Piracy, and what should be done about it?

Piracy is a tough subject to talk about with people because nobody truly cares because nobody really sees the damage being done, or they actually think they're doing the right thing. When studios or whoever, go about putting grandma's and little girls on trial over the download of the latest Britney Spears song, it doesn't put them in them best light either.

The entertainment industry as a whole is going through changes. Whether it be videogames, movies, music, anything can now be found on the internet and downloaded illegally, and I totally disapprove. People work hard on their craft, and while piracy has been cited as one of the ways to put work out there (which even helped famous bands like Metallica become popular in the early days through copied tapes) there has to be a better way of discovering new media.

Here's the dilemma though. If you want the best quality, you usually have to go with the most expensive option. For movies, that's Blu-ray. For music, that's CD's (or vinyl, DVD audio or Super Audio CD for the audiophile among us). For videogames, well, it really depends, but you get what I mean. If you want the best quality, it usually comes from a physical piece of media mastered by the studio and if you want it cheap and fast, you usually to download it off iTunes or Amazon, maybe it stream it from Netflix, or worse, download a shaky-cam version of your favorite movie.

Lossless codecs are starting to become more and more mainstream but iTunes does not provide them for music, and HD codecs such as VC-1 are incredibly effective at keeping detail intact on Blu-rays but once again, Netflix streams everything in lesser quality, even when it's in HD. I get why they do this, after all, bandwidth is still restricted and limited, despite how far we've come. Besides quality, the lack of portability or allowing people to borrow media. For example, buy a Blu-ray and lend it to a friend and it'll play in his Blu-ray player. Try and give him a legally downloaded iTunes file, and good luck trying to watch it.

Apple, in particular, has this idea of a walled-garden. You can have almost anything you want within that garden, but God forbid you try and take it somewhere else, or there's something beyond the wall that you may want.

iTunes is a beautiful program, that syncs media and apps between multiple computers and other Apple branded devices...but what if you want to watch it on your TV? Buy an AppleTV and it'll sync up perfectly...but the AppleTV is a lowly product. I have a 360, a PS3, hell even my Wii can handle media better than the AppleTV, but I can't sync my iTunes library with them. I also have a couple of bits of media on my Xbox through Zune, and even more media on my PS3 that can't sync or cross borders. Every system is locked down, leaving a library of stuff dedicated to each machine. Why can't I have all my media just play on anything I want? Whether it be a computer, a DVD player, or my toaster, let me pick where I want to experience it.

Netflix is really the only place where I can watch media almost anywhere, but again, I'm limited to the material they have making ownership impossible. If more companies were to follow Netflix's example, I think we can curb piracy, and not treat the customer like second rate citizens. Hopefully, we'll have this all sorted out before physical media bites the dust eventually.

This question comes up a bit.

Do I hate the new iPhone?

The short answer is no, but there's more to it than that. Apple and I definitely have a love/hate relationship. I love my new MacBook Pro, it does things I couldn't even imagine how hard it would be to even begin to do on my old PC, however, at least my PC could do everything and my Macbook Pro doesn't. While it's a huge pain in the ass sometimes on the PC, at least it'll do what I want eventually, but if there's no way to do it on Mac, you have to figure out on hell of a workaround. I do enjoy the fact that on my Mac, I can put Windows 7 on here, if I feel the need, and believe me, I have felt the need, I just can't afford it right now.

Now, before my MacBook Pro, I had gotten acquainted with Apple through the iPod, and I had the iPod Mini, and that thing still works to this day. Sure, I stopped carrying it around after 15 months and then just lived off my laptop for media, but it was a decent experience.

Then the iPhone came out, and I was 100% Super...not impressed. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was cool and all, but I knew better than to buy first gen stuff, unless it's Nintendo. Although the promise of carrying around my media in my pocket in one device instead of separate devices was something that always appealed to me, but in most other phones it was thrown in at the last minute. Apple made a very clean interface that is still in my mind, completely unmatched by any competitor (but they're getting close now). However, I knew that it was too expensive, it was missing features other phones had for years, and it was small in non-expandeable storage. So I waited, and ignored the phone. Then the iPhone 3G and it addressed most of the issues I had with the phone, but I had no intention of getting one.

Then I got one. To be fair, it was a Christmas present so I didn't buy it. I explored the features of the phone and I was throughly impressed, and the App Store really helped shape the experience that is now iconic in people's mind. I really love the phone. After all, I still have it. The 3GS came out and basically was just a faster version of the phone I had, but I wasn't going to upgrade...you know, contracts and stuff, so I decided to upgrade what I thought would be the 4G.

Oh boy...where to begin. Let me start off by saying the phone is by no means bad, it's just incredibly, infuriatingly, disappointing. There are things that Apple has, for lack of better words, truly fucked up on. First and foremost, the antenna that runs around the phone that stops working as soon as you touch the phone, is almost unacceptable. Industrial design-wise, this is a huge snafu. The consumer should be able to use, hell, hold the product without any degradation to the experience the product provides.

Then, there's no 4G connectivity. I know what some of you are saying right now, "Jose, AT&T currently has no 4G network!"
Thanks, I'm totally aware of that. They will have one by next year, and I would like my phone to be future proof. They did it with the 3GS, after all, AT&T's HSPA+ network wasn't up by the time that phone came out, but that phone fully supported it, so why not this one?

However, my biggest gripe may be the lack of a 64 GB option. I have a lot of media on my Macbook Pro, so much media, that in only 7 months, I've used up 420 GB's of my 500 GB hard drive. Come on, would a 64 GB version be so hard to do? The problem I've always had, is that I love variety in my music, and with somewhat restrictive space (my current 8 GB iPhone) it's hard to get that. Also, I'm a bit of an audiophile and I get everything I can in the best possible quality available to me, which means I usually encode directly from a CD in a lossless compression format. The sad part is, even CD's are compressed, but much less than your typical MP3 download. I find most MP3's unlistenable. I don't get how people can even bother with such bad quality or demand better quality music, but that's another blog entirely. The point is, the higher the quality the song is, the more space it takes up, and the less songs I can put. I personally think that 64 GB's is perfect having enough media on the go, along with keeping the quality intact, and Apple failed to give it to me.

These may sound like small complaints, but in the future, I know these will add up. There are some other things, I didn't mention, and once again, I actually do think the phone is cool, but this is Apple here. The company that has changed the technology industry so many times, and while I don't think that Apple has to revolutionize the industry with every product, they at least could at least stop Jobs from hyping every product up to high heaven and ignoring any suggestion from the peanut gallery.

All in all, other than answering a couple of people's questions as to why I've been so vocal against the phone, I really don't have anything to gain by this. Apple's already sold like a million phones in less than a month. Hopefully, I've at least made you want more from Apple, because I guess Apple's doing something right if we're always asking for more from they're products, yet still have a smile on our faces when we open the box.