On Matters of the iPhone and Zune and DRMs...

Okay, so i'm still on the fence, really, about getting a zune. mostly I want one because of its interactivity with the 360. there's no easy (or cheap) way to get my ipod to play through the stereo and control it through the tv. yeah, i know there are those remote docs (not the apple dock) that'll put the ipod menus on the screen, but honestly, at the point i buy one of those, another $50-99 and I have a Zune.

Right now, i'm doing the buy-music-in-the-iTunes store, burning to cd, and reimporting (so that I can stream the tuneage from the lappy to the 360). Pain in the ass. yes, I'm checking into virtual cd burners.

the iPhone thing muddies the water slightly. if i ever want an iPhone, there's no point to getting a Zune. And i won't sit here and lie and say i haven't thought about how cool it would be to only have one gadget in my pocket instead of two.

it's a conundrum.

Right now I'm leaning toward saying fuck the ps3, er, iPhone and getting a zune. Possibly just using the ipod as a mini-external HDD.

Because it goes like this:

From Gizmodo.com...

Cue the iPhone Blasphemers: The Times Speaks of iHandcuffs

Responding to the iPhone revelation in the New York Times today, Randall Stross launches a harsh — but familiar — excoriation of Apple's FairPlay DRM system. He argues, among other things that:

Even if you are ready to pledge a lifetime commitment to the iPod as your only brand of portable music player or to the iPhone as your only cellphone once it is released, you may find that FairPlay copy protection will, sooner or later, cause you grief. You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever. Because your iTunes will not play on anyone else's hardware.'

I'm not sure most people think of continuing to buy Apple products as "grief." While it may be a closed system, it's also what makes the system work as well as it does.

iTunes only has to work with the iPod and vice versa, and together they provide a pretty seamless experience. Besides, if FairPlay really caused the average person that much of a problem, they could (and probably would) just load regular MP3s onto their iPod.

The commentarian has a point. I can just load mp3s onto my ipod. But my complaints aren't with the iPod itself, though it has shown to be less than sturdy. Just last week, I'd convinced myself to stick it out another year with the ipod. But... The Marley Situation (whereupon I bought Legend from the itunes store, then burned and reripped into Zune) cast doubt upon me. Simply because I can't just plug it into the 360 and play the music I just bought.

For example, my ipod has some 2700 songs on it, 650 or so of those either steph or I collected from itunes during the past three or four years (a lot of them were whole albums where you get more songs than the one for .99 would indicate; we haven't actually spent $650 at the itunes store. I don't think). When i take that ipod and plug it into my 360, it shows I have just 2050 songs on it.

Did I not buy the song? Compare a song to a cassette single. I buy the tape with the one song on it, it's mine. I can play that song almost whereever I want. With iTunes, I can only play it on my computer (or four others), and my ipod (which has a rechargeable battery I can't replace). Furthermore, the song is STILL on the ipod. it's not like I'm transferring it TO the 360. How much sense does that make?

So... really, I'm arguing against DRM, not the ipod or itunes specificially. And to that end, I should be looking at Zens or Sansas, not the Zune. And I should just be buying my music from Hastings in the used bin like the days of old, hoping that when I buy a whole disc, I get more than one good song. or whatever that one music site is out there that sells non-drm'd mp3s.

Or... I could just limewire my music. Cause fuck the music industry for making me pay $17.99 for all those cds all those years when it cost them a couple of bucks to put one on shelves...

Yar.