I found it far too restrictive. It’s like buying a Toyota and only being allowed to use gas from the Toyota garage – or a Hotpoint Washing Machine, but only being allowed to use their own brand of washing powder.

They should open up the spec of the iPod so that you can use any kind of audio format, instead of trying to monopolize the marketplace.

Just my two pence! )

Peace out x

Well, they buy their first iPod because they like it. They buy their second iPod because they have to, or else lose access to their iTunes purchases, or have to compromise with lossy-compressed songs burned to CD and perhaps ripped again with loss of quality.

Perhaps they still like the iPod, perhaps they don’t. But the lock-in doesn’t seem good to me. I think we would benefit from a more open system.

That said, I take your point completely: Apple is where it is because of the failure of others to compete effectively – especially Microsoft, I suppose, though both Creative and Real in this market before Apple.

Tim

However, the music player market is competitive as hell. Everyone has access to the technologies – flash memory, small hard drives. MP3 is easy; WMA gets licensed; even AAC can be played back. You can work out where iTunes stores songs. Apple doesn’t have any lock-in on people ripping CDs; and iTunes exclusives are hardly a lock-in to the iTunes/iPod combo, because (as you pointed out) you can burn it to CD.

Apple had no natural advantage in the music player market, no monopoly to exploit. I don’t see why the leading player in a market should have to open up just because it’s the leader.

Even the AAC format that Apple uses as the default encoding in iTunes isn’t its own – it’s a standard. It’s open for licensing. Yes, the iPod only works with iTunes. But to work backward from the iPod, which people choose because they like it, to Apple having to open up its whole system, doesn’t quite gel to me.

Charles

Fair enough

Incidentally, I actually agree that the lock-in of FairPlay is enough to ensure that I won’t buy a sone from iTunes either.

Regards,

Rob…

Who says? I consider it anti-competitive; further, I wouldn’t purchase a Zune song any more willingly than I would an iTunes song.

It is just not so important because Zune has a tiny market share.

Nobody outside Microsoft can make sense of the Zune lock-in; it looks stupid.

I agree with your other remarks; that’s just how it works.

Tim

Note, for instance, that MS does exactly the same thing as iTunes with Zune but that isn’t considered “anti-competitive”. Zune doesn’t even tell you the price of songs, just the “points”. Also, the other way around, no one says that Apple is “anti-competitive” because it doesn’t handle its APIs the way the MS is being forced to.

Funny old world when you do something so well that you become the market leader, isn’t it?!