BTW Ogg should be free, but we don’t know if it would stand up to patent challenges. It’s never been popular enough for that to be tested.

iPod & iPhone support all mainstream non-DRM codecs. iPod & iPhone doesn’t support Ogg.

…therefore Ogg is not mainstream.

iPod & iPhone support all mainstream non-DRM codecs. Ogg isn’t a mainstream codec. Ok, that’s harsh, but it’s true.

Paul Davis: “barriers … [Apple assumes] getting media into itunes is the first thing anyone would do before putting it on their ipod…”

You said earlier, “its about [Apple] making it as easy to use non-commercial, small-audience distribution methods as their own.” Well, I’d say Apple already does this — anyone who distributes music with a mainstream codec has no problem reaching iPod users. I think that’s fairly “barrier-free.” It’s true that you can’t use your own music management software — that’s not optimal. If I didn’t like iTunes so much, I’d be more concerned.

The fact that there are now multiple vendors for digital audio != the pipe dream described. Its another sales channel, no more no less. Its good for us in that at least we have a chance to get our non mainstream stuff into a channel with the same level of reach as any major retail chain, but that does not mean in any way that consumers/listeners will seek our stuff out. That right there was the big lie.

Sure I’m not growing fat off iTunes checks, but honestly I dont have the time or programming skills to set up my own storefront or the desire to invest in hiring someone to do that for me.

As for the touch/phone related issues, I never expect my toaster to make me coffee so maybe I’m just too old to understand your complaints. Or maybe to me the desire for anything and everything to be the way I want it looks like entitlementitis. Now if you will pardon me, there are some kids on my lawn and I must go shout at them.

a) we know what codecs you want to use and we’re the only place you can get them for your ipod

b) getting media into itunes is the first thing anyone would do before putting it on their ipod

the second of these flows directly from apple’s initial goal of using the ipod to sell more macs (before they released itunes for windows) and perhaps more charitably their desire to provide the user with a very integrated experience. as long as the user’s needs and desires fit with apple’s idea of what they should be, its all good. the ipod is *so* dependent on itunes (the app) that it appears crippled compared to, say, my iAudio devices, which “just work” on all 3 platforms without any special software. i have a mac, but i don’t keep my music on it, and i don’t buy music from itunes (emusic & magnatune mostly). my music collection was already ripped to ogg/vorbis format before i got an ipod touch (for quality reasons). no DB access makes use of my preferred music manager (rhythmbox) impossible, even the very idea of a “DB” for what is just a filesystem in essence … these make my ipod touch most a paperweight for me.

the situation feels to me quite analogous to the situation with developer tools on OS X, actually. as long as you’re willing to stay inside the box apple has built for you, the tools are superb. as soon as you want to start to interact with 3rd party software libraries and tools, XCode starts to suck eggs. and worse, if you want to do cross-platform stuff, you end up losing a lot of what XCode offers because its so entangled with XCode itself (suprise!) which is clearly not-cross-platform.

moreover, i’d love to be developing ipod apps right now, but i am just unwilling to be forced through the filter that apple has imposed. is it really helping ipod users that apple does this? only time will tell. they’ve sold us all a really capable computing device and made it clear that actually, we shouldn’t think of it that way. their choice, i suppose, but deeply frustrating to those of us who can see the technical capabilities of the machine.

i’d also note in passing that i am very frustrated by the ipod touch/iphone physical interface. the device is cool when you want to hold it in your hand and look at it when using it, but compared to other players i have owned, it is really incredibly difficult to use “blind”. I have also found that the touch screen is close to unusable once you start sweating even a little, making the use of my touch during workouts very restrictive. nitpicks? sure – the overall design of the thing is amazing. but are they important to me, and by extension, perhaps others? i think so.

I agree that the embeddable player thing is a problem. Unfortunately, a lot of players require Flash, which is kind of dumb, if you think of it. Why should you need an entire application plug-in architecture just to play a piece of media? Answer: you shouldn’t, and as YouTube has demonstrated, there are effective Flash-free workarounds for vendors willing to implement them. Extra interactive controls can be added via Javascript, too.

So I’ll add that to my previous sermon — let my codecs go! Don’t tie my media playback to an entire application plug-in architecture…