The killer problem with WMP11

intrepid wrote:

I hate the stupid things because I work in one of Australias largest retail stores and all people ever ask is "do you have iPods" or "whats an mp3 player, is it like an iPod?". Maybe it's the uneducated public I hate - but either way someone has to answer for this "tazo" of the electronic world... and I hope it fades soon or I'll go postal!

I can see how that would get annoying

It would annoy me if iPods were rubbish or overpriced and were only popular because they were trendy, but actually they're well made and although they used to be expensive, they're now very competitively priced. In fact until very recently you couldn't buy the Creative equivalent of the 30Gb iPod Video (the snappily named Zen Vision:M) for the same price, let alone less. Amazon.co.uk now have them for a tad under 190ukp which is about the same price as you can buy the 30Gb iPod for, but still the Zen is thicker and heavier and there's no 60Gb version available at all.

What does annoy me about the iPod is that by only supporting Apple's own (ironically named) Fairplay DRM, users can only buy legal downloads from Apple's own iTunes Store. Then having done so, you're stuck with buying iPods forever more, or lose access to the tracks that you bought. People complain about Microsoft all the time, but at least Microsoft licences it's tech. WMA might not be free (as in beloved of hippies, freeloaders and malcontents), but any music player vendor can licence it, which is what all major player manufacturers except Apple have. If iPods supported WMA I'd have bought one already, but it's telling that Apple would rather lose the business of people like me who value choice, in favour of controlling the market made of up people who don't.

As for WMP11, Microsoft's efforts to tackle iPod dominance suck and Microsoft's licencees must dispair. There should be one really strong brand (WMP is *not* a strong brand), promoted heavily by Microsoft as well as the player vendors and music stores, that lets people know that all these non-Apple products are interoperable. It should also then make some effort to point out that by buying an iPod you are locking yourself into always buying iPods - put some value on that wide compatability and support WMA has.

Cairo wrote:

WMA isn't open, either. It's Windows Media Audio, after all. Microsoft provides players, encoders and "music management" tools only for its own operating system.

Who said it was "open" (whatever the hell that means)? I said that Microsoft licence it. Apple could licence it if they wanted to. Maybe they'd be interested if they didn't control the majority of the music player market, but as it is, they're not.

Of course people can bleat about free/open formats. If you want that, buy a music player that only plays mp3 (don't forget that that is patent encumbered though so maybe if you should try and find one that plays Ogg if you're being really anal about it). The only place you'll buy music from is dodgy Russian sites that pay no royalties.

If you want to buy download music legally you have to chose between Apple and WMA-compatible players. If Microsoft and Apple switched places the justice department would be right on them for leveraging their player market share to force people to use iTunes Store and then lock them into buying iPods forever because Apple won't licence Fairplay. Apple only gets away with it because it's the smaller company.