“A feud between Apple and RealNetworks over music downloads is exposing Jobs’ tragic flaw. Amazingly, he seems to be making the same devastating mistakes with the iPod that he made with the Mac 20 years ago,” Kevin Maney writes for USA Today.
“Just as it happened with PCs, other digital music products will narrow Apple’s technology lead. Maybe those products will never be as good as Apple’s, but they’ll become good enough – and they’ll be based on broader standards that don’t lock in users, and they’ll probably be cheaper. If history is any guide, when that happens Apple’s share of digital music will leach away,” Maney writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Mac required huge investments by developers to create compatible software. So, when faced with budgetary contraints, they chose to go with the most popular platforms. The iPod simply plays music that can be encoded in any format the “developer” desires for very little cost. The music doesn’t need to be rewritten, recorded, and remastered. It’s like writing Photoshop once and then pressing a button to translate it to make it work perfectly on the Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. To draw an analogy between the Mac and the iPod highlights the writer’s ignorance of this fact.
time will tell with this one. it will be fun to watch this play out. i reserve my opinions for later…
well put MDN, i couldn’t have said it better.
As usual, McNewspaper strikes again!
He knows nothing…just babbling. Blah Blah Blah Blah. Exactly what a dog hears when people talk. (Farside)
I sent this guy a letter. I may be wrong, but he seems to have left a few things out. Of course this is just my opinion…
He isn’t telling the whole story. Apple has taken care to make sure the iPod works with Windows as well as Mac. And let’s not forget that Apple is working with HP and Motorola through the proper channels (as opposed to hacking and theft like Real) to widen the iPod and iTunes base. Also, they need to have some sort of DRM (Fair Play in this case) or they would never get the record companies to get on board. Plus, MS didn’t just take over the PC market because Apple wouldn’t license the OS, Windows was a straight rip-off of the Mac platform (just not as good). Can you blame Steve for wanting to protect iPod and iTunes after what happened to him with GUI systems on PCs (and don’t tell me about Xerox, I know they had GUI before Mac existed, but it was very different).
Maney admits that the Mac systems are better (hardware and software) even the Intel exec he quotes admits that Mac is elegantly engineered. If this is the case, why shouldn’t Apple prosper?
~M
Another blow to another publication. How low can you go.
There’s a lot of garbage in the piece but iPod/iTMS share will leach away and that’s fine with me. While the rest of the world puts up with cheaper ‘good enough’ products I’ll be in the 10% – 15% (at best) who prefer much better products and don’t mind paying a small premium for them.
This is a very complex issue here. In one side, there are the customers that buy at iTMS. They can play their music through iTunes and, if they want to carry on, use a portable player.
Their primary choice is an iPod, because the solution is straight-forward: they just connect the iPod and update it.
Other scenario is the customers that bought their music at RealNetworks and they choose iPod as their portable player. If this is the case, I think they already have a turnaround to convert Real’s DRM to mp3 (by writing an audio CD and then import it to iTunes, perhaps?). They may choose to use Harmony. They don’t have to convert their music to AIFF and then to MP3, AAC or Apple LooseLess. However, they will have a DRM on their music and maybe don’t want to make all these transformations because they will loose quality (maybe).
The problem here is that somebody hacked Apple’s own DRM and this can cause the music labels dissapoinmentt because the FairPlay is not as secure as they thought.
I understand that one wants to buy music wherever one wants and play it whatever player one owns, as we use to do at a brick-and-mortar store. However, if you buy music on casette tape and you want to hear it on a CD player, you have to transform it first, loosing some quality in the process.
Did Real play Fair hacking Apple’s FairPlay? The time will tell us.
I think this author wrote right past the issue.
Consumers want the “whole magilla” to work right, not just a part of it and what they’re buying into is the “iPod Experience”, not just the iPod itself.
While you can put your own CD’s on the Pod very easily,ITMS makes buying new stuff utterly simple along with archiving your library to CD’s.
Think KISS, that old standby. The frosting on the cake is that the iPod is also “Way Cool” which is the intangeable the others don’t really understand.
Don’t click on his article!
But, Macminute has a few more blurbs from this guy. Basically, totally clueless.
He is implying that Apple is engaging in monopolistic behavior!
Hilarious! He has no idea what that means. Monopoly would mean that Apple used their iPod clout to force Bestbuy not to carry other players, or other labels not to sell via other stores. Umm, that’s NOT happening.
What an idiot! According to this guy, if you have a great selling product, you should allow everyone on the planet to leech off it. Leech, leech, leech. What, he thinks Apple is a charity? Other companies are more open because no one is buying their products. (think Dell iPod exchange!) Apple can ensure the best experience possible because people are buying iPods like crazy. They gain nothing from opening up, except to lose everything.
People, you should complain to the editor and point out all the fallacies of this guy’s article. Never go for the writers. Go for their editors and embarrass them into dropping the guy.
Real probably hacked PlayFair not FairPlay. PlayFair is illegal in most countries and moved offshore to protect it’s self. It is now opensourced. How Real can say they haven’t broken any laws is beyond me.
Name 1 player, prior to Harmony’s conception, that played more than 1 kind of DRMed content.
Apple has 4 music stores that the iPod works with. How many stores do you need?
The major complainers in this feud don’t want more choice for iPod owners, they want more market for their own pet brand of DRMed content.
Articles simular to this USA Today story have apeared many times in the past few months. While I do not normally subscribe to conspiracy theories, there is a pattern of coincidence that is difficult to ignore; the implication of the stories being that why should anyone invest in a product that will not be around much longer. Are these writings? part of a larger effort to reduce iPod sales? It appears so.
Most tech writers seem to think that the only way to compete is the Microsoft way – and who can argue with the market share that they have. However, there is nothing wrong with the Apple way. It ensures solid, integrated products – something I’m sure PC manufacturers would love to have if they hadn’t hitched their wagon to Microsoft.
It remains to be seen if DRM will be the key to future downloadable music. If a single standard is required, my hope is that it is an industry standard, not one from Microsoft or Apple. Right now, Apple is more of an open standard with AAC than Microsoft with WMA. I wish tech writers would “get” this.
I have never really bought into the whole “PCs are open architecture and Macs are closed architecture, so PCs won.” argument.
I think a far more likely explanation is that Apple never told the world how good the Mac is. Come to think of it, they still don’t. The clear evidence is that ‘feel good’ advertising does not do it for computers.
However, Apple has been doing a great job of telling the world how good the iPod is, or at least making ‘feel good’ advertising for it. The clear evidence is that ‘feel good’ works for iPods, (not to mention ease of use and style).
Mike
Rick-
What the hell is “Apple Looseless”?! I think you meant Apple Lossless!
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Also, Harmony only works for Windows users, not Mac users.
I haven’t heard anyone complain that they don’t have enough “choice” in online music stores except for the clueless journalists that claim that this is what people want. Has anyone else? Face it, the iTunes/iTunes Music Store/iPod scenario just flat out works, and flawlessly at that. What is the problem? I don’t feel “locked in” by any means.
People also seem to forget that you don’t need an online music store at all to use iTunes or an iPod. I have a large collection of CDs (~1500) that is the basis for my library. The iPod is just a means of mass portability. I’m sure there are many others in the same boat. I didn’t start collecting music when the iTMS appeared on the scene.
I’m happy being locked in Four Seasons. Why do people want to choose between Motel 6, LaQuinta, etc.?
You guys are so stupid, its not even worth commenting. But what the heck, Apples in a glorious position once again, and once again they are set to blow big time, and the iPod/iTunes will be a memory. Its not leeching as someone put it, its LICENSING. i.e. the royalties recieved by liscensing though economies of scale would make Apples current profit on iPod players look laughably small. The only ray of light in this story is that Apple actually DID have the brains to eventually liscense firewire, which is completely unrelated except that it shows that Apple made a smart buisness decision at least once in their existence.
It truly astonishes me to hear such completely uneducated, blind-to-reality comments from people. Reading some of these comments is like listening to brain-washed republicans defend Presdufuss Bush.
What do you expect from Maczealots? They are apologists since 1995.
Sounds like a bunch of whining PC apologists crying about why they can’t get cool Apple innovations for their POS platforms. Just get the best and forget the rest. If you PC losers don’t like it, don’t use it. The rest of use can enjoy our cutting edge technology in peace.
Oh, good!! The dodo brain “Anon. E. Mouse” is a liberal, anti-Bushie. That’s excellent….
anes is wrong! wrong! wrong!
we need to start a campaign to have an international standard for frequent stay/frequent flyer points! how dare they lock us into one group of airlines or one chain of hotels!
i think i better tell United its about time they accepted all my American Airlines points!
Orange Alert… be on guard
Apple actually DID have the brains to eventually liscense firewire, which is completely unrelated except that it shows that Apple made a smart buisness decision at least once in their existence
AE Mouse, Firewire is not Apple’s, it’s IEEE 1394. Apple just gave it a name. Who’s stupid now?
neomonkey, Apple developed firewire then opened it up as a standard.
FireWire is an technology developed at Apple. It was presented to the IEEE, doofus. The specification ratified by the IEEE is number 1394.
For the non-engineers in the bunch: aside from publishing papers (with horrible layouts), the IEEE does nothing on its own except sell life insurance – the same kind of lame policies that your grandparents had.