“Some might say that the 2009 Macworld Expo keynote was boring. Apple didn’t present any groundbreaking new products, didn’t redesign the old ones a whole lot, and Steve Jobs wasn’t even on stage. ‘No surprises at Apple’s final Macworld,’ sighs the Guardian. The event ‘won’t be missed’ according to InfoWorld. ‘Macworld fizzles,’ screams Reuters. Last year’s underwhelming event looked positively awesome by comparison,” Anders Bylund writes for The Motley Fool.
Bylund writes, “Of course, they’re all wrong. This was the most exciting keynote I’ve ever seen.”
“The iTunes music store is finally breaking free of its old DRM shackles. From now on, every new song in the world’s best-selling music store comes in the unprotected iTunes Plus format,” Bylund writes. “If you don’t have an iPod or iPhone, every song can be converted to the industry-standard MP3 format or burned to as many CDs as you like.”
MacDailyNews Note: Yeesh. What year is this, again? Anders, MP3 is a dinosaur format. AAC is its successor. MP3 is inefficient and outdated vs. AAC. Use the AAC format for your music, not MP3. And, with iTunes, you could always burn spinning plastic discs, even though you should have figured out by now how to take your iPod / iPhone with you into the car and everywhere else instead of lugging stacks of CDs around in search of old-time CD players.
Bylund continues, “I predict that the unrestricted file formats won’t hurt iTunes sales in the slightest, and I actually expect growth rates to pick up steam… With the market leader going to a completely open place, and inviting all comers to join it, there’s no reason to hold off any longer. Apple just expanded its addressable market. And the company is leading the way into a new era of open, cheap, and convenient media consumption.”
Bylund writes, “Boring? Disappointing? Fizzled? Open your eyes, guys and gals. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Full article here.
[Updated, 5:05pm ET: Cleaned up our “Note” above to clarify our points and to better address Bylund’s statements.]
Most of these differences between Phil and Steve are imagined. He did a good job, even steve couldn’t have satisfied the whiners without a teleport device.
I enjoyed the keynote and think the updates to both iWork and iLife are great. The iTunes news was big. And good ol’ Phil did a nice job. His voice squeeks like he’s going thru puberty.
MDN: I gotta call you on your take. I have several iPods and an iPhone; my son has several iPods; my wife couldn’t care less. She has a 6-CD player in her car, and when the Holidays come, she wants is packed with Christmas music. Burning CDs with MP3s is perfect for her. There are still technology friends and family members we must sustain.
“Anders, MP3 is a dinosaur format. AAC is its successor.”
MDN’s penchant for criticizing the slightest perceived misstatement, has diminished its ability to recognize what an author is saying.
MP3 may have been the term to describe a format many years ago, but it isn’t now. MP3 describes a type of device, a device that plays digitally recorded music.
In this context, the context that non-geeks use every day, MP3 is used correctly.
It’s time for MDN to wipe its collective noses.
Gregg Thurman,
Bylund wrote, …every song can be converted to the industry-standard MP3 format… which directly contradicts your douchebaggish comment.
MDN was right. You’re wrong.
Finally, an analyst with a positive reaction to Apple’s appearance this year at Macworld. It helps not to have ludicrously unrealistic expectations, since you can appreciate what’s actually there.
Though it’s once again annoying to see this kind of ignorance about AAC files. Really, what are these “reporters” paid to do? Simple research via Google would provide them with factual, useful information about other portable music players which can play AAC files, such as the list here: http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6490_7-6625879.html
“It’s time for MDN to wipe its collective noses.”
As soon as they pull them out of their collective butts.
How funny is it that they link to Apple’s own press to support the thin argument about the superiority of AAC to MP3; the real world difference is beyond negligible.
mp3s encoded at 192kbps or higher (or vbr) to me are still in a fine format. Am I missing something? Why should those who don’t use AAC be ridiculed?
Even that I was expecting a new 4 cores iMac, the software they presented is awesome (or I should say the “new features”). I believe those new software version are the equivalent on importance to the new hardware versions. i can’t wait to have it.
Also, I did not miss Steve Jobs on the keynote, Phil does a really good job on that.
@Gabriel
what are these reporters paid to do?
the better question would be:
what does it take to be a reporter?
the answer: the desire to be a reporter I guess.
I have no desire and neither do you I’m guessing.
isn’t this whole thing so not fair? people who could do the job 10x better have no interest in doing said job — it’s the way it’s always been.
the large majority, and I challenge anyone here to attempt to prove otherwise, are empty-headed douch-bag hacks who think their readers are even more inept than they are.
> I predict that the unrestricted file formats won’t hurt iTunes sales in the slightest, and I actually expect growth rates to pick up steam…
That’s a really dumb “prediction.” How can going DRM-free possibly “hurt iTunes sales” in any way? It does not negatively impact existing customers. The only possibility is that sales will grow because existing customers will buy even more songs and most non-iPod users can now play songs from the iTunes Store directly.
“Most exciting”. I graded the Expo as underwhelming, sparse, and unambitious.
The only writer that has a clue has to the possible impact of DRM Free iTunes music. Can you say increasing iPod sales!, Increasing iTunes store sales! and increasing Mac sales! All from DRM Free iTunes Music? Yes, iTunes is a gateway product that takes the Windows washed mind and starts to clean it. iTunes is the best and largest online catalog of Music, So, you have a Sony MP3 Player you buy music from iTunes you copy to the Sony train wreck of a management tool and sync your device by next fall you’ll be upgrading to an iPod. You have a Zune you want that one song or Music Video that’s only on iTunes so, you put iTunes on your system and discover how great and user friendly it is. A real online store and fabulous experience. In days you’re looking at your clunky old Zune thinking… I need to upgrade to an iPod.. even the Apple/iPod downers out there will be moving to the iPod in no time.
@ken1w
I’m guessing Fox News style ‘conventional wisdom’ has led our fine writer to believe that it has been Apples idea the entire time to tie DRM to music sold through iTunes and NOT the music cartels, er, talent pimps… er… no what is the politacally correct? er, major labels, that’s the ticket…
@roobler
Well, it may have been the record labels that necessitated having the DRM in place, but Apple actually benefitted more from “being forced” to use DRM because it created exclusivity between the iPod and iTunes Store for all these years. The DRM was advantageous to Apple.
Now that iPods and the iTunes Store are so dominant, it really does not matter. With DRM gone, most people will still buy iPods and the iTunes Store will have even more customers because even non-iPod users can now play songs from the iTunes Store directly. To top it off, the average price paid for songs is going down in April.
Well, Apple did just make it easier for a household (or person) to own both iPods and non-iPods and still use the iTunes store. So the iPod ecosystem has become a little less sticky.
But I think Apple is fine with this because having seen the last quarter’s booming iPod touch sales, Apple is ready to move on from simple oersonal media players. And nobody else has anything like the iPod touch. Yes, Nokia and Archos have stuff but they don’t have the whole ecosystem.
@Greg Thurman:
Just because some people say “axe” instead of “ask” does not mean “axe” is the proper term.
Neither is “nucular”, but some dumb-ass insists on using that one too.
Why would you lower your standards for stupid people?
It frustrates me to no end that the anti-Apple crowd (because there is no such thing as a Winblows fan) continue to spread the lie that AAC is a proprietary codec and stands for “Apple Audio Codec”.
Bylund is the same Fool who thought the T-Mobile G1 had pre-sold 1.5M phones, just because he put the reports of T-Mo tripling their pre-order with HTC’s report that they expected to mfr 500k by the end of the year. Of course, he never retracted his stupid conclusion and the internet ran with the success of the G1.
@Gregg Thurman:
MP3 may have been the term to describe a format many years ago, but it isn’t now. MP3 describes a type of device, a device that plays digitally recorded music.
In this context, the context that non-geeks use every day, MP3 is used correctly.
Uh, no. That’s not what’s said in the article. Allow me to quote the important part.
“every song can be converted to the industry-standard MP3 format“
The guy was talking about the format, Greg.
And MP3 is a dinosaur. However, AAC’s advantage is more noticeable at low bitrates. At the high bitrates that iTunes Plus uses, there probably isn’t a great deal of difference.
——RM
Yes… Let’s bring back Roz Ho.
It was a great MacWorld. What it lacked in hardware, it more than made up for in software (Phil was right – iLife has always been the shining beacon for switch-contemplators, and it just got cooler).
And even more important, Phil did a great job, the audience loved it (more than a Stevenote, even), and it shows a future for the company that isn’t so anchored to one man’s fate and fitness.
Frankly, I enjoyed Phil’s on-stage presence much more than Steve’s. He’s got a whole one-of-us thing going that really drew me in.
If Steve survives the next year, Apple will be free to continue to excel in spite of global turbulence. It will be released from arbitrarily concrete and irrational external deadlines. Quality and breadth of offerings will improve as whole industries seek ways to shift their focus to ride the Apple wave.
@Andrei
I’ts not that those who dont use AAC are being ridiculed, but they may not know what they are missing by locking themselves into a strictly MP3 format. If you had a chance to get superior sound reproduction and be able to load more tracks on your Digital music player would you not do it?
AAC is actually MP4 which is the successor to MP3. It is a superior compressor to MP3 and especially for high frequency content. It’s most effective at lower bit rates such as 128 which has been the default for the iTunes store library until recently when 256 became available. At the higher rate AAC’s advantage over MP3 is not as great but it’s still superior.
AAC is not proprietary to Apple. The songs you purchased on the iTunes store were never proprietary to Apple nor were they “locked” into the iPod. You could always burn the songs to a CD and play them on any CD player. You could always reimport them from that CD and use them on any MP3 player.
DRM did not benefit Apple nor was it something they insisted on; it was the music cartels that insisted on it. Steve has been challenging them to drop it for years.
MP3 verses AAC
At lower bit rates AAC sounds better and it is a smaller file.
At higher bit rates AAC still sounds a little bit better and it is still a smaller file.
Smaller files equals more files (tunes) per iPod.
Lecture over.
I agree regarding AAC over MP3, but greatly missed Steve and am disappointed overall.
Maybe I’m just tired of reading so much negative press- “Steve is dead,” “Steve is lying,” “Who Needs Steve,” “Apple Blew It,” and “Macworld Keynote underwhelming, excrutiating.”
I’m glad it’s over- almost as much as I’m glad the election is over. Looking forward to the iMac refresh, or maybe the matte option added to the 15-inch MBP.