“It sounds like Rob Glaser is itching for an invite to Apple Computer’s digital music party. Glaser, chief executive of multimedia software giant RealNetworks, derided the way Apple’s top-selling iPod music player works only with Apple’s own top-selling iTunes Music Store — and doesn’t work with rival download stores like the RealPlayer Music Store. Glaser, whose Seattle company develops RealPlayer and owns the online music site Rhapsody, shared a panel at PC Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz., Tuesday with Shane Robison, Hewlett-Packard’s chief technology officer,” Jon Fortt reports for The Mercury News.
“HP plans to begin selling its own version of the iPod in a few weeks through a partnership with Apple, so Glaser asked Robison to work on getting Apple CEO Steve Jobs to open up the iPod to others in the industry, predicting that Cupertino-based Apple’s music player will lose market share otherwise,” Fortt reports.
“‘Consumers will say, ‘I bought an iPod and I can only shop in one store. What is this, the Soviet Union?” Glaser said. ‘Steve does understand this,’ Robison said. ‘It will evolve,'” Fortt reports.
Full article here.
Nagromme,
I think you just nailed it! Very well put. I think all these critics fail to see that very simple point!!
it’s still humorous to me that people like Glaser bitch about not being able to be on the iPod, yet none of these secondary shit services is available for the mac.
“Piss off hypocrites.” – Steve Jobs
“The point isn’t whether iTMS can ‘stand on its own’ without having the iPod fail to support Microsoft WMA. The point is that Apple has no desire to help Microsoft’s effort to dominate yet another industry.”
Oh, come on. Now you’re just being silly.
Apple’s job, first and foremost, is to make money. At the moment, they can sell iPods which don’t play WMA and make money. If–and I am not saying this will happen–the point comes where they can make more money by selling iPods which support WMA, they will do so in a heartbeat.
So, in other words, what you’re saying is that if Apple supported WMA and Real in iTunes (by, say, paying Microsoft and Real to write QuickTime Codecs for their formats) and on the iPod, this would be bad for Apple? How so? Would people stop shopping at iTMS? iTMS can still continue to distribute music as AAC/FairPlay. I can still play it on my iPod. Would people not buy an iPod because it plays WMA and Real? Heck, I think more people would (again, not that it’s current inability to do so is hindering sales any).
I’ll admit, it’s sort of an “ideal world” argument. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have any DRM, I could play music in any format on whatever devices I want to, etc. Companies wouldn’t use secret file formats as a way of locking users into their products (no matter how much market share they have). My complaint is Steve Jobs idealistic quote, “At Apple, it’s all about the music.” Well, if that’s the case, why should it matter what format the music is encoded in?
“Would people not buy an iPod because it plays WMA and Real?”
Peter, it isn’t clear if you own an iPod or not but I’m assuming you don’t. Part of the beauty of the iPod is how easily it works with iTunes. So lets say Apple opens up the iPod to play Real’s DRM-version of AAC as well as WMA.
Napster now tells everyone ‘come buy from us because you can play our songs on your iPod.’ But how does the song physically get from Napster to the iPod? Does Apple now have to work on importing songs from every other format into your iTunes playlist? Will this upset Real because people aren’t using their RealPlayer? To do this Apple has to include DRM WMA within the iTunes software and pay Microsoft for every version of iTunes software it gives away. Yes – all those copies of iTunes given away now means money in Microsoft’s pocket if it includes WMA.
Seems to me the work necessary to incorporate these other formats into iTunes/iPod is too much work. Any glitch in the WMA file and then Apple gets service calls for the iPod not working right. Frankly, I’m trying to be as M$-free as possible so I’d prefer that my iTunes and iPod not include anything from M$.
At some point (early next year?) consider opening up AAC/FairPlay to whatever services still exist and perhaps share the code to let their songs import into iTunes. This encourages competition while preserving the nice integration withe the software and hardware.
Peter:
While Apple is of course a for-profit company whose job is to make money, that doesn’t mean they have to ignore longer-term or less tangible considerations–such as brand identity or quality–which are also relevant to making money. If Apple believes the quality of the overall experience would suffer as a result of supporting other formats (and some have criticized the quality of WMP), it might be in their interest to keep their system “closed.” Similarly, if they think it’s in their long-term best interest to develop an appreciation of the Apple experience in the larger non-Mac population that the iPods are now reaching, or even just to signal to the market the Apple can WIN completely and decisively against M$, those are more good reasons to keep it closed. I’m not saying Apple should definitely keep out other formats forever, just that there are other (business) considerations beyond a minor blip upward in short term sales.
iSteve: a few short term sales is not worth giving a long-term boost to your biggest rival.
If Apple enabled WMA on iPod today, iTunes store sales would decrease only slightly. They hardly make Apple money anyway, and Apple would for the moment still have the leading store. And iPod sales would increase slightly–and those sales DO make Apple significant money. So Apple would make some amount of additional money in the short term by adding WMA to iPods.
And in the long term, they’d be helping Microsoft do something that would be VERY bad for Apple.
The day may come when MS is no longer pursuing WMA as part of its monopoly tactics. A day when it won’t be pumping money into these WMA stores to help them advertise, etc. A day when nobody things “Windows Media” is automatically the standard and the best because it has “Windows” in it. But until then, Microsoft is a very real threat to Apple’s music future, and if Apple has the control this time around, they should keep it. And who will care? The people who have shopped at WMA stores and don’t want to bother re-ripping their purchases. These are NOT a lot of people.
Someday, helping out other online stores may be good for Apple. That day is not today.
That was re Peter, not re iSteve
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The reasons to leave WMA off the iPod are not regarding selling more or fewer iPods OR songs for the present. The reasons are about MS as a monopoly, and the genuine long-term damaging effects that has had on many companies before and will again in future.
My comments and view on the licensing out AAC/Fairplay have been published so many times now. That I feel like a broken record (or like Dull DJ??). Apple is playing it right for now, I hope they don’t drop the ball.
“The reasons are about MS as a monopoly, and the genuine long-term damaging effects that has had on many companies before and will again in future.”
Y’know, the whole MS-evil thing is childish. It’s two corporations. Period. Stop trying to pretend you’re Luke Skywalker in a fight against the Evil Empire. Microsoft is trying to promote it’s standard. So is Apple. Apple includes it’s standard as part of it’s operating system. So does Microsoft. When Microsoft opens it’s music store, it will be WMA-only. Apple’s music store is already AAC/FairPlay-only. Apple’s music store is linked directly from the music player included with the operating system. Microsoft will have a hard time justifying doing this–though they may try.
This is a battle between corporations which does not benefit consumers. The better solution–for consumers–would be to support any and all formats and let the market decide what is best.
The iPod is the best player on the market. So, the argument goes that WMA & Real support would produce a “short-term” increase in sales. What would cause the sales to later go down, if the iPod is such an awesome device? People buy the iPod because it’s a great music player.
How would adding WMA & Real support to the iPod and to iTunes hurt the iTunes Music Store? If they are so bad and AAC so good, wouldn’t people use AAC anyway? If the iTunes Music Store is such a wonderful shopping experience, wouldn’t it naturally win out?
The theory is that if Apple added WMA support to the iPod, it would inspire music stores to use WMA/MSDRM and not AAC/FairPlay which would benefit Microsoft. But at the moment, that is their only choice! Music stores can’t license AAC/FairPlay (and the first person to bring up that stupid web-site gets smacked) because Apple won’t let them.
If AAC/FairPlay is to become a standard to compete with WMA, it should be available for licensing. It is not. Why not? Wouldn’t more stores using it make it more valuable? “But if Apple did, they would lose sales in the iTMS!” How so? Because other people’s stores would be better than iTMS? And if Apple makes more money selling iPods than iTMS music, wouldn’t the choice of music stores help iPod sales–not that it needs it–which is where Apple makes money?
Frankly, I’m not convinced that Apple is planning to license AAC/FairPlay. If they were trying to create a standard, they’d license it to other people.
I think this ad on Craigslist says it all:
“iRiver 20G MP3 player (not an ipod) – $350”
hey guess what.. apples got about 80% of online legal music in aac format with fairplay..
last i checked acquisition.. admittedly a mac program accessing platform neutral networks…is full of mp3 files and the odd mp4 or wma file…
therefore… it’s aac vs. mp3.. not wma..
yes.. itunes plays mp3 files lmao.. nothing to worry about..
Peter, yes, sales would go down later: when MS dominates the market and uses that against Apple. Changing their DRM and not letting Apple in, throws their marketing muscle against AAC over the long haul, or whatever. It’s not a certainty that MS would abuse the success of WMA if Apple lets them, but it’s the next closest thing to a certainty.
You can’t compare Apple and Microsoft as if they were equivalent. They are not. MS is a monopoly in one area (desktop operating systems) and repeatedly uses that to control other markets. Apple is far from that kind of monopoly in music, and shows no signs of using that to become a monopoly in other areas either. Apple has nothing like the bottomless pockets of MS to take huge losses in areas they want to dominate long-term. Apple has a foothold now by being first and best in a new market. They need to be smart to hold onto that.
I agree that there’s no reason to think Apple’s planning to share their DRM. Apple’s DRM is a “standard” ONLY in the same sense as most of what Microsoft calls “standard:” it’s the most widely used. Apple’s DRM is standards-based but it would not surprise me if Apple NEVER lets others in. Again, now is not a smart time for them to do so.
The point is not that MS is “evil,” the point is that MS can harm Apple and the Mac platform and Apple music offerings. They have done so in the past, and often illegally, so Apple should be aware of that. They are. So are most Mac users. MS has done the same to many other companies too. That’s simply the facts, not “childishness.”
“Feel the wrath of iTunes and iPod.”