“As rival device makers seek ways to dethrone Apple’s iPod and derail the iPhone, they’re increasingly casting Apple as a selfish mega-company that plays by its own digital rules, manhandling software developers and and alienating a helpless Hollywood,” Jon Fortt blogs for Fortune.
“Apple has done plenty on its own to act the part… by Jobs’ decree, the iPhone will be closed to outside developers until February, when Apple has promised to welcome new software on somewhat limited terms. And besides some deals to offer MP3 downloads on iTunes, Apple has not moved to make the bulk of its products compatible with competing devices or services,” Fortt writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple has not moved to make the bulk of its products compatible? Jon seems to have missed or forgotten about Boot Camp.
Fortt continues, “Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow alluded to Apple’s strong-willed reputation earlier on Monday, when in a conversation with reporters he contrasted Apple’s tactics with Sony’s recent openness with its Walkman media players… ‘Apple’s fully proprietary in almost everything they do – they get away with it because they have some great stuff going on,’ Glasgow said. ‘So you can be successful proprietary, but I think the better wave is being open and allowing consumers to make their choice.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Sony espousing openness and choice is like… the ultimate in hypocrisy.
Fortt continues, “There’s a strong case that all this talk about a closed Apple amounts to little more than barbs from jealous competitors. After all, Jobs & Co. have almost single-handedly created a multi-billion-dollar market for sleek, pocketable computers that double as music players and phones… And to drive those markets as quickly as he has, Jobs clearly needed to exercise some control. Tapping Apple’s expertise in designing both elegant hardware and intuitive software, he was able to create a delightful experience that has helped Apple sell more than 120 million iPods, and maintain better than 70 percent market share in the category.”
Fortt writes, “Even… Microsoft, a company known for breaking into markets by forming powerful technology partnerships, is taking more of a go-it-alone attitude on the technical end as it chases the iPod with its fledgling Zune media player. Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp says that, in the short-term, Microsoft has decided to sacrifice openness for elegance.”
MacDailyNews Take: So, where’s the “elegance,” exactly?
Fortt asks, “Will disgruntled Hollywood moguls be able to derail the iTunes/iPod train? On their own, probably not – as much as they might resent Apple, it’s so far the main place where consumers have shown a consistent willingness to pay for video downloads.”
Fortt writes, “The real threat might come from rivals like Sony, SanDisk, and particularly Microsoft – companies that would be glad to sell Hollywood’s wares under more agreeable terms than the Tinseltown execs can get from Steve Jobs… [Microsoft’s] Reindorp said [that] the software giant’s reputation in music is such that industry executives ‘know that we have a long history of being a good partner, while Apple unfortunately has kind of proven themselves to be a bit of a bully.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Forget the shovel, we need a bulldozer to get through this one. Somebody go ask Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” partners how “good” of a partner Microsoft was to them – you can find them in or on the way to bankruptcy proceedings. Microsoft’s calling any other company a “bully” snatches Sony’s Ultimate Hypocrisy crown just seconds after it was bestowed.
The full article, loaded to the gills with hypocrisy and horse manure from Apple’s desperate, jealous victims, is here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Patrice” for the heads up.]
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
This is why the works of George Orwell should be required reading.
Sony = Open
Please, stop. Now that is hilarious.
Seriously. They’ve been trying to close people in to their hardware since changing the shape of a VHS tape and calling it Beta Max. Then there was the mini disk. etc.
And Sony has ATRAC record of open formats?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Transform_Acoustic_Coding
It’s sad really….mediocresoft will do anything these days.
(Well…anything but produce quality offerings!)
LONG LIVE MEDIOCRITY!
the whole Sony open thing is a joke, right?? If you buy the least expensive version of the PS3, it is not backwards compatible to PS2 games. Last time i checked, content purchased some from itunes on a power pc mini will play on my intel based macbook pro….
So Sony is saying they are open to viruses, malware, Trojans, spyware, and such?
And Microsoft is saying they are good partners, as long as they are the ones pitching?
OK, that makes more sense.
Even… Microsoft, a company known for <strike> breaking into markets by forming powerful technology partnerships </strike> using their OS monopoly to strong arm vendors and unfairly eliminate competitors, is taking more of a go-it-alone attitude…
There fix that for you.
there can only be one ring to rule the world
apple is that ring
hahahahahahah
Please, if they like this now they are going to be screeming bloody murder come 2008, 2009, 2010…….
Buy AAPL and relax, hey it is on sale today
And let’s not forget Sony’s dirty little DRM fiasco which knackered loads of PC’s by installing cloaked files from shop bought music CDs.
“Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow …”
A Sony guy called “Stan” of all things? He sounds like a gaijin to me.
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Mind you there’s not much traditionally Japanese about Sony products — none of that Zen-like simplicity and calm. Start up a new Vaio and you’re deluged with with begging pop-ups from the likes of Symantec and all the other crapware.
It’s the Mac that’s like a Zen garden.
“Stan … contrasted Apple’s tactics with Sony’s recent openness …”
Ha, ha, ha.
Sony and _openness_! This is the company who used such a viciously closed and aggressively DRMed format on their players that no-one would buy them.
This is the company that rootkitted people’s PCs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal
And that then brushed the public’s concerns and anger aside — famous F-Secure shirt with quote here:
This is the company that loads its PCs up with so much crapware — selling its “customers” out to the highest bidders among software makers — that it takes hours to clean them up. I know: I’ve done it more than once. Do they think I _like_ that or something? Is that what “open” means?
I never had that on a Mac. Opening the packaging and starting a new Mac is a pleasure. Doing the same with a Sony Vaio is like jumping into a swimming pool only to find it full of turds and oilslicks.
Walt Mossberg:
“I compared a MacBook Pro laptop with Leopard preinstalled to a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista preinstalled. Even though I had cleared out all of the useless trial software Sony had placed on the Vaio, it still started up painfully slowly compared with the Leopard laptop.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119326655774870521.html
I guess Mossberg missed some of the crapware — there’s enough of it and to spare.
“helpless Hollywood” – that’s rich. “cancerous”, sure.
Good luck dethroning the iPod Touch. Won’t happen.
Sure MS and other options will be out there. Point is, people won’t pay more for less/worse service. People don’t want to have to think in order to watch different shows: That is, they don’t want to have to go to Hula.com for some stuff, flip over to Walmart.com for others, etc. You don’t move to different rooms in your house to watch different channels on different TVs. Had the networks been smart, they’d have invested in Apple stock instead of their own solutions. $1B in Apple 2 years ago would have made a tidy profit for the studios today.
Lets be blunt about this, “more agreeable terms” means,
HIGHER MUSIC AND MOVIE PRICES FOR THE CONSUMER!!!
If that’s why Apple is being called a “selfish mega-company,” count me in.
They are two companies that do not know how to compete once true competition arrives bringing products to the market people love to use.
It is nice to see them go to the media and spew forth their desperation. It shows me they have little in the pipeline they think will be a hit.
It says that Redmond already knows the new Zunes will not sell well, not even close.
On Sony’s end, they can’t write software to save their lives, so they rely on others to do it for them. They are good at building formats and some hardware that is a lock-in, but once this stuff hits the desktop or pocket gadget, they lose all control. Thus, their formats die and they start all over again.
Ah yes Sony, the company that installs hidden spy ware on there products.
“Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp says that, in the short-term, Microsoft has decided to sacrifice openness for elegance.”
MacDailyNews Take: So, where’s the “elegance,” exactly?”
Fuck, where’s the “openness”?
“Fortt writes, “The real threat might come from rivals like Sony, SanDisk, and particularly Microsoft – companies that would be glad to sell Hollywood’s wares under more agreeable terms than the Tinseltown execs can get from Steve Jobs… [Microsoft’s] Reindorp said [that] the software giant’s reputation in music is such that industry executives ‘know that we have a long history of being a good partner”
Regardless of whether the store is run by the media providers, Sony, SanDisk, or MS, the content will have to be delivered to consumers in a form they want and at the price they want. I doubt the the media providers or any of their “good partners”/bitch-boys will create anything other than a store that gouges consumers for low resolution files that blow up after a week…and have commercial that you cannot skip.
Apple may be a bully, but apparently a stick to head is the only way to convince these fucktards to give consumers what they want.
Where were all these whiney clowns for the last 15 years when hardly anything would work on a mac?
there were so many excuses to NOT make software compatible for Macs.
now when apple comes up the ladder because of a superior product
all the same people are calling foul.
bunch of whiney ass babies.
MDN “may”
asi in “Yes Steve, you MAY change the world
LOL
Apple is a bully!!!
Only because they are looking out for the consumer. If they rolled over like everyone else, we’d be paying $4 a song and $7 a TV show with ads.
I’ll take Steve Jobs’ business acumen any day.
If MS os Sony had anything that could compete with apple’s iPhone or iPod Touch they would be talking about that instead of bad mouthing apple. Media time is precious and to see them squandering it by talking down the competition instead of highlighting their own offerings is just sad. It has the stench of desperation all over it. When you have something that people want you need never mention competion it should sell itself. All i needed was a demonstration of the iphone to know i absolutely had to have one.
Microsoft has always been all for choice….as long as that “choice” is Microsoft.
You realize that these group action suits are all part of this Sony/Microsoft ‘We are open Apple is closed’ advertising campaign.
If you can get enough people repeating a lie, the whole planet will buy it.
Mac zealots, how dare they call us that?
Did I say that out loud?
While I agree with the above posts about the closed approaches taken by the other companies mentioned in the article and how open Apple’s hardware truly is, I think we are focusing on the wrong aspect of the article. The part that concerns me the most is Apple’s stance regarding the pricing of content which DOES seem to be driving away the content providers. Apple should be finding ways to work with the content providers (and they may be doing that behind closed doors.) But to have NBC walk away from iTunes is a shame and does not put Apple in good light to the other content providers. Another manifestation of the content providers working relationship with Apple is the fact that Universal is no longer giving Apple exclusive rights. To lose NBC and the exclusivity with Universal is NOT a good trend.
Apple should be considering the answer to the question can it sell HW without any content? Can Apple really afford to say the heck with everyone except for Diseny and it’s derivatives?
I am an Apple fan and stockholder. I think Apple provides the best HW and SW – bar none. However, I am concerned with their partnership skills with the media giants and hope a change of approach comes before the content providers no longer need or want to work with Apple. My two cents worth.
Peace.
Tries to push thier formats or media types
Sony tried propietary ATRAC
MD format
Micro MV
8 not compleatly compatible memory stick formats
Why dont they stick with Open Ones