For Apple Followers, It's a Matter of Faith

[tiagosilva29]

And it wasn't known to me, was first time iv seen it that I remember

All you need to know is that Mephistopheles and swuzzlebum were happy. Until he cheated on her with OS/2 (last post on that thread).

I find it amusing that no one has even brought up Free Software into this discussion. Maybe because it's a proper philosophy!

[Boz]

I bought maybe 50 songs before the store went DRM free, so I paid a whopping $15 bucks to upgrade to 256kbit, DRM-free music. I didn't have to, but why not?

Also, it was a much better deal than completely losing the things you bought.

You shouldn't have paid anything to Apple.. it was a pure ripoff tactic and they could have done it because unlike you tons of people had thousands of songs bought through iTunes with DRM.. So charging them to take it off just so they can use it on other devices was plain ripoff.

You're right there, but it's also more restrictive for my purposes. For instance, I only have one device that can play Amazon VOD: my computer. I can't even get Amazon VOD content on my Xbox because it requires having Windows Media Player on your desktop to stream it. Meanwhile, I have three devices that can play an iTunes rental or download (I do mostly rentals and just download the free TV show pilots :p): my computer, my iPhone, and my iPad.

I don't know what you are really talking about.. I watch all my Amazon content on Xboxs, PS3s, Panasonic TV and my mobile devices without any problems.. I don't need WIndows Media Player. I am not sure what that even means.

What's the point in having a more "open" solution if I have less devices that support it and have no plans to buy a device that does support it?

There you go.. Apple till you die.. no way anyone can come out with anything better.. you will always be using Apple products.. that's what the article is talking about and the view you express..

It's not minority that belongs to Apple cult.. it's almost all of them.. like you for example.. it's just that mostly everyone has issues admitting they are "those type of users".. Nobody wants to be viewed as a loon. Your posts in every negative thread about Apple show that.. You are one of the people mentioned in the article. I'm sorry to say.

You see.. the difference between me and you is that I can't stand the company that's so greedy, so fascist like and I can't stand Steve Jobs for being an egoistical and lying scumbag. I do use Apple products. THere are many things right and many things wrong with it and there is almost everything wrong with the way Apple handles business (towards me as a consumer), but you won't see me dissing something that's a good piece of hardware from Apple.. just the fact that they are lying sacks of crap.. There is no reason for them not to open up a bit and still make great hardware.. but they won't.. because they are the greediest, the most evil company in our recent history. Microsoft and Intel are small kids for Apple.

Talk about revisionist. Amazon MP3 opened in September 2007, 5 months after Apple had already sealed EMI as a DRM-free partner and 7 months after your most hated man in the world wrote his Thoughts on Music letter. A few months later (around Jan 2008), however, Amazon did get agreements with more major labels before Apple (Apple wouldn't go completely DRM free until Jan 2009 mostly due to CEO bickering; Apple wanted to keep prices down, record labels wanted to hike them up), but saying Apple didn't go DRM-free because Amazon was "kicking its ass" is flat-out wrong.

Again.. you drink the Apple kool-aid.. what almighty Steve Jobs says that has to be true and what they really want.. he can't be saying things that are really excuses for Apple to keep making money. He's a lying sack of crap and nobody in this world should trust him.. They have proven over and over again that they have no interest in helping consumers get any flexibility.. The company is an embodiment of closed platforms and holding consumers hostage.

And yes, Amazon kicked their ass for almost 2 years.. what happened and what deals they might have had or not is completely irrelevant.. I was buying music DRM free while Apple crap was all DRMed.. and at the end.. I had to pay hundreds of dollars to Apple to get DRM free licenses for the music I already bought.

They can go screw themselves..

PlayOn isn't sanctioned by any of those content providers at all (and frankly, if Hulu and others could block it without blocking all computers, I'm sure they would). It basically just plays the content from those sites on your comptuer and transcodes it so your UPnP device can watch it.

That's THE WHOLE FREAKING POINT!!!.. You can use and create code that will stream from your computer to any devices via UPnP or DNLA and they can't really stop you because it's OPEN..

If we were to live in Apple world (thank God we don't), you would have to pay for each one of these services, then buy only hardware from Apple and use their software.. I mean all of your money would have to go to Apple without a single choice.

[xtrabit racing]

just american consumerism

[Elliott]

You shouldn't have paid anything to Apple.. it was a pure ripoff tactic and they could have done it because unlike you tons of people had thousands of songs bought through iTunes with DRM.. So charging them to take it off just so they can use it on other devices was plain ripoff.

So it wasn't Apple's idea to put DRM on the songs in the first place, and Apple doesn't make much off of the sales of songs anyway, but Apple has to pay the bandwidth costs to take it off and upgrade you to 256kbit AAC? I would love it if Apple soaked those costs, but I also understand that I live in the real world. By the way, Amazon doesn't let you re-download songs and movies either.

I don't know what you are really talking about.. I watch all my Amazon content on Xboxs, PS3s, Panasonic TV and my mobile devices without any problems.. I don't need WIndows Media Player. I am not sure what that even means.

Amazon VOD on Xbox 360 has to go through Windows Media Player, which means you have to have a Windows PC on and connected to your network that has the media. There's no native Xbox 360 app, or at least that's what the Xbox 360 VOD page on Amazon's website leads me to believe.

There you go.. Apple till you die.. no way anyone can come out with anything better.. you will always be using Apple products.. that's what the article is talking about and the view you express..

It's not minority that belongs to Apple cult.. it's almost all of them.. like you for example.. it's just that mostly everyone has issues admitting they are "those type of users".. Nobody wants to be viewed as a loon. Your posts in every negative thread about Apple show that.. You are one of the people mentioned in the article. I'm sorry to say.

No, not Apple 'till I die. Apple while they make the best products to suit my needs.

FYI, I don't buy movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store (well, I don't buy either of those at all anyway, in any format) because they have DRM and I can access almost all of that content on Hulu anyway. I do rent from iTunes because it's not exactly expensive and it's easy.

You see.. the difference between me and you is that I can't stand the company that's so greedy, so fascist like and I can't stand Steve Jobs for being an egoistical and lying scumbag. I do use Apple products. THere are many things right and many things wrong with it and there is almost everything wrong with the way Apple handles business (towards me as a consumer), but you won't see me dissing something that's a good piece of hardware from Apple.. just the fact that they are lying sacks of crap.. There is no reason for them not to open up a bit and still make great hardware.. but they won't.. because they are the greediest, the most evil company in our recent history. Microsoft and Intel are small kids for Apple.

Stop buying from Apple and using Apple products. It might help you with your rage.

Again.. you drink the Apple kool-aid.. what almighty Steve Jobs says that has to be true and what they really want.. he can't be saying things that are really excuses for Apple to keep making money. He's a lying sack of crap and nobody in this world should trust him.. They have proven over and over again that they have no interest in helping consumers get any flexibility.. The company is an embodiment of closed platforms and holding consumers hostage.

So no facts to refute my claims, but I'm drinking the kool-aid? It's a conspiracy, man!

And yes, Amazon kicked their ass for almost 2 years.. what happened and what deals they might have had or not is completely irrelevant.. I was buying music DRM free while Apple crap was all DRMed.. and at the end.. I had to pay hundreds of dollars to Apple to get DRM free licenses for the music I already bought.

Where the hell are your numbers? In terms of digital downloads, iTunes has been a front-runner for a long time. Hell, iTunes is now the leading distributor of music period.

They can go screw themselves..

:laugh:

That's THE WHOLE FREAKING POINT!!!.. You can use and create code that will stream from your computer to any devices via UPnP or DNLA and they can't really stop you because it's OPEN..

Great! I don't care if you circumvent intended use cases. Hell, I'm sure I do the same all the time. I'm just saying that giving PlayOn as an example is ridiculous. None of the vendors want that to happen, but they have no control over it. Why would Apple or any other company create and advertise what probably violates quite a few ToS agreements? Even Google wouldn't be that crazy. I think the only reason PlayOn has lived on this long is because very few people really know about it.

[Boz]

So it wasn't Apple's idea to put DRM on the songs in the first place, and Apple doesn't make much off of the sales of songs anyway, but Apple has to pay the bandwidth costs to take it off and upgrade you to 256kbit AAC? I would love it if Apple soaked those costs, but I also understand that I live in the real world. By the way, Amazon doesn't let you re-download songs and movies either.

Listen.. you live in the la la land.. you keep drinking the kool-aid and believe that Apple really wants DRM free world..it's just that those damn providers all force them to DRM it.. yet other providers (at least in music) didn't have that problem 2 years prior to Apple "liberating" our libraries by taking additional money from us.. the encoding rate is NOTHING.. it doesn't cost them anything.. it's something they could have given you for free because whether it's 192kbit or 256 is very little difference. It's an excuse to charge money.

And Apple is the embodiment of DRM.. everything they do is closed, protected and actually most of the stuff they make goes beyond standards.. just because they want to appear they are ahead of everyone and they can't stand competition.

Read this.. a very nice article from Ars Technica.

http://arstechnica.c...er-lock-ins.ars

and another nice article

http://arstechnica.c...e-aint-dead.ars

Apple is rotten to the core.. there is no two ways about it. They are the greediest and most controlling crooks in technology world.

[Phixion]

So let me get this correct, because i have an iPad, MBP, and iPods I'm a fanatic or cult of Mac

iPad alone answers that question... :D

[superstrikertwo]

My question is why does anyone care what someone else uses? It's really non of your business and doesn't affect you in any way.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

I find it amusing that no one has even brought up Free Software into this discussion. Maybe because it's a proper philosophy!

Meh, free software isn't really free, especially from a business standpoint, MS It you can find dime a dozen, OSX IT or *nix IT not so much and pay for it in salary. But on the same token, I prefer free software like OpenOffice over MS Office

[Phixion]

So it wasn't Apple's idea to put DRM on the songs in the first place, and Apple doesn't make much off of the sales of songs anyway, but Apple has to pay the bandwidth costs to take it off and upgrade you to 256kbit AAC? I would love it if Apple soaked those costs, but I also understand that I live in the real world.

Really? $570 million isn't much to you?

http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2008/03/how_much_profit.php

Another estimate was made last year

by PacificCrest analyst Andy Hargreaves. He estimated per-song revenue at $0.69, network fees at $0.05, operating expenses at $0.05 and credit card fees at $0.10. That comes out to a 10% operating margin. On music sales of $1.9 billion, that gives us an operating margin of $190 million.

Artists have been complaining about the profit margins for years.

[Elliott]

Listen.. you live in the la la land.. you keep drinking the kool-aid and believe that Apple really wants DRM free world..it's just that those damn providers all force them to DRM it.. yet other providers (at least in music) didn't have that problem 2 years prior to Apple "liberating" our libraries by taking additional money from us.. the encoding rate is NOTHING.. it doesn't cost them anything.. it's something they could have given you for free because whether it's 192kbit or 256 is very little difference. It's an excuse to charge money.

What other providers? Maybe it's the Apple haze clouding my brain, but I don't remember many legal alternatives to get mainstream DRM-free music before iTunes went DRM-free and the Amazon MP3 store opened. As for going DRM-free, why exactly do you feel entitled to get the new higher quality, DRM-free songs for free? I don't know of any other service that would've offered a similar perk. Hell, I don't know of any other service that would've only charged less than a 1/3rd of the cost of the original song to upgrade it. I didn't see Microsoft going "Hey guys, we're shutting down our PlaysForSure licensing servers. We're going to unlock all your music for you." No, I actually saw "Hey guys, we're shutting down PlaysForSure, so if you need to authorize those closed down WMA's past a certain date, you're screwed." Same happened when Sony shut down Sony Connect and the same thing happened when Yahoo shut down its music service. At least Apple's DRM'ed tracks can still be authorized and used. You were never forced to upgrade and you never lost the ability to use them.

And Apple is the embodiment of DRM.. everything they do is closed, protected and actually most of the stuff they make goes beyond standards.. just because they want to appear they are ahead of everyone and they can't stand competition.

Read this.. a very nice article from Ars Technica.

http://arstechnica.c...er-lock-ins.ars

and another nice article

http://arstechnica.c...e-aint-dead.ars

Apple is rotten to the core.. there is no two ways about it. They are the greediest and most controlling crooks in technology world.

Quite a few of the attributed forms of DRM (except for the iPod/iPhone lock-in to iTunes) are pretty universal to the industry. For instance, HDMI is used by a lot of vendors instead of DisplayPort because they need HDCP. Apple wanted to use DisplayPort, but needed to keep its media partners happy (it's a company, after all), so they baked HDCP into it. It's not used for anything except DRM'd HD iTunes content (again, video content is pretty much universally DRM'd anyway). Phone locking and anti-jailbreaking measures are nothing new and are an unfortunate measure that comes from doing business with telecom giants. Just ask Motorola, HTC, and others.

As for locking Mac OS X down to Apple hardware, it's is in their best interest as a hardware company. If they didn't lock it down, they'd have to, one, completely shift their business strategy to become a software business and, two, charge way more for OS X and bake in some sort of Genuine OS X licensing scheme just like everybody has known to love in the Windows world. It's not like they exactly lock it down tight either. In fact, Snow Leopard has probably been the easiest version of OS X to crack since it went x86 compatible.

To this day, though, I still don't agree with their decision to require authentication chips in their iDevice peripherals. It didn't really affect me (I'm not a big TV Out guy), but I do feel for the people that bought peripherals that didn't have the authentication chips and expected them to work on their new devices.

Really? $570 million isn't much to you?

http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2008/03/how_much_profit.php

Artists have been complaining about the profit margins for years.

Those are complete guesses. We don't have conclusive numbers because Apple lumps iTunes Store sales figures into a broader category, but they continue to insist that they make just above break-even. http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100225/apple-billions-of-songs-billions-of-apps-not-much-profit/. They could be hiding something, but we all know how much Apple likes to gloat if they have a success on their hands, so probably not.

[.Neo]

So let me get this correct, because i have an iPad, MBP, and iPods I'm a fanatic or cult of Mac

Yes. And so am I because I own a Mac Pro, LED Cinema Display and iPod touch. You want to get together and plan the destruction of the world and annihilation of the human race? Maybe Elliott would like to join us as well. I bet I can persuade my mom as well as she uses an eMac together with some friends.

I'll be sure to get a bottle Prosecco and a couple of beers if you guys bring something over to snack. I'm free next Wednesday!

[Stetson]

I dunno about actually calling it a religion. If you did, there are a lot of other things you could call religions.

Like when Glenn Beck came on tour to my college campus and people lined up for a full day before the doors opened.

Or when a new Twilight movie comes out.

Or a new Star Wars movie back in the day.

[Vice]

People on this forum take this Mac vs PC thing way to seriously.

[.Neo]

People on this forum take this Mac vs PC thing way to seriously.

People on this forum take themselves way to seriously. It's funny how most PC users around here have more issues with Apple, than Apple users have with PCs. Looks to me like the whole For Apple Followers, It's a Matter of Faith subject is the other way around on Neowin. :laugh:

[Stetson]

People on this forum take this Mac vs PC thing way to seriously.

Yeah, I think it's like Xbox vs PS3 or even Republican vs. Democrat. People like to create Us vs. Them situations.

[tmaxxtigger]

People on this forum take this Mac vs PC thing way to seriously.

Indeed, summed up perfectly!

[.Neo]

People like to create Us vs. Them situations.

I can see it right now: World War III will be about PC vs Mac. :laugh:

[Stetson]

I can see it right now: World War III will be about PC vs Mac. :laugh:

Yep, or Hotdogs vs Hamburgers or Shirts Tucked vs Untucked or whatever silly issue people polarize around.

[Vice]

People on this forum take themselves way to seriously. It's funny how most PC users around here have more issues with Apple, than Apple users have with PCs. Looks to me like the whole For Apple Followers, It's a Matter of Faith subject is the other way around on Neowin. :laugh:

I use both I've mentioned this on here previously I have a MacBook Pro and I have a self-build PC that I run Windows 7 on. Personally like you say I ain't got a problem with Windows. Windows has a huge software library and the latest version (7) runs brilliantly for me. I like both the operating systems for different reasons.

The idea that Apple users are somehow iSheep is in my opinion quite a flawed and generalised statement. I get the same enjoyment in opening a new Apple product as I do opening new PC hardware or trying out the newest version of Windows. It's no different to me. And I see people on Windows centric forums like this one which do the same. On this very forum you can have topics with over 1000 posts discussing the latest Microsoft operating system while its still in closed beta following PDC or PAX or whatever event just the same as how the Mac users huddle around WWDC topics.

PC and Mac users are no different really.

[tiagosilva29]

Meh, free software isn't really free

Free software is free as in freedom, but not free as in gratis. Everything in life as a cost.

[kill3rt0m4t0]

People on this forum take themselves way to seriously. It's funny how most PC users around here have more issues with Apple, than Apple users have with PCs. Looks to me like the whole For Apple Followers, It's a Matter of Faith subject is the other way around on Neowin. :laugh:

A bit telling how Apple users are so quick to go on the offensive at PCs and Microsoft over a news article in the BPN forum (read: a perfectly normal occurrence) that, in fact, makes no mention whatsoever of their imagined enemies, don't you think?

Gee, we already have a scientific study to prove it, you guys don't really need to go out of your way to show what's already been proven, you know.

[.Neo]

A bit telling how Apple users are so quick to go on the offensive at PCs and Microsoft over a news article in the BPN forum (read: a perfectly normal occurrence) that, in fact, makes no mention whatsoever of their imagined enemies, don't you think?

Gee, we already have a scientific study to prove it, you guys don't really need to go out of your way to show what's already been proven, you know.

It goes both ways, you know... But for your sake lets pretend that isn't the case. ;)

Guys, if you look at +Elliott posts history, all of them are defending Apple .... so no use arguing with him ...

And Boz has a history of continuously attacking Apple. Like I said, it goes both ways.

[Shadrack]

Its just a company that makes products. The whole "iPhone reception" and "iPad can't access the web" issues is exaggerated into a world of FUD. People tend to be fans of devices they like to use. Apple make devices people like to use. Apple didn't invent such a notion, just capitalized on it.

[tablet_user]

It's not a religion actually.. it's like the worst cult that brainwashes you and does everything to make money off you while in return promising everlasting something and telling you you are sooo much better, cooler than others because you use their products/belong to their cult.

while i agree that apple fanboys are slow they arent the worst. They are willing to pay for thier product. Tell a linux fanboy he has to pay even $1 for his distro.

[TDT]

while i agree that apple fanboys are slow they arent the worst. They are willing to pay for thier product. Tell a linux fanboy he has to pay even $1 for his distro.

Fail. He pays. He donates for the distro to be developed further. Or pays for the dvd/cd version, instead of the free download, just to support the maker. Do some research.

About this Apple thing. I'm not saying that Apple products are crap, I even use Snow Leo (on PC) for some apps that are exclusive to this OS (like Logic Studio). But Apple has a long history of misleading marketing and commercials, design over functionality, etc. I really don't understand those fanboys that hate you just because you notice a bug or flaw in some Apple product. It's quite stupid to pretend that your device/OS/whatever "just works", when there are websites like macfixitforums.com. And yes, I can say this, compared to Microsoft, Apple is nothing, in many ways. Yes, they may have some things that got very popular, but keep in mind that Windows (and other MS apps) are for 90%+ people of this world. It's impossible to have a bug-free OS, or something that "just works" in this case, because it can't be tested in all scenarios. Apple knows this, and, knowing they're a minority, they turned this into a marketing campaign. But even so, their products are far from perfect. And, to be honest, I'll have a MS product any day instead of an Apple product.

You can say whatever you want, but Apple fanboys are really fanatics. Not all of them, but most of them. They would buy even a can of **** if Jobs would say it will prevent cancer. This is a serious psychical issue.