iTunes for Windows is out

[Drake Tungsten]

Sad and pathetic isn't he.

Thanks for the input, Captain Obvious.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Sad and pathetic isn't he.

Thanks for the input, Captain Obvious.

Well I just wanted to make it clear that you were caning him.

Anyway, Windows users shouldn't be listening to music on their computers, they should be at Microsoft's site, busy downloading todays twenty-seven urgent security patches.

[geeslaka]

If patching security holes was the top priority of any of us(no matter the OS), we'd do nothing else.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by Asher

Mr Nice Guy: I've told you months ago AAC was Dolby's, it's actually a slightly modified Dolby Digital 2.0. All of this talk about AAC being really advanced is weird, it's older than MP3 by a few years. Just requires more computational resources to encode and decode.

http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4aac/standard.html

"The MPEG-4 AAC standard incorporates MPEG-2 AAC, forming the basis of the MPEG-4 audio compression technology for data rates above 32 kbps per channel. Additional tools increase the effectiveness of MPEG-2 AAC at lower bit rates, and add scalability or error resilience characteristics. These additional tools extend AAC into its MPEG-4 incarnation (ISO/IEC 14496-3, Subpart 4)."

Older? Yes, but recently upgraded.

Who cares about the additional resources AAC uses, anyway? With the much more powerful computers available these days, it doesn't really matter.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by Agathon
Here's more ammunition. Evil psychopathic Apple did not develop Fairplay; it was developed by a company called Veridisc http://64.244.235.240/ and licensed by Apple.

Well, there you go! Apple doesn't look as "evil" after all now, do they.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Bye guys. Gotta go to church now.

[Q Classic]

No. All a company would have to do is license the AAC and use their own DRM.

that's precisely why it's not an open standard. they have to pay a licensing fee to get the aac standard in the first place. the only audio codec i know of that's truly open is ogg.

By the way, everyone here keeps talking like AAC belongs to Apple, but in reality the company that invented and patented AAC Audio is not a part of Apple at all, but an independent subisidary of Dolby Technologies.

did you read my post, and my conclusion of aac? "apple cannot license what it does not own" is what i said, paraphrased.

This sures makes me wonder why all the tech articles I've been reading on the subject refer to AAC as an "open" standard. Of course, even people who write about this stuff for a living can't be right if Asher says they aren't...

AAC is not an open standard, but was developed by the MPEG group, which includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia. As a result any software or hardware that uses AAC has to pay a license fee. As AAC is realtively new, support may be sporadic for the format in other players.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/19/0053242&mode=thread&tid=107&tid=141&tid=187&tid=188

can i see some tech articles? most of them say that it's open in that you can look at parts of the standard free of charge to study them. there are parts protected by patents that you must pay for to obtain the license to. thus, it's not truly "open", like ogg vorbis.

Anyway, Windows users shouldn't be listening to music on their computers, they should be at Microsoft's site, busy downloading todays twenty-seven urgent security patches.

actually, this week there's only four, if you keep up to date.

Who cares about the additional resources AAC uses, anyway? With the much more powerful computers available these days, it doesn't really matter.

(sigh) and this is why we have programs that are horridly programmed. sure, we have more powerful computers. that doesn't mean we should try to squeeze every last drop from it. the ideal is to increase capabilities while trying to maintain as small and elegant of a codebase as possible, using as little memory and resources as possible.
microsoft doesn't subscribe to that, unfortunately, and neither does apple.

Evil psychopathic Apple did not develop Fairplay; it was developed by a company called Veridisc http://64.244.235.240/ and licensed by Apple.

you do realize that doesn't matter if nobody else is licensing it... better technology does not always win. what wins is what is easy to use, transparent, best-marketed, and cost-effective. aac, alas, is not as cost effective as wma, which isn't as cost effective as ogg. ogg is not well marketed, but wma and apple's aac are. all three are easy to use. so it's still any format's game.

[Drake Tungsten]

that's precisely why it's not an open standard. they have to pay a licensing fee to get the aac standard in the first place. the only audio codec i know of that's truly open is ogg.

You're definition of the term "open" is incorrect, Q Cubed, which is leading to all this misunderstanding. When referring to audio compression formats, "open" simply means that the format is available for licensing to anyone who can pay the fee. AAC is this type of format. "Open and free" formats are available to anyone (hence the "open") and have no licensing fee (the "free"). Ogg Vorbis is this type of format. WMA is , of course, neither open nor free, which is why any move away from it is a good thing.

[Q Classic]

You're definition of the term "open" is incorrect, Q Cubed, which is leading to all this misunderstanding.

it's not just my definition, drake. i didn't write that /. review.

When referring to audio compression formats, "open" simply means that the format is available for licensing to anyone who can pay the fee. AAC is this type of format. "Open and free" formats are available to anyone (hence the "open") and have no licensing fee (the "free"). Ogg Vorbis is this type of format. WMA is , of course, neither open nor free, which is why any move away from it is a good thing.

open does not mean anybody can license it. open means that the format is availible for study to all who wish to use it. that's why pdfs are open, but docs aren't. that's why html and xml are open standards, but asp is not.
because aac keeps certain parts of it locked away under patents, like mp3s, it's not an open, but proprietary format. anybody can look at how the basic format of mp3s works--that's how we got id3v2 tags--but because one technically has to obtain a licensing fee, it's not an open standard.

[Drake Tungsten]

can i see some tech articles?

Here's one. Not as good as the one I saw the other night, but Google is getting filled with new articles on iTunes and I've lost track of the ones I was looking at. Should've bookmarked them when I had the chance.

http://faac.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=AAC

Worldwide ISO/IEC open standard (as opposed to proprietary closed standards e.g. from Microsoft, see also MPEG-4 Systems for an example).

[Drake Tungsten]

open does not mean anybody can license it. open means that the format is availible for study to all who wish to use it.

That too. I forgot to mention it, because I'm an idiot.

[Q Classic]

bruce perens, computer guru, says this on his site.

http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html

No Royalty
Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards organization may involve a fee.
aac requires a fee to implement.

No Royalty
Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards organization may have a fee. Thus:
Patents embedded in standards must be licensed royalty-free, with non-discriminatory terms.
Certification programs should include a low or zero cost self-certification, but may include higher-cost programs with enhanced branding.

now, wma is very clearly proprietary according to that page's definitions. aac and mp3 are as well, but less so. the only codec that sufficiently fits all the defintions is ogg vorbis, and thus it's the only "open" standard.

[Drake Tungsten]

It seems the definition of "open" is very different depending on who you ask. Kinda makes this whole argument pointless, doesn't it?

[Q Classic]

btw: just because it's a standard on the iso/iec website does not make it "open".

http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CombinedQueryResult.CombinedQueryResult?queryString=jpeg

jpegs show up there, too, but jpegs are proprietary. they just happened to have an owner who didn't care at all about maintaining their patents.

[Drake Tungsten]

Found one of the other articles. Decent analysis of the effect iTunes and AAC might have on Microsoft's plans for WMA.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-998880.html

And the obligatory quote to bolster my side in this probably pointless debate...

Apple's open-standard alternative needs market momentum to gain traction that would ensure content creators would stay on board.