What do Microsoft and Apple have in common?

They apparently both have sold out to the entertainment cartels (movies, games, music, etc.) to prevent you from even making legitimate use of what you buy….meaning on the very computers and display hardware that you pay your hard earned money for!

The funny thing is, MacWorld is playing this up like it’s a good thing:

Apple didn’t just introduce new laptops Tuesday; it also introduced a new term to the vocabulary of Mac users—DisplayPort. The Mini DisplayPort found on new MacBooks, the refreshed Macbook Air and 15-inch MacBook Pros replaces the DVI and mini-DVI interfaces found on older models. But is this another proprietary debacle like Apple’s failed Apple Display Connector (ADC) interface? No.

DisplayPort is, in fact, an open industry standard promoted by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), the same group that determines standard sizes for flat panel display mounts, for example. And Apple isn’t the only company supporting DisplayPort. HP, Philips, Samsung, Lenovo, AMD, Nvidia, Intel and many other companies have thrown their weight behind the standard, so we’ll be seeing a lot more DisplayPort-compatible devices in the coming years.

But at least MacWorld does at least try to list some of the downsides:

Unless you’re content with the infinitesimal selection of displays that work with DisplayPort right now, you’ll have to buy more gadgets to get your new Mac to work with a DVI or VGA display. You’re going to pay $29 for the privilege of getting such an adapter through the Apple Store. Unless you need a Dual-Link DVI adapter to hook up a Cinema HD Display or another 30-inch LCD panel, that is—that’ll set you back a full c-note, and you’ll be waiting four to five weeks for it, according to the online Apple Store.

What’s more, regardless of whether you buy Apple’s DisplayPort adapter or a third party’s (if you’re lucky enough to find one, that is), you’re going to mess up your desk with more boxes and wires getting that DVI or VGA display to work.

First Microsoft caved under the entertainment cartel’s unreasonable demands and turned Vista OS/hardware into Vista The Enabler. Now Apple’s newest hardware and OS on the new Aluminum laptop computers has turned into Leopard the Enabler … NOT enabling you as the owner of the harware, but enabling the entertainment cartels to say what you can and can’t do on your hardware with movies, music that you buy. And so many hardware companies have also caved!

All so Apple can make a few bucks in the iTunes Store??

Read it and weep:

Apple brings HDCP to a new aluminum MacBook near you

High Definition Content Protection (HDCP)—you can’t live with it, but you practically can’t buy an HD-capable device anymore without it. While HDCP is typically used in devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, HDMI-enabled notebooks, and even the Apple TV in order to keep DRMed content encrypted between points A and B, it appears that Apple’s new aluminum MacBook (and presumably the MacBook Pro) are using it to protect iTunes Store media as well.

So what you say? AppleTV already had this, did you know that? Maybe you want to educate yourself a bit, eh? HDCP, DPCP, DisplayPort Content Protection.

Arstechnica continues a little later in the article AFTER explaining one way in which a teacher has already been frustrated by unreasonable unintended consequences of not being able to play a movie on a Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter, plugged into a Sanyo projector that is part of his room’s Promethean system:

The technology in Apple’s MacBooks that prevents a seemingly arbitrary collection of iTunes Store files from being played on HDCP non-compliant devices is perhaps more accurately called DPCP, or DisplayPort Content Protection. As we’ve covered in the past, DisplayPort was designed as an open, extensible standard for computers that offers lower power consumption over DVI (especially in the Mini DisplayPort format that Apple uses on the new MacBooks). But more importantly, DisplayPort also beats DVI in the studios’ books by offering the option of 128-bit AES encrypted copy protection.

And folks at the Apple Support Forums are also complaining about this iTunes movie purchases will not play on external display – HDCP auth error:

Well, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of a storm over this one already but I expect there will be.

Just got a new MacBook last week and finally found a mini Display Port -> VGA adapter so i could use my 19″ external display. I rented a movie from the iTunes store yesterday and when I tried to play it on my external display, it gave me a warning/error that the display was ‘not an authorized HDCP display’ and it would not play. Plays fine on the small MacBook screen, just nothing external. To make it even worse, i tried all the movies that I have purchased from the iTunes store with the same result… NONE of them will play on anything but the MacBook’s small 13″ screen. This is crazy unacceptable.

Has anyone else run into this yet or have any ideas of something I may be overlooking in order to get purchased movies to play on an external display?

Yep…and I am sure there are many more that will find things they can’t do with what they bought.

Gawd, I hate it when I am right. I knew Apple would sell out to the entertainment cartels like Microsoft did.

Companies that are adopting or plan to adopt DisplayPort Content Protection in their hardware.

And as Wikipedia notes DisplayPort is basically just another standard — more of the same but different — like HDMI, it’s direct competitor:

DisplayPort is a competitor to the HDMI connector (with HDCP copy-protection), the de facto digital connection for high-definition consumer electronics devices. Another competitor is Unified Display Interface,[2] a low cost compatible alternative to HDMI and DVI. However, the main supporter of UDI, Intel Corporation, has stopped the development of the technology and now supports DisplayPort.

Yeah, that should help the new TVs, electronics devices and computers work together, eh?

Well, it looks like we add another set hardware that are never gonna be part of this ladies’ electronics gizmos … unfortunately.

Thanks for nothing Apple.

Sad.