they call it garbage collection

I have a need to clear these Apple-related things out of my head:

• Even if I don't use it as my phone, I'll probably still want an iPhone.  If only as a Wifi enabled, media-playing, web-browsing toy.

• Relatedly, what I want come June is a way to track the price movement of the secondary market for iPhones, esp. if an unlocking method is discovered.  I'm sure there's a way to do it on eBay (or through their API), but it will be interesting to watch the price differential between a subsidized model (with forced subscription) and a resale model (without).

• Surely they'll iTMS enable the phone, right? And leverage the Cingular billing relationship?  (I want that track, I want it now, and sure, go ahead and charge it to my cell bill.)

• I keep reading about how DRM will eventually go away, that it's days are numbered.  The strategic rationale for this is that Apple's dominance of the digital music market will force the labels into action that attempts to leverage distribution of other players (Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, Real, etc.) to break the iTMS stranglehold.  (E.g., sell it in non-DRM'd MP3 format so that people can buy it wherever they want and still play it where they want. Like on their iPod.)  This very well may happen, but it might not have that much of an impact on Apple's position in the market, since there would be nothing to prevent them from offering those songs in a non-DRM'd format as well, and they'd still be able to leverage the iTunes hardware-software connection.

OK, that's it for now.

Comments

[David Jacobs]

"I keep reading about how DRM will eventually go away, that it's days are numbered."

I am also totally unconvinced on this point. If you look at the trend of music production, from 8-track, vinyl, audio tape, cd, dvd, mp3, they trend both towards "cheaper/easier to manufacture" and also "easier to encrypt/compress content." There's no force I can imagine that would roll back 30 years of that momentum.