RealNetworks Chair and Chief Executive Officer Rob Glaser sat down with IDG News Service to discuss his company with Joris Evers for IDG News Service. Two questions touched upon Apple, the iPod, iTunes, and the iTunes Music Store:
IDGNS: Hewlett-Packard announced it will release a digital music player based on Apple’s IPod [sic] and preinstall Apple’s ITunes [sic] jukebox software on its consumer PCs and notebook systems. Does that hurt RealNetworks?
Glaser: ITunes [sic] is only going to be used for playing songs you bought using the ITunes [sic] store or ripped using ITunes [sic]. What we have done with RealPlayer 10 by making it universal is create a solution that we think consumers will flock to. Imagine the situation when you buy a couple of tracks from the ITunes [sic] store, a couple of tracks from Napster, and hopefully you’ll buy tracks from the RealPlayer Music Store. You want it to just work. What Apple is doing reinforces format diversity. Even though Apple is narrowly focused on its one format, its success reinforces the need for people to take a universal approach. We’re the only major player that does that.
IDGNS: Apple offers both the ITunes [sic] media player and the IPod [sic] hardware. Will we ever see a RealNetworks device?
Glaser: We’re not likely to make our own hardware. We will have hardware partners who we work closely with to make sure that we deliver a great end-to-end experience. We are already doing that with Palm; we’re working on that with Creative Labs. We will increasingly work with more and more device makers out there.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wonder if Real’s service (and the company) will last another five years? And calling the iPod, “IPod,” and iTunes, “ITunes,” makes IDG News Service look uninformed and lazy. IDG News Service is simply disrespectful of Apple, as they seem to be perfectly capable of getting every other company’s non-standard trademarked names correctly on the page. They don’t seem to feel the need to impose their own version of the RealNetworks name, or by following their logic, it would be written something like “rEalnEtworks” or something to that effect. It’s a subtle disrespect (we imagine the author thinking, “Apple stuff – not worth the effort of getting the name right”). It’s usually reserved only for Apple’s trademarked product names and it sticks out like a sore thumb in articles like this. We will continue to point it out until it stops.
ho-hum!
They’re just all living in denial. Reality will slap them in the face sooner or later…
“What we have done with RealPlayer 10 by making it universal is create a solution that we think consumers will flock to.”
Sound familiar?
I read the same claim by the BUY.COM music store folks as well as Napster and Wal-Mart. So far, I don’t see much in the way of “flocking”.
Why do these people feel the need to marginalize Apple whenever they compare their service to the #1 ?
Can you say WEAK ?
Why don’t you guys give up on the IPod and ITunes whining….this is usually caused not by UNINFORMED AND LAZY people as you state, but by the publishing systems that spell check and publish to a web server…get over it….it’s a common error done everywhere….and yes…I’m an apple loyalist before you zealots start flaming me…I’m also a web developer so I’m familiar with the issue….
ummm… if it’s a publishing system doing as spell check, why isn’t it “Ipod” and “Itunes”. Apparently it’s human error at some point, wether it’s the author or editor or the person that programmed the publishing system.
Why would I buy music anywhere else?
So far, the only thing I have not found at the iTunes store, that I would like to buy, are those freak’n Beatles songs. And since I don’t see that happening for a while I guess I will have to “find” the CD and rip them.
Really, why would I go to 3 or 4 stores to buy music. I never did that when I purchased CD’s or Albums at the store. I had my favorite music store and I went there.
So, is Glaser stating that iTunes music store purchased music (with it’s AAC prop layer – not re-encoded as an mp3), will work with Realplayer 10? I’ll take a punt and guess that Real will not have that capability…..
However, it is possible that I’ll have to eat my words later, but I doubt it.
I don’t know… Apple is playing a dangerous game with this whole thing. I have to admit, that even though they have provided the best solution for me, that most people just like having choice. They don’t want to hear that you can only use their iTMS songs on an Apple portable player, and conversely, they don’t want to exclude a playable format option (wma, yuck!) from their ipods.
And yet, Apple doesn’t want to pay the license to put wma decoding on the ipod. So, what I propose is that Apple offer a paid firmware upgrade to let the ipod play wma’s. That way the people who want it most can pay for it, without Apple paying through the nose to put it on every machine. Granted, they may lose some iTMS business, but if the people already have ipods, does Apple really care anyway? After all, supposedly the iTMS is meant to drive ipod sales.
birdseed, RealPlayer 10 WILL play music from the iTMS. You have to have iTunes installed first, because RealPlayer only taps into the QT in order to authorize it. It can’t do it independently, but to the user, it’s automagical.
iGads: “Why would I buy music anywhere else?
Oh, I don’t know. Say you prefer Napster over iTMS, but you drink Pepsi. Or say you prefer iTMS over Real but you drink Heineken.
If Tower records was giving away free singles, perhaps you’d stop in…
Personally, I think this is a good idea. It’s about the music, not the format.
Right now Apple has to be strict, I think, about not supporting other formats such as WMA and not licensing their DRM. They need to do this because they are making money off iPods not iTunes. Period. Soon, though, in the next year, it will be the other way around almost. IPods (at the beginning of a sentence is this OK or should it always be iPod!?) will gradually go down in price and the margins will decrease. The infrastructure for iTunes will be in place and GarageBand (4.0?) will eventually let musicians skip the Big Five entirely and go directly to Apple. Then iTunes will be the money maker instead of the iPod. But Apple can’t switch over just yet. The razor and razor blade (or printer and toner) analogy doesn’t apply yet, but it will. Just give it time. At that point they can license their DRM because they will be making lots of money off iTunes and they won’t care as much if others also build iPod-like players. WMA will go away, so why worry about it and help keep it alive now? There are two monopolies here: Microsoft and the Big Five. Apple has to have a long range plan for them. I think Microsoft can see the long range result, but I don’t think the Music industry yet sees what is happening.
“We’re not likely to make our own hardware.”
That’s all he had to say. Apple’s lead is secure.
What can they all really say other than something like this when they are getting their butt kicked every which way imaginable.
This applies to Thurawthroat also. He knows he is looking stupid, so he writes back to Mac users and plays victim instead.
Real Networks is a very screwed up company from what I hear. I interviewed some people from over there. They wanted out pretty bad. Are they even profitable? I don’t think so.
And their software is a fscking pain in the ass to use. It never works right.
<<What we have done with RealPlayer 10 by making it universal is create a solution that we think consumers will flock to. Imagine the situation when you buy a couple of tracks from the ITunes store, a couple of tracks from Napster, and hopefully you’ll buy tracks from the RealPlayer Music Store. You want it to just work.>>
Have they found a way to play songs from all the other music stores? I’m impressed!
As for the inability to spell names correctly because some spell checker won’t allow it, I don’t buy it. Even my 1984 Mac 128 (with Mac Spell Tools) had the ability to learn new words. Editors may be dumb (I work for them) but they aren’t that dumb!
“Why don’t you guys give up on the IPod and ITunes whining….this is usually caused not by UNINFORMED AND LAZY people as you state, but by the publishing systems that spell check and publish to a web server”
How hard is it to add names or words to a spellchecker dictionary? Don’t tell me a computer-oriented website doesn’t know how to use a simple thing like a spellchecker. I made my share of typhos and grammatical errors, but I don’t get paid to publish my comments.
I think MacDaily News is reading too much into the spelling mistakes.
The questions asked by IDG News Service show a great deal of awareness about the impact of iTunes in the online music space. There was no anti-mac agenda in the interviewer’s conduct; this is not C/Net we are talking about
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Its a little thing but it means so much. MDN should continue to point out these error because just as MDN says, it shows a general lack of respect towards Apple. Its out of respect that IDG and others should get the proper caps on the words, particularly that of product and service names.
Hey, they are so disrespectful with their ITunes instead of iTunes, etc. Maybe we should all call them pCWorld. The small p would be so appropriate, if you catch my drift. 😀
Isn’t one [sic] enough? Get over it.
Spelling is important. How do you feel when someone misspells your name? It is disrespectful not to learn at least how to spell someone’s name or something they have constructed (title of a book, picture or statue, software, etc.). It is just like not knowing how to do percentages. The little things are telltale indicators of the person and their feelings about themselves, the importance they attach to the job they do, and how they feel about you. Either get upset about it, or admit that you have the same attitude about others, but don’t make it obvious by complaining when someone points out laziness and disrespect.
The anti-Apple capitalization conspiracy is easily put to rest by simply searching for other brand names with non-standard capitalization on the PC World site. What do you get? EMachines, IPaq, EPhoto (Agfa scanner), EBay.
Let’s see… Do they hate *all* these companies? Or have they just followed the age-old rule that the first letter of a proper noun is always capitalized?
Real should get real.
As for iPod/iTunes/iTMS not playing WMA, notice the AP report today about the Massachussetts attorney general’s website soliciting post-settlement anti-trust practices by Microsoft. Seems M$ is charging too much for licensing the code it was supposed to force it to release and is even trying to hobble Adobe, inc.
Why should Apple bow at the alter of M$ ??
tHEY dIDN’T mISSPELL aNYTHING, tHEY jUST rEFUSED tO uSE nON-sTANDARD cAPITALIZATION tHAT hAS nO sIGNIFICANCE eXCEPT aS aMARKETING gIMMICK.
iTRY tOSPELL pEOPLE’S nAMES cORRECTLY, bUT iWOULDN’T xPECT pEOPLE tO wRITE mY nAME “dENNIS” jUST bCAUSE iDO.
Some writers/publications are lazy about Apple products. You even see MAC from time to time. MDN’s right in general–maybe not about IDG, though!