Palm Os Blog

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Electronic device manufacturers and content producers have

got to back away from the forest and see the light filtering

throught the trees. Consumers want to control the content

they purchase and want to be able to use their electronic

devices together without restrictions placed on them.

Standards and interoperability will have to come to digital

devices, just as Google co-founder Larry Page said in his

Consumer Electronics Show keynote speech when he introduced

Google Video. Right now, only those video’s purchased through

Google Video that are NOT copy protected will play on video

iPods and Sony PSP’s – the rest only work on Google Video.

http://www.google.com/press/podium/ces2006.html

That news about Google Video and Digital Rights Management

(DRM) standards of interoperability had me fuming about my

inability to use my content (photos, movies, music) on

devices made by different manufacturers or between cell phone

providers. Today I ran across a story about an Anti-DRM group

in Britain campaigning to demand an end to DRM.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/18/drm_consumer_opposition/

Obviously I’m not the only one disturbed by the fact that I

cannot move digitally recorded movies from my Tivo to my DVD

recorder (purchased for exactly that reason, but before I

knew it wouldn’t work) I only found out that I couldn’t

record movies from the Tivo to the DVD recorder when I called

Pioneer customer support to ask why the recorder wouldn’t

record my movies. It seems that I can only move digital

movies from the Tivo to my computer (which I found I could do

with free Tivo Desktop software when I called Tivo customer

support.)

So instead of recording directly from my Tivo to my Pioneer

DVD recorder, I have to move the movie over to my computer

via Tivo Desktop software, then burn a DVD from my computer.

Very smart move on Tivo’s part, as it means I definitely

won’t buy the DVR from my satellite TV provider because they

don’t support skipping commercials, nor do they support

moving movies to my computer.

This also means I don’t NEED my Pioneer DVD recorder – so

their DRM which stops Tivo digitally recorded movies from

recording to DVD means that I won’t use that Pioneer DVD

recorder and will now sell it. The other DVD player connected

to my other television will suffice. If I want to record

something, it goes on the Tivo because it is so easy to use

and works so extremely well. I’ll use the free Tivo Desktop

software and move it to my computer and burn DVD’s of my

recorded television and movies there.

Clearly Tivo is doing all they can to make their device

consumer friendly – but they are being besieged by television

and movie content producers, who are screaming at them to

stop the “piracy” of their users. Tivo now disables the 30

second commercial skip button daily (which you have to know

how to program – Select, Play, Select, 3-0, Select). They do

this via automatically updated internal software because

advertisers screamed at them for several years about the

consumer ability to skip commercials. The result is that I

reprogram that function daily anyway – annoying, but not

nearly as annoying as not being able to control my own device

the way I want to.

I’m convinced that content producers will lose this battle

over the long term and I’ll do all I can to fight them

myself, like supporting anti-DRM groups wherever I find them.

And I’ll research more thoroughly before buying products

which contain DRM to make certain they will work with my

existing devices – meaning no Sony CD’s or DVD’s. There have

been rumors that Apple is creating a set-top box and service

similar to Tivo and I’d buy one in a split second as I’m sure

I could use my iPod, iMac and iPhoto seamlessly between all

devices.

Maybe they’ll make a phone with a Mac OS and a PDA as well (I

actually used to own an early Apple Newton PDA and oh, how I

wish they had continued to develop that wonderful little

thing). I’m happy to use anything Apple produces – but I

won’t switch cell providers or switch my Satellite TV

provider. Interoperability and standards are essential to me.

It’s about choice. Pioneer limited my choices and lost a

customer and Motorola lost my ROKR iTunes phone business

because the device is only available from Cingular.

Obviously, I’m a Mac user and had studiously avoided

purchasing Windows machines until I had to buy a Windows box

to run business software not available for my Apple machines.

So I bought an extremely cheap $299 PC to run the three

programs that won’t run on my Mac. That cheap machine now

serves as my DVD burner for movies (with a cheap external

hard drive as movie storage drive). Pioneer lost a customer

because they don’t allow me to record movies to DVD from my

Tivo. How about a Tivo/Apple partnership? That would be a

marriage made in heaven due to the customer-centric design

and usability so elegantly addressed by both companies.

I’ll put up with Apple’s walled garden (iTunes and

proprietary AAC files) and their own DRM only as long as

everything they make works seamlessly together. Apple

products always have worked elegantly together and probably

always will. Somehow most third party software seems to

interact well with everything else on the Macs. The moment

Motorola makes that ROKR iTunes phone available through MY

cellular provider, I’ll consider buying that phone.

Being in the market for a phone, I had been looking at a Palm

Treo 650 phone/PDA and was excited when they introduced the

new 700 model, just as I was about to make that purchase. So

I read a few reviews and discovered to my horror that Palm

just fell victim to the dominance of Microsoft and replaced

their own well designed Palm operating system on that new

Treo 700 with a buggy, slow and cumbersome Windows OS!

In the process they lost another customer, because I can’t

stand the clunky way one must navigate with Windows

(reviewers agree) and refuse to buy that machine now, the

same way I avoided all other PDA’s running Windows for the

past 10 years. This is all because Palm couldn’t port

Microsoft documents and Windows related bits to the Palm OS

when corporate users required that interoperability. Thanks

to Gates & Company, Palm lost another customer – and their

own elegant OS.

If mainstream electronics device manufacturers continue to

take the path of least resistance by kowtowing to content

producers, lowest common denominator software and stifled

functionality and interoperability, then consumers will

eventually find a way to take back the control. We’ll avoid

buying products (CD’s & DVD’s, “rented” music) that don’t

work with their existing devices (Tivo’s, DVD recorders,

PDA’s, iPods) and will find companies that make all of this

stuff work together and buy from them – but only so long as

ALL devices and ALL content work with each other

interchangeably.

Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist and blogs about web content at: http:// weblogs.Publish101.com [http://weblogs.Publish101.com] and distributes articles about business at: http:// Publish101.com [http://Publish101.com] while operating a small business ecommerce tutorial at: http://WebSite101.com [http://%0D%0AWebSite101.com]

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