[1] You don't believe that there's a direct correlation between (I buy an iPod) -> (I buy even a fraction of my music that only plays on iPods) -> (I'm more lik

[1] You don't believe that there's a direct correlation between (I buy an iPod) -> (I buy even a fraction of my music that only plays on iPods) -> (I'm more likely to buy another iPod in the future)? I figured that business strategy was pretty self-evident when I said "first mover advantage," so didn't explicitly spell it out. [2] "Apple would have loved to give away the music for free, they would have sold a lot more ipods." This is where we disagree. I believe that they would have sold fewer iPods, as the incentives for purchasing another iPod over the an alternative player in [1] would no longer be present. Per that belief, I consider the statements "Apple didn't want DRM for altruistic reasons" and "Apple would have loved to give away the music for free, they would have sold a lot more ipods" to be equivalent. If you don't accept the premise that Fairplay was vendor lock-in (as both Realplayer and a few lawsuits alleged), then obviously that wouldn't be altruism. "Apple fought tooth and nail to remove DRM" is a question of motive and effort. The fact is they eventually did away with DRM because the market dictated it. The question is whether they did away with it (a) as soon as possible, (b) purely as a market response, or (c) as late as possible. The statement that "Apple didn't want DRM, the labels insisted on it" is largely irrelevant. What matters is whether they made financial gain from employing DRM, and, if so, whether that impacted their timeline and dedication to removing it. "Why would Steve Jobs write a letter about DRM at all if Apple secretly wanted to keep DRM?" That's where I thought the timeline was interesting. To me, it wasn't that Steve Jobs wrote a letter about DRM, it's that Steve Jobs wrote a letter about DRM after the growth portion of music sales was finished. *Again, if you don't feel Apple benefited financially from the vendor lock-in provided by Fairplay, all of this is a moot point as we're going to arrive at radically different conclusions anyway.