Can’t you see what is happening with any of the apple’s products ? iPhone came with so many restrictions just to make place for the next one which is “better” and will cost you just $200 more. iPad came without USB and camera – don’t worry we are preparing iPad2 and it will be (probably) with USB and camera: just $600 more and you will be happy. Adobe flash was not allowed to work on iPhone and iPad because was giving an option to the developers to write software which cannot be controlled by Apple ( for example application which will download and play music from Amazon ) All these bs for short battery life and crashes were forgotten at the moment when Apple saw that customers started to buy Android devices because of the flash support.
Apple will never try to give you the perfect product. Tt is a company policy to offer you the worse possible product that you are going to buy and to try to upgrade you later to a “better” one and to take your money again and again. “Upgrade” from 128 to a higher bitrate is exactly the same and they will continue to give you the same shit until you are willing to pay.

You are right to bitch about this, but that’s the way it is. Being honest costs sometimes.

Let’s complain about stuff that really matters in life, like health care, war, energy, climate change, clean water, families. And whether Kanye West was a jackass.

The counter point was that for the first time ever you were given credit for a previous purchase of music! THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.

But some specific statements were made that seemed misleading.

>> the pirate enjoys a far superior product and experience for free than the customer who pays<<> higher-quality sound, and no restrictions<> Until the music industry figures out how to reverse this equation,<<<

Give the devil his due, they have it figured out. What they offer through iTunes and Amazon is a superior buying experience and a high quality product without restrictions.

I'm no shill, and I don't think our point of views are actually much different. It is more of a half full vs half empty sort of a thing. Just as you see a negative from this I see a positive from this. It will be even more interesting once we see what happens with cocktail. Apple may again offer (at a discounted price) additional features for albums I have already purchased. They don't need to but it would make my choice to purchase through iTunes a higher value proposition, not a lower one (even though it might cost me money) because my existing investment is being carried forward.

It is hard to compete with the value of stolen if you are ok with that.

“Sure, this has not always been true”

Isn’t that the whole point of the article? It wasn’t until very recently where legal music started to approach the quality, availability and portability of pirated tunes. But the horses left this barn long ago. It will take years to readjust attitudes, if that’s even possible.

“but easy to use P2P has not always been true ether.”

Napster nearly a decade ago was one of the easiest music products even to this day. Quality and selection were never a problem until the record companies started (rightly) sabbotaging the catalog with junk music. IMO, itunes is one of the more bloated, klunky music programs available today.

“stealing is still wrong”

About the only thing I agree with.