When it comes to Apple’s iPod and iTunes symbiotic relationship, “It all sounds depressingly familiar to those who remember the mid-1980s, when Apple was the most powerful voice in the then new personal computer market. It refused to license its software to other manufacturers, which turned instead to Microsoft,” Nick Clayton writes for The Scotsman.
“No matter what Apple does, it cannot hold on to its current massive share of the world’s portable music player and download business,” Clayton writes. “What it can do is alienate its devoted users by preventing them having a choice. They would not buy a CD or DVD player that would only work with discs from one shop. And there is no reason why they should behave any differently on line, no matter how much Apple would like them to.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As with the “Mac OS X security through obscurity myth” we endured awhile back, it looks like we’ll have to repeat the facts over and over until they sink in: the Macintosh platform required and still requires huge investments by developers to create compatible software. So, when faced with budgetary contraints, they chose and still sometimes choose to go with the most popular platforms. The iPod simply plays music that can be encoded, for very little cost, in any format the “developers” (musicians and labels) desire: AAC, MP3, WMA, etc. 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 for use on Mac, Windows, Linux, etc. To draw an analogy between Mac OS licensing and the iPod/iTunes symbiotic relationship simply highlights the writer’s ignorance of the vast differences between the two business situations.
