They put that chip in there specifically to block access to 3rd party accessories, which don't pony up license fees. It's just another example of apple trying to price gouge their customers. They do this at every opportunity. See: Not supporting flash on iphone, their active blocking of any other MP3 player on iTunes (software and DRM), their fee to strip the DRM from the songs you've bought, and the glorified service pack that is snow leopard. I own a ton of Apple gear, but why do we have to kiss their ass just because they make good stuff? They're just as greedy as any big company.

Oh, and grow some balls, TUAW. "We're sympathetic"? My thought is that probably translates to "We realize this is crappy behavior, but we're so afraid of the rabid fans and that we might lose access, that we refuse to call a spade a spade."

@tekkenshihan

Actually it doesn't tell you that. The "bars" on a cell phone only give you signal strength, when what actually matters is signal to noise ratio (SNR). High signal strength is like yelling, which means you're easy to hear if you're in a quiet room, but not if you crank up the stereo, or if that room is echoing. That's why sometimes you have a crap connection, even if you've got 5 bars.

Also, there's the network infrastructure. If AT&T doesn't have the capacity to support all it's concurrent users, they're going to suffer.

What is your opinion? We wouldn't know, because you didn't say.
Is it that consumers don't care that ITMS products are DRM, yet they do for every other store carrying DRM? That a non-story about MS supposedly filtering content is more important?

How do you have an entire post on the state of DRM, and only obliquely mention the ITMS? The quality of the music is a joke, and whatever people's personal experiences, the fact remains that the official policy is no redownloading of lost music.
Oh, and while the Zune can't compete with the Touch or iPhone, it runs rings around the Classic - and that's pretty good for 2nd generation product. Plus, since both parties have retracted the "content scanning" story, why continue to push it?
I like this site, and I love Apple products, but why not grow a pair and actually criticize them when they deserve it, especially considering they're the market leader in the exact practices the post is about?!

gears of war

The only thing on linux even worth looking at is the XBMC port to linux. LinuxMCE is a joke, and MythTV is a great way to eat up hours and hours of your free time. XBMC is still in a pre-alpha phase, but it's evolving from what is currently the best media center experience out there. Last I heard, they're looking to get a reasonably stable build out sometime around October.

Alternately, have you considered actual MCE 2005? You could run it with your specs. It's pretty stable, supports a decent number of codecs, and has an active 3rd party developer community.

when they cut the head off the mutant immortal

Two things here:
One: It's certainly not in any developing country's interest to crack down on IP theft. They create little IP but get the benefit without having to expend capital. I mean if they could get free cars, do you think they wouldn't? So it doesn't make sense to think that they're making an example of a school teacher to satisfy the WTO. I mean if you want to make an example, I'm sure there are far less sympathetic people using pirated software. If anything, they're trying to create an example of a poor person just trying to help the children...

Two: angelsvairwaves1 - Have you ever installed OS X? There is no security (in terms of preventing piracy) whatsoever on the retail versions, and the security on the versions bundled with machines is laughable. Now obviously this is because of the different business models, but if you're going to throw in a Apple fanboy comment, try to make it coherent.

I agree that this is BS from Apple of the highest order. iTunes 7 has been a dog almost from day one, causing tons of problems on my macbook. I haven't tried it under Vista yet, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a reason why they couldn't find time to make it work during the glacially slow Vista development period. Hell, Vista's been in public beta longer than gmail. (joke) The certainly found plenty of time over the development to take potshots at Vista and steal+integrate features from Windows.

The crazy thing is that lately MS has been acting so much cooler than Apple. Granted their marketing sucks, but some of their divisions are actually showing signs of innovative/entrepreneurial thought. For instance, like Media Center is far better than Front Row, and I'd far rather have a Media Center machine + xbox360 MCE than Front Row and AppleTV.

Finally Blake:
You asked how a crappy Gateway machine could beat a Mac Pro. To be honest, I'm a little skeptical of that claim w/o a link, but it'd be a combination of two facts. One, the fully buffered memory used in the Mac Pro has noticeably less bandwidth and higher latency than the memory used in most Core 2 machines. Two, not a lot of software is going to utilize four cores better than two. Combine those two facts, and you've got a recipe for a cheap piece of crap (aka Gateway) beating a workstation like a Mac Pro.

If I read this correctly, then it does sound like Apple is making up an excuse for squeezing more money out of people. Which doesn't surprise me since it sounded like BS from the beginning. This IS a story - moreso for the fact that it sounds like Apple has basically lied about why it's charging this fee. It knew it's customers aren't going to like paying for a laptop, then paying for it again, so it hid behind some mumbo-jumbo it didn't think anyone would call them on.

The "licensing fee" theory doesn't even make sense. First of all, the whole point of an open standard like 802.11 is to avoid licensing fees. Second, if it's for a licensing fee, why wouldn't Apple just say that in the first place? Third, is the idea that Apple mysteriously decided to pay 60% of this fee out of the goodness of their heart? Wow, that's nice of them. I guess I'll be sending in my check with a thank you note.