Sony’s new Walkman players ships with the new Windows-only “Connect Player” that, according to Sony, “offers advanced music library management as well as providing seamless access to the Connect catalog of more than one million tracks and albums available for download.”
Looks familiar. Apple iTunes, anyone?
“Connect Player” incorporates an Apple iTunes-like user interface that features a ‘drag and drop’ function for transfer from library to player.
Mac users who attempt to visit the Sony Connect website receive this lovely “disconnect” message:
We appreciate your interest in the Connect music store, but our store currently only works with computers running Windows 98 Second Edition or higher. You don’t seem to be using that particular operating system at the moment, so, unfortunately, we’ll have to part ways until we support the operating system you’re currently using, or you make the switch to an OS that is compatible with the Connect music store.
Downgrade to Windows so we can use Sony’s iTunes rip-off Connect Player? Fat chance.
System requirements:
• Microsoft Windows 98 SE, ME, 2000 or XP
• Minimum of 500 Mhz processor
• Minimum of 400 MB available hard disk space
• Minimum of 128 MB RAM
• Internet Explorer 5.5 or later
More info via Sony Connect: http://musicstore.connect.com/index.html
Sony is obviously bereft of original ideas. They’ve been reduced to combing Apple’s website for marketing slogans (small as a pack of gum) and downloading Apple applications for ideas.
Apple’s iTunes user interface United States Patent 6,731,312 can be viewed here. Images relating to the patent can be viewed here.
[UPDATE 9/9, 3:52pm ET: fixed links to Apple patent information that were correct and tested at time of original posting, but seem to have mysteriously changed. Links to Apple’s patents now work again.]
Related articles:
Apple wins iTunes interface patent – May 11, 2004
Too little, too late? Sony getting killed by Apple in digital audio – September 09, 2005
Also-ran MP3 player makers miffed by Apple’s impossibly low price for iPod nano – September 09, 2005
Sony and Warner holding out on Apple iTunes Music Store Australia – September 08, 2005
Sony Connect President in wake of iPod nano: ‘we will accelerate our challenge’ to Apple iPod – September 08, 2005
Apple close to deal with Sony for ‘online music download service for Japanese iPod users’ – September 05, 2005
Bad news for Sony: millions worldwide choosing Apple iPods – August 22, 2005
Sony to combat music market ‘maestro’ Apple Computer with ‘Walkman Beans’ – August 18, 2005
Musicians stage mutiny against Sony, defiantly offer music via Apple’s iTunes Music Store – August 10, 2005
Apple’s Japan iTunes Music Store debut more bad news for Sony – August 04, 2005
Sony debuts US$199 1GB iPod shuffle killer, bills it ‘small as a pack of gum’ – July 06, 2005
Sony BMG and EMI try to force Apple to ‘open’ iPod with iPod-incompatible CDs – June 20, 2005
Windoze *AND* IE? Yeah, that’s 21st-century thinking.
Good luck with that.
MW “plan”… what plan was that, again?
Doesn’t Apple have a patent on the iTunes interface anyway?
Oh, and set Safari to pretend it’s IE6 – surprise, surprise! it works perfectly!
“Bad writers borrow, great writers steal” — T.S. Elliot
Loved the MDN take
Cupertino, start your lawyers….
how ridiculous, how does one set safari to pretend it’s IE6?
I used the debug menu to set safari to pretend it is windows on IE and still got the apology screen. Am I doing something wrong?
“how ridiculous, how does one set safari to pretend it’s IE6?”
by changing the ID of Safari to a another browsers ID with a third pary app
Hmm I got a different message. Well, it’s about the same, but uses browsers instead of operating systems:
We appreciate your interest in the Connect music store, but our store currently only works with Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. You don’t seem to be using that particular browser at the moment, so, unfortunately, we’ll have to part ways until we support the browser you’re currently using or you upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer. Please click the Download link below if you’d like to upgrade now.
The sick thing about this is that there will be all too many journo’s willing to say this is the iTunes killer app and the start of the fall. It won’t be but instead of this being given short shrift it will be given a half life.
Sony: Innovator for the 20th Century
Apple: Innovator of the 21st Century
Microsoft: Innovation? Whats that?
“how ridiculous, how does one set safari to pretend it’s IE6?”
Use Terminal or a third-party app to enable Safari’s debug menu and then switch the user agent to IE6.
Make sure Safari’s not running, then paste this into Terminal: “defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1” (not the quotes though), then hit return.
How does one set Safari to pretend it’s something else?
Simple. First, enable the debug menu (have a search on MacOSXhints if you need to find out how)
Then, go to the Sony site.
When it comes up with the message, go to the Debug menu, and change the user agent to WIndows IE. This will cause the page to reload
However, it will still be showing the error page. So delight the last bit of the address in the address bar and hit enter. It should work fine.
It’s so similar, that it may just be a Sony-branded portion of the iTMS. Or their own store that has licensed the iTMS interface. Given the fact that Sony has been holding their music catalog hostage, and that there was apparently a deal worked out to make that catalog available to iTMS users in Japan, it doesn’t seem far-fetched.
Course, I don’t know how useful licensing agreements are when your shit is all japanese looking. How are real people supposed to find songs on that thing, anyway?
it’s like b&o using windows xp
hahaha
all these supposed forward thinking companies using crappy ms shite
apple WILL be the dominant OS in the the next 10-20 years
i bet my life on it
Boy, I’m feeling chatty today.
The thing that gets me with all these “iPod killers” and their music stores/software is that they don’t support the Mac. I can’t even consider using their products because of their insistence on getting back at Mac users because Apple is successful in this field. It seems to me that they would want to court Mac users (or any potential customer; imagine the coup if they began to pull large numbers of Mac users away from the iPod to their product. Mac users also tend to be discerning about technology offerings, and if you get them to like your product, then you know you have something that can compete against the best out there. Not to mention the success of the iPod/iTunes started with Mac users.
Of course, this strategy would require hardware and software that performs better than Apple’s offerings, something we haven’t quite seen yet. Though there are arguably better players out there, their software integration isn’t close to iPod/iTunes (from what I’ve read and witnessed in disproportionate sales, anyway—I don’t really use Windows, so I can’t try out any of the other player/software combinations).
I like Apple’s products, and I can’t not use OS X, but if somebody put out something better, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it. That’s a big but though.
one really has to wonder whether Sony is proud of it’s “achievements”.
How on earth could someone, especially given the catch-up role Sony is currently playing, come up with a GUI theft like this one? This really is beyond embarrassing. Way to go Sony.
With you flappo.
Seems a waste of money to compete with iTunes at this point, since iTunes is so mature, cross-platform and FREE…
MikeA…..what do you mean by “So delight the last bit of the address in the address bar and hit enter.” I always have the debug menu available to me, it’s set to MSIE 6.0, and I get the error menu.
It’s common knowledge that the Japs don’t inovate well, but they do a hell of a job copying and then making improvments. I’ll bet it just pisses them off looking at the Nano and then comparing to to their large brick mp3 players. I thought they were the masters of miniaturization.
But does it work with my iPod, connect t my car and over 2 million songs from iTunes Music Store?
Sony is going to be offering only it’s music and some crappy players.
MDN ‘Ad Council’ ad reads
“Babies were born to be breastfed”
And males have teets to keep babies busy until mom comes home I guess. I always wondered why males have teets, strange huh?
MDN W “control”
The Virgin download store looks like iTunes as well.
Nick,
Yeah. Someone’s already good at this, so everyone else should just go home. Makes sense.
I dunno. Intentionally excluding all browsers but one from viewing website content seems somehow .. uhhh .. evil, regardless of operating system requirements for software offered on that website.
I know that sounds ugly .. but it really is repulsive as a business practice. To me, at least.