Re: [Marxism] iPods are evil

[Horacio Oliveira <horaciooliveira@xxxxxxx>]

On Jun 23, 2006, at 8:41 AM, Muammar Kris Khaira wrote:

> I'm not sure if there are any computer hardware companies that
> don't exploit workers in Asia.
>
> However, being an underdog in the OS market, clever advertising and
> other initiatives like using the free, open source FreeBSD kernel
> for Mac OS X has created a halo of righteousness for them in the
> eyes of consumers.

Some of the people involved are very much a part of the open source
community and they have pushed Apple beyond "halo" towards even
better open source behavior. Dave Hyatt for example.. see

http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/

or the whole notion of OpenDarwin

http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/


> Apple has many other great evils in comparison to other companies
> -- DRM e.g. you can't copy music back out of the iPod and
> restricting their Music Store to iPods. In the music hardware
> market, they're not the underdogs.

Apple uses MPEG-4 AAC (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Advanced_Audio_Coding) as a standards format (not open but at least
the code is visible unlike Real or WM) created by many companies.
However, The DRM is proprietary, but most of the restrictions are a
product of the record companies rather than Apple. It was only by
implementing the DRM that Apple could get them to open the vaults...
As far as free enterprise goes Apple has been pretty good about
declaring a set price for all and not allowing the multiplicity of
pricing structures that ultimately screw buyers... I wish they'd just
do direct copyright to the authors of the works and skip the music
labels...

but then they are corporation...


> A debate on Apple's monopoly (click Thread Next to follow the thread)
> http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
> 200605/msg00209.html
>
> One of Apple's DRM technologies
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay
>
> Regards,
> Mac user
>
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