Darryl
Stunt Coordinator
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2002
- Messages
- 165
A perfect analogy is tough to come by. My jeans and panties analogy was definitely worse than the DVD/VHS analogy.
The memory stick example isn't great either because Sony does license the technology to other companies. My non-Sony monitor has a memory stick reader, as does my non-Sony PDA. The memory stick I've got in my camera was made by Lexar. So yeah, you can only use the Sony-proprietary media (the memory stick) in a Sony-proprietary slot (the reader), but Sony allows other companies to provide such a slot and to create such media. Apple allows neither. If anything the memory stick example supports the conjecture that Apple's practices really are different from the norm.
Even though Apple's restrictions would strike me as wrong even if it didn't directly affect me, the biggest reason this is a pet peave of mine is because it gets in the way of my preferred usage scenario - managing all my media on a central server and streaming to extenders. Apple won't support non-Apple DRM in iTunes, and they won't let anything but iTunes provide support for Apple DRM. That makes it impossible (outside of transcoding) to manage all my media in a single app. As many legitimate complaints as there may be against Microsoft, they did a good job of making media center extensible. There's even a way to add AAC/MP4 capabilities (3ivex codec), but it won't work with Apple's DRM because Apple won't license the technology.
Bottom line is that it bugs me but doesn't seem to bug most other people. Oh well, I can live with that.
The memory stick example isn't great either because Sony does license the technology to other companies. My non-Sony monitor has a memory stick reader, as does my non-Sony PDA. The memory stick I've got in my camera was made by Lexar. So yeah, you can only use the Sony-proprietary media (the memory stick) in a Sony-proprietary slot (the reader), but Sony allows other companies to provide such a slot and to create such media. Apple allows neither. If anything the memory stick example supports the conjecture that Apple's practices really are different from the norm.
Even though Apple's restrictions would strike me as wrong even if it didn't directly affect me, the biggest reason this is a pet peave of mine is because it gets in the way of my preferred usage scenario - managing all my media on a central server and streaming to extenders. Apple won't support non-Apple DRM in iTunes, and they won't let anything but iTunes provide support for Apple DRM. That makes it impossible (outside of transcoding) to manage all my media in a single app. As many legitimate complaints as there may be against Microsoft, they did a good job of making media center extensible. There's even a way to add AAC/MP4 capabilities (3ivex codec), but it won't work with Apple's DRM because Apple won't license the technology.
Bottom line is that it bugs me but doesn't seem to bug most other people. Oh well, I can live with that.