Man behind the Curtain

Anyone who has been around me lately will know that I don't have the best of thoughts on Apple's policies at the moment. Too restrictive in both hardware and software, has been my common complaint. Although I disliked this sort of attitude, I could understand it. If things were more open, we could get back to the OS 9 fiasco of hundreds of system hacks interfering with each other, making any type of diagnostics for Apple or third party developers impossible.

But then there are the other annoying things: Apple's restrictions on all things music and movies. It is getting very annoying that I can't integrate so many of the open-source formats in any of the iApps, be it iMovie or iTunes. And that my mother had to buy an iPod so that she could play her legally purchased music off of the music store, and even then could not copy them directly onto her Nano, filled me with anger.

Well, it turns out, maybe I am not the only one. Steve Jobs himself has published some "Thoughts on Music" on the Apple website. In this very interesting article, Jobs explains why Apple is using DRM (because the music companies will only sell DRM'ed tracks), and what possible routes online music distribution can take in the future. If it went by Apple, it would look a lot like what we would prefer to see:
"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music."
Jobs also explains why licensing Apple's DRM system, FairPlay, to other companies is not such a good idea: Simply because of the danger that the inner workings of FairPlay could be leaked to an unknown party. This would be especially bad for Apple, as they are responsible for keeping FairPlay working, or else the music companies have the right to pull the entire music catalog off of the iTunes Store.

I really recommend reading the article, and hope Steve will give us more of this in the future. It is great to see what things look like from an Apple perspective. As it turns out, in this case, it is not so much different from the rest of us thinks.