“Analysis For worse, the online media market continues to fracture into the haves and the have nots – those that have partnered with Apple and those that have not,” Ashlee Vance writes for The Register. “Media companies baffling the public with their ineptitude is nothing new. Apple had to drag the labels kicking and screaming to iTunes. Now, Apple has had to show the mogul crowd how to do a subscription service right by this week offering a discount on TV shows and letting consumers keep their programs. Why Napster, Real and the RIAA think making music disappear at the end of an expensive subscription will prove attractive is anyone’s guess.”
“With that in mind, the media giants who have partnered with Apple – particularly for TV downloads – must thank God that Steve Jobs exists,” Vance writes. “The pigopolists would never figure this stuff out on their own. They would never have agreed to meet in one place – iTunes – without the charismatic Jobs showing them the way. Companies like ABC and NBC would have taken years to push their TV shows onto the interweb and at a somewhat sensible price.”
“Apple has managed to repeat its tradition not of discovering something new but of doing something obvious first,” Vance writes. “Consumers… will grow more and more loathe of the idea behind bundled cable as a result of Apple’s work. The subscription price for The Daily Show – $9.99 for 16 episodes – still seems high. But you can imagine a day when you pick, say, 10 TV shows for that price. Apple downloads them for you, burns them to a DVD and off you go… We imagine that a couple of up-starts will rise and give Apple a real challenge at their own game. That tends to be the way technology-heavy markets operate. Such variety should be welcomed. If this doesn’t happen, the media companies will only have themselves to blame for allowing Apple to control their TV shows as well as their music. Don’t depend on a company as woefully inept as Google. Create a joint venture capital arm to develop independent media warehouses. Invent something great and give it away via open source. Do something. Do anything. Just don’t whine about your own ineptitude. We’ve grown so very tired of that.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “J Alex” for the heads up.]
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I don’t like google very much anymore either. Googletalk? that is shit.
In my opinion, the only really impressive thing that Google has ever done is search. Everything else they kind of throw the “beta” tag on and just experiment with. They seem unable to really make a polished, finished product like Apple consistently does.
google mail is a pretty good product too. I give them props for that–they really nailed what people needed with free web mail.
I thank God Steve Jobs exists too, or I’d be using a adware, spyware, virus infected PC right now… but then again, we’d still all be using DOS wouldn’t we?
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This is a gem:
<i>Why Napster, Real and the RIAA think making music disappear at the end of an expensive subscription will prove attractive is anyone’s guess.</i>
MW: “tried” and failed
I’ve lost a lot of respect for Google as well. Selling out to the Chinese. Compromising freedom of speech for access to a market. It’s unAmerican.
Then again a lot of things America is doing are unAmerican.
Does Google pay Apple for links found surfing with Safari? If so, does anyone have any idea how much?
I highly doubt it, Benton. That’s like saying, “does Wal-Mart pay LensCrafters for every product seen by people wearing glasses?”
I still respect Google. Google Earth is fantastic, if it weren’t for Gmail I’d be stuck with Yahoo Mail (ugh), Google search still remains standard and unfortunately, it’s not compatible with Mac (I don’t think), but from what I’ve seen, Google Desktop is pretty cool, too.
Google may be a little overreaching with their beta projects, but overall that’s no reason not to respect them. A lot of companies do what Google is doing, experiment massively, but they don’t make it as public as Google does.
Does God exists? Or is She just make believe?
The Google products that work well for me are: Google (search), Google News, Google Maps, and Google Mail. Otherwise, there products are just too fractured. I can’t even remember half of them, let alone use them.
God is a man.
The devil is a woman.
> pigopolist
??? My Tiger dictionary doesn’t know…
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?searchword=pigopolist
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pigopolist
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/pigopolist
http://www.onelook.com/?w=pigopolist
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pigopolist
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pigopolist
don’t know…
http://www.google.com/search?q=pigopolist
finds, but doesn’t _define_… Talk about “baffling the public”…
Anyone got a defining link…?
Don’t these guys already get billions in advertising dollars already? Along with some sort of cable service royalty/fees? Then they’re whining about not getting enough money from these downloads. I could just record this crap for free and not pay a dime to them. TV’s a bunch of shite as far as I’m concerned. Why did I even bother writing this?
pig + monopolist = pigopolist
pigopolist is a good definition of the RIAA.
>I’ve lost a lot of respect for Google as well. Selling out to the Chinese. Compromising freedom of speech for access to a market. It’s unAmerican.>
If our forefathers knew what the USA has become with “Freedom of Speech”, and not allowing anyone to mention God in public, they’d have written our Constitution differently.
Uh…CAN you burn iTunes TV/video downloads to DVD? I didn’t think you could…
Hey MDN:
Where’s your article on LG’s decision to abandon their planned Blu-Ray only player in favor of a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD hybrid? I assume you’re working on it.
I’m sure you wouldn’t have rushed to the presses with an article about a major HD-DVD partner scrapping a HD-DVD only player for a hybrid, now would you?
Ron,
I disagree.
Since when have people stopped mentioning God in public? I hear about God in public more than I’d like.
“If our forefathers knew what the USA has become with “Freedom of Speech”, and not allowing anyone to mention God in public, they’d have written our Constitution differently.”
If our forefathers knew that people would say things this ridiculous they’d have probably included reading comprehension requirements in the Constitution.
Anyone can mention God anytime they want. Watch: God, God, God.
Guess you’re wrong. In fact, YOU mentioned God. In public. You proved yourself wrong!
I thought Google really had it together until I saw that video store. Yikes!
Google earth is cool, and they make a great search engine, but they should look at Flikr, very cool site navigation and presentation. Maybe redemption is in the cards.
Google Earth is cool but didn’t they buy that tech?
Also, anyone can say god. But you must obey the following rules:
1) You can’t mention a religous holiday in a place of business.
2) If you’re a cracker, you can’t make ref to another person’s race.
Please note- Rule 2 only applies to Caucasian folk.
The cheeky folks at The Register have called it right again. I love the ‘pigopolist’ moniker for the greedy video/film cousins of the RIAA member crowd.
I for one am very tired of tiered and bundled cable service. In order to get a very few channels of decent content you have to subscribe to tons of the worst kind of bullsh*t.
In case you didn’t know, most cable channels get a per subscriber fee (kickback) from your cable bill. Otherwise you are directly supporting sh*t you do not watch and quite possibly offends you.
Even worse is the fact that the majority of these channels are owned in part or whole by many of the same companies operating cable systems and satellite services. The same Time Warner that operates cable systems owns The WB, TNT, TBS, Turner South, CNN, Headline News, CNN International, We, HBO, Cinemax, The Cartoon Network, etc. Comcast has extensive financial ties to Discovery Networks (Travel Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, Discovery, etc) and other channels.
The rest is a list of fellow travelers from the clique. Viacom owns MTV, VH1, BET, Spike, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Showtime, The Movie Channel, etc. Disney/ABC owns part or all of ABC Television, Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Channel, Disney Channel, ABC Family, ESPN and it variants. GE (NBC/Universal) owns NBC TV, PAX TV, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, Sci-Fi, Court TV, USA, Shop NBC, etc.
I for one would like the anti-trust laws enforced. It’s long overdue as we have been getting ripped off for years.
HELP ME PLEASE!!!
I legally downloaded a movie from publicdomaintorrents.com in divx format but my dvdplayer won’t touch this format. Is there a conversion tool that will enable me to convert it into mpeg2 (dvd format)? I have Quicktime Pro and the mpeg2 component. I also have the latest versions of quicktime and iLife. I’m running OS10.3.9. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Excuse me, Ron, but you can mention God in public whenever you like. In fact, you just did. What you cannot do is compel me to be present or to listen or to pay for your venue.