- Who is worth more: a person alive 100 years ago, a person alive today, a person alive 100 years from now, or a person who is never born, or a person who has always existed?
- Building a better mousetrap... and catching it on film.
- Is Obama's approval index tanking? Thoughts on this here and here.
- School vouchers are bad because they leave too many children behind? I suppose it's much better to leave them all behind, no?
- Patents versus markets?
- Quantum physicist wins $1.4 million religion prize.
- Getting pregnant accidentally on purpose?
- Will the economy kill school laptop requirements?
- The first child born in Antarctica?
- Japan's ambassadors of cute?
- The new iPod Shuffle just keeps getting worse. It turns out that not only do you need headphones with the controls built in, but those headphones require an authentication chip. What does this mean? You can't use regular headphones with it and whatever headphones you do buy for it will be mega-expensive. Doesn't that kind defeat the purpose of a tiny, inexpensive MP3 player? If this is indicative of what happens when Steve Jobs isn't at the helm, Apple could be in for some trouble.
- The economy vs. law students. Unfortunately, it's not a happy picture.
3 comments:
Re: the shuffle.
Boingboing got the story totally wrong. There is no DRM in the headphones, anyone can make them without needing a special chip
Link:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/16/ipod-headphones-aren.html
Any company can make the headphones, but you gotta pay if you want to say "Made for iPod."
The whole "controversy" over the Apple headphones is a bit overhyped.
A Macworld article by Dan Frakes cites an Apple spokesman as saying, "As part of the Made for iPod program, we make sure that third party headphones work properly with the third generation iPod shuffle." The article also states, "however, there is no DRM in this new control chip, according to Monster Cable's Kevin Lee, who added, 'In fact, it's not even authentication. It just gives us a way to control the iPod.'"
There will be 3rd party headsets available; as Chris alludes to, it's more a matter of controlling the branding of "Made for iPod."
In other words, its a licensing issue, not an authentication issue.
Also, apparently the chip from Apple was going to be sold to developers for $1 but that cost is even lower...so it wouldn't add that much to the cost for consumers.
I've never been a big fan of the shuffle anyway...and I don't see much reason why anyone would want to spend much on extra headphones for it anyway. And yes, Apple is a control freak of a company.
As for this being indicative of what happens at Apple without Steve Jobs, I rather suspect this was all in the works before Jobs took his leave of absence. I think Jobs would have to be gone at least a year or two before one would really see top level Apple decision making without his influence. Even then, I suspect Apple has a multiyear product roadmap already drawn up that reflects the Steve Jobs vision.
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