Udo's Techblog

OK. You've illustrated ONE example. How about some research into your claim that "we can safely assume this is just the beginning of the lock-down." So far, there is no PROOF that what you are "assuming' is even valid for anything other than YOUR computer.

What I see here is a snot-nosed rat-faced git intent upon making a name for himself on the internet by writing a blog and making claims that have no research, no factual basis (one incident does not make a trend, nor a company wide practice), and no foundation in reality. It is for this reason bloggers, while read, are given very little credence because of their valueless, unsubstantiated, and wildly accusatorial fluff.
Go get some facts, justify your reasoning, come up with some logical conclusions based on the facts. Otherwise, leave the editorializing to editors, and not to mindless, uneducated, half-brained, uneducated twits whose whole function in life is to published facetious, meaningless drivel.

Thanks Russel, you really make me feel good about myself when you put it like that. Anyway, if you think I'm making a "name for myself" here, you are seriously misjudging the nature of the blogosphere. But, you know what, instead of sticking to your glorified editorials, you actually came over here and participated in the discussion - and I'm grateful for that.

Somewhere in there you make a very good point, because I really am cranky and jaded. So I'll clarify where I'm coming from. See, I believe CRM is actually becoming more ubiquitous every day. And since it's a gradual increase, people tend to just ignore changes when they occur in little steps over a greter period of time. What this means is, over the course of several years, we're less and less free to use our computers as we see fit and this video link nonsense from Apple is a good example.

I don't want to stick around and wait for the day when I'll have to use Linux in order to get my computer to work as I intend to, you're absolutely right, so I'm going to raise strong concerns over the possible direction Apple is going. They need to hear it from someone, right? And somehow I doubt that editorials will pick it up if they don't absolutely have to.

To be fair, I realize Apple did this because the content industry pressured them to tighten up their platform. There has to be pressure from customers to counter that. Steve Jobs' belief in a DRM-free future alone is not enough if there is no obvious business benefit achievable by actually going there. I really do hope this is an isolated failure of judgment, and I am still looking forward to buying my next MacBook - otherwise I wouldn't care to write about this either.

While it seems Apple may be headed to Redmond, they're really just pressured into DRM. Contrary to what people might think of this being the "information age", the meaning is quite different to what is normally understood: Just because someone can Google whatever they want, doesn't always mean the information is free. Now, information is power (much like knowledge). DRM makes for an excellent example (though not exactly power). They control what we can get for free, what we need to pay for, and, as this example here of iTunes Movies, where we can use what we pay for. Any other way makes us cheaters to the industry. Companies only stay for as long as they can function profitably, and they can't exactly do that giving stuff away. So, while I don't mind paying for movies, not being able to play them where-ever I want is kind of a pain (like DVD regions). Becoming Microsoft-like does screw up your customer relations and not having to deal with that on my current MacBook Pro is one less thorn... I hope the situation improves keeping the real users in mind - us.