J&R over at BBG dissected the iPod Shuffle’s tiny headphone control system and found an unidentified chip, marked 8A83E3, that appears to be some sort of proprietary digital control that prevents unauthorized transmission of commands to the Shuffle without an official Apple adapter. If this is true – and it seems old in-line adapters don’t work with the Shuffle, which makes us believe that this proprietary to the Shuffle – this is kind of a big deal. Even if we’re talking about a lock-in, it’s a fairly egregious example of forcing compliance.
If anything, this could simply be a tiny buffer that reads and transmits button clicks. Unfortunately, this also prevents manufacturers from producing bargain basement adapters and, in a way, counts as a fairly egregious Apple tax. Quoth BBG:
It is possible the new Shuffle headphones simply send a pulse or other analog electrical signal to the headphone jack of the Shuffle, but we do not have the equipment to determine that ourselves. (Put a multimeter on the second ring of the new headphones, though, and you’ll at least be able to see if different button presses causes different resistance, implying the controls work with analog controls, not a digital scheme.)
But it is also possible the signals are digital. “Digital” does not mean “encrypted”, however. If the signals are not encrypted, then there would be no legal impediment to manufacturers making compatible and unlicensed headphones that work with the new controls. (Either way, regular audio headphones still work, although without controls they’re useless on the Shuffle.)
Apple has a long history of creating “authenticated” hardware and this definitely could be a situation where Apple is adding lock-in controls to their hardware if not actual DRM.
UPDATE – The chip doesn’t seem to appear on Octopart. Even if this is not a DRM chip per se, you cannot use old Apple in-line controls with the new Shuffle which means that Apple has changed the methods involved in sending clicks to the Shuffle. Be it an encrypted scheme – unlikely – or a buffered digital stream – more likely – this is a lock-in what no one really expected.
Apple must really have the best image in the world to get away with this. If Microsof tried this they would be torn apart,Apple and Steve Jobs, not so much I think.
I completely agree with you. The difference is that fanboys don’t mind being buttraped all the time by Apple. I do think Apple is a much more evil company that MS is. At least MS doesn’t hide it. Apple tries to be the cool kid in town and gets away with it because they’re marketing geniuses. I’m not blind though. I love my iPhone, but I sill hate Apple with passion for little things like this.
Unfortunately for Apple, the government isn’t as sympathetic as consumers sometimes. Some accessory companies are going to complain to the government, and away they go.
What is the marketshare of the ipod?
What the fans do is called “double think” in the terms of 1984 -the novel-. You can convince yourself to anything if you try hard enough.
Yeah. Did you read the NYTimes article on how Apple spends more on marketing than Microsoft? No wonder we like Apple so much! They are in our heads!
correction: minus me from your we.
The only kind of apple I like is crispy and sweet.
No, I read the NYTimes article that said MS spends more money on marketing than Apple. The same article that went on to say Apple also spends less money than MS on R&D
Well the article *I* read in the NYTimes said that Apple created polar bears, while MS bought all the shrimp on the planet.
…. superior Indian engineers have created and implemented this advanced technology, which is taking over advanced global devices….
Americans are dumb and clueless.
Anjali SpammerSen
From India
Shut up a$$hole. Stop spamming.
This is really sad, because apple should know better, Greed will always be the downfall of a company…
Apple has no reason to be trying to lock you into there headphones other then Greed. How do we make more money off of our product.
Answer – force the customer to buy our headphones or headphones from companies we approve of and have a deal with..
-Dear Apple,
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, when you do you will find that the consumer is not as dumb as you think.
-Order canceled…
Printer and cartridge strategy?
I wonder if this is what happens when Steve Jobs leaves the helm. Would he really advocate removing the buttons?
I’m sure that this product was in the pipeline long before Steve Jobs went on a leave of absence… And there’s no doubt that he is approving product designs from home.
I will definitely be using this in my “Apple = Evil” discussions with friends.
*waves Windows based laptop around.
Are your friends usually still awake after these “discussions”?
I love these “company = evil” complaints. Did someone make everyone buy this new, evil shuffle?
I’ve never heard so much utter bullshit about such a little device that plays music. You’d think it was the end of the world.
haha yeah, I have musicians trying to convince me that apples are better than pcs for basic uses like word processing and web browsing…
in terms of media players, apple have most of the market, with the zune basically being the only viable competition (which i can’t buy in oz). I believe this is only because of their marketing and lack of enthusiasm by other companies.
just my thoughts…
Way to go. A meaningless story based completely on conjecture. Get you facts straight, any facts would do. And try to get them first hand rather than regurgitating what Jimmy said over at gossip blog junior. Lame.
im pretty sure that when it comes to cellphones that BBG is hardly “gossip blog jr”
Brian Ford : you have a signature “style” of confrontation/hostility that’s instantly recognizable.
While I could be completely wrong on this one, are there really any audiophiles buying iPod Shuffles? Aren’t these things pretty much used by joggers and really cheap people that want to be able to claim that they own an iPod? Nobody’s really going to put lossless on a Shuffle, so I can’t imagine you’d want a pair of $300 Sures hooked up to this thing. I guess it’s just the principle. As long as these headphones are built as solidly as the old ones, they’ll last longer than the battery in the device anyways. The iPod headphones I have are the only sub $50 buds I haven’t managed to break in the last 3 years with normal use, while my old 20 gig couldn’t hold a charge if it had a bucket.
Yes, but most distance runners I know are quite particular about what headphones they use. Probably because they don’t want the weight, can’t keep the earbuds in their ears, or have issues with friction burns from the constant bouncing.
A sales rep told me that after-market headphones will be possible, but that they will not be able to use the “accessibility” feature of the Shuffle announcing each song before it is played.
most “real” distance runners don’t listen to music when they run. And I’ve never heard of “friction burns”. I’m a 50mpw’er, so I’m not a hardcore runner, but I’ve used Apple earbuds for many many years without problem of friction burns.
I took one look at the ad and swore I’d never buy one of these. It’s not about $300 headphones. It’s about buying a replacement earphone any where, any time. Try finding an Apple product in a small town in an emergency. I’ve owned half a dozen of these fool things and one drop of the earphone and it’s toast. I’m a truck driver and these things always seem to break in weird little towns at odd times of the day when electronics stores aren’t open – and places where a big truck won’t fit. This is not smart to be locked into a very expensive headphone on a cheap device.
Why would this be surprising if it were accurate? Many consumer electronics companies, like Apple, make a huge %ge of their profit from high-margin accessories sales. Adding an auth chip to the headphones is a tiny increase in COGS, and well worth it if it lets them be in the only game in town for headphones.
Compare this with restaurants that let you BYOB, but require the payment of a non-trivial corkage fee. This works to essentially protect the margin from direct wine sales. If this rumor is true, Apple will sell a $20 control adapter for the headphone jack, and you’ll just price that in to the cost of owning a Shuffle if you insist on using 3rd party headphones. Or you’ll just pick one of the sets that are offered from the official wine list.
I really need to buy tinfoil hat stocks.
So, erm, how then have other firms already offered after-market earbuds that work perfectly fine?
Who? Can you point us to it? There was a blurb on some future headphones, but none that are currently available.
http://tinyurl.com/dmof8o
Personal experience with Klipsch affirms they ain’t in the habit of pre-announcing product without having alphas already testing.
But, then – if you’re too lazy to Google, you won’t accept pretty standard industry practices linking mfg to 3rd-party accessory producers.
But, then, I only wandered into this tent by mistake, anyway. :)
I think what everyone is missing here is that this seems like the beginning to something that is definitely a whole lot bigger than this. From what I can tell with the hooplah and from what I’ve determined, I think they are using the shuffle as a testing grounds for other products. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this start being implemented into other products down the road. I figure that they thing that if they can get away with it in the shuffle, then maybe they could do it on the rest of the line. Then start producing more expensive (maybe finally decent) headphones for the unit and control the entire market share on headphones and license it out to one or two other companies.
Just a thought.
In order to sync an iPod/iPhone, you need a proprietary cable (could easily have been mini or micro USB). And now you have to use Apple sanctioned headphones or headphone adapters to control and listen to the device. It’s pretty nefarious that they moved the controls (instead of duplicating them) to the headphones. The real trouble is that you used to be able to walk over to any store and purchase replacement headphones for a fair price. Now, if that store doesn’t have permission to sell Apple accessories, you’re just shit-out-of-luck.
All conjecture and speculation. Has anyone that that *maybe* this IC is the ‘brains’ for the new click-control?
Let’s not get the facts in the way of a good anti-Apple rant, Sal. This click control is supposed to work by magic, not some fancy-talking computer chip or anything.
CrunchGear reaches a NEW LOW!
You guys really need to wise up… this blog is becoming a joke.
Here is a Fortune Magazine blog post that estimates the “mp3″ player market share of the iPod.
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/01/29/beyond-the-incredible-shrinking-ipod-market/
Seems to me that they are bordering on monopoly territory. This move could be bad news for Apple.
Monopolies aren’t illegal. Abuse of monopoly power is illegal. You can buy any other MP3 player from any other manufacturer and use it with (almost) any operating system. There is nothing that makes you buy an Apple product, and Apple isn’t abusing their power to make their vendors only develop for them.
The reason Microsoft got in trouble was because they were penalizing computer manufacturers if they wanted to put another OS on their machines along with Windows, or if they wanted to put a different browser than IE on the machine as the default browser. This was seen as an abuse of their monopoly.
I have a monopoly on art and motion graphics made by me. Nobody can make art by me except me. It’s called a natural monopoly. Apple has a monopoly on iPods. It’s not an illegal monopoly, because it’s not a monopoly on MP3 players.
too bad more people don’t understand this.
Total Linkbaiting…. how disappointing :(
DRM? What kind of silly mechanism would that be to put a DRM chip in the controller?? :D
DRM or not, this seems clearly designed to keep prices high and require proprietary hardware. Where you used to be able to plug in any set of headphones into any device, now they have to be specific to the unit. This is BAD, and now instead of being an open-standard (which regular headphones are), it’s not proprietary.
Other brands have inline remote controls, done via an intermediate cable between the headphones and the device. Why couldn’t Apple have done this? At least that separates the proprietary bits from the commonly available bits.
It’s just a chip that controls new BUTTONS on the ear buds cord!
Jesus… you guys really want to be known for stupidity.
Extremely anti-competitive of Apple to do this.
“Apple says there will also be third-party adapters that will let you add a remote to your favorite headphones.”
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/03/the_new_ipod_sh.html
Via: John Gruber’s Daring Fireball
Typical Apple. Apple is to iPods what Microsoft is to operating systems. Why is anyone surprised?
I love how the Microsoft fanboys jump at any chance to pat each other on the back while masturbating in Apple hatred.
Listen up douchebags: there is no evidence that there is any form of DRM on Apples headphones. It’s just a chip that NO speculative internet blog knows the function of.
At least Apple is trying to be innovative. What are Microsoft doing? Waiting for Snow Leopard so that they know what to copy for Windows 7?
lol yeah Microsoft sucks!
Wait, that’s not what you are trying to say, right? Because that would be pretty hypocritical.
I am going to crown you “The douchebag” – you sound like a ignorant Apple Fan Boy! but that’s expected. I really don’t understand the MacTards, they would go beyond their realm to make claims to favor Apple and yet bash any company that isn’t Apple. This is one of the reason most of the Apple fanboys make me sick.
I love to read these comments and watch apple vs pc/microsoft dorks fight. It’s even funnier to hear you people toss around “fan boy” over and over again. I challenge all of you to do something social this weekend that doesn’t involve an internet connection.
HA!
Having to use proprietary earphones is just lame. No matter what company does it. ‘Nuff said.
well said!
the apple fanboys are right until, they know exactly its right to hold judgement.. but it is quite suprising how vehemently they are willing to defend apple even though they know how wrong this would be. And I really doubt this is apple vs ms thing.. its about wrong and right.
But even thought this is not a Apple vs. MS thing… they waste no time in labeling you a MS fanboy just because they think Apple is Jesus and MS is Satan. But you know they sound something like a religious cult believing anything their master Jobs tells them.
I don’t get it. Can’t people replicate that adaptor? I mean rip the adaptor apart n use similar chips on that adaptor n you’ll have a rip off – then the same things can be put in a head phone or a diff adaptor n Apple won’t be able to do anything. Aren’t people justicer reacting I wonder.
Did people just imagine that Apple would have a easy-to-make adaptor in first place? Cone on guys, even the PS3 comes with it’s authentic Dual Shock controllers but that doesn’t stop the market from creating fakes.. ;)
Oh! no. We are willing to buy the iPod from Apple but the adaptor.. Why, we are besides ourselves that we may not be able to buy the adaptor from someplace else.
What’s next – a citizen action to make the whole iPod design open so you can manufacture your own ?
Apple needs to be able to make changes to design that benefit the user experience or use new technology.
I thought this was old, confirmed news… I saw the EFF blog being unhappy about Shuffle headphone DRM a couple of days ago.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/03/apple-adds-still-more-drm-ipod-shuffle
It’s just a chip that controls new BUTTONS on the ear buds cord!
Jesus… you guys really want to be known for stupidity.
“Jesus” yeah we know you are calling your Apple father Steve Jobs…
> It’s just a chip that controls new BUTTONS on the ear buds cord!
No, the issue is much bigger than that. You used to be able to plug any headphones/earbuds/stereo into any player and it would work. Now, you can’t do that – you have to have proprietary headphones/earbuds in order to control the player. That’s the real problem here as I see it. Had they put the buttons on an intermediate cord, I’d be fine with that – but now you can only use Apple and Apple-licensed headphones/earbuds/stereo.
Examples: If you plug this into the AUX port in your car stereo you can’t control it. If you use a nicer pair of studio headphones you can’t control it.
You can use ANY HEADPHONES with the Shuffle, you just can’t pause or change volume. It starts playing immediately, which is kind of what you’d expect from an MP3 player with no buttons.
There are products coming to market – some from Apple, you can bet some from Griffin too – that let you control the thing while using whatever headphones you want.
Anyone chanting “OH NOES DRM” on this one should run, not walk to the nearest radiology clinic for a head CT scan. Leave the tinfoil off.
“You can use ANY HEADPHONES with the Shuffle, you just can’t pause or change volume. It starts playing immediately, which is kind of what you’d expect from an MP3 player with no buttons.”
I honestly don’t think I would call something that you plug headphones into, and it just starts playing, not being able to change the volume or songs, and MP3 player. I personally don’t want to have to buy a 3rd party (or even a first party) fix to such a dumb mechanic to have a workable mp3 player. Get off your high horse, I would be just as annoyed if microsoft or any other company put out something this horribly though out.
Jesh people… then spend your $100 elsewhere….
So, don’t buy an ipod/shuffle/nano/whatever… There are other just as good mp3 players out there that let you use any earplugs, etc you want.
AND…they’re even far less expensive. But I guess we all just want to be on that bandwagon.
You don’t even know what the chip does, and TechCrunch is making a mountain out of a molehill anyway. Sad.
One of the features of the new Shuffle is the voice transcription of songs and playlists. The headphone is critical for this feature. Someone replacing the supplied headphones with something else might not understand why the voice doesn’t work afterwards, and will crap on Apple.
Actually, the player should handle all that. The headphones should have one function and one function only – be the transducer.
What happens if you want to use your own studio headphones? Oh you can’t. What if you want to plug this into the AUX port in your car stereo? Oh you can’t.
John, I doubt that 8A83E3 is the name of the chip. Many ICs have a set of characters for identifying the chip printed on them, which have nothing to do with the actual name of the chip.
Picked up a Touch last year all taken by the flash tech, one of the worst things I had ever done. Don’t get me wrong, the tech is nice but I was bored with it within months, the app store a complete mess and when I woke up, remembered how Apple like to treat their customers getting away with the sh!t that other companies would be hunted down for.
This whole Shuffle farce only further adds fuel to my opinion of the company. My lady was telling me how her Sony Discman had the same sort of design with the controls on the earphones (sorry, ear’buds’), broke within weeks making the device completely useless.
I’m pretty sure that 8A83E3 is hexadecimal for “Suck it, whiners. — Steve”.
Church of Apple strikes again
their believers are worse then the extremist.
Wow, what a misleading headline. And then all the fools that post comments based on the headline instead of reading the article to find out that the author does not know anything about the chip. What a joke. This is why there are people who write articles for the internet and those that have real tech jobs.
Apple never does wrong. These accusations are severely disappointing and simply confirm our suspicions that TechCrunch is a secret Rebel base for attacking the Apple Empire.
Apple moving to Dark Side
Isn’t it so that there’s a chip like this in all ipod ‘authorized’ stuff, like for instance docking stations?
The new iPod shuffle is talking. Now you can track it and join the conversation with your friends. Given its size, the next generation will be built in the ear buds.
Misleading title – it’s not proven to be a DRM chip, neither is it proven to do anything you accuse it of doing. Ridiculous. In the related news – Holy Cats! Techcrunch writers are aliens! Even though not really per se…
What you are seeing here is a single device in two parts.
There is the storage/power/logic part and the separate transducer/control part, and they connect together using a more-or less proprietary connector and interface.
Either one of them is NOT a complete device.
Your problem is thinking of this as two separate and nearly generic devices instead of a single unified device in two parts.
(And no, I won’t be buying one – my only use for the iPod I already have is as a storage device for the sound system in my car, and with no standard “iPod interface” and no “controls” on the unit itself, it us useless to me.)
Although it appears that way, there isn’t any facts that state it’s DRM chip unless I missed something.
It’s worth staying on top of your privacy and data security with an independent site like This security site.
apple is cool! cos u fuckos dont have an ounce of brainpower to do what they do.. prove me wrong then.. someone, anyone.. prove me fucking wrong.. hah! didnt think so…
there is already a long list of apple products using proprietary devices, cables or adapters. Just thinking of the new Mini Display-Port and the need to buy two absolutely overpriced proprietary adapters for connecting DVI and VGA displays. If you have the DVI adapter it is not even possible to connect a non-proprietary DVI to VGA adapter.
This is more than lame and it proves the way how apple actually treats its customers.
No question about the benifits of most of the shiny and perfectly usable Apple products – and no question that the Apple engineers are doing more good than bad in terms of product quality.
STEVE PLEASE STOP THIS PATRONIZING S*** — THIS WON’T WORK TOO LONG!
Music, entertainment, looks to me like a Floyd’s song: Amused to Death…
I loce the fact that anyone pointing out that there is no evidence whatsoever that it is a DRM chip are labeled Apple fanboys.
You do understand that you have a choice, yes? You don’t HAVE to buy the Shuffle. But if you do want to buy it, the product is based upon having no buttons on the machine itself. So if you buy it and then later decide that Apple is evil, who is the dumbass?
If you want to have controls on your machine and be able to use any headphones you want to use: DON’T BUY THE NEW IPOD SHUFFLE. It’s not meant to meet those particular needs.
And if you don’t plan on buying the Shuffle, why complain? It doesn’t concern you if I can’t use any headphones I like on my Shuffle. Your life is in no way affected.
Just to draw a parallell to something else: complaining about the Shuffle not having its controls on the machine itself is like complaining that a Ferrari only has two doors: it’s not built or meant to have 4 doors, so if you want a car with 4 doors = buy something else.
Hopefully there will be some backlash to any real or perceived ‘apple tax’.
I purchased one of the new iPod shuffle (3rd gen). Once I realized that I could not use my own headphones I quickly canceled my order. I called the technical help line and spoke with an Apple technician (teir 2). He said, “wait a few weeks for third party adapters to come out.” He then told me they could not release the schematics on the clicker itself which i wanted so i could splice in a cable that would connect to my in ear monitors. Because he said that there will be 3rd party adapters and that on the apple site it says normal headphones can be used but with limited capability I do not believe that the chip is a DRM chip.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3472
I’m an apple user, an apple fan… but I’d like to think not a ‘fan boy’. With that in mind, I gotta say the new shuffle does not seem like a ‘real’ apple product release.
In my mind, apple has a brilliant design side, a (albeit high-and-mighty) user-focused-good side, and an evil-how-proprietary-can-we-make-it side… and the three usually live in unexpected harmony.
But with this product, it seems like the evil side convinced the other sides to back off and let it do a giant-focus-group-experiment.
I never understood the shuffle from day one, but this release is unbelievably poor, whether or not there is really proprietary in-line drm going on.
“But even thought this is not a Apple vs. MS thing…”
HAHAHA! Everything in the tech blogs is an Apple vs. M$ thing.
90% of the comments on tech blogs are by Apple hating basement-dwelling, unemployed PC gamers. Article headlines on tech blogs are flamebait written to attract the haters/suckers for the clicks. The clicks are all that matters.