DRM: Where is it headed

DRM encompasses multiple technologies that control the use of software, music, movies or any other piece of digital content. A year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote an open letter urging the music industry to drop DRM. Although Apple’s iTunes still sells a lot of content protected with Apple’s “FairPlay” DRM software, songs from EMI Music’s entire catalog are now available DRM-free through iTunes. Amid declining sales, the major music labels are experimenting with new business models, including dropping their previous requirement to protect their music through DRM software.

More at Knowledge@Wharton

Story behind iPhone

The demo was not going well.

Again.

It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple’s top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple’s boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn’t just buggy, it flat-out didn’t work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, “We don’t have a product yet.”

The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs’ trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. “It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill,” says someone who was in the meeting.

More at Wired.com: The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry

ET, IT…and the rest