I wonder if their real intent is to gather training data on which parts of papers are considered important by readers, and which topics are related to each other.
This is probably an extension of their hostility to mp3s. They wanted to force people away from downloaded or ripped content and toward their own store.
That is ahistoric. Apple was forced into FairPlay by the labels, not by choice. They moved to non-DRM'd M4P as soon the labels let them.
As for why they preferred M4P (AAC) to MP3, it was a licensing issue. MP3 was patent encumbered until 2017. Apple, being Apple, didn't want to pay to license the encoder I believe.
> However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC "end-user" codecs.[52] The terms (as disclosed to SEC) uses per-unit pricing. In the case of software, each computer running the software is to be considered a separate "unit".[53]
[…]
> The AAC patent holders include Bell Labs, Dolby, ETRI, Fraunhofer, JVC Kenwood, LG Electronics, Microsoft, NEC, NTT (and its subsidiary NTT Docomo), Panasonic, Philips, and Sony Corporation.[16][1] Based on the list of patents from the SEC terms, the last baseline AAC patent expires in 2028, and the last patent for all AAC extensions mentioned expires in 2031.[57]
Yes, AAC is also patent encumbered, but the structure of the fees was apparently "better" for Apple. This was heavily discussed … Jesus, 15 years ago now … when everyone was pissed Apple didn't use MP3s.
Basically, AAC was cheaper for Apple so that's what they used.
But AAC was as "open" as MP3 and there was never any "lock in".
Small correction although you’re mostly right: m4p is the FairPlay encumbered file extension and unencumbered AAC audio files are (by default in iTunes) m4a.
> This is probably an extension of their hostility to mp3s.
Apple was never "hostile to MP3". Even iTunes 1.0 (considered an "MP3 player" back then) supported ripping CDs to MP3, using the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder that was far superior to alternatives (especially at that time).
What are the standards for plastic-free? I suspect almost every piece of clothing with zippers is using nylon thread and backing, as well as plastic materials tags.
The F-15E Strike Eagle is a different, significantly heavier and higher payload was produced by a separate, later project abd competition from the original air-to-air F-15 (its competitor was thr F-16XL, which would have been the F-16E/F if selected.)
And the F-15EX Eagle II is an even newer aircraft.
Same with the F-16, which started life as a skunkworks project that prioritized dogfighting but is today heavily used for close air support and bombing.
While the skunkworks project and even the initial government Lightweight Fighter project had an air-to-air dogfighting focus, the program under which the F-16 development was conpleted and it was eventually purchased was for a multirole fighter, that wasn't a post-purchase usage evolution.
I was stuck behind a big RV recently who was driving part way over the center line most of the time. I eventually realized he was trying to avoid clipping all the low branches along the edge of the road.
Search engines refer people to those old threads. Users who care enough and are tech savvy enough to delete their post histories are more likely to have made higher quality comments in the past answering tech support questions, reviewing products, etc. Those are the old threads that appear in search results and potentially draw in new users.
One thing it's still useful for is getting user reviews that actually tell you if a product is junk or has recently been replaced with an inferior version. Store sites and review pages make it too easy for companies to get negative reviews hidden.
The solution to social media companies behaving badly once they have users locked in may not be to lock yourself into another unprofitable company's closed ecosystem that's temporarily free.
I can get a much better idea how my ML models will behave at scale if I prototype on my 16GB MBP than if I only had whatever ram is leftover from 8GB after Chrome and everything use up most of it. It's no match for server GPUs but I can run multiple Jupyter notebooks with decent size datasets loaded and not have to think about it.
The new Macbook keyboards have such low travel that they feel like a step in that direction. I like the laptop overall but I make a lot more typos than I did on my old one.
