If you've paid any attention to the Apple/RealNetworks and Harmony discussion, John Gruber at Daring Fireball has another great article entitled Why 2004 Won't Be Like 1984. John's style of writing is good, no... great. He makes a logical argument for the things he says and does a good job at speaking about things he understands or has researched. The most significant point made throughout - which I even forgot when reading the media's reporting of the Harmony dispute - is:
The second point — Apple’s full support for MP3 and other non-protected audio formats — is curiously and significantly underemphasized in the mainstream media, especially in coverage of the recent RealNetworks brouhaha.
Yes. Beautifully said. It is truly amazing that while many are ready to pounce on Apple for not licensing RealNetworks to play their DRM encoded songs on the iPod, they forget that RealNetworks has yet to support OS X with the software you would find on Windows for their DRM music. On top of that, the iPod isn't a closed system for playing music. It does support MP3's and I fail, as John does, to see how one can label a player that plays the most used format of re-encoded music as being closed. It's a great read - check it out.
