Perhaps you’ve heard about Apple and EMI striking the first blow to crumble the wall of Digital Rights Management on music. I really can’t comment on the blessed event itself without tripping over somebody else’s analysis. There is one tangental point to all of this that I think is very interesting: this move will be a big step in breaking the walls of Apple prejudice in the minds of geeks.
A name like Craftsman to a carpenter is like the names Microsoft or Apple to a geek and there’s generally a sense of product loyalty (or repulsion) with either. In the case of Apple, a lot of geeks are still biased against the company for their previous history of proprietary technology and the decline in the quality of their products during the late 80s and early 90s. Recently Apple has been doing a lot of things that have been gaining back the trust and the iPod and the Mac have demonstrated that not only can Apple create some really slick products but that they can also do it in a way that is thoroughly standards-based. The proprietary nature of the iPod and iTunes ecosystem tied together with DRM was one of the last major arguments left.
Oh, and in addition to my post of March 23rd, add AAC to the list.
Lastly, I promise no more Apple-based articles for a while. I need to branch out into things I know a little bit less of.
Apple’s Proprietary Past Precedes Present Plans
Apple is often accused of using only closed standards. This was true 10 years ago, but a lot of things have changed since then. Unfortunately the closed nature of the iPod, iPhone, and iTunes music store have had a reverse halo effect on those who remember Apple’s past and aren’t looking at their present any further than their entertainment devices. While Apple computers have gotten easier to update since the transition to Intel, I’ll admit that the designs of some models make that somewhat difficult. Still, there’s much standardized love to be had in the Apple computer world such as:
- Apple has led the industry in the implementation of USB, Firewire, DVI, Bluetooth, and gigabit ethernet
- Every application in OS X can print to PDF
- OS X can host AFP, SMB/CIFS, web, SSH, and FTP services
- OS X reads everything above plus HFS(+), FAT(32), NTFS, NFS, WebDAV, ZFS (soon), and more
- All Cocoa-based OS X applications support Unicode
- OS X can connect to Active Directory, LDAP, and SLP
- Address Book exports to the vCard format
- Dashboard uses HTML, CSS, and Javascript
- iCal exports to the iCalendar format
- iChat supports the AIM and Jabber protocols
- iTunes rips to the MP3 format by default
- Mail uses plain text files (with some XML mixed in) to store messages
- Preference files in OS X are XML formatted
- Preview, OS X’s viewer, can read and save BMP, GIF, JPEG(2000), Photoshop, PICT, PNG, SGI, TGA, and TIFF
