8 ms·

I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you

I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the users use iTunes and have never used anything else. It's these users that will have the problems of being 'seemingly' locked into an ecosystem.. mainly because they don't know (or care to learn) anything different and it becomes too hard.

DeepDuh 14y ago
What's the difference on PCs then? If users don't know how to move the stuff on their smartphones, they probably wouldn't know how to do it on a PC. Plus, many probably wouldn't know how to handle all that media period, except what's available from web services - where again there is no difference. I fail to see the point.
w0utert 14y ago
>> I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the users use iTunes and have never used anything else. That's just BS, you can simply select all your music and videos and whatever in iTunes and drag it to a folder. Probably there's even an export function, but I'm not sure, because I've been 'locked in the Apple ecosystem' long enough I never had the urge to move my music around (it's been sitting in an iTunes library on a Linux AFS share all this time, which is also accessed by my Squeezebox. Talk about being locked in :-S). If all else fails you can just type 'iTunes' in Spotlight and it will come up with the folder that holds all your music, so you can copy it from there. As for all the other content that 'makes you part of the ecosystem' on something like iOS or Windows Phone: all these iOS and WP apps are built for their respective platforms, so you wouldn't be able to magically transport them to an Android phone (or whatever platform) and run them anyway. You can move them between different phones and tablets that run the same OS if you want though. The comparison with a DVD player that only plays discs from a single vendor is kind of stupid. A DVD player is like a fridge or a television, it simply performs one single function and that's what people buy it for. A HD-DVD never worked in a Blu-Ray player, and a VHS tape never worked in a Betamax player either. I can make up useless analogies all day. It's not really clear what the author of this article actually proposes would be better than having a few 'ecosystems' like iOS, WP or Android. A one-size-fits-all ecosystem that everybody is forced to use? Many different ecosystems that somehow all have exactly the same features so you can use all your applications and content on every device?
- colin_jack 14y ago
  Na I don't think it is BS, especially if you've spent time rating your music. I've had an IPod since they first came out and I've been rating my music ever since, and then using playlists to ensure anything I rate poorly doesn't get transferred. I really wouldn't be happy losing that information in a move to Android.
  - w0utert 14y ago
    >> Na I don't think it is BS, especially if you've spent time rating your music. [..]. I really wouldn't be happy losing that information in a move to Android. That's a tad specific don't you think? Do you really propose that every piece of software in the world should be able to use every single bit of metadata ever used in any other random piece of software, on any other OS and any other device? Most of the iTunes metadata is in the ID3 tags, so it gets transferred. Not sure about ratings, but if they are not there it's probably because not all ID3 tag versions support it, or because different players interpret these fields differently. Anyway, tools exist to export this data from an iTunes library, nobody is stopping you from using them. I don't really see how this is different from moving your music + ratings from Android to any other OS anyway. It's not like I can export a music library from Android or WP and preserve and import all their non-standard metadata into iTunes, right?
    - colin_jack 14y ago
      Tried a while back, the experience wasn't great and I didn't find any approach that I thought was viable. I probably will try again soon though as I've since moved to Ubuntu so really need to get off ITunes. It isn't very different that moving from Android to another OS. Just to be clear I'm not criticizing Apple specifically, I'm just saying that the process of moving is not quite as painless as you might hope for. I do think it is in the big players interest to consider making it easier to move. I know why they don't but I do think a company like Apple, confident in their hardware and software, would stand to benefit as much as lose out from such standardization. People like me might give up on ITunes for a year or two until the retina airs are more reasonable then switch straight back, where as right now if I do take the pain of switching I'm unlikely to be back any time soon.
clarky07 14y ago
What the heck does he want? Should Apple make iTunes work for all 50 thousand different android devices too?
- edent 14y ago
  No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. You could store your music on your Xbox and push it to your iPhone - or in iTunes and push it to your Windows Phone. Imagine if your BlackBerry could only send emails to other BlackBerry devices. We wouldn't accept that (although BBM is trying to push us that way) - so why should we accept it with other services?
  - w0utert 14y ago
    >> No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. If there were one published specification for storing a music library, before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it, and some software vendor will create and sell some piece of software that extends the format to provide it. It's just supply and demand. I really can't wrap my head around this, are you really asking for generic, one-size-fits-all file formats, applications and hardware for everything, or are you just being naive?
    - edent 14y ago
      I'm probably just being naive :-) Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end.
      - w0utert 14y ago
        >> Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Bad example. E-mail is basically just formatted text with binary attachments to be interpreted by the e-mail client. Still, almost every e-mail client uses some internal database-like format to store your inbox and augment it with metadata to make it easily searchable and whatever. E-mail clients are to e-mail what music players like iTunes are to music files. You can't just pick up your Thunderbird e-mail database and drop it somewhere for Outlook to use, just like you can't pick up your iTunes library and drop it into Windows Media Player or whatever other music player. With some effort you can often import/export e-mail databases between clients, but that's no different from importing/exporting an iTunes library. >> Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. One of the most-heard complaints about the HTML standard is that it moves so freaking slow, and is still full of cruft and inconveniences from 20 years ago. HTML isn't actually that great at all, it's just the least worst option we have if you want cross-platform markup with all the features HTML offers today. That's not to say I propose a proprietary alternative to HTML by the way, just that HTML is hardly the prime example of a model you'd want to apply to every other piece of software. >> Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end. First of all that's not entirely true, because USB only defines a transport layer, not how the data going over the wire should be interpreted. It isn't all that different from something like RS-232 serial communication, just a lot more advanced. In itself there's nothing you can do with USB alone, you still need a protocol, which is usually implemented by a driver. Apart from generic hardware such as mass storage devices, almost any USB device that implements any kind of specialized hardware functions needs a hardware-specific driver, and more often than not, thesre are proprietary. Don't confuse 'open' with 'generic' by the way, because even if some piece of hardware uses an 'open' protocol, it's still not 'generic' as you can't do anything with it without a (very specific) driver. Second, USB is not really the epitome of 'openness' either, as you have to pay royalties to sell hardware that uses the USB standard and carries the USB logo. Any more examples? ;-)

DeepDuh 14y ago

What's the difference on PCs then? If users don't know how to move the stuff on their smartphones, they probably wouldn't know how to do it on a PC. Plus, many probably wouldn't know how to handle all that media period, except what's available from web services - where again there is no difference. I fail to see the point.

w0utert 14y ago

>> I think he means tied up more in the sense of its 'difficult' to move it for the average user. sure you can pull out your content and sync it to android if you know what your doing (read - tech savvy-ish) but the vast majority of the users use iTunes and have never used anything else. That's just BS, you can simply select all your music and videos and whatever in iTunes and drag it to a folder. Probably there's even an export function, but I'm not sure, because I've been 'locked in the Apple ecosystem' long enough I never had the urge to move my music around (it's been sitting in an iTunes library on a Linux AFS share all this time, which is also accessed by my Squeezebox. Talk about being locked in :-S). If all else fails you can just type 'iTunes' in Spotlight and it will come up with the folder that holds all your music, so you can copy it from there. As for all the other content that 'makes you part of the ecosystem' on something like iOS or Windows Phone: all these iOS and WP apps are built for their respective platforms, so you wouldn't be able to magically transport them to an Android phone (or whatever platform) and run them anyway. You can move them between different phones and tablets that run the same OS if you want though. The comparison with a DVD player that only plays discs from a single vendor is kind of stupid. A DVD player is like a fridge or a television, it simply performs one single function and that's what people buy it for. A HD-DVD never worked in a Blu-Ray player, and a VHS tape never worked in a Betamax player either. I can make up useless analogies all day. It's not really clear what the author of this article actually proposes would be better than having a few 'ecosystems' like iOS, WP or Android. A one-size-fits-all ecosystem that everybody is forced to use? Many different ecosystems that somehow all have exactly the same features so you can use all your applications and content on every device?

colin_jack 14y ago
Na I don't think it is BS, especially if you've spent time rating your music. I've had an IPod since they first came out and I've been rating my music ever since, and then using playlists to ensure anything I rate poorly doesn't get transferred. I really wouldn't be happy losing that information in a move to Android.
- w0utert 14y ago
  >> Na I don't think it is BS, especially if you've spent time rating your music. [..]. I really wouldn't be happy losing that information in a move to Android. That's a tad specific don't you think? Do you really propose that every piece of software in the world should be able to use every single bit of metadata ever used in any other random piece of software, on any other OS and any other device? Most of the iTunes metadata is in the ID3 tags, so it gets transferred. Not sure about ratings, but if they are not there it's probably because not all ID3 tag versions support it, or because different players interpret these fields differently. Anyway, tools exist to export this data from an iTunes library, nobody is stopping you from using them. I don't really see how this is different from moving your music + ratings from Android to any other OS anyway. It's not like I can export a music library from Android or WP and preserve and import all their non-standard metadata into iTunes, right?
  - colin_jack 14y ago
    Tried a while back, the experience wasn't great and I didn't find any approach that I thought was viable. I probably will try again soon though as I've since moved to Ubuntu so really need to get off ITunes. It isn't very different that moving from Android to another OS. Just to be clear I'm not criticizing Apple specifically, I'm just saying that the process of moving is not quite as painless as you might hope for. I do think it is in the big players interest to consider making it easier to move. I know why they don't but I do think a company like Apple, confident in their hardware and software, would stand to benefit as much as lose out from such standardization. People like me might give up on ITunes for a year or two until the retina airs are more reasonable then switch straight back, where as right now if I do take the pain of switching I'm unlikely to be back any time soon.

clarky07 14y ago

What the heck does he want? Should Apple make iTunes work for all 50 thousand different android devices too?

edent 14y ago
No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. You could store your music on your Xbox and push it to your iPhone - or in iTunes and push it to your Windows Phone. Imagine if your BlackBerry could only send emails to other BlackBerry devices. We wouldn't accept that (although BBM is trying to push us that way) - so why should we accept it with other services?
- w0utert 14y ago
  >> No, what I'd like is if there was a published specification for storing a music library. Then, any device could implement it. If there were one published specification for storing a music library, before you know it some people will demand features that are not supported by it, and some software vendor will create and sell some piece of software that extends the format to provide it. It's just supply and demand. I really can't wrap my head around this, are you really asking for generic, one-size-fits-all file formats, applications and hardware for everything, or are you just being naive?
  - edent 14y ago
    I'm probably just being naive :-) Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end.
    - w0utert 14y ago
      >> Look at email as a standard - a few people have tried to extend that and it hasn't worked. Bad example. E-mail is basically just formatted text with binary attachments to be interpreted by the e-mail client. Still, almost every e-mail client uses some internal database-like format to store your inbox and augment it with metadata to make it easily searchable and whatever. E-mail clients are to e-mail what music players like iTunes are to music files. You can't just pick up your Thunderbird e-mail database and drop it somewhere for Outlook to use, just like you can't pick up your iTunes library and drop it into Windows Media Player or whatever other music player. With some effort you can often import/export e-mail databases between clients, but that's no different from importing/exporting an iTunes library. >> Or, look at HTML as a standard. People want to extend that so they fight in a committee and collaborate until there's something which is mutually beneficial. One of the most-heard complaints about the HTML standard is that it moves so freaking slow, and is still full of cruft and inconveniences from 20 years ago. HTML isn't actually that great at all, it's just the least worst option we have if you want cross-platform markup with all the features HTML offers today. That's not to say I propose a proprietary alternative to HTML by the way, just that HTML is hardly the prime example of a model you'd want to apply to every other piece of software. >> Or, look at USB. Literally a one-size-fits-all plug on both ends and a common transport layer - but you can stick whatever device you want on either end. First of all that's not entirely true, because USB only defines a transport layer, not how the data going over the wire should be interpreted. It isn't all that different from something like RS-232 serial communication, just a lot more advanced. In itself there's nothing you can do with USB alone, you still need a protocol, which is usually implemented by a driver. Apart from generic hardware such as mass storage devices, almost any USB device that implements any kind of specialized hardware functions needs a hardware-specific driver, and more often than not, thesre are proprietary. Don't confuse 'open' with 'generic' by the way, because even if some piece of hardware uses an 'open' protocol, it's still not 'generic' as you can't do anything with it without a (very specific) driver. Second, USB is not really the epitome of 'openness' either, as you have to pay royalties to sell hardware that uses the USB standard and carries the USB logo. Any more examples? ;-)