MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Nice how they mentioned that iTunes sells in AAC and not MP3 without mentioning that AAC is a better format. Lots of neophytes think MP3 is the gold standard.

May 21, 08 - 08:02 am Comment from: TowerTone

The Beat Goes On......as usual.

No matter how information is presented, no matter where it comes from, it is important to read information critically. What more can be said? It seems that "journalists" now-a-days rarely, if ever, check their facts. Why you'd almost think that they are tools of marketing departments.

Heck I didn't even know itunes DRM free were now 99 cents. I thought all the iTunes Plus were 1.29, that's how they came out at first. I even paid more for some of them the first month they were out.

In all fairness the original article was partially true. iTunes plus is an extra $0.40 in Canada according to Apple's website. It may not have been completely accurate but according to Apple it is true. I would love to side with Apple but when your wrong your wrong.

http://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/store/music.html

Cheers

May 21, 08 - 08:21 am Comment from: Hm...

Lamplighter, mule driver, chimney sweep, blacksmith, fact-checker. All once positions in high demand. Now relatively obsolete...

May 21, 08 - 08:28 am Comment from: Mr. Peabody

Steve Ballmer to Napster, "Okay guys and gals, check's in the mail, nice doing business with you."

Napster to AP, "Okay ugys and gals, check's in the mail, nice doing business with you."

Aaah yes, freedom of the press: Freedom to distort and mislead, on demand. It's a wonderful world isn't it?

Hate to break it to you, but nobody gives a flying fuck about Canada.

And "you're" is the contraction of "you are." As in, you're a moron.

@Shadow:
PLEASE don't mention Canada on these comments.
Do you REALLY want the USA to start noticing this country? What if they decide to "help" us?!
@Newsflash:
That's right, nothing to see here, move along. Oh, look - Dallas! Cool! Hey, Southern California is nice! Look down there, everybody!

@ Newsflash

You're completely correct with regards to the grammar. To bad someone with your literary skills has to resort to playground language in your responses.

Insults don't change facts.

Have a nice day

Cheers

Help us with what exactly??? All I ever hear from virtually everyone outside of the USA is a lot of bitching about this country. I don't ever see much help being offered.

May 21, 08 - 09:05 am Comment from: Hm...

@ Shadow

And your wrong is that "your wrong" should've been "you're wrong."

Not to engage in wrongfully attacking, just pointing out the wrongness of your construction in the rightness of your thought. <grin>

I think most people outside of the States would rather be living next door to a Canadian rather than a yank.

@Hm...

Newsflash already pointe that out. I will have to remember to proof a little slower.

Thanks for the courteous correction.

Cheers

I've learned not to believe anything I read. If it effects me, I check the facts. Because I know for damn sure, no journalist will.

I work in the defence industry and have met many Americans. Like me they do the bidding of their government.

The Americans that I have met are generous and want to make a positive change in the world.

I am proud to refer to Americans as my cousins. We have more in common with each other when our governments are excluded.

Cheers

BTW

The original article is still partially correct.

May 21, 08 - 09:51 am Comment from: shen

"I think most people outside of the States would rather be living next door to a Canadian rather than a yank"

rather a lot of people INSIDE the States feel that way too.....

Thanks, shen.

You've ably confirmed for one and all the prevailing phenomenon that no one loathes himself and his country as much as does the average liberal American. Societal perfection is the goal here for the Birkenstock crowd, and one iota of slippage from that criterion brings on national breast-beating the likes of which is seldom seen around the world. We have raised self-loathing in America to a high art, so congrats to you, Shen. Perhaps you'd like to live next door to Germany, Russia, Sudan, Japan, Iran, China, Cambodia, or their historical like in your next emanation. Your guilty conscience will be more than a little assuaged then, I'm sure.

May 21, 08 - 11:04 am Comment from: Roberto

Canada is being a smartass over this iTunes crap. Bush has signed legislation that will will outlaw them forever. We begin bombing Canada in five minutes.

America is a nice, friendly, to Canadians at least, country but I wouldn't want to live there.

It's hard enough living in a socialist country like Canada, thank you very much.

50% of Americans are liberal.

75% plus of Canadians are liberal. It's like living in Sweden!

May 21, 08 - 11:11 am Comment from: Roberto

PS - just paraphrase joking, as Reagan was when he joked about bombing russia. No offense to our fine northern neighbors! Have a nice day, eh.

May 21, 08 - 11:13 am Comment from: Roberto

O Canada!
Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!
Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix!

@ Missy

OMG you were totally correct in your opinion. I will have to remember that the earth begins and ends with the good old US of A.

My apologies to everyone in C_shh_a and the United States for taking us off topic.

Have a great day.

Cheers

You don't need to live in a foreign country to see some of the wrongs the USA has done. US citizens, as a group, just don't give care. We get ours, so screw everyone else... even our fellow Americans (Canadians, Mexicans, etc).

May 21, 08 - 11:54 am Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@Register or Login says, "I've learned not to believe anything I read. If it effects me, I check the facts. Because I know for damn sure, no journalist will."

My sentiments about your sentiments are: Oh they'll check the facts alright - They'll check just enough facts to spin the story the way they're getting paid to.

The American press may have been liberal leaning in the early half of the last century, but at least there was, I believe, a genuine attempt at objectivity/accuracy, and some sense of responsibility along these lines. Now days if I'm liberal I watch/listen/read a preset group of channels/journals, and if I'm conservative the same goes. And this is what I love the best, some of us flatter ourselves that we're being objective because we occasionally watch or read propaganda - uh, I mean news, from the other side. What the hell!

And please spare me any rants about MDN - Come on really - we come here to gloat when MS screws up, bitch and moan when Apple screws up, and to celebrate all things Apple. To even pretend that that's news or any kind of pretense at objectivity is a waste of time.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled propaganda - news - uh, programming.

May 21, 08 - 12:08 pm Comment from: Asmodeus

Another MDN thread sinks into the jingoistic pit of hell.

Time to find another to read.

May 21, 08 - 12:34 pm Comment from: Cubert

Apple needs to start calling AAC mp4. That way consumers will understand that it is supposed to be the successor to mp3. Most think it stands for Apple Audio Codec, and is therefore, incompatible with any player but the iPod (non-DRM protected AAC files I mean).

Shadow indicated iTunes Canada prices were higher than iTunes US, but they are the same .99 per track for both DRM free and standard. On a political note, Canada has a minority conservative government, which is essentially slightly right of center, and so far the best we have seen in a long while.

May 21, 08 - 02:35 pm Comment from: G4Dualie

"In all fairness the original article was partially true.... I would love to side with Apple but when your wrong your wrong."

You choose to side with the article because it's "partially true" and regretfully cannot side with Apple because they're wrong. There are a lot of wrongs here but Apple isn't one of them. At least not within the context of this particular article.

Forgetting for the moment that Apple is the injured party here, the glaring omission in this article is that nowhere was it mentioned that Apple declined to comment or that Veiga even bothered to ask for their position on Napster, who was snatch from the jaws of bankruptcy, is entering the music business once again. This was a transgression.

The author obviously had very low expectations for his article because Apple could have provided a generous bid to welcome the competition into an arena already littered with the bodies of past online music merchants. Nope. Instead he talked to two people; Gorog and Enderle, who by the way was right for the first time in his career! And Gorog, who is amazed he has even arrived, thinks he's the Yin to Apple's Yang is drunk with power and is still a little loopy from all of the attention he's been getting from his private equity partners, thinks he's in control. Hah!

Dumping Roxio to acquire Napster was Gorog's first mistake. Roxio could have left him and his progeny wanting for nothing for the rest of their lives, so it makes you wonder why Gorog is going to bet the farm on digital music, peddling an inferior audio codec. This is his second mistake. Two steps forward, one step back. That's what we Yanks call the Two-step Shuffle; usually accompanied by some song your mama used to like.

I know we Americans love an underdog but ferchrissakes, to dump Roxio, a company who pioneered a remarkable interface that accessed the horrifically voodoo-like science that is Blue and Red Pages, for a company in bankruptcy, and for good reason, is really pushing the limits of respectable odds of realizing the American Dream, a bit of magic for which we Yanks have lost all sense of perspective.

If you're going to challenge Apple you better bring your A-game, a sad, slow lesson learned by Microsoft. But, if you're going to partner with, rather than challenge, or treat with contempt, the cutthroat pirates of the music industry (or Microsoft for that matter), where nothing is as it ever seems and you could wake one day to find they own you and your progeny, you will become their bitch.

Gorog won't survive a knife fight with the music industry. That will be his third and fatal mistake; to think that he could let the music industry put a velvet glove to the controls of his ship by providing expert guidance in the form of carpet-bagging weasels who began undermining his authority from day one.

From where I sit, Veiga appears to be just another has-been who would squander his own career by allowing themselves, or their editor, to play fast and loose with the truth. Which is another way we Yanks say "partially true".

May 21, 08 - 02:36 pm Comment from: G4Dualie

Apple needs to start calling AAC mp4.

Bingo!

@ Redline

I indicated, through the link provided, that Apple said that iTunes Plus was more than DRM music. If this is not true then Apple needs to correct the information.

What I was trying to point out was that someone may have researched and found the information at Apple and then reported it. If the article originated in Canada it would be considered accurate. It may have then been posted on the wire for others to use.

Bottom line Apple needs to make sure the information they provide at their websites is accurate.

Cheers

May 21, 08 - 04:10 pm Comment from: G4Dualie

Napster might have a better shot competing against Amazon, which isn't solely focused on selling music downloads. — Alex Veiga

"Napster's brand and focus on the medium should give it an advantage," Enderle said.

This is wrong on so many levels and the chief reason why Veiga is writing about business for the AP and Enderle is the goto guy when you can't find someone to provide the answers you want to hear. It also flies in the face of Jobs' business/visionary philosophy of skating to where the puck will be - not where it was...

The problem for Apple and its shareholders is that AP articles are syndicated and this awful story will be peddled to every editor with a wont to be controversial. Unfortunately for Napster and all interested parties is that AP articles are syndicated and this awful story will be peddled to every editor with a wont to be controversial.

Veiga and Enderle haven't done Napster any favors.

Advantage? Better shot? Over what or whom? Apple or consumers? And why are they even talking like this? This is NOT what the investors want to hear on the day the news breaks that Napster is back.

What's sad is with "Grand Opening" articles like this, which are normally composed of a mixture of company propaganda laced with journalism, is they are used to differentiate you from your competition (apparently not yet understood by the author) and can have a dramatic impact on forward momentum. Especially if the author is an idiot.

Here we have an individual who has a history of defending the music industry by lambasting the academic world for allegedly fostering peer-to-peer networks. In fact, Veiga was encouraging universities with marginal success, to illegally squash select network activity suspected of music piracy. The music industry and Comcast and their ilk were providing the means to violate students rights and some duped universities realized they were being used by the forces of evil, while other colleges and universities wanted nothing to do with it at all.

Just like Amazon, the iTunes Store isn't solely focused on selling music downloads either. There are movies, television, and books AND a whole other set of business (lawyers) entities with which to deal. We all know the media content, much like Apple's wonderful computer software, is a loss-leader to hardware sales and let's face it, if the iTunes Store were shuttered tomorrow, Apple Inc. would continue to thrive.

Unfortunately for Napster, music is their only commodity and when people begin forsaking music purchases for gasoline and groceries in this economic decline, Napster will begin yet another long decline into bankruptcy. Oh sure the music industry will be more than willing partners to keep this malleable store-front open for as long as possible but they face stiff competition from other content providers who offer alternatives to something other than music. More importantly though, in tough economic times, peer-to-peer networks should realize a brisk increase in traffic. Why marry the cow...?

Napster is now the poster child of the music industry!