Comments on "Apple Should Be Ashamed"

Some comments on my post about movies on iPods suggest that I should blame Hollywood and Washington for the inability to load DVDs into iTunes and an iPod, not Apple. I believe it’s fair to include the movie industry and the U.S. government, certainly.

However, it’s Apple that markets the iPod as a movie player, Apple that sells the iPod in tremendous numbers, Apple that runs the iTunes store, and Apple that makes the profit. It’s also Apple that doesn’t make it clear, when you purchase an “iPod with Video” which can play movies, that the device is crippled so that it won’t play the movies you already own.

If you go to the “Movies” feature page for the iPod classic, for example, Apple tells you that you can “Buy movies from the iTunes Store and you can sync them to your iPod classic to watch anywhere, anytime.” That’s fine and accurate, but doesn’t tell the whole story. It would be better if Apple said, explicitly, that this is the only legal way to load movies onto the device. I’m sure their marketing copywriters could find an unambuous way to say this without killing sales of the iPod.

Ditto if you go to the “Tech Specs” page, which gives consumers techno-gobbledygook about video formats, but doesn’t explain that there are deliberately imposed limitations on importing video which don’t exist for importing audio.

If you search the iPod/iTunes support database, you’ll find a FAQ that says, “Can I transfer my DVDs into iTunes and sync to my iPod?” The response is a terse, “iTunes and QuickTime Pro do not support importing content from DVD videos.“

Apple doesn’t say why it’s not supported. Apple doesn’t say whether the limitations are technical or non-technical. Apple doesn’t say that it wishes to provide that capability, but is regretfully unable to do so because of the law (Washington) or big-studio contracts (Hollywood). They just say “not supported.”

So, tell me again why I shouldn’t direct my consumer ire toward Apple?