one sided contract on who controls the music they purchase, its insane when you take an objective look at it.

Would you be happy if you had to leave your albums in the Virgin mega-store, had to return to the store any time you wanted to listen to them? The virtual experience is not far off that. But as noted in the linked article, DRM is failing and changes are on the horizon.

2)Security, open = malware
I do not think it is an either/or. My panasonic camera plays well with iPhoto, which in turns sync’s very nicely with Flickr via a 3rd party plugin. My favourite MAC application is Omnigraffle. Wintel fails because its unstable, OSX is open yet suffers little malware.

3) Hardware lock-in almost seems inevitable;
The best designs/solutions come when you face tough competition. Granted- Apple is design orientated, but surely having competition spurn them on is better than having the whole stage to yourself and the doors locked from the outside? Do you want to be labeled a ‘fan’, or, a ‘customer’ who is afforded some free choice and a little respect?

There is nothing to say that OSX-iTunes-iPod/iPhone cannot work in an open development environment, sans DRM. Apple can go build the things they’ve always built, 3rd parties can try to compete. You and I are the winners, lock-in/DRM is not for our benefit, I have never heard a solid argument for why my life is better with DRM on a closed hardware platform.

The Palm rocked because they had a killer design and released an SDK – the core apps were cool, the ad-ons were cream on the cake. Are there Treo virus’s taking down wireless networks??

To Pauric: I have 2 iPods in my family, about 40GB of AAC and MP3’s almost all from my own CD’s, so where’s the problem with iPod? To buy DRMed songs is of course not only a bright idea and I avoid it too. But what has it to do with iPod? (To say, in Europe many Audio CD’s are sold with crappy copy protection). To buy some iTunes songs and to be able to burn an unrestricted Audio CD of them is not a hard restriction.

To Pauric: I have 2 iPods in my family, about 40GB of AAC and MP3’s, almost all from my own CD’s, so where’s the problem with iPod? It plays those horribly encoded illegal MP3’s as well.

To buy DRMed songs is of course not only a bright idea and I avoid it too. But what has it to do with iPod? (To say, in Europe many Audio CD’s are sold with crappy copy protection). To buy some iTunes songs and to be able to burn an unrestricted Audio CD of them is not a hard restriction.
Lock-in by convenience is our fault, we can go the hard way (to buy CD’s instead of clicking in iTunes Store).

Tom, I too own an iPod. Use macs at both work and home. I prefer to use a different mp3 player. The issue is that when I sync my mp3 player with iTunes my music does not go in to a structured directory that I can browse directly with other applications (easily). It disappears in to a big itunes controlled file. As an aside if your id3 tags arent 100% you get one massive flat listing. All the lectures I had saved are now spread alphabetically across about 8000 ‘artists’. Due to the closed nature, there has been little homebrew apps developed to suit specific uses like mine.

I choose not to use an iPod because
1) The DRM decryption overhead causes a reported 15% drain on battery life. Ive put a new battery in my 3rd gen, it lasts about 2 days, my generic mp3 player easily gets a week of use.
2) Ipods come at a premium price yet arent very durable, a quick scan of ebay will highlight the three main flaws with the design.
3) personally I prefer a different way to control my music, I like to randomise my favourites. Something that is not possible with iPods.

The point being, if you like iPods – good for you. If you dont, tough?? Thats not acceptable.

My girlfriend could be considered a traditional iPod user. When she downloads an album from iTunes I have yet to figure out how to copy my favourite track to my mp3 player without jumping through hoops. We paid good money for the content, let us use it legally.

The real issue is trust. If a basic premise of a design is to not trust the user explicitly, e.g. the home depot self checkout system. Then the experience is flawed whenever the user tries to accomplish something not defined by the designers. Ever get hung up in a continuous ‘please place item back in basket’ loop at HD? thats because they dont trust you to be honest, which is fair.

But when we’ve paid for music and we want to listen to it any which way we please get hosed with locked hardware & drm. Its wrong and hurts users.

“To buy some iTunes songs and to be able to burn an unrestricted Audio CD ” Is that true? I thought there was a copy limit of around 5 cd’s? I could be wrong.

I’ve recently switched back to a MacBook — having been an Apple user since Apple IIe in grade school, but switching to PC for the last 10 years in my professional career.

And it does just work. That’s the great thing about it.

However — it remains to be seen how Apple will behave when it is no longer the underdog. Apple has not shown that it is any more enlightened with regards to DRM or lock-in than Microsoft or Sony.

How long do we accept some of their heavy-handed tactics with the excuse “but it’s Apple — I love my [Mac/iPod/iPhone/insert-your-iProduct-here]“

Fairplay DRM (and most DRM) is stupid to buy. The CD burning work around is no good, because you lose the metadata in the files when you convert them. There are currently companies making devices more capable than Apple’s for home audio. I had to run a “special” program to be able to listen to my content over non-Apple hardware. If Apple licensed Fairplay, it could become a marketplace standard, but it would inevitable lead to it being even more easily cracked. I feel like a dupe for ever spending money at that store.

As far as the iPhone software limitations go, I am assuming it won’t run J2ME apps, so it won’t be able to do things like run the Google Maps with traffic applet I run on my Treo. Or Zagat, or any app I write myself. I suppose everyone will be using web apps with the phone, but it’s a bit slow (EDGE?!?) for that.

Matt, this post on the radar from Tim O’Reilly agrees with your complaint
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~3/75279771/sonos_rhapsody.html

And a more recent post there from Marc Hedlund compares the flaws of the iPhone stragegy with what worked for your Treo.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~3/75368182/four_stories_on.html

Josh, your marriage analogy is interesting in that “marriage” is actually a flexible concept. Different marriages have different types of “lock-in”–some, almost none at all. In many cases, the lock-in is dynamic and not “hard coded.” And, in theory, whatever lock-in there is could be said to be based on mutal agreement.

I think your gut reaction to Cory’s comments are correct: people do and will embrace certain kinds of lock-in if it’s good for them. I’d also add that the iPhone is more “open” than many phones currently in widespread use (e.g., the way the iPod is more open than a CD player).

But, the larger issue with the iPhone lock-down is whether the iPhone treats people as “partners” with mutual interests, or as hostiles whose interests are ignored / supressed / punished for the sake of Apple’s business model.

Ultimately, I hope wrestling with these kinds of issues inspires Apple and/or others to do great design for users in the mode of “partner” rather than “hostile”.

Excellent points, Jay.

Of course when I say marriage I’m referring to a monogamous relationship…but as you say that’s definitely a choice made on the part of the people involved.

I would add to your point about the larger issue and say that it isn’t *just* Apple’s business model to use DRM, it’s also the wish of the content providers, in the case of music it’s also the music industry (movies: movie industry).

I’ve read that even if the content providers didn’t want DRM, Apple would have it anyway. I wouldn’t bet on that, though, given that Apple has been pretty good about using open formats (albeit with non-purchased files).

Hardware lock-in seems to me another ball of wax. Apple sells hardware, so they’re going to try and innovate to the point that they’re the only ones on the block. It’s kind of like buying a car…you have to buy parts specific to that model or they just don’t work. I wonder if there’s a certain level of sophistication that must be reached in order for acceptance of that hardship.

Completely agreed on the last point. Apple will eventually have to come to terms with this…let’s hope its in the partner sense as you say.

I hate to be a total cynic here…but 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Also by choice.

In short, marriage is a completely flawed analogy, with no place here. There is nothing EMOTIONAL about DRM itself…by its very nature, it is purely FUNCTIONAL.

That said, the desire to implement DRM is definitely an emotional one…one rooted purely in greed. And sooner or later, companies are going to have to realize that what they want doesn’t matter…they should instead be asking what their consumers want, and meeting the *reasonable* desires there.

The worst part of the iPhone for the Americans is that they will have to deal with Cingular AT&T. And what troubles me is that Apple is going to make a bad call in other parts of the world too. I am worried that Apple might select the worst cellular provider in Canada (this could be Telus Mobility or Rogers).