Brandon Fuller

Apple Stays Ahead of the Curve

Let me set this up. I have been buying all my music lately on the iTunes Music Store. Its so convienent that its addictive. Even my wife is getting into it. She has buying songs for our kid to listen to on iTunes. I hooked my iPod up in my truck. I developed a plugin for iTunes. I am all about Apple’s music solution.

Happy, except for one thing…I have a limited number of older devices that only know how to play MP3s. So they don’t work with the music I buy from Apple. In case you were not aware, Apple distributes their music as AAC files that are protected so you can only play them with Apple products currently.

That puts me in the position of many of the folks that don’t like buying from iTunes — why would I pay the same amount for music that I can’t play anywhere? If I just bought the CD at the store, I could play it anywhere. With iTunes I buy the music but I don’t have the same rights as I would if I would have bought the CD. Well, iTunes has been so easy and I can play it almost anywhere so I am pretty happy.

This weekend we had a birthday party for my daughter and with all the kids it would have been nice to be able to play kid’s music in the background. But all our kids music is in AAC format and my AudioTron doesn’t understand that. I need a solution.

So I got to thinking. How can I get MP3s over to my AudioTron while keeping my iTunes happy? One way is to burn your purchased music to a CD and then reimport from the CD in MP3 format. This is not prohibited by the software and therefore seems like a legal action to me. But I don’t want to burn all these CDs? A while back some guys figured out how to crack Apple’s copyright protection. That software is available. What if I figure out how to use some of that technology to unencrypt my purchased songs, convert them to MP3, and make them available to my AudioTron? Technically, the end result is no different than what I can do with the product itself. This is just an optimization in some sense and I don’t have to waste time and blank CD-Rs.

So I was off. The plan was to write some code and build it into my plugin. The code searches your iTunes library and looks for purchased/protected music. It makes a copy of the track and puts in a cache directory. Then it unprotects the file and converts it to MP3. Then I just have to make the cache directory available to my AudioTron and we are all set. The only downside is 2 copies of purchased songs — 1 AAC and 1 MP3 but oh well. Disks are cheap. I did a few tests and my prototype worked perfectly! Time for bed.

I woke up today and saw that Apple released the new AirPort Express. At first I couldn’t figure out what this thing did from the press release. Then it clicked after reading some more. This was the device I needed. One of its features is that you can plug this device into your stereo and it acts like a wireless streaming client. So just like when you stream songs from one iTunes-enabled computer to another, this device acts as a receiver. Now, you can control your stereo with the computer — which I prefer. Searching 1000s of songs with a remote just doesn’t work well for me. After reading on for another minute, I placed my order! Shipping in…July. Bummer. I am not a patient person.

So anyway, I guess I won’t work on the iTunes “converter” plugin. I wasn’t trying to do anything immoral. I wasn’t going to share my music with others. I don’t need this new feature to do that — I could do it today if I wanted. I just want to have the same abilities of “fair use” as when I buy music the old fashioned way. I still think there is value in this feature though. However, I personally find myself not needing this feature because the AirPort Express does what I need for now.

Curious what other people’s thought are on the issue. I talked with a handful of my “advisors” today and their responses ranged from “makes sense” to “you will get sued”. If enough people think this is a good thing, I might release it. But for now, Apple does a good thing and stays ahead of the curve on this one. I have been buying more and more Apple products lately. As long as they continue to interoperate with my Windows world, life is going to only get better. Thanks, Apple.