[LeeG]

According to this Panasonic has a new camera supporting AAC - any other devices out there? Its all well and good to promote "open standards" but if all anyone uses is windows media format - then THAT IS the standard - and be sure that M$ will profit from it.

I'm encouraged that another device is supporting AAC - how about other MP3 Players? If the only one that supports AAC is the iPod, then Apple could box themselves into a corner again with proprietary hardware....


Lee

[MaxPower2k3]

i don't think they're boxing themselves in at all. As long as they continue to support old standards, there's nothing wrong with introducing new ones. I happen to like and use AAC, but i know that there are a lot of people on this board that continue to use MP3 due to the wider compatibility across platforms. That doesn't mean we all can't use iPods, though. The only thing that apple has done that i can see people complaining about is that they use AAC exclusively on the iTunes music store. I think that they had to, though, to get the DRM (is that the right acronym?) features (which, obviously, are less than convenient, but, hey, at least they're not as bad as the Windows Media DRM)

[LeeG]

Thats my point, if you want the apple store to be as successful as it could be, it has to have OTHER players that can play the media it sells - right now, ONLY the iPod is compatible with the store - thus proprietary hardware is required to use the store and play its music, despite it being an open standard. Others need to adopt it for it to be a relevant standard. People will buy songs they can play on their player, and yes while there are a lot of iPods, its not the whole market, and as better and better wanna-bes come into the market, I see the windows crowd (the vast majority of users) eventually resorting to the same purchasing petterns as their hardware - cheapest, fastest, biggest. Without regard to build quality, HI, intuitive-ness. People won;t spend the big bucks on their second iPod, when nomad, etc makes a cheaper, bigger one. iPod's not the only game in town...

Hope more players start embracing AAC, this would help the iTMS tremendously

-Lee