I agree with a number of the points raised in this thread. Some folks out there hold the ability to download music and the quickness of the process supreme over the quality associated with more expensive media alternatives like cd's or records. I agree with Caleb that nothing in the world can compare to the articulate sound and nuances of playing a record. I have purchased music online, bought the cd and have ordered SACD's so I am on every side of the fence on this one.

Steve Jobs is only trying to find the happy medium between all the arguments. For one, the percentage of all music on all bazillion ipods in the world that has been purchased is not a favorable one. The iTunes store is a great concept from music that is exclusive to pre-ordering movies at a discounted rate. I have my own issues with the fact that they are not in 5.1 surround however that is not the point of this thread. To make the iTunes store work Jobs had to develop a way to assure the content providers that their music and or movies was transferable only so many times between media and devices. The fact that one company has negotiated a way of making the content cost less and allowing it to be transferred five times between devices is noteworthy. Not trying to evangelize Jobs here but as far as groundbreaking goes he is doing pretty good so far. In the move of drm free music Apple demonstrated that they are in tune with their customer base. Many people refused to pay money for MP3 quality (128kb/s AAC). As more cars and more devices became ipod compatible this was predictable. Pixar has numerous other board members who want to DRM their products I am sure. I have not heard of any movie house selling commercial movies without DRM. Also in the category of noteworthy is the court case where movie server company Kaleidoscope won a case where the Judge deemed CSS a product of lawyers and dropped charges against Kaleidoscope for copying DVD's to its own storage violating the CSS on the disc. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/29/1913251

Will, I am a Logic Pro user and I have served time selling recording gear and software at the Guitar Center. Protools is married to Digidesigns for hardware. As Apple is in the hardware business I don't see that one on the horizon. I can import pro tools projects in to Logic and out of the box Logic offers more to the creative minded content creators. Protools has more up on Logic as far as a recording platform. I think Apple teamed up with Apogee in an effort to make a hardware and software solution with "Ensemble" that would steal some of the light away from Protools and Digidesigns. What kind of integration are you looking for?

Daryl