This exciting news just in. Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced it will put a copy Apple's iTunes on every PC it sells, and also will start selling a rebranded Apple iPod.

http://news.com.com/2100-7354-5137473.html?tag=nefd_hed

Looks like a lot of new consumers will have access to iTunes when they buy a new PC

Also looks like HA will have a lot of new AAC/M4A newbies coming here asking questions soon...

Note what I have emphasized in RED below. This deals exactly with another thread here on HA where I have been addressing the need for file format/container standardization for compatability sake among MP4 players and software.

Quote from news story:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the move will ensure that more consumers use iPods.

"Apple's goal is to get iPods and iTunes into the hands of every music lover around the world, and partnering with HP, an innovative consumer company, is going to help us do just that," Jobs said in a statement. "As the industry balkanizes by offering digital music wrapped in a multitude of incompatible proprietary technologies, consumers will be reassured in getting the same unparalleled digital music solutions from both HP and Apple, two leaders in the digital music era."

On its own, Apple has sold more than 2 million iPods, including 730,000 last quarter.

The world domination has begun


BTW: "HP knows what's good ™"

Yes it apparently has. Thanks for sparring with me on this a bit rjamorim.

I appreciate the discussion. You are so knowledgeable about audio formats/encoding.

Now hopefully the world will see M4A/MP4 audio for its quality. You could even say my prayers (were quickly) answered when I found this news post. Imagine my surprise seeing this as we have just been debating this issue in another thread.

Yuck, buying pre-bloated computers! (Well, that's nothing new for brand computers, anyway )

sparring?

Yeah, but just remember who these computers are for. They are not for hardcore audio experts such as yourself and the audience of this forum-they are for average Joe with a few bucks in his pocket to buy a no-fuss computer. Persoanlly, I think it is great that someone else is pushing Apple's solution. We are supposed to push people into the new Napster at my work, and I am loathe to do that. I much prefer the way Apple sells the tunes, does the DRM etc. compared to the Napster model, and I am glad that a consumer computer maker like HP that has high market presentation voted for the Apple way over the Napster way.

They used to , but then they discontinued the 48 series calculators, discontinued their excellent in-house processor design, bought CompaQ, gave the Alpha team away, and spun off most of their world-famous testing & instrument divisions at a time when the telecom bubble was bursting in order to be more like Dell, for some unfathomable reason.



I agree completely. As much as I dislike DRM, Apple's DRM is a lot more friendly than it could be, and they did not get locked into the mediocre WMA format. The subscription services do seem somewhat attractive for broadband users who listen to a lot of music and dont care to keep it, however.

Most of the Alpha team is working with Intel on IA-64 codename Chivano and later now. And it could easily be argued that IA-64 blows any of those processor families away including Alpha because of EPIC's strengths. HP is Intel's ally in IA-64 development. So I think they know what is good indeed.



I have to disagree. I think Apple is more of a tighter control company than even Microsoft. They've constantly been hiding the grueful details of their computer hardware and bloating it as it is something innovative. They constanly try to screw their already small customerbase by charging them for every minor OS update. The only reason they still manage to look pretty is because they don't have the consumerbase of Microsoft and thus less number of whiners. Yet there're many.

And how could any sort of DRM be friendly? They're no Magnatunes and sell crippled music. Both qualitywise and DRMwise. That's that.

Like ?



Saying that 10.2 (Jaguar) or 10.3 (Panther) are minor updates only proves that you have no idea of what you are talking about

Like the horrible memory bus speed 133Mhz a few months ago.


Well of course you're entitled to what you think, as much as I am (that's why I don't have to tell you my background to assure you I know what I am talking about). It's the same OS essentially (no company is that quick to write a major OS overhaul in so little amount of time between the previous update) and sold for $109 which is a travesty.

Also with RealPlayer 10 supporting playback of .M4A files (but not .MP4 files - you have to rename them to .M4A), that adds yet another popular player that will playback .M4A audio files (albeit using Quicktime 6.x).

Now we just need MusicMatch, WinAmp and Microsoft Windows Media Player to play .M4A and .MP4 format files and we'll really be living large.

The momentum is a rolling...

As rjamorim so nicely put it: "The world domination has begun"

Now if we can just stick to one wrapper format for non-DRM MPEG 4 Audio files, that would be great folks!

The current tally for native .M4A and .MP4 file format playback (LC AAC) stands at 5 players:

1. iTunes/iPod - iTunes wil playback either M4A or MP4 file extensions (M4A is default for files it encodes)
2. Nero 6 (soon to add support for reading/playback of files using the .M4A file extension)
3. Foobar2000
4. QuickTime 6.5 - will play back both .M4A and .MP4 audio files
5. RealPlayer 10 (free version) - Plays back only files with .M4A extension (you have to rename .MP4 to .M4A)

Friendly in the aspect that you can pretty much use it in whatever way you want.



Yeah, just look at magnatunes catalog. A real gem.

If you are playing with the RIAA companies, you'll have to use some DRM, plain and simple. IMO Apple's DRM is much better than what other people use. If you still choose to be utopic and refuses all kinds of DRM, you might as well refuse to buy mainstream music from online stores, DVDs, VHS tapes with macrovision, CDs with copy protection...


About quality: All listening tests so far prove QuickTime AAC to be transparent on ITU's terms (scores higher than 4 for 128kbps). While it might not be transparent in your acoustic room using Sennheiser headphones, that's the exception environment. People will use the tunes in their iPods while jogging at the park using earbuds. I doubt they would even care to look for artifacts in such situation.

That is funny. Real Player is actually depending on another player to work :B

I think it's hacker-friendly and that's surely a good thing.



Well, I don't claim the catalog is big. But MagnaTunes' system is the only one that deserves a praise as far as I am concerned. And I don't buy CDs with copy protection, have a region free DVD player. I pay around $5 per CD on average as it is if I cannot find it online in lossless or in MPC, which still is preferable. And a CD comes with booklets, additional goodies which iTunes does not offer AFAIK.



Well what if you don't have an iPod or never intend to use it on one. It's crippled objectively. That it is transparent under iPod's deficiencies doesn't change this fact.

Yes it is funny (Real using Quicktime). Maybe Microsoft will jump on the bandwagon and use Quicktime to play .M4A/.MP4 files for its Windows Media Player too.

Still your DVDs come encrypted with CSS. That is DRM.



DUH! It has nothing to do with the iPod. It has to do that the tracks sold at the iTunes store can be transparent except under extreme situations (I.E, listening tests)

Just faster, more stable, with several enhanced/new functions like Webdav, the Pixelt codec, Journaling, Hot File Adaptive Clustering among others.
All thing easily noticeable by the average mac user.

So....its kind of like a service pack for Windows? I don't pay for service packs, and Apple's users shouldn't have to pay to go from using v10.2 to 10.3....it's just stupid. Hell, it costs less than $109 to go from Windows 98 to Windows XP Home .

Not at all, there is a substantial redesign of the kernel, updated system software math libraries, and various other changes at the core.
However you don't have to trust me or Apple, Darwin (OS X's core) is open source, so everyone can verify what's changed and what not.

Just because your OS provider don't do it doesn't mean its impossible

I dont think so, not unless you arbitrarily cripple the comparison by comparing an outdated Alpha on an old process with the absolute most current Itanium 2 core, which is about as fair as comparing and Opteron to a PentiumII. Had the Alpha team continued at a CompaQ that funded them rather than gave them away to Intel, the EV8 would be availible rather soon, and there is little doubt that the EV8 would absolutely dominate the 64 bit processor landscape in many ways had it
lived.

HP decided that it conflicted with their business model, and since they had been halting their own PA-RISC design for years in order to gain early (but stupidly, not exclusive) access to McKinley, a processor based on a great deal of their own work, the EV8 would have been a severe embarassment, as well as difficult to market. As it is HP is still selling clock speed and cache boosted version of hopelessly outdated PA-RISC chips to customers who are extremely reticent to switch to EPIC.

No, HP did not want to go back on it's long-standing desire to make EPIC hit the big time by introducing a competitor from the company they just bought that would put their multibillion dollar (and >a decade) investment in EPIC to shame. Regardless, this is quite off-topic.



Friendly relative to Real, and as friendly as you're going to get from major label stars.Selling AAC's that are not playable in the most widely circulated hardware AAC player on the planet is absurd on Real's part.

I have never seen a Rolling Stones album on Magnatunes. Nor do I believe I ever will. Their vast array of a total of eight Jazz and Blues artists I've never heard of is pitifully inadequate for my purposes.

If I have to choose between any song I want with Apple's DRM, and the sadly constrained selection of DRM-free songs on Magnatunes, I will not be choosing the latter on the great majority of occasions.

I might as well only watch student films on VHS solely because they haven't bothered to throw on macrovision.

Great point

I just checked out magnatunes. Wow!!!!!! HI-FI CBR 128 mp3 files!!!!!!
I am so impressed I can hardly maintain bladder control!!!! Thanks
for the heads up Atici!

Erm... dude, these tunes there are demos.

If you pay, you can download high bitrate VBR MP3, Vorbis and even FLAC.

hehe,

Thanks Roberto-I was not going to whip out my beleagured credit card just to find out. They should make that more clear on the site.