Nearly every sentence of this post is factually wrong. A wide variety of DRM free video exists on the internet, some of it is even paid material. Louis CK, Jim Gaffigan and Greg Proops have all done DRM-free work.
My iPhone can play any video encoded in the right formats using the Videos app. It can also run VLC. A wide variety of main stream BluRay players support DLNA and media via usb.
Copyright being a killer kind of overlooks why we have copyright to begin with. I make movie, I get some limited powers to determine who can and can not distribute my work and how it's used. If I make a movie, you don't have the right to make a buck off my work with out my say so. Do you have ANY idea why that's kind of inherently unfair?
Also, if I don't want my work used to sell cigarettes or used to stump for some political candidate, then that should be my right.
That's not to say copyright reform isn't needed, or that copyright holders don't have disproportional bipartisan political influence or any number of things. However, as a leading issue of our time, it's somewhere near, "Are there too many Buicks on the road?" Fixing or repealing the DMCA is relatively easy. There are many issues that I can think of that just aren't.
EarPods are quite decent and the design is very ingenious.
However, the response is pretty neutral. I'd imagine the Beats acquisition is probably at least in part to make better headphones. I don't know if Beats' streaming licenses are transferrable.
By the time Apple showed up to any particular gadget segment, that gadget segment had existed for years, and sometimes decades before. iPad? Tablets had been kicking around since the 80's. iPhone? iPod? Smart phones and MP3 players had been around since the late 90's. Mac? Apple II? I think you get my point.
But you're making the point I am. Competition is a GOOD thing. Apple showed up in gadget segments and made them better because they weren't terrorized by existing players to keep out. Again I'm not saying that's the point we were at, but I am saying that just because someone/ some company was great, that's no excuse to allow them to try and stop competition.
I'm struggling to find any sort of counter argument that isn't, "But we get to make something cool!" Which is wrong, because most of our time, we're coding up something that shits CSVs so someone can go into a meeting and highlight some menial point to other managers.
> I'm struggling to find any sort of counter argument that isn't, "But we get to make something cool!" Which is wrong, because most of our time, we're coding up something that shits CSVs so someone can go into a meeting and highlight some menial point to other managers.
"We get to make something cool!" is not the same as "Everything we make is cool!" I'm not a professional programmer, but it seems to me that, if you're not also (in addition to your job) programming in your spare time for the sheer joy of creating, then you're probably not the best programmer you could be.
I also meant to say that even if we do eventually make something cool, the crushing realities of working as a software developer still sucks.
Granted, if you're a Googler or Amazonite, or otherwise working for a decent company, this isn't true. But most software developers aren't Googlers or what have you.
