WARNING: Your brand new PC hardware is already broken under Microsoft’s Windows ‘Vista’

24 Comments

1. What a cheerful fellow!

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2. funny, all of my five + year old macs can still run tiger.. .

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3. Geez– if this is true, what a mess. I guess it’s a moot point, but this would make ME switch.

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4. ouch…he’s not bitter though. Nosiree!

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5. MDN misses the point. The same DRM scheme that makes today’s Media Center PC’s obsolete will also make today’s Macs, when used as a media centre, obsolete.

   The new Macs and the new PC’s will both have the new DRM chips on board. Any video/audio that is available to be digitally recorded will require the use of this DRM chip that is only found in these new machines.

   The move to Intel was needed for this DRM capability. All computers without it will be obsolete in a year or two.

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6. “… you might want to take a look at Apple’s new which starts at just …”
   Apple’s new what? I missed that. Mac Mini?

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7. MacDailyNews is right – Now WOULD be the best time to get into Mac computing, because once the Macintel ‘revolution’ takes hold, DRM will be mucking up the Apple Experience just as surely as it will the Windows side.

   If Apple had just used Intel for some sort of video/game console type product, and maybe the xScale processors for a future video iPod, I wouldn’t be too concerned. But in transitioning the ENTIRE computing line to Intel – not just x86, but Intel x86 – Jobs is basically putting every future Mac, and hence Mac user, at the mercy of these corporate extortionists.

   Very depressing.

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8. Would you expect anything different?

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9. You don´t get it mdn its going to bad for future apple intel owners too.

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10. I don’t mind paying to viewing or hear content. I don’t see anything really wrong with it. If I want to see or hear some peice of media enough, why should I not be expected to pay for it?

    We have all become spoiled with our abilies to copy and share copyrighted material for free, but these are realatively new abilities. Look back a 15 or 20 years and the best you could do was make tape copies of music or movies, which couldn’t really spawn another generation of copies because the quality was horrible. Distribution of thee copies was expensive because it was a physical object that had to be handled. Today we have easy ways of making perfect copies and distributing one original to millions or consumers for free. Of course this is great for those who think that the rich are too rich and that artists (and everyone else involved in creating and distributing content)should donate the fruits of their labor (and personal investments into their products) to society, free of charge, for the greater good. Altough many people talk that way, it has never been a realistic goal.

    DRM is not the end of the world. Once DRMed media is perfected (as good as it can be) and it becomes very difficult to make quality reproductions of copyrighted material, a new order will be created where some artists and companies will want a broader market that non-DRM media will have, and we will begin to see content providers provide both DRM and non-DRM protected content. The consumers will demand that by the amount people are willing to spend for content. Let’s face it, companies realize that consumers aren’t going to double their spending on media to maintain the level of new content they are currently used to getting (via illegal distributions). A happy medium will be reached where DRM content will be the norm, but the pricing will be cheaper because of the desired amount of market penetration the companies will want to maintain.

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11. Al,

    Right on the money.

    Funny, too. I’ve complained about the DRM with the iPod locking you in and all I’ve gotten is a firehose of zealotry aimed back at me.

    I guess it is all perspective – if you own the platform effected it is OK, but if it is somebody else’s you’re a moron for buying in. In this case, it’s OK to be locked in my Apple.

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12. DRM does suck but at least Apple fights to keep it reasonable. You don’t notice the DRM on music from ITMS much at all unless you want to do something highly illegal like give someone your entire music collection in one fell download. I can see why this is illegal too. It really is stealing. As long as Apple keeps the DRM reasonable I won’t have a problem with it.

    Also I find it hard to believe that they would try and implement something that would immediately make recently purchased hardware obsolete. A gradual trend to this is inevitable and already happens now as new software and functionality such as iChat demand greater processing power to operate. The backlash of such a move would be great. I think this is a little bit of doomsdayism.

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13. Verbose says: “We have all become spoiled with our abilies to copy and share copyrighted material for free, but these are … new abilities. Look back a 15 or 20 years and the best you could do was make tape copies of music or movies, which couldn’t really spawn [other] … copies because the quality was horrible. Distribution … was expensive because it was … physical … Today we have easy ways of making perfect copies and distributing … to millions or consumers for free.”

    I was a child of the 70s and I made EXCELLENT cassette copies of albums, even radio shows. And by the late 80s – early 90s, VCRs were doing really well with copy quality and just got better. So I don’t see the threat of increased quality of copies as being a valid fear, requiring ever more stringent controls on me doing what I want with something I’ve already paid for. In fact, I challenge the average viewer to tell the difference between DVD quality video and a good VHS tape version of the same (I use my own original StarWars trilogy as exhibit A). Or even 128bit AAc vs. standard CD compression. The difference is only great if you happen to be an afficianado.

    As for digital technology enabling the potential for greater theft than the previous ‘state of the art’, this was exactly the same situation in the analog world of not too long ago – cassettes and VHS were both going to be the downfall of the industry! And yet somehow, miraculously, artists and media companies not only survived – they thrived. Present day file sharing services put a new wrinkle into this today, but last I checked both music and video sales were growing, and – more importantly – so were the profit margins of the companies who distribute them. Am I missing the tsunami here?

    “Of course this is great for those who think that the rich are too rich and that artists (and everyone else involved …) should donate the fruits of their labor … to society, free of charge, for the greater good… [T]hat … has never been a realistic goal.”

    This is a red herring. You’re always going to have thieves, but the vast majority of people have no problem paying a fair price for any product. Apple’s iTunes, thriving in a world ‘awash’ in digital scofflaws and file swappers, demonstrates that most conclusively. And just because I want to be assured I’ll only be paying ONCE for the music or video I buy, and that I be allowed to do whatever I want with it, short of longstandingly acknowledged criminal practice, doesn’t make me some sort of utopian communist. It makes me an average consumer living in what’s SUPPOSED to be a personal freedom loving democracy.

    “Once DRMed media is perfected … and it becomes very difficult to make quality reproductions …, a new order will be created where some artists and companies will want a broader market that non-DRM media will have, and we will begin to see content providers provide both DRM and non-DRM protected content… Let’s face it, companies realize that consumers aren’t going to double their spending on media to maintain the level of new content they are currently used to getting (via illegal distributions). A happy medium will be reached where DRM content will be the norm, but the pricing will be cheaper because of the desired amount of market penetration the companies will want to maintain.”

    Now THIS sounds utopian. Your “new order” of copy restrictions AND then no copy restrictions is logically inconsistent. Certainly it makes no sense for an industry, that’s currently trying their level best to get all consumers in ‘lockdown mode’, to suddenly give everyone the keys to the handcuffs. What would be the point of putting all the restrictions on in the first place??? You say the reason is because companies realize we won’t want to “double [our] spending on media” (whatever that means), but the fact is this is EXACTLY what these companies want us to do. Double, triple, quadruple … whatever they can get away with. Corporations care first and foremeost about profit – fairplay, fairuse … fairness in general … it’s all expendable if it means a better balance sheet for them. You need to wake up to this economic fact.

    Regular old market forces aren’t enough to pull that kind of revenue growth off, but the technology straightjacket they’re now pushing will do the trick quite nicely. From their point of view, once we’re all locked into a “perfected” DRM based world, there really isn’t much choice left on our part. We either pay for things we didn’t have to pay for before, at a greater price or more often than before, or we risk huge fines and jail time. The latter is already happening (or don’t you keep up with the latest news rgearding universities or individuals being sued by the industry’s digital gestapo?).

    Is this your New World Order? You can keep it pal. And if it actually comes to pass, I for one will go back to the freedom loving realm of vinyl and cassette tapes. No problem.

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14. Vastly Inferior Software Trashes All

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15. if u ask me

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16. odyssey67,

    You make it sound like someone’s holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy their products. There are other things in the world to get into, like horticulture or dog training.

    If you don’t like the way all this tech crap rolls out, don’t buy it. It’s an option, not a mandate. However, if you are interested in it and want to get a piece of it, you’ll have to pay for the whole ball of wax: the physical product, the R&D, the business strategies, and legal strategies, etc.

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17. Relax. Take a breath. Chill out.

    No company is going to force some new standard on the public that will force everyone to buy new hardware. Such a standard would fail miserably, unless…

    A) The new standard offers some new value to the consumers (like DVD did over VHS)
    -or-
    B) The old standard is no longer available in any form.

    “B” is next to impossible, barring some amazing conspiracy among content providers that would almost certainly run afoul of antitrust laws. The old standard will remain as long as there are customers that want it, just like VHS tapes are still available at your video store, albeit in an ever-dwindling section.

    It’s especially ridiculous to claim that DRM is why Apple is moving to Intel. How long will it be before a majority of the Mac’s install base is on the Intel platform? Any new service that required a Intel-based Mac would be a colossal flop.

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18. Excellent, odyssey67 — I’ll add another comment to a Verbose prediction I think is naive —

    “A happy medium will be reached where DRM content will be the norm, but the pricing will be cheaper because of the desired amount of market penetration the companies will want to maintain.”

    The market penetration envisioned by the record companies is all in their heads. They believe file sharing costs them sales based on nothing but their opinion — observed data suggests otherwise. They will not lower prices for any reason as evidenced by their collusion to keep prices inflated long before there were wide-spread methods for making digital copies and the recent pressure to get Apple to raise the iTMS track price which costs them exactly nothing. Record labels don’t compete – they collude – and if somebody won’t play along, like Apple, once again, they don’t try to compete they try to force.

    When the time came that I could buy a 2-hour dvd of a movie that costs a hundred million to make (and which did not make back the investment at the box office) for 10-12 bucks that was the time I quit buying $18 dollar cd’s with 40 minutes of filler and 10 minutes of music. Bring on the DRM, bring on the price increases – I’m not buying it anyway. Maybe I’ll go back to taping off the radio. Perhaps the next move by the record labels to prevent unauthorized copying will be a cd that emits no sound.

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19. Whatever DRM is put in place, it will be broken in fifteen minutes by a hyper-caffeinated 15-year-old. As Misanthrope eloquently pointed out in his last sentence: if it can be seen or heard, it can be copied.

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20. To hell with this, I’m going back to vinyl

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21. TC & DRM Promise And Risk

    Trusted Computing FAQ by computer security expert Ross Anderson:
    http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

    Electronic Frontier Foundation on Trusted Computing – Promise and Risk:
    http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php

    Apple Matters – Macintosh: Intel Inside! Now Improved With Delicious DRM
    http://applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/484

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22. technology straightjacket says: “You make it sound like someone’s holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy their products. There are other things in the world to get into, like horticulture or dog training.”

    Not if I want to watch a movie or listen to music. And for the record, I’m not A/V hobbiest (you could put my present collection of music and videos in one medium-to-large sized box). I just like owning what I buy, and not being treated like a criminal because of that.

    “If you don’t like the way all this tech crap rolls out, don’t buy it. It’s an option, not a mandate. However, if you are interested in it and want to get a piece of it, you’ll have to pay for the whole ball of wax: the physical product, the R&D, the business strategies, and legal strategies, etc.”

    You clearly have a problem undertsanding what the concept of “law” means in society. If the government does what the media industry is pushing for, and makes new laws requiring the citizenry adhere to their new DRM technologies and schemes, there is no ‘opt out’ clause. Laws ARE mandates, and they theoretically apply to everyone (practically speaking, if I have enough cash to hire an ‘OJ Simpson-like’ legal team, I can probably do whatever I want … but that’s another debate).

    You are making an argument that many people today seem to accept; that simple availablity of a plethora of consumer goods is the same as having true freedom of choice in the political and legal sense. It’s not. And while new DRM restrictions on video and music are indeed ‘lifestyle’ choices, and hence seem silly to be drawing lines in the sand about, the incursion on the rights these technologies allow will set legal precident. So, beyond the simple economic unfairness of it, there is also a danger that the precident will have ripple effects in other, less frivolous areas. That’s one of the aspects of the Common Law tradition we live under.

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23. LordRobin says: “Relax. Take a breath. Chill out. No company is going to force some new standard on the public that will force everyone to buy new hardware. Such a standard would fail miserably, unless…

    A) The new standard offers some new value to the consumers (like DVD did over VHS)
    -or-
    B) The old standard is no longer available in any form.

    “B” is next to impossible, barring some amazing conspiracy among content providers that would almost certainly run afoul of antitrust laws. The old standard will remain as long as there are customers that want it, just like VHS tapes are still available at your video store, albeit in an ever-dwindling section.”

    First, your contention that industries can never force standards on the public is demonstatibly false. When CDs where introduced, consumer purchases of them weren’t great enough to displace vinyl records (among other reasons, many just liked the sound of analog better). Nevertheless, the industry could make ALOT more money per CD than they ever could per record, so to push the CD standard on the public they simply made fewer and fewer records, regardless of consumer demand for them. Remember, there was well over half a century of ’embedded users’ of vinyl, but by the end of the 1980s it was almost impossible to find a record in a popular music store, anywhere.

    I would point out that one of the great powers that the computer today gives the consumer is the ability to digitally thwart such a consumer unfriendly scheme like that of pushing record buyers to CDs. And this is EXACTLY the reason why these companies want DRM in every PC as soon as possible. They, for purely economic reasons, simply want to be in the cat bird’s seat again. I’d rather reserve that seat for myself.

    “It’s especially ridiculous to claim that DRM is why Apple is moving to Intel. How long will it be before a majority of the Mac’s install base is on the Intel platform? Any new service that required a Intel-based Mac would be a colossal flop.”

    Digital video delivery is the problem that Apple could not get the media companies to allow them to solve without some form of DRM that was much more robust than software AAC for music. The profit matgines are orders of magnitude higher for video, so the loss/gain potential in delivering it made all these media conglomerates insist on doing it ‘there way’ this time. Software can be more easily hacked than hardware, hence – to get access to all those movies and TV shows – Apple had to get on the DRM train that these companies preferred. And that train is driven by Intel.

    Now, it will probably start out with a video iPod or some specially designed homebased ‘iMedia server’, but the latter will almost certainly be powered by “Intel Inside”. Who else is Apple going to use at this point?

    And since all this stuff will still be digital, and since computers are always going to be digital too, and since these media conglomerates have ALWAYS regarded computers as their biggest obstacle in regaining their dominanct position on what we see and listen to, and how much (and even whether) we pay for it … well, I’m sure you can see how having DRM in computers – all computers – is simply a way of shutting a big back door, from their perspective. Intel powers 80% of the PCs on the planet. If Windows falters even more, then what other OS is likely to take market share away from them? OSX. So getting Apple ‘in the fold’ early – ie before their market share numbers get too high – was probably a very high priority.

    The only leverage these companies had was video. Apple wants video – enough of it to build a well-sized library for an online store and specialty products. To get that video, I’m sure they were told in no uncertain terms, they’re going to have to play ball with regard to DRM. On EVERYTHING.

    It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but remember … even paranoids have enemies.
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24. So what does all this mean exactly ? All my current mp3s, movs, mpegs, avis won’t play on future machines ? Or future media produced on these new machines, won’t play on old ones ? I’m confused.

    mw = faith. Whatever that means…

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