New York Times on DRM
“Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs” says The New York Times in today’s edition of “Your Money”. Unfortunately it doesn’t really say much about the iPhone and crippleware beyond saying that it will be limited in music playing in effectively the iPod. However the article does a very nice job of covering the state of the downloadable music scene and has some good comparisons to Microsoft’s DRM solutions and eMusic’s decision to not use it. Well worth a read if you haven’t been following the debate of late.
Ever wonder what Steve Jobs really meant by his comment about the iPhone being “literally 5 years ahead of any other mobile phone”? My guess is that he was looking to the future of DRM, and client-crippling/monopolistic technology and noting how iPhone is incorporating all the tricks in the book to have customers who switch to Apple switch permanently.
I worked up an illustration to this effect – don’t know if it’s all that funny, but the point is dead-on (I’m not biased, of course).
http://www.autodogmatic.com/index.php/a/2007/01/17/steve_jobs_introduces_iphone