Re: Apple Computer changes its name

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.iB1.0.1070113002113.5520A-100000@halifax.chebucto.ns.ca>,
Simon D. Williams <email@ld8.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
>> True - but if I do pay you, I expect to be allowed to decide for
>> myself what kind of player I want to play the music I paid for on!
>> And I also expect to be able to change my decision later.  If you
>> impose restrictions on me in this respect, then I will not become
>> your customer.
> 
> From a consumer point-of-view it's not much different than the choices of
> media were in the past... you couldn't play LPs on a cassette deck, so the
> hardware you own has always affected your purchasing choices.

....but I could play LP's on an LP record player of any other brand.
Different brands of LP players didn't use different "encodings".  And
the LP player allows me to play 45 rpm EP records as well, and (a few
decades ago) even 78 rpm shellac records (if I changed the needle on
the pick.up).

However, in the earliest days of the vinyl record, things were
different: there were 45 rpm EP records and 33 rpm LP records.  The
two formats of vinyl records were competing, and almost always a
record player could play either EP recods, or LP records, but not
both.  Fortunately, this stupidity vanished a few years later, when
record players capable of playing both EP and LP records appeared.

Today's situation, with portable digital players requiring different
encoded formats of the digital files, reminds a bit of the situation
in the earliest days of the vinyl record, when record players were
unable to play both EP and LP records.


Of course the physical difference of the media will always matter.
Therefore, neither an iPod nor an Iriver will be able to play
cd or vinyl records, or cassette tapes.  But if the physical media
are quite similar (such as the EP and the LP vinyl records), a
player should be capable of playing seveal formats.

-- 
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Paul Schlyter,  Grev Turegatan 40,  SE-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
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