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Update — No DRM In New iPod Shuffle
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Mar 17, 2009 01:28 AM
from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes "BoingBoing Gadgets has updated their story from yesterday on DRM contained in the new iPod Shuffle. (We also discussed this rumor last week.) It's a false alarm. There is a chip in the headphone controls but it is just an encoder chip. There is no DRM and no reason to believe that third party headphones wouldn't work with the new Shuffle. (Apple would still prefer you to license the encoder under the Made for iPod program, but with no DRM, there is no DMCA risk to a manufacturer reverse engineering it.) The money quote: 'For the record, we do not believe that the new iPod headphones with in-line remote use DRM that affects audio playback in any way.'"
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iPod Shuffle Finds Its Voice 379 comments
theodp writes "Steve Jobs wasn't around to convince you that you should be impressed, but on Wednesday Apple unveiled a 4GB Shuffle that's half the size of its predecessor. Holding up to 1,000 songs, the pre-shrunk Shuffle sports a 10-hour battery life and also adds a new VoiceOver feature that can recite song titles, artists, and playlist names, as well as provide status information. Even without a show from Steve, the new player is generally leaving folks dazzled, although there are some complaints."
Update: 3/14 at 14:10 by SS: Reader Mike points out some disturbing news that the new Shuffle contains DRM which, according to a review at iLounge, prevents it from fully working with any headphones that don't have an Apple "authentication chip."
Submission: Update: No DRM in New iPod Shuffle by Anonymous Coward
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Places Apple still have DRM. (Score:4, Insightful)
* Mobile phones & Ipods (make sure user can't run Apps which haven't paid the Apple tax)
* In their O/S (Check it's installed on correct hardware)
* ITMS (video)
* Video out of Iphone (make sure you can't use third party docks to watch ipod/iphone vids on your TV.
So frankly, DRM on Apple products was not surprising - it was a natural assumption to make.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So...no DRM, only ARM.
They are still trying to lock you into their crappy products, or 3rd party products that have paid the Apple tax for certification and pass those costs onto you.
Why does it always get so complicated every time Apple try to reinvent simplicity?
Re:Simplicity (Score:5, Insightful)
What I mean is the standard 3.5mm jack is simple, and works brilliantly for it's intended role. So why mess with it?
"Made for 3rd generation iPod shuffle" is fairly simple, but 99% of people would have no idea what generation their iclod is (/. crowd aside).
"Plug these in, hear music" is even more simple, and how it should be.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I mean is the standard 3.5mm jack is simple, and works brilliantly for it's intended role. So why mess with it?
I guess that would be because 3.5mm jacks don't carry remote control signals. Really this whole argument is a joke â" we're complaining at apple because they put a remote interface on their headphones, something that other companies have been doing since god knows when. Not only that, but apple have a good history of allowing 3rd parties to see those specs and get verified as producing
Re:Simplicity (Score:5, Informative)
This entirely misses the point though - without the Apple headphones there is no way to control the iPod, You can't pause, skip tracks, change volume etc. All it does is play when normal headphones are installed.
Most (all?) other MP3 players that use remote controls on the headphone line have the remote control as a separate part which you can use with any headphones you like. Even the old iPod remotes are like that. Now you have to buy a remote control just to use non-Apple headphones, and currently there isn't one available.
It's not DRM but that doesn't make it any more attractive to me.
Parent
Re:Simplicity (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's perfectly valid to complain about that, since the design of the new shuffle is so stupid -- WTF is the point of having separate controls, when the separate controls are almost as big as the damn player itself?! The second-gen Shuffle was a much better design.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And so will the shuffle. Plug in 3.5mm headphones, turn on, listen to music.
Re:Places Apple still have DRM. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a complete inverse logic here.
"Made for X" is inverse of "make it simple" (aka works with 99.8% players in the market). For all intents and purposes, that 3.5mm jack on the shuffle isn't standard at all. They could have made the connector in a say, magsafe style and call it a revolution. In either way you need an (unreleased) adapter (to connect normal headphones) or "made for X" headphones to use the shuffle properly. This is analog to putting apple "enhanced" usb ports on apple computers. "Well it works great if you have apple hardware connected to the usb ports, but if you want to use your usb printer/memory stick/whaterver, you should buy just this small adapter (link to apple store)." It is a lock-in coupled with royalities (which are transferred to you and me) plain and simple.
How fun would be to go into a store wanting to buy some pair of earphones, but you have to buy only sony XLX branded ones because you only have compatible sony player. Or you want to buy that excellent sounding Shure headphones, but alas, those work only with yamaha pianos. Or you want to buy computer keyboard for your dell, but the store only has "made for hp" ones.
I don't want to live in that world, world of lock-in (I'm not saying that there is no lock-in today too, quite the reverse), high prices and most of all completely unnecessary and artificial limitations. But lock-in is ultimately for consumers good isn't it?
Parent
Re:Places Apple still have DRM. (Score:5, Informative)
No, the remote on my Sony discman (probably, IIRC the connectors were similar) wouldn't work with my SAFA CD/MP3 player, but when a classmate stepped on my Sony's remote and made most buttons useless (there were of course separate buttons for next and previous tracks, play/pause as well as volume control and remote lock instead of the ridiculous morse code bullshit) I could still use my discman with ANY headphones I had. From $2 shitty earbuds from a cheap walkman knockoff to my ER-4s, the only difference being that I had to use the controls on the device itself. Also, while the remote was still in one piece, I could again use any of my headphones with the remote by unplugging the Sony earbuds from the top of the remote and plugging the ER-4s in.
Does that clear it up? Discman: no remote, no remote functionality. Shuffle: no remote, no functionality. At least not until you buy an adapter for half the price of the player [apple.com] itself.
Parent
Re:Places Apple still have DRM. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
mobby_6ki answered you pretty well, but I wanted to connect my post (the post you are replying to) and his post.
The problem is that the shuffle *doesn't* have any hardware controls (aside from on/off) on the the unit itself. The controls are *only* on the right earbud cable. Why is this a problem? Because there is no other way besides an adapter (*sold separately*) or "made for shuffle" earphones. That is the biggest problem. The consumer doesn't have a clear choice in headphones. The shuffle out of the box
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, but there's a big fucking difference between doing that and locking out and suing anyone who doesn't want to pay for the certification!
If a third-party doesn't want to pay for "made for iPod" certification, then they shouldn't be allowed to write the logo on the box. But they should still be allowed to se
Re:Places Apple still have DRM. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those of us who know what they are doing would take the specs every time over "made for X".
Right, because we buy something based on the specs, try it, and find out that despite claiming various specs, they've done an incompatible implementation and it doesn't actually work rebliably, if it works at all. And then we troubleshoot it until we are sure it doesn't actually work, and then we return it in frustration and get something else, until we find something that works.
That is how those of who know what they are doing operate.
Oh, sure, if we're late to the party we can look at what other people tried and follow their successes. But how is that really any different than following a 'made for X' sticker? In either case we wait for someone else to vet compatibility.
And if we don't have that, its just trial and error. No amount of knowing what you are doing is going to magically give you foresight on which hardware is really compatible vs which just should be compatible based on the specs.
Parent
Re:Places Apple still have DRM. (Score:4, Informative)
Not just that, but there's also now some sort of crypto signature on the index files the newer iPods create/read. If it's not present then the iPod refuses to recognise any of the music.
This seems to be there solely to destroy interoperability with any non-iTunes software (Amarok). Great, thanks Apple.
(Sightly OT - as linux user, with a 40+ GB music collection, mostly in mp3 format, what is the best current high capacity media player? 32GB Xen X-fi with an additional SD Card? Or is there anything else non-Apple that can store all my music?)
Parent
In the native Apple fanboi tongue (pretention): (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, good day sir. I wish to inform you that I shall NOT be refraining from raping your mother and eating your father. Please do not suffer the illusion that your parents will be left un-assailed.
There we are. Now I may ravage or consume your parents with utter impudence, because I never said I wouldn't (in fact, I strongly implied I would!).
Bother! It would STILL be evil, even if I proclaimed I were to do it! Amazing! Therefore, dishonesty is not necessarily a prerequisite of evil!
Ah yes, another crippling counterargument from a skilled orator. Well played sir, putting the word "wank" in your sentence sure annulled the fact that IT IS PRETTY DAMN EVIL TO INTENTIONALLY GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO SABOTAGE PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT THEIR HARDWARE TO PLAY NICE WITH THEIR SOFTWARE.
Parent
Re:Places Apple still have DRM. (Score:5, Insightful)
What if I want to do exactly as you say and listen to my OggWankis files in my new BMW, using my Wanker Player 5.1. It is a free country after all. Welp, nope, my BMW is only compatible with an ipod jack and the very encrypted firmware we are discussing here. This jack is patented and licensed by Apple only, and Apple holds on to that one like a rabid dog. So I MUST use an ipod, and only an ipod. Apple uses the patent on the ipod jack to ensure it maintains a defacto monopoly on players, when those players are being used in new ways and in different markets. This is the very definition of 'evil company', in my opinion.
Keep drinking the freedom kool-aid there, Russ.
Parent
Boing Boing Unreliable (Score:5, Insightful)
What disappoints me is that Boing Boing get on the front page of
The real story is Boing Boing is an unreliable site: who'd have thought that on the interwebs there would be dishonest sites *shock* *horror*!
Re: (Score:2)
What disappoints me is that Boing Boing get on the front page of /. for lying, and then a second time for admitting they lied.
You'd prefer they just left the "lie" out there? Where I come from admitting your mistakes and taking responsibility for them is a good thing and to be encouraged. If you honestly believe they misled everyone despite knowing the purpose of the chip in the first place, please present your evidence.
Re:Boing Boing Unreliable (Score:5, Insightful)
All this has taught BoingBoing is that they can lie, get the publicity, then admit they lied and get more publicity. As to evidence: I'd point to the fact that they had no evidence whatsoever to back-up their claim and yet they made it any way. The onus isn't on me.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is I don't believe it was an honest mistake, so I'd rather they didn't lie in the first place.
As I said, present your evidence.
As to evidence: I'd point to the fact that they had no evidence whatsoever to back-up their claim and yet they made it any way.
As has been pointed out to you, there were other sites reporting the same.
The onus isn't on me.
Actually it is, since you're the one accusing them of lying with no evidence. They may have said something that turned out to be wrong but they've ret
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Very well, then I will accuse BoingBoing and any other sites who reported on this to be grossly incompetent at basic first-year electrical engineering.
Anyone can figure this, even yours truly (who isn't even trained as an electrical engineer: Apple has added extra pins to the headphone jack in order to support things as simple as a single-button headset control on the iPhone. Clearly it was not feasible for Apple to keep just adding pins onto a short headphone jack in the hopes of cramming more buttons in.
I
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's sort of like Bush Administration officials on Iraqi WMD's: if they weren't lying through their teeth, they were less competent than a jellyfish. Pick your poison.
You still insist on accusing them with no proof and nothing to back you, yet you don't seem to realise the irony.
Yawn. And you don't realize that you're asking him to prove a negative.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The onus isn't on me.
Yes it is. You're the one who made a claim (BoingBoing is lying).
How do you propose we prove the negative?
Re:Boing Boing Unreliable (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Boing Boing Unreliable (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>"We heard there was DRM in the iPod, so we opened the headphones and found this unknown chip!"
Heard? From whom? What proof?
Thats internet journalism for you. The blogger revolution is simply nothing more than rumors and outrage.
Re: (Score:2)
I think this has less to do with Boing Boing being dishonest and more to do with a bad journalism. I have many problems with news sites and professional journalists today (especially most IT journalists), but they do have a very good point when it comes to many bloggers. When your site becomes as popular as Slashdot or Boing Boing, where you make enough money to live off it, shouldn't you also be doing a better job than most of other bloggers when it comes to basic journalistic principles?
I like both sites,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
hysterical Hatorade drinkers with bum eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh grow up fanboy. They linked to someone elses story, with caveats.
Oh pull your head out. The Boing Boing headline [boingboing.net]
Remember that old saw about how "a lie travels around the world before the truth has a chance to put it's shoes on"? The original liar obviously deserves most of the blame, but that doesn't absolve everyone who spread the lie of responsibility.
Parent
Authentication chip != DRM (Score:2, Informative)
Please stop calling authentication chips DRM. DRM = digital rights management, its for digital content, you cant physically have DRM on a headphone cord.
Re:Authentication chip != DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
This is no place for sensible discussion! (I kid. Mostly.)
The point was brought up several times by several people, myself included, in the last discussion. (Interestingly enough, many of those posts got modded up and down about a dozen times each.) It's a lock in, and only partially - you need an adapter or specially manufactured headphones, but there's nothing to stop reverse engineering, or from using unlicensed headphones/adapters.
On a side note, I wonder if the EFF is going to retract their statement, or issue some sort of apology...
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
On a side note, I wonder if the EFF is going to retract their statement, or issue some sort of apology...
They already have http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/03/apple-adds-still-more-drm-ipod-shuffle [eff.org]
Re:Authentication chip != DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be rights management on a digital device. But more to the point, DRM has become a catch-all term for any form of vendor lock-in, specifically lock-in which when avoided is punishable by the DMCA.
Parent
retractions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see what's honest about that. Why didn't they ask an electrical engineer then, rather than engage in wild speculation?
Because anyone who did know anything about electronics could immediately tell you that you should expect to find a chip in there; something the people at BoingBoing gadgets made a big deal out of. With three button states to send ov
Why all the fuss? (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company wants to make an MP3 player with buttons on the headphone cable, instead of on the device, why is that evil?
Why is everyone going mental? So you can't use the headphones you already have, so what? Just buy a different MP3 player!
Lots of people don't care much what headphones they have, they just wanna listen to music while exercising, and they want a small light device to do that. By the end of the month there will even be a handful of other headphones to choose from.
There's no standard way to control a device from a standard headphone jack, and you'll be buried in lawsuits if you do it the same as someone else is doing it, so a new approach had to be made. Why is this such a big deal? We're stifling innovation by making a scene over stuff like this.
Re: (Score:2)
That said, I wish that Apple would have designed the player so that when any pair of headphones were inserted it would just start to play. This is possible because the headphones are removed it stops. I can get i
Re: (Score:2)
The only reason I see why we don't build an MP3 player into a pair of headphones is because the industry has moved away from the big earphones to the tiny ear buds, at least for MP3 players.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but there's actually a large selection of MP3 players built into headphones, sunglasses, etc.
http://www.google.com/products?q=headphones+built-in+mp3+player [google.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, I wish that Apple would have designed the player so that when any pair of headphones were inserted it would just start to play.
Of note, the only control left on the device is the power/shuffle switch. You can plug in any headphones you like, turn it on, and it plays. This is a giant load of rubbish over absolutely nothing.
A new way of doing remote control of players, which will more than likely (looking at apple's track record) be open to industrial partners to duplicate.
Re:Why all the fuss? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company wants to make an MP3 player with buttons on the headphone cable, instead of on the device, why is that evil?
- It isn't standards compliant. When standards disintegrate the consumer pays.
- It promotes vendor lock in. It isn't inter-operable with other equipment. Consider digital SLRs. Once you buy into a brand and you've invested in enough equipment you're stuck with that brand unless you sell it all and start again.
- People who are replacing an older model may not realize there is new lock in until they've actually bought the product.
Why is everyone going mental? So you can't use the headphones you already have, so what? Just buy a different MP3 player!
When a market leader pulls this crap, others do too and pretty soon all the MP3 players you can buy have this "feature".
Lots of people don't care much what headphones they have, they just wanna listen to music while exercising, and they want a small light device to do that.
That's nice. They get what they want. What about those that do care about the headphones? What about those who can't use ear buds due to hearing or ear problems?
By the end of the month there will even be a handful of other headphones to choose from.
- Not if there's a patent on the tech and Apple wants to lock them out
- If they aren't locked out there's a licensing fee which drives the price up of all the headphones
There's no standard way to control a device from a standard headphone jack
Sounds like a good argument to develop a standard rather than applaud this bad behaviour.
you'll be buried in lawsuits if you do it the same as someone else is doing it, so a new approach had to be made
Don't you see there's something very very wrong with that? At this point it's not innovative so why are people afraid of being buried in lawsuites? Sounds like an argument for IP law reform.
Why is this such a big deal? We're stifling innovation by making a scene over stuff like this.
This is innovation? Seriously? Controlling a player externally via a proprietary cable? Really??? If this is considered innovation, there's a real problem.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> Sounds like a good argument to develop a standard rather than applaud this bad behaviour.
There is a kind-of standard which solved the problem years back, which (for instance) my old Sony Minidisc player and at least 3 or 4 of the phones I've had follow.
You have a propriety connection into the phone, and at the other end of the cable you have your clip with microphone/volume/pause/track-skip/answer-call buttons an
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
When has itunes or the ipod ever stopped you from listening to a cd that you've ripped?
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot that now they have an RIAA lapdog very likely pulling the DOJ to their favor.
Oh right, proprietary headphones needed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I spliced the cable of my mobile phones headphones which had control buttons on the cable as well. It was great PITA. Those wires inside the cable are extremely tiny and are joined with nylon thread (probably for endurance) which makes those signal wires almost impossible to handle by hand. So unless you have some special tools and alot of patience I can't recommend cutting the cables.
Re:Oh right, proprietary headphones needed (Score:4, Informative)
Those wires inside the cable are extremely tiny and are joined with nylon thread (probably for endurance) which makes those signal wires almost impossible to handle by hand. So unless you have some special tools and alot of patience I can't recommend cutting the cables.
That special tool is called fire! Half a second under flame and the nylon fibers ball up near the bottom, and the copper wires can then be twisted together. Everything has those fibers now, and you need this technique to modify everything from a cellphone charger to a bluetooth headset to a standalone DVD player.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I thought of doing this, but I suspect you'll likely find this very hard for a myriad of reasons, least of which is that the control part is actually about 3" below the right headphone earpiece -- so you'll have to do at least two splice jobs, one for each ear. I had hoped you could actually adapt the built-in headphones into an adapter, but I fear that's unlikely to be feasible.
Not DRM but still Evil? (Score:5, Funny)
A new cold war with Russia... (Score:2)
Apple +1, Universe -1
Cory and Xeni (Score:2)