waffle

So: Intel says at a media exhibition that it’s okay for Apple to not be open.

Excuse me while I’ll chow this down. Intel is pushing Viiv, a platform whose media vending is based on Windows Media, a closed format in all its varieties. Out of Apple’s entire platform, I can point out only three closed formats of any magnitude whatsoever: the FairPlay DRM (and it not being licensed for other companies; Apple is not alone in doing this), the DAAP protocol for iTunes music sharing and the Apple Lossless codec. Literally everything else - bar internal databases - is open, and the DAAP protocol is being “licensed” for other vendors.

Media? MPEG-1 (MP3 means MPEG-1 Part 3 audio encoding) or MPEG-4. Both open. AAC? MPEG-4 audio codec. Open. H.264? MPEG-4 video codec. Open. Bonjour/Zeroconf, that iTunes uses for discovery of shared libraries and remote speakers? Invented by Apple, and not only open but open source.

That Apple means “closed” is these days largely a myth. (I mean, compare the number of totally proprietary ports on a 1996 Power Mac and a 2006 Mac Pro.) Would I like to see more formats supported in iTunes? Yes, sure, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, maybe even WMA/WMV. But Viiv is not more open than iTunes, unless “open” means “widely licensed to a bunch of box makers while building on closed formats from Microsoft”.