Posted on 12/06/2005 3:03:25 AM PST by Panerai
Rob Glaser has made his peace with Microsoft's Bill Gates. Now, the RealNetworks chief executive is turning up the rhetoric against another technology icon: Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs.
At the Digital Living Conference here on Monday, Glaser told a packed hotel ballroom that Jobs & Co.'s refusal to make the iPod compatible with music services other than Apple's iTunes was "pig-headedness." Glaser also said that Apple's unwillingness to cooperate with other online music vendors promotes piracy of copyrighted materials and will eventually draw the wrath of consumers.
These are heady times for Glaser and his Internet multimedia company, which announced in October that it had reached a favorable settlement with Microsoft on the $1 billion lawsuit RealNetworks filed in 2003.
Under the deal, Microsoft agreed to pay $460 million in cash to settle the antitrust claims and will also pay $301 million to support RealNetworks' music and game efforts. In addition Microsoft will promote RealNetworks' Rhapsody subscription music service on its MSN Web business.
Perhaps Jobs unknowingly helped RealNetworks and Microsoft find common ground. In 2004, Glaser appealed to Jobs to make the popular iPod compatible with other music services. Microsoft has long sought to strike partnerships in the digital-music arena to help it challenge Apple's enormous lead in the sector.
Jobs responded by telling his shareholders that a deal with RealNetworks simply was "not worth it." Glaser didn't let that stop him. In July 2004, RealNetworks released a version of its music download service compatible with Apple's iPod--without the permission of Jobs & Co. Apple has called it "hacker tactics" but hasn't filed a lawsuit.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
The iPod hardware and the iTunes service looks like a clear case of "tying" to me, or at least it would if Microsoft was doing it. Let's see if all those AG's have the balls to go after Apple...
Steve Jobs is a nasty man.
As Gates said to Jobs in the 'Silicon Pirates', you can't steal form a thief.
Let them fight each other to the death over proprietary, restrictive formats. I only use mp3 unless I have to listen or watch something on WMP.
Glaser's been whining about lack of access to the iPod for a while now. It is getting old. By now you'd think they'd have invested in coming out with a decent iPod competitor.
At the moment, the close ties between the iPod and iTunes delivery system are necessary for the advancement of the whole idea. At some point Apple will have exploited it far enough, or will make a mistake leaving an opening for a competitor. Glaser and his people have been unable to keep up with Apple, and thus they're complaining. Forcing Apple to open up its iPod will probably result in fewer innovations, and we'll be back to sitting around wondering why there was nothing after the video iPod.
Hmm. Glaser is upset because someone else has a proprietary format and it is not Real Networks.
Go figure.
Microsoft has a monopoly.
Apple doesn't.
Besides, if the AG went after Apple the way they went after Microsoft, the end result would be the same.
A ruling against the company and then no substantive penalty.
Now, if Microsoft had actually been penalized for being an abusive, stealing, lying, 800 lbs. gorilla with a penchant for predatory lawsuits and faking evidence in Federal court, you might have an interesting idea.
But since Microsoft got a pass on all of that, Apple shouldn't have to worry.
Apple has the status of the iPod, but it's hefty marketshare is about to come to an end. Apparently the U.S. is set to be flooded with cheap,cheap,cheap players from China in the coming year.
He and 1,000 other CEO's, I suppose.
You've been able to buy cheap, cheap, cheap MP3 players for some time now. It hasn't impacted Apple's iPod sales because the iPod is an excellent product at a reasonable price.
Pricing with Apple is still pretty competitive when comparing capacity. But what if there was a competitive system with the Nano, for instance, sixty bucks cheaper?
"There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go."
"It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me."
"... about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Considering the howling that's been coming from Microsoft about Linux and how hard it is to compete with a no-cost product, I found this quote particularly ironic.
"We are going to cut off [Netscape's] air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free."
It will be interesting to see if the cheap Chinese products can compete on storage space, features (such as video), reliablility and a non-sucking interface for much less than what the Nano sells.
I different kind of market -- I was waiting for a subway a year ago and saw a high school kid drop his CD player. Basically it seemed to crack the door. The kid unhooked the speakers, took out the batteries and CD, then threw the thing away. A week later I saw CD players for twenty-something bucks. Disposable electronics.
Do you have any doubts we'll see a Chinese version of the iPod Shuffle for $24.95 within a year?
Do a Google Search for << "Real Networks" spyware scumware >> (Results 1 - 10 of about 1,360 )
And find out why none of that filthy crap will ever exist on any computer of mine.
Sample posts:
I found this accidentally when I forgot to reset my clock during an experiment.
All of a sudden I saw the scheduler kick in and attempted to send data to Real Networks.
Fortunately my Zone Alarm trapped the transfer, so nothing was sent out."
were opt-out, but that they hid the real opt-out items in a scrollable form where the visible options on the top were already unchecked. Unless you paid attention and made sure you scrolled through all the options, you may think you were opting out because everything you could see was unchecked, but there were 9 or 10 more nasty items checked below that.
The takeover issue is another big problem, which neither WMP nor Winamp have. Overall, Real has honestly earned their terrible reputation, and I for one will never trust them. Goodbye, Real.
Glaser's one to talk. I haven't loaded anything from Real on a computer of mine in years, and I have no intention of doing so. They've screwed themselves by putting out invasive software and by making a download of any "free" player an exercise in frustration.
They'll have to work mighty hard to recover any kind of credibility with me.
A MP3 player and a CD player are fundamentaly different things.
The CD player contains no internal data. The media is physically separate from the device.
The MP3 player requires internal storage. There is going to be a lower limit to the price of such an item.
Some Chinese ripoffs have been showing up on EBay the last couple of weeks. Some sellers point out they are not "Real" Apple Ipods, some may not. The "Shuffle" model seems to be the first one they are ripping off:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Like-IPOD-Shuffle-512-mb-Brand-New_W0QQitemZ5838342268QQcategoryZ48680QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
AND:
http://cgi.ebay.com/MP3-Shuffle-99-the-same-as-Ipod-Shuffle-512MB_W0QQitemZ5838894497QQcategoryZ73839QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I'm thinking manufacturing. It's easier to manufacture a MP3 player. It's cheaper to ship MP3 players. And it's cheaper to package them.
If I were going to do a business model for the Chicoms, I'd ship them with basic software and let the kids load whatever they want on it.
Fortunately (for Jobs) the board brought that loser John Sculley in from Pepsi and Jobs had to come back and rescue Apple from Sculley's ineptness.
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