srsly

i’m all about device convergence when it comes to cell phones and music players. motorola’s ROKR is nice, but it’s not quite there storage wise. the MM-9000 and the Samsung MM-A940 are ugly as shit, and also limited by storage. not only that, but according to this article, Sprint seems to think people that own these poorly designed phones will subscribe to extra services, and then pay $2.50 a pop for songs to listen to on said ugly devices.
apple’s system on the other hand, is nice and cheap; granted the device costs just as much as a cell phone but with no phone ability. unfortunately the service only allows downloads in apple’s proprietary format; which essentailly locks you into their hardware. which isn’t any worse than any other music download service; they all lock you to a device in that the music will only play on a device that has the DRM software on it. other services have the upper hand by having a wide variety of hardware/devices to play your music on. that choice isn’t very comforting though seeing as how well designed the ipod is and how much you get for your money. yes they are expensive, though i think it’s worth it. and you’re certainly getting more bang for your buck now that they play video.
i guess the point is, nobody has this downloadable media thing quite right. it all seems to be shackled to some kind of proprietary thing, FairPlay/AAC for apple, probably Microsoft DRM for most other devices. Neither is compatible, and neither company wants to play nice. throw in the record companies and their NEED for DRM, which i think is perfectly reasonable and an entirely different topic, and we’re at an impasse.
nobody has quite figured out how to please all three parties, and i think it may be a while until someone does. for now i think apple is doing a fine job, though with the one caveat of distributing their product in a format supported by a very limited amount of hardware. they’ve been on top of competetive pricing, and constantly updating their hardware with new features. what it boils down to is they have the market cornered, and they aren’t abusing their customers. a couple things need to happen for this to be the perfect product: first, apple needs to start distributing things in mp3, second, people need to get their heads out of their asses and come up with a standard for DRM so those files distributed in a widely readable format will be granted the ability to be played on numerous devices. but those things won’t happen because the first one will require cooperation between a number of companies that want nothing to do with each other in this space, and the second would level the playing field as far as apple is concerned and they really don’t want that.