“At a recent trade show in Japan, a senior Intel executive praised newfound partner Apple or its consumer-friendly, proprietary entertainment platform,” Anders Bylund writes for The Motley Fool. “Then he turned right around and prayed for Japanese electronics manufacturers to support the open standards of Intel’s Viiv entertainment platform — which is notably incompatible with iPods and iTunes. Want another cake while you’re eating this one, Intel?”
“‘Let Apple be Apple,’ said Eric Kim, senior VP of Intel’s home entertainment group,” Bylund writes. “The fact that Steve Jobs and his merry men have a virtual stranglehold on the digital music market can inspire its partners to forgive many a flaw, like a tightly locked-down media format that won’t work with anybody else’s hardware until Apple decides to loosen up a bit and start selling third-party licenses.”
MacDailyNews Note: You mean like Motorola? Oops, sorry to break Bylund’s flow.
Bylund continues, “Even Intel, provider of the chips powering today’s Macs, doesn’t have the right to sell gadgets or software that can play your iTunes downloads, and the chipmaker seems OK with that.”
“I’m a big fan of open standards myself, and would be happy to see Apple’s closed platform opened up so I could buy songs through iTunes and play them on my Creative Zen media player. Intel is in a position to push Apple into licensing its FairPlay digital rights management scheme to Viiv devices. Giving Apple a free pass while everyone else is supposed to get in line makes Intel look like a wishy-washy turncoat that doesn’t really believe in its own product,” Bylund writes. “‘At the end of the day, consumers want choice,’ Kim said. But no matter what they choose, Intel wants to be a part of the solution.”
Full article here.
You want to play iTunes content on a media player, Mr. Bylund? Then get an iPod.
Apple should not license FairPlay to others unless and/or until it makes business sense, not because someone wants to buy an also-ran device and buy from Apple’s iTunes Store. Also-ran device buyers like Mr. Bylund should use the also-ran online media outfits to which they’ve consigned themselves with their purchasing mistake, er… decision.
Intel is not “giving Apple a pass.” Intel doesn’t tell Apple what to do. Never forget: Universal Binary means it runs on Intel and PowerPC (and there’s always AMD for those that like to compute a bit more leisurely). Intel needs to keep working hard to keep Apple’s business and thanking them profusely for it.
Related articles:
Motto inside Intel: ‘Let Apple be Apple’ – October 03, 2006
Apple’s vs. Microsoft’s music DRM: whose solution supports more users? – August 17, 2005
The de facto standard for legal digital online music files: Apple’s protected MPEG-4 Audio (.m4p) – December 15, 2004
