“Apple today released iTunes 4.5, which allows you to convert WMA songs to AAC format so they’ll play on the iPod. In typical Apple fashion, this is the hard way to do things, as the iPod would support WMA naturally if they just let it (Apple turns off this feature in the iPod bios). But give Apple credit: A file transcoded from WMA to AAC will sound like crap, so the company can point to the sound quality difference as a reason to stick with its proprietary format,” Paul Thurrott writes for Paul Thurrott’s Internet Nexus. Full article here.
In an article dated January 9, 2004, Thurrott wrote, “Exclusive: HP Working to Get WMA on iPod – HP’s blockbuster deal with Apple will have one exciting side effect, I discovered today. The company will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft’s superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to the iPod by mid-year. You heard it here first.” More here.
No word on whether Paul is reconsidering his position that the HP ‘iPod’ will play the “superior” WMA format. Looks like it’ll play WMA format music after it’s been converted to AAC, that is. Also, Thurrott provides no hard facts supporting his assertion that “a file transcoded from WMA to AAC will sound like crap.”
Users with a Windows machine and browser (or using Safari’s Debug menu to set the User Agent to “Windows MSIE 6.0” will see this from Apple on the iTunes Import webpage:
“If you
Let the hating begin.
surprise surprise
thurrott thurrott
Well he’s probably right. It probably will sound bad. It’s been encoded, decoded and encoded again.
The bit that bothers me is the “Microsoft’s superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format”. How the hell is it superior.
And this proprietory stuff too. Like WMA isn’t proprietory ! None of the ‘A’s in ‘AAC’ stands for Apple you bloody fool ! This is all talking about DRM-free stuff too (AAC/Fairplay is effectively proprietory).
Apple is playing it fair
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Is that a picture of a Kernel Panic he’s got on his site ? What a twat. That little picture shows just how balanced his reporting is.
Stick to the man at M$
Correction: I meant stick it to the man at M$.
Doh
Soon Apple will start selling G4 processors to PC�s so that you can replace intel�s processor with it and start using Os X.
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Isn�t it nice
Thurrott, thurrott, thurrott. This is all so funny. He’s the official Apple jester.
“Microsoft’s superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format “
He’s like our very own Bill O’Reilly.
Ray, That’s better than “stick it in the man at M$.”
Hywel
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Maybe Windows users can use Apple Lossless coder so that they actually get better quality than the original WMP
What are you now sticking in the man at M$?
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I would not stick it in the any man at M$
Homophobe do not change the subject.
Given that he’s also encouraging people to steal, I sent him this e-mail
[I]Paul,
So now we see your morality in all its glory.
By posting a link to FairTunes, and by exhorting people to download now, you are – whether you like it or not – promoting copyright theft.
So as you once referred (in an e-mail to another correspondant) to Apple as “rotten from the top down”, what does that make someone who encourages people to break the law. How would you feel if I went online and encouraged people to ‘acquire’ photocopies of your doubtless incredibly turgid books? What a truly wonderful example to set to your children: theft is alright, so long as you’re screwing someone you don’t like.
Don’t bother replying, as I’m not sure I can stand to read another of your Goebbels-like pieces of revisionist drivel.
Example:
Claiming that, by incorporating a WMA conversion utility into iTunes 4.5 for Windows, Apple has fulfilled your discredited prediction of WMA support in iPod.
Here’s another spin: WMA audio stores have failed in the marketplace, and Apple – despite the fact that it is under no obligation so to do – has created a lifejacket for all the poor saps who bought into the Microsoft ‘vision’ (how strange those words look together) of inconsistent usage rights, poorly designed software and cheaply-built players.
In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not a fan.[/I]
Feel free to write something similar.
The guy is a complete waste of time. Of course everyone knows that WMA is superior.
So was Beta vs. VHS.
Mac isn’t supporting the superior encoding, it is supporting the one that will be used for the masses.
Isn’t that brilliant Paul?
WMA is superior elitist niche market format. AAC is the inferior “for the masses” format.
Oooooo how do you like being on that side of the apple Paul? Watch out for the worm.
Apple’s site says it can only import “unprotected” WMA files. Opps, oh well. Has anyone hacked the iPod bios yet to allow the playing of WMA? Could it play protected WMA?
The descent into hell begins…
Thurrott must eat his words when he sees how successful iTMS Europe will be later this year. I have urging need to buy thousands of songs in the first month. I have lost so many lp�s and cd�s over the years and I need to get that music back. Also I have borrowed cd�s to friends and never got those back. I think that my whole collection will be reborn.
MCCFR
I will copy your post and send it to thurrott with my name on it.
I am not so good writer in English.
MCCFR
I will replace that G�ebbels with Bush though
Thurrawthroat, if your head goes any farther up Win$ins arsenal, it will penetrate the earths atmosphere. You are the new definition of the word “fool”. Everybody knows it. Please give Enderle a chance at the top of the fools throne for awhile. You hate what you know noone can touch. Sony and Micro$in are at the very least a year behind, and deep down, you know it. It’s eating at you inside, man…give yourself a break. I’m worried about you.
Fin:
Don’t start the political crap! The Apple/Mac community is obviously multi-partisan and you just spoil the experience with that stuff. When you need to make some partisan jab, just go to some other site (love your Apple comments though–those are usually sharp and enjoyable). Don’t mean to come off too harsh, just tired of the irrelevant political nastiness…
http://www.petitiononline.com/muapt1/petition.html
What a tool. Why do all the PC-chump Mac bashers feel the need to yammer on about their ultra-manly car obsessions? Remember when Thurrott’s soulmate Rob Enderle waxed orgasmic about his new Ferrari-cobranded Acer laptop? (it’s RED! and Windows plays a VROOOM! wave file when it starts! take THAT, PowerBook!) Wonder what Freud would say. Nice to know Thurrott is a Van Halen fan, too. And you know their CD’s ship with coupons for hair plugs and penis-enlargement pills now.
If it sounds like crap before conversion, it will sound like crap after. That’s how he knows it will sound bad.
AAC is SUPERIOR to WMA.
Even PC World Found AAC to outperform WMA by a wide margin on listener tests and technical tests:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,64123,pg,1,00.asp
Thurrott is just the most blindly biased ass of all time. How ANYBODY could champion the MS Monopoly as a personal cause is beyond me. If this were 1938, he’d be on the side off the Third Reich for sure. It’s always easier to go with the majority. Especially when you’re as intellectually dishonest and emotional as this twirp.
Hello people! When the hell is someone going to make a “FairPlay” for windows media files?? Surely if they can do it to AAC they can take on M$. Surprised that no one is going for the obvious target. I’m still waiting…
I just visited Thurrott’s site for the first time and I can’t help but feel somehow infected by it. What a creep. I think it’s amazing that somone has a site dedicated to so much hatred…what’s he so defensive about? I can’t believe anyone would PAY him to write…BTW – love the “our own O’Reilly” comment…hehe…too funny.
I like Van Halen. They’re a proper and exceptionally silly good time rock band.
Anyone who takes them seriously is an idiot though.
Turdott’s got krisky kreem all over his face and it didn’t come from donuts.
On another vein, I doubt if wma to aac will sound bad; it all depends on the encoder. If it sounds reasonable, iPod Windoze users will have to keep two versions of their music, wma for the crappy jukes and aac for the iPod. The question is: which copy will they dump when the HD becomes crowded?
“[…] so the company can point to the sound quality difference as a reason to stick with its proprietary format”
AAC is not proprietary. AAC can be licensed by anyone and used in anything, just like WMA (unprotected).
Of course, adding FairPlay makes it proprietary where protected-WMA can be licensed. But we’re not talking about the “protected” variations.
Turd-rot does it again, without fail. I suppose he would be letting us down if he didn’t have some drivel to spew every time Apple makes MS look even worse than it does all by itself.
tclash: “Our very own Bill O’Reilly?” WTH are you talking about? He’s one of the rare independent voices on talk radio today, dishing out to both the Dems and the Pubs…. Sheesh….
No, Thurrott is like our very own Al Franken. He has no need for any facts and he’s always full of baseless insults and propaganda.
Hey, the Jester idea is COOL. MDN, can we have a section dedicated to Thurrott’s antics and other FUD? Anyone here a graphic artist and willing to draw a cartoonish Paul Thurrott Jester for the funnies section?
Hey!
Whaddya say we create a new meaning for the word “Thurrott”, in the same way that “Santorum” has been redefined by his critics (google it).
Let’s get some suggestions for the new definition and using the word in context.
e.g. Thurrott: A noxious fart that escapes in segments rather than continuously.
“Sorry about the smell, but I promise that is the end of that Thurrott.”
Windoze Media is an audibly inferior codec. Compared to other codecs at the same bitrate Windoze Media always has more audible artifacts. Thankfully, users of iTunes don’t have to settle for Micro$oft’s inferior codec. They can instead use AAC or mp3.
With Van Halen from their first album in ’78 to present…look at the evolvement in their music and musicianship. I take them very seriously…yes they were fun and silly the first four albums, but I have yet, even today, to see a stage show beat their 1984 tour.
That is also why we support Apple…they have proved to us their commitment to evolve, and at the same time throw in quality and intuitiveness and futuristicness. Sorry, I suddenly faded out and thought this was a Van Halen forum.
In this era of HD players, superiority can be achieved or inferiority surpassed by getting a better encoder and a higher bitrate, for any given format. Formats are about DRM schemes, not about quality. You can encode an Mp3 to make it better sounding than AAC. That its size is bigger than AAC’s is a non-issue for a 20 Gigabyte player.
Van Halen got turned down by none other than Gene Simmons, but later got discovered by a Warner Brothers exec playing in a cheesy dump bar with only a few people occupied, but they were playing and acting as if they were in Madison Square Garden. Even though they were tiny, they played to change the world and they did.
Apple is doing the same thing.
Who is Thurrot? Is that some kind of disease? No, wait. That was the roadie who stole my underwear after I left the stage and took a shower. Valerie still gets the creeps when I mention that loser.
And the Apple AAC encoder isn’t even the best one on the Mac.
Go to Ovolab and download AACHOO – it’s slower than iTunes, but if you want high quality reproduction in a lossy format, it’s pretty good.
How about:
Thurrot; the tiny, almost inaudible, gasping sound one makes, when one involuntarily vomits, after suddenly opening a container full of rotting maggot-infested meat.
So, I went to the idiot’s site. And I saw in the top of his page some photos, and in one of them is an iMac.
Are we lead to beleive that this guy who HATES all things Apple, actually spent over $1,000 on a system just so he has some form of proof he has used a Mac?
I would bet his hands shake with hate every time he turns the poor thing on.
That reminds me, back in the early 90’s I recall a study that was done to see if people’s feelings had an effect on the computers they used. One team was to always be positive around the machines and the other was to be negative. The team that was negative experienced lots of crashes and freezes. The study did not get into why, like did the machines “sense” how the teams felt about them or was it that the negativity caused people to opperate the machines poorly (i.e., less patience).
In anycase this may explain a lot about Paul’s experiences with Macs � he hates Macs so much that he wills them to crash, thus the kern panic photo.
“If you want to gather up all your music later, iTunes lets you consolidate your library anytime.”
Well, at least if it’s MP3 or “WMA (unprotected)”. And gee, they won’t license their AAC (protected) to anyone else. And if “Apple is playing it fair :”, then One Guy From Finland must think that this refusal to license is a “fair” thing.
Oh. I forgot. You’re all Apple Addicts. Well, since we’re all being fair and Apple iTunes is the best thing around (right?), then show me how easy it is to redownload songs that you lost or accidently erased.
Then we’ll talk about how “fair” Apple is.
NEW Zealand Online Apple Store Runs On Windows
The Mac Observer – USA
The New Zealand edition of ComputerWorld is reporting that the brand new online Apple Store for New Zealand is running on Windows IIS server, and not Mac OS X …
<http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/04/28.1.shtml>
Did that mofo actually use the word crap to describe something?
I think he may have been referring to the PC he was writing his god damn article on.
How does this clown survive?
Duffy, I could be wrong (as iTMS isn’t in Oz yet), but I am sure you are able to redownload the tunes you have ‘accidently’ erased through the Music Store. Can anyone help with this one?
Me, the NZ ‘Apple Store isn’t a bonified Apple Store, or even web site. It is a shop front for an Apple Reseller in NZ. Check the links from apple.com, and you’ll find that NZ isn’t on the list (Oz makes it on there though). It is a bit of a shame though that it is running on a non Mac server, but they are a little behind times in the land of the long white cloud…
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Duffy,
In order to “re-download” music you should have made plenty of backups of using iTunes and DVD-R’s, Apple would require one to have stringent DRM and a music client that reports upon one’s music collection (like Napster etc) so that your not simply downloading the music to someone elses computer.
This is a gross violation of our privacy for a lack of simple action on your part. Apple sells the music not rents it. Once it yours, your responsible for it.
It’s this rather liberal DRM additude that makes iTunes the number one seller of online music.
So get off your lazy ass and buy a few DVD-R’s or CD’s. Then again I guess you don’t backup anything else either because your PC is a piece of shit and you can’t get the DVD burner to work.
hahaha
For a guy that hate Mac He sure know the news on apple.
My theory is that at some point in time, Steve Jobs gave Paul a wedgie or kicked sand in his face or something. The guy has such a deep hatred for almost anything Apple, and considers anyone who uses a Mac a raving zealot (which, I’m afraid, the sometimes the case, but I digress) and talks down to them by default. If he put 1/10th the energy in discreding all of the FUD that gets thrown around in the PC world, instead of focusing on Apple, he may actually have a somewhat decent Windows news site. But, as many have pointed out, he just makes himself look like a fool. Ah well, at least he is entertaining in a pathetic sort of way.
As for Paul knowing the news on Apple, examining the information on his silly little “Internet Nexus” site makes it pretty obvious that he’s a regular reader of MacSurfer. It adds to the sad nature of this guy; he claims to be a “journalist” but can’t even do his own research.
Someone buy Windows apologist Paul Thurrott an iPod and a dual 2GHz G5 with 8Gb RAM so he can cure his addiction. The guy’s obsessed with Apple – it’s sad and somewhat painful to listen – he may be in denial, but the signs are obvious.
His reports are getting even more desperate and pitiful.
Linking to Paul Thurrott’s site only encourages him. I say let him rot – he’s even worse than the ‘zealots’ he claims inhabit mac websites.
Get a Mac already Paul you pathetic loser.
Paul has a record for posting what he know nothing about! WMA,ACC is not crap just what Paul writes is CRAP! I think he works for one of those newspaper magazines that finds alien tatoos on baby’s! If you’re going to write an article get the facts before you make any claims.
the thing i don’t get about thurrott is why he says that he only uses mac or linux systems, yet the books he writes are only about windows. how does he know what to write if he doesn’t have a PC? and if he’s so into apple products (as he appears to be) why doesn’t he write about them?
or is he making up the fact that he has ever owned or used a mac system?
Yep, Paul Thurrot is more like Al Franken, baseless insults, non-factual, hatred etc. O’Reilly is backed by facts.
Sorry guys, I’ve done the analytical testing. At the same bit-rates, on the same type of music, WMA is better (as in more accurate to the original uncompressed file) than either MP3 (huge difference) and AAC (smaller, but still noticable difference). Don’t flame me, as this is my business. Also WMA Lossless is outstanding as is the new multichannel variant which looks as if it will be part of the new HD-DVD spec.
That all said, there is no reason to assume that a WMA file transcoded to AAC would sound any worse than the AAC file itself (which to most people sounds pretty good) so long as the sample rate were high enough. Problem is in capacity. A 40gig iPod would store less AAC music than WMA at a similar sound quality level.
In order for Apple to “take over the market” as it were, all they need to do is support WMA directly. There are no WMA music players which can come close to the beauty and simplicity of the iPod (though if they are not careful, that may change shortly). If I were them, I would also add a fast CF card slot into the device so that it could be used as a digital wallet for the photo crowd (a la the Gmini 220). Now that would be KILLER.
Apple, your out in front and their nipping at your heels (again). Don’t make the mistake you always make and refuse to go the last coupe of yards and win the race. Take them out NOW!
I am curious: are there any sound modelling issues in any of the prominent lossy formats that would make them inherently inferior to the rest no matter the bitrate?
In my opinion, different audio formats sound, well, different, not necessarily worse. WMA, imo, sound as if their is more base than in the original. AAC sounds more natural to me. Could which format is “superior” really be opinion, though? What sounds good to one person may not sound good to another. Either way, I’m using AAC. :0