Music and the big, evil corporation that is Apple

Music lovers love Apple. Music lovers hate Apple.

Just like the constant flame war between computer users and phone users, the same goes on with music lovers; Apple's dominance of the downloads market, mp3 players, iTunes and DRM. Is it really all that bad?

The most common complaint is the fact that whilst you can copy music onto an iPod, you can't copy music off the same device onto the computer. I can see why this is a hassle...you have all your music on your desktop, you're out with your laptop and you want to put a song onto it from your iPod. Alas, YOU CANT BECAUSE STEVE JOBS IS EVIL AND IS TELLING YOU HOW TO USE YOUR HARDWARE.

Or you're at a friends house, you want them to have this album to listen to. Its on your iPod so its a simple copy and...NO WAIT YOU CAN'T BECAUSE STEVE SAYS NO!

Before we get into this, you can disregard my entire post because I own 2 Apple computers and an iPod, all of which I use on a regular basis. So that simple fact means that I'm totally and utterly in love with Steve Jobs' company and will defend them to the death. Yes, I also own a turtleneck sweater and ponce around thinking I'm better than everyone.

C'mon. Seriously.

Sure, Apple seems restrictive. No, they are restrictive. I'm not going to get into the whole Adobe vs Apple and the new SDK argument here, its not relevant - Gizmodo can cover that.

The point is that I'm not the kind of user that finds these restrictions the worst thing in the world. Hell, look at any product, computer, device, gadget, anything that you've bought recently. Is it 100% perfect? Does it have absolutely no flaws?

See, some people nitpick. One problem and its a nono. Thing is, everything comes with problems and, like I said in the Mac post on my other blog, you've just got to weigh up whether the disadvantages are things that will actually bother you on a regular basis, or whether they are things that don't really get in your way.

DRM is one thing. Apple did seem to go DRM free a while back with "iTunes plus", but it seems to have vanished. At one point I found this DRM restrictive, and stopped buying my music from the iTunes store. I still used iTunes as my main music player, I just stopped buying from the store.

When I started getting more into my Music Production and moved onto the Apple platform full time, this became less of a restriction. I bought my first Macbook simply to use Logic Pro, but it performed fine for using the internet and word processing (my only two other uses for a computer) so I didn't really need a Windows laptop on the side.

So since my move to the Apple platform, the DRM restriction became less relevant. I listen to my music on my Macs and my iPod, I can move my music around freely and thus I now buy most of my music from the iTunes store; its convenient, fast and, in a lot of cases, cheaper. Its a good quality too.

So I don't mind being told how to use my hardware. I use it as it was designed to be used. So what if iTunes runs better on Macs than Windows - are you really surprised? I mean, Apple, trying to get more people to buy Macs? Is that such a henious thought? Its a business people, they like profit. Sure, this makes them evil. If thats such a problem for you, then don't buy their stuff.

Whatever platform you use though, enjoy the music for what it is, however you can. After all, thats the whole point in the end - there's just so many different ways to enjoy music and access it. Some people don't like Apple's prescribed method for accessing and enjoying music, and thats fine. There are plenty of other ways, and plenty of people use this way.

Posted from my iPad

(just kidding)


Keep loving music,
Vinnie