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Businesses Television Apple

Steve Jobs's Big Miss: TV 205

Posted by samzenpus from the blow-up-your-tv-throw-away-your-paper dept.
jfruh writes Steve Jobs was a well-known audiophile and music lover, which helps explain why Apple transformed the music industry in the '00s with the iPod and iTunes. But according to a new biography soon to be released, Apple may have failed to do the same for TV because of Steve Jobs's disdain for the medium. One of his first acts upon returning to the company was to kill the flashy, expensive 20th Anniversary Macintosh, in part because it had a built-in TV tuner. "Apple will never make a TV again," Jobs declared.
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Steve Jobs's Big Miss: TV More

Steve Jobs's Big Miss: TV

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  • Which explains the ATV. (Score:5, Informative)

    by UncleRage ( 515550 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @01:17PM (#49256717)

    It's gotten lackluster support across the board. For a device with a lot of potential, it's got a lot of ugly bumps.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      I'm curious what more it's supposed to do.

      I can only think "run apps" but you can mostly do that with mirroring which eliminates a whole lot of ugly compatibility issues (for Apple, and app developers) even if the experience is lacking in some ways. Even with apps, the whole interactive controller issue gets kind of weird if a phone, tablet or the remote doesn't make sense.

      By and large, Apple TV does what its supposed to do -- play media on your TV from your phone, tablet, PC or streaming.

      The lack of an Am

      • Things use the bluetooth for audio so i can listen in bed with headphones or controller support, or run Plex client. You now the most basic shit a box like can do. I have 3 Apple TVs rotting in my closet because they refuse to innovate on it AT ALL. Every TV in the house had an ATV on it, until i got sick of them doing nothing. I replaced them with Chromecast, Android TV Nexus Player and Fire TV stick. ALL of them beat the pants off ATV.

      • The lack of an Amazon Instant app is annoying, but Netflix is there. The rest of the content is kind of ho-hum, but then again, mirroring and airplay solves some of those issues, like Amazon Instant or many other media playback app

        Quote for Truth. That's basically my only gripe about AppleTV. No freaking Amazon Streaming. I get Amazon Streaming on my PS3 and my iPad and iPhone, but not on my AppleTV WTF? Why wont Amazon support AppleTV? While the 1st gen Apple TV didn't do too much for me, since buying a new AppleTV last year, I've almost all but stopped using Amazon Streaming because I can't be bothered to switch over to PS3 just to watch a couple TV shows on Amazon they don't have on Netflix. The Man in the High Castle pilot was t

        • Quote for Truth. That's basically my only gripe about AppleTV. No freaking Amazon Streaming. I get Amazon Streaming on my PS3 and my iPad and iPhone, but not on my AppleTV WTF? Why wont Amazon support AppleTV?

          They won't support Android, either, or at least they historically haven't done so. Only recently have they opened up their client to the majority of Google TV devices, let alone general Android devices.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by narcc ( 412956 )

            They won't support Android, either, or at least they historically haven't done so.

            Are you sure? Every Android thing I've connected to my TV, for years, has supported Amazon Instant, my old Visio CoStar, Roku, even my Blu-ray player.

            As far as I can tell, they've supported a wide variety of Android devices from smart tv's to streaming boxes longer than the service has been called "Amazon Instant".

            • Are you sure? Every Android thing I've connected to my TV, for years, has supported Amazon Instant, my old Visio CoStar, Roku, even my Blu-ray player.

              Yes. Only a handful of Google TV devices, mostly based on Gingerbread, have been supported until fairly recently. Most of your generic chinese sticks (mkXXX) didn't work. Very recently most Android devices have been permitted to use Amazon video, but there's still some devices where it seems like it should work but it doesn't.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          a BS proposition, since you're streaming from the internet to one device, then locally restreaming to the AppleTV -- way to clog your network.

          I need to get some monitoring going and test various airplay options, because I have a suspicion that where it can, the device may pass off the stream URL to the AppleTV so it streams natively. Obviously, in some cases it can't and this is where I think the difference between airplay and airplay mirroring might come in.

          Overall, I agree with the notion that it's kind

      • Re:Which explains the ATV. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Noah Haders ( 3621429 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @03:38PM (#49257273)

        the one thing apple doesn't do, and the only thing that matters, is to integrate all channels and sources into a singe interface. you can search for breaking bad and netlix pops up, you can search for KUWTK and E! shows up, you can search for GoT and HBO shows up. this is the only thing that will truly "solve" tv.

        the joke is on people who think Apple missed out by not producing their own tv, as opposed to a set top box. looool. tvs have razor thin margins and people will hold on to a set for 10 years. sounds like a shitty business to be in.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Think of a big screen all in one computer with multiple remote tablets. Each participant gets their own networked tablet which they can view their own particular output whilst controlling the outcomes on the big screen in a multi-user environment. We are maturing into a computerised environment and the push is already occurring into making it an inclusive, shared with those around you environment, rather than an exclusive, disconnecting from those around you environment. You are looking at more digitised b

    • For most people I know, they do their digital tv viewing via game consoles.
      Xbox, play station or wii. Apple TV, chrome cast, etc... Are nearly all just tv. So it isn't so popular.

    • Define "Lackluster" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @02:53PM (#49257095)

      It's gotten lackluster support across the board.

      I'm curious why you think an HBO exclusive deal to stream without a cable subscription on AppleTV is "lackluster". I wasn't ever going to get an AppleTV myself but that sealed it (along with the price drop).

      The only thing the AppleTV is missing that many people might want, is Amazon Prime... and there's a lot of overlap between them and Netflix, which Apple does have.

      Apple has been treating AppleTV as a hobby, sure, but that doesn't mean the support for AppleTV has been at all lackluster.

      • It's gotten lackluster support across the board.

        I'm curious why you think an HBO exclusive deal to stream without a cable subscription on AppleTV is "lackluster". I wasn't ever going to get an AppleTV myself but that sealed it (along with the price drop).

        Hopefully, your ISP isn't Comcast.

        Comcast has blocked access to "HBO Go" on Amazon, Roku, and Sony Playstation. It's likely that they'll block "HBO Now" on Apple TV as well. That's actually one of the reasons HBO made this three-months exclusivity deal with Apple, because it's hoping that Comcast backs down against Apple.

        If Comcast doesn't back down, I guess you'll be stuck watching Game of Thrones just like the rest of us through your TV screen via your computer, because Comcast doesn't block computers, it

        • What you are talking about is HBO Go, which requires the streaming application to verify you are a valid subscriber - only right now that verification system is failing on Comcast [techdirt.com]:

          "Comcast doesn't really give an answer other than to say the massive (and soon to get much larger) company only has so many people available to ensure TV Everywhere authentication works on new devices"

          HBO Now (I think that's the new name) is a totally new AppleTV only app, that you pay HBO directly for a subscription - it has its

      • the HBO deal, is the death of cable tv companies as we know it. they may even know it. this is really huge and a big win for everyone. no government imposed fake, net "neutrality" needed, the quasi free market working it out.

        when the consumer can pick and choose the channels they really want to watch, and only pay for those, you win and the producers of real content win.

        I wonder if this deal was in the works when Steve Jobs was still around, because if so, he really did revolutionize tv as we know it in the

      • The AppleTV sat in the corner of Apple Stores for a long time, doing pretty much nothing. I worked at one between "real" jobs about five years ago, and whenever a customer noticed the AppleTV and asked about it, I described it as "Apple best-kept secret". Not that it was a difficult secret to keep, because there was almost nothing to say about it. I don't recall ever selling one. Granted, that was a rather different device from the current streaming box (my other pitch line was "an iPod for your movies"),

    • How does that work? He's been dead for a couple of years now.

      You think Tim Cook is doing seances with him? It would explain a couple of things....

  • Steve Jobs's disdain for the medium. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by koan ( 80826 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @01:22PM (#49256741)

    I agree with him, he was %100 correct in this regard.

    Only the bean counters would want to dabble in that banality.

  • Breaking News (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This just in... Steve Jobs has bad judgment. Details at 8.

  • "Jobs, as it turns out, was completely wrong about the integration of television and computers.

    â€oeWe donâ€(TM)t think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge,†Jobs told Macworld in 2004 when discussing the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh. â€oeWe think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.â€"

    Now most of them
  • Or perhaps Pearl Jam were "Steve Jobs" fans
    or more likely, they've never known each other

    While Pearl Jam received four awards at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards for its video for "Jeremy", including Video of the Year and Best Group Video, the band refused to make a video for "Black" in spite of pressure by the label. This action began a trend of the band refusing to make videos for its songs. Vedder felt that the concept of music videos robbed the listener from creating their own interpretation of th

  • Doesn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @01:34PM (#49256801)

    The big Internet suppliers have done a bang up job of turning the Internet into TV anyway. Even better than TV from the perspective of the advertisers; you only see one advertisement at a time when watching TV. On the Internet they are able -- with the cooperation of the web page designer -- to have you seeing as many advertisements that can be fit on the screen. Content? Heck... that stuff just gets in the way of -- and takes away space for -- more advertisments. (More and more web sites seem to have used http://websitesfromhell.net/ [websitesfromhell.net] as a design manual; especially some of the advertisement-heavy examples.)

    The pathetic thing is that I don't know of a single person who clicks on ads -- except by accident.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      On the Internet they are able -- with the cooperation of the web page designer -- to have you seeing as many advertisements that can be fit on the screen.

      There's advertisement on the Internet? You poor fool must be surfing without an ad blocker, who inflicted such cruel and unusual punishment on you?

  • A miss?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @01:59PM (#49256861)

    Really?

    A miss?

    Are you confusing TV with watching video content on your computer because those are two entirely different things and Steve supported the latter. He probably realized that slaving PCs to broadcast/scheduled TV was a non-starter... Just as making PCs have built-in FM/AM Tuners would've been.

    http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]

    I'm not saying Steve was a prophetic genius as he certainly made mistakes and it's wholly possible he disdained TV because he didn't want the cable companies like Comcast to get a foothold into his control of the industry. But this was far from "a miss".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )
      Have to agree. Where's TV going to be in a couple of decades? I think it'll have the status of FM/satellite radio at that point, except you risk getting a ticket, if a cop catches you watching TV while you drive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ThorGod ( 456163 )

      Too true. There are much larger misses to be pointed out. Anyone misses opportunities because we're finite human beings.

      As for me, I wish they would have thought out iTunes better. It's a clunky beast and moving the iTunes library around is annoying.

      • iTunes is a compromise between Apple and the music companies. More than anything, its the underlying reason why the music companies licensed to Apple. They could promise full end to end control of the music (at that time). Itunes is what it is due to political forces FAR MORE than technological ones.

    • I've had a PC running Windows Media Center recording TV on the broad cast schedule for about 10 years now. It currently has 6 tuners (records 6 things at once) for cable broadcasts, and an older tuner to pick up FM on occasion. I can watch live TV/radio, schedule recordings or watch recordings from anywhere in the house that has a TV via Windows Media Center extenders, one Ceton Echo extender and a few Xbox 360s. I can watch iTunes videos or play music, Amazon streaming, or transcode (on the fly) pretty

  • Jobs' views on TV not a secret (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    People are thinking less than they used to. It's primarily because of television. People are reading less and they're certainly thinking less.
    [...]
    When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolutio

  • TV is dead anyways. I am no fanboy but this makes me like Steve Jobs a little more. The fact that he liked some things and hated others gave the company a vision and gave him a passion. Google could learn from this instead of scattershotting with everything with 'me too products' that fail and just hurt the brand ( and waste money). TV in that era was especially bad, I can't stand people that like sitcoms. protip=friends, the big bang theory, and cheers are all the same show. A bad one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Art3x ( 973401 )

      TV is dead anyways

      Not only are people cutting the cord, but the new generation is not even buying the large screen to put in their living room. Instead, they're using their laptops and tablets [nytimes.com].

    • TV is dead anyways. I am no fanboy but this makes me like Steve Jobs a little more. The fact that he liked some things and hated others gave the company a vision and gave him a passion. Google could learn from this instead of scattershotting with everything with 'me too products' that fail and just hurt the brand ( and waste money). TV in that era was especially bad, I can't stand people that like sitcoms. protip=friends, the big bang theory, and cheers are all the same show. A bad one.

      I agree, the future of visual entertainment is streaming, not selling people an obscenely expensive and bloated package of crappy TV cannels just so they can watch a handful of them to catch their favorate shows. If the Steve saw that coming over a decade ago thn swearing that "Apple will never make a TV again" sounds more like farsigtedness than an oversight. There is a reason people use bittorent and it's not that all bittorenters are cheapskates (althoug may motivate some of them) it's more that they lik

      • I agree, the future of visual entertainment is streaming, not selling people an obscenely expensive and bloated package of crappy TV cannels just so they can watch a handful of them to catch their favorate shows.

        I worked on an "IPTV" project 10 years ago when it was all new and whizz bang, but unfortunately it requires a half decent Internet service, which sadly even 10 years later most people don't have access to.

    • If it was bad then it is worse now. You had TV Series. A lot was sitcoms sure but you had sci-fi, action, etc as well.

      Today you have reality shows and news you've read on the Internet two days before.

  • No opportunity (Score:3)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @02:06PM (#49256905)

    TV does not offer a company like Apple much opportunity. There's no UI problem that keeps people from being able to get the most value out of their TV. People won't buy an easy to use TV at a big premium over a regular TV. This is why Apple was never going to make a TV.

    The only thing people really want from their TV is cheaper, more conveniently delivered content. Apple has no TV content, and there's no way for Apple to make money offering others' TV content at a cheaper price. And there's no way to sell a new premium TV based on cheaper TV content -- the premium you gained on the TV would be more than lost on the content discount.

    • TV does not offer a company like Apple much opportunity....There's no UI problem that keeps people from being able to get the most value out of their TV...

      Go back 10- or 15- years, the UI problem with TV was on-demand content delivery. Remember mailing DVDs back and forth or trips to Blockbuster with the constant reminders to "be kind and rewind?" But agree with you that the opportunities of content delivery are limited at best when your business model is hardware centric. Other than a set-top-box or connectivity with a Mac / iPod, there's not much else Apple could sell in the commodity TV market.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      As if Apple's thing was "easy to use". Apple makes jewelry - design/style first, ease of use second. Admittedly, they don't let ease of use get too terrible, most of the time, but style always comes first.

      TV is what the peasants watch. There are expensive TVs, but there can't be an "upper class TV". Fashion is all about pretending to be upper class* by buying over-priced status symbols, and Apple has had very few misses since Job's return in that regard. TV certainly wasn't one of them.

      *The actual uppe

  • You can get pretty much any size and style of TV from a number of different vendors in a wide price range to fit any need whatsoever. You can even buy a projector if you want to turn your entire wall into a TV.

    All that Apple needs to make is a little box that plugs into the HDMI port on that TV. That's IT. Once that's done, when you turn on the TV you get the "Apple experience" and full access to their ecosystem of TV shows, movies, and music.

    The reason Apple hasn't made a TV is it's not a product segment w

    • You can get pretty much any size and style of TV from a number of different vendors in a wide price range to fit any need whatsoever. You can even buy a projector if you want to turn your entire wall into a TV.

      All that Apple needs to make is a little box that plugs into the HDMI port on that TV. That's IT. Once that's done, when you turn on the TV you get the "Apple experience" and full access to their ecosystem of TV shows, movies, and music.

      The reason Apple hasn't made a TV is it's not a product segment where they can really make a difference. It would be equivalent to Apple making a power strip.

      What people forget is that Apple DID make a computer/TV hybrid, long ago. It was cool for its day, featuring a 68030-based PowerMac 550 all-in-one computer, and a custom TV-tuner card, which even let you do screen caps of the TV image. Apple figured it was perfect for the college-dorm market, with limited space. There was even a cool black one. Quite sexy looking.

      They sold about 10 of them.

      So, you can understand Apple's reluctance to get involved in TV again.

      • The Macintosh TV was a road apple. It only had one expansion slot that had the TV capture card in it. It was slow for its time. You couldn't even watch TV in a window; it had to be full screen. There was no way to record video.

        If they had made it more capable, they might have sold more. But it was cheaper to buy a faster Mac and put a cheap TV next to it, than to buy the Macintosh TV. I know; I was there.

  • I use a monitor that has built in speakers with an HDMI cable to the box provided by my IPTV provider.

    The built-in tuner that that monitor has is completely useless because the only places in Saskatchewan that still have TV broadcasts are Regina and Saskatoon -- the towers in every other location across the province were shut down when the switch to digital was made.

    You can't use the digital tuner with the IPTV or cable providers here; you have to use audio/video or HDMI inputs.

    Let's face it: outside

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Why did they shut down broadcasts during the switch to digital? Digital broadcast TV is much cheaper to maintain than analog broadcast TV was, so it seems a bit odd. You get to run 4 channels on the same transmitter that only did 1 before, and you save on power as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msobkow ( 48369 )

        The towers used to be owned by separate companies: CBC and CTV, plus Global in the Saskatoon and Regina markets. So what good is being able to squeeze another three channels into the allocated bandwidth when there aren't three other channels to broadcast -- save for your own competition, who have their own equipment?

        As far as penetration goes, most people either subscribe to SaskTel (IPTV) or to Access Cable, or have subscribed to one of the satellite providers if they're on a farm. The number of peopl

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by amorsen ( 7485 )

          In Denmark, several muxes are run pretty much the same way any cable TV operator would, except the build-out costs per subscriber are obviously lower because no cables need to go into the ground. Broadcasts are encrypted and people buy cards which unlock the channel packages they decide to pay for. Just like cable, but with somewhat fewer channels.

          It seems like you would be able to cover the majority of the residents of Saskatoon with a single antenna mast. That should be plenty to make it economically viab

    • You live in Saskatchewan. You and the other 6 people there don't count.

      Seriously though, are you sure its not just that you live in a very rural destination.

      In the states, broadcast TV is MEANT for areas outside of the metro centers since thats the only place that cable providers really provide services. Once you get out of high density areas, cable ceases to exist and you have to get data via broadcast.

      We also have a mandate that all cable providers have to support CableCARD, which means you can use what

    • That's lame. I guess you can still get satellite TV though.

  • That model of Macintosh was a Road Apple. It had specifications that put it in line with Macintosh models that cost half as much. It was notoriously bad for what it cost, what was in it, and how it held up in real world usage. In 1998, Apple released a Macintosh model for 1,299.99 called the "iMac" that performed better than the $7,500 20th Anniversary Macintosh.

    It had nothing to do with the TV tuner. That Mac was junk.

    • 12,000 only made; never intended for mass production.

      It was a Jony Ive concept machine - the iMac G4 didn't debut an LCD desktop until almost 5 years later.

  • Steve Jobs had a habit of looking 10-20 years into the future for where Apple would move to in product use. Cable with 300 channels is doomed and SJ saw that. Why do I need a TV to view the one or two programs I want to see at night? Why do I need a "big screen" for news?

    Young people are more interested in mobile and sharing clips, than most older people and that is evolution. Older retirees often look at TV as a companion or avocation in lieu of something/anything else to do.

    I see cable and even fixed

    • Shows (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @03:37PM (#49257263)

      I think the future is subscribing to shows instead of channels. I'd rather pay $20 a month for a couple dozen really good shows to watch, than $100 a month for those same good shows, plus 200 other shows I never watch.

      • Subscribing to shows instead of channels was (is?) the iTunes model of selling TV. I don't think the market wants that. (Which is good, because it would it would spell the end of the "sleeper" hit, or most niche programming.) Ye olde radio, traditional basic cable, and the current popularity of streaming music all point to a desire for access to a general mass of content, for people to select from without a whole lot of thought.

        In the next several years I think we're going to move to a hybrid subscriptio

    • I'm pretty sure it was more in line as to why there's no FM tuner in iPods. That way you need to buy shows/music/movies from iTunes.

  • Doesn't compute. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by quax ( 19371 )

    He was also CEO of Pixair and clearly got movies.

    Nowadays it's all about recreating movie atmosphere in your living room.

  • Was it really a big miss? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cashman73 ( 855518 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @04:06PM (#49257397) Journal
    Was it really a big miss? Or was it intentional? Maybe the reason why Steve Jobs steered Apple away from making a TV was that he foresaw the complete disaster in the TV and cable industry, and saw everything moving online. Even with iTunes, you've been able to buy TV episodes and movies there for at least a decade. And TV viewing is shifting towards online streaming on other devices that Apple has dominated (iPhones, iPads, etc) for several years now. There's already plenty of manufacaturers making large screen televisions, and in the past 10-15 years, that has shifted from CRTs and analog to flat screens and digital. There was no reason for Apple to get into the business of making large screen TVs when all that was going to shift anyways. Apple TV was sufficient to allow those that cared to bring digital content to their big screen TV, but Jobs didn't care much for that medium, so Apple stopped at that.

  • TV was not Steve Jobs' big miss (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GrumpySteen ( 1250194 ) on Saturday March 14, 2015 @07:08PM (#49258053)

    Skipping conventional medicine and trying to treat his cancer with alternative medicine for as long as he did was a much bigger mistake.

    • Probably.
      But he could also have died during that "routine" operation. Or left in a coma, because the doctor or someone on his team screwed up.
      Nobody can say that for sure.
      What we can be quite sure of is that Steve Jobs, when he realized that a fruit-juice diet wasn't really helpful and pursued the "conventional medicine"-path, woke-up from the operation soon knowing that he was basically living on borrowed time.
      In the remaining time, he created (and drove his employees very hard) a lot of new or upda

  • Seriously, $30 retail for a DVB-T tuner to watch free to air digital...

    Another FUD article denigrating the great leader? Jobs missed nothing.

    Of course Apple ][ machines used TVs for output via RF modulation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )
      To use a USB DVB-T dongle, you need a USB port. Preferably not the one that your power cord is plugged into.

  • At least, I was assume it was in his biography (as I never read it). But when it came out, there were quite a few reports that Jobs said he had figured out TV interfaces:

    It's entirely possible that because he didn't like the TVs, he had come up with a better UI ... but we haven't seen a dramatic revision of the Apple TV since he died ... so we might never know what it was that he c

  • Just because Apple hasn't released a TV solution beyond the AppleTV doesn't mean they are not working on it. Just because Jobs killed a TV project also doesn't mean anything. Jobs killed absolutely every project except for Pro laptops & desktops and Consumer laptops & desktops when he took over as CEO. Apple was about to collapse, they were about 4-6 weeks away from financial ruin. Drastic measures had to be taken.

    Apple is the only company that can disrupt the TV/Movie industry and deliver such

  • TV is a declining medium. 15 years ago, when I removed the TV from my home, I was an exotic. Since then, more and more people I meet also don't have a TV, especially young people. And a lot of the others use it to watch movies from DVD or download/streaming, not any TV station.

    It's big still and thanks to exclusive deals for events like olympics and world cups, it will stay around for many more years, but it's a medium on the way to exit, and two generations from now it will be part of media history like gr

  • TV tuner cards have been available for ages but hardly anyone bothers to put one in a PC.
  • (audiophile). In the context of iTunes, which sells low-fidelity recordings in mp3 format, I do not think it means what you think it means. I'm no golden-ear audiophile, but even I can hear the difference between an mp3 and any of a half dozen lossless codecs. For all practical purposes, one can not buy quality audio in digital (no physical media) form. The reason for that is mp3, and the blame for that we may rightly lay at Apple/Jobs' feet.

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