Slashdot Mirror
Real's Reality
"There's also an interesting conversation going on at Jogin.com, which started with this post from the author, basically a rant, describing how inconvenient and even hostile Real Player is. It would be like any other rant, except an employee of Real Networks replied with some insights into the company's wrongdoings and somewhat explained Real's undeterred hostility towards those who downloaded the free version of its player. Furthermore, a consultant, who used to work at Real Networks, replied, sharing some questionable practices Real engaged in, such as hiding a variety of "add-ons" at the bottom of the page, hoping that the user would not scroll down to un-check the selections, and then charging his credit card for add-ons when he signed up for paid version on Real One."
I know why I don't use Real player anymore...
Real Player used to be a simple piece of audio (then later video) playing software. Now its becomeiwng one of those applications that wants to dominate your system and do everything from playing media to making eggs. RealMessage Center? A constantly running tray icon? Asking me every 2 seconds if I _really_ want it to not be the default player for everything...
RealNetworks might not be having troubles if they were able to produce significantly more advanced codecs and didn't resort to bloat. No innovation, no company, regardless of whether your player can polish my shoes or not.
Is that Real Player is a big bloated piece of crap. No one uses it if they have a choice. Microsoft's destroyed a lot of competitors, but in this case, they didn't have to. Real did it themselves.
I remember using Real Player back in like 1996. It was incredible stuff, and it just worked. But then they fell into the trap a lot of other software companies do. They tried to make their software do EVERYTHING, and instead of one doing a couple things well, it did everything poorly.
Similar to the RIAA blaming Napster for their poor sales, Real just assumes their business is going doen the toilet because of something MS did (they must have done SOMETHING evil, right?). I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that their product is just bloated spyware, or poor corporate leadership, or the "bunker mentality" at Real that the article mentions...
Realplayer G2 w/RealJukebox.
Great design. I loved it... then it started happening *cue sad music*... The upgrades... they said "RealONE" was the thing... but all it did was take away my ability to listen to crap online for free.
Free Carolina Hurricanes webcast? Gone. $29.95 a month.
Free Carolina Panthers webcast? Gone. Buy NFL Field Pass.
Free racing webcasts? Gone.
Now, I don't mind ads. Heck, I run a website, I live on ads [cheap plug]go to oldos.org and clickyclicky on my google text ads [/cheap plug]. I wouldn't mind listening to ads during the game, watching cheap flash ads before listening, or anything like this. How come TV can survive without needed subscriptions (skin-e-max and h-blow excluded), but internet webcasts can't?
Jay | http://oldos.org
Wouldn't one reason for Real losing out is that Micro$oft's Media Encoder is free as in beer and Real's or Apples, for that matter, aren't? (well, they weren't last time I checked)
Yup. And everyone else is entitled to do whatever they can do drive such assholes out of business.
I've had this sig for three days.
But, how are people accidently buying the premium version? How do you accidentally type in your credit card information? I don't know about the rest of the world, but when I type in my credit card info I am *not* surprised when I get billed.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Real could of owned the world, but heres my run down of why Real hurt themselves, they harrased the customer.
1. Takes 10 minutes of hunting around the website for the free version. Even when you click on the "Free" version, it prompts you to buy it.
2. When loading the program, it asks you to register, then prompts you to buy it, and then loads an html webpage.
Back in the day,
Now Microsoft is using the mpeg4 format, and seems to be taking over HDTV format on Dvd's. They win, everything. They will be the OS and multimedia format of the future.
While I agree Microsoft did use its power to assist in taking over, Real networks interaction with customers was on the level of spammers, horrible salesmen from hell. Customers had a bad experiences and walked away.
I donot know if Real managed to port their COM with XPCOM, but, that would help them leverage the functionality of a component object model for developers to exploit and would have helped them to gain acceptance from the open source community. There were more complaints about the install process and the capturing of the file types rather than the actual streaming technology itself. This is a shame for a technology company trying to provide an alternative for a/v streaming. May be the management needs to rethink its priorities regarding this. And whoever the mailer(s) were, and if they are reading this post - nice to know that there are such honest people who are willing to voice their opinions.
Winamp still plays audio files just as good as it normally did. I actually like the video player, my only problem is it doesn't play certain files. Even if you hate it you have the choice not to install video support and get the original player.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Not to change the subject or anything, or sound redundant or anything, but it's this kind of situation where Ogg would be perfect.
... is the uninstall program. My Dell laptop came with it installed, but it was gone shortly after I saw the icon come up on the first boot. I can't stand nag-ware, and even the paid-for versions of RealPlayer nag you incessantly about upgrading to the version-of-the-week. What has this to do with Real Network's market share? Hopefully, a LOT!
Why? I mean really, why? "Ooooooo, it works on Linix. Ahhhhhhhh..." Sorry, but Real is a real piece of shit, and they will have to do a lot more than port it to Linux to win "real" respect.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I never installed it, but I've seen it on other people's machines and it launches a popup when you play media files. WTF!? Showing you advertising simply for viewing content already on your hard drive! It's obscene (IMO). I'd never install that crap.
Is there any open source alternative for media serving? Why can't people just use that?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I find the "Upgrade to pro?" each time it starts highly annoying.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
*twitch*
Did fdisk /mbr work?
a spam and advertising force-feeding shop that happens to own a once-good audio and video encoding formats, and now won't let anyone else support those formats because everyone would ditch the ad-ridden RealOne garbage in a flash if that's ever the case!
The sooner those bozos go bankrupt, the better.
Yeah, and it knows humans can add them back 50 times a second, that is why it doesn't check it 30 times, or even 10 times a second. That would be too slow.
I can't afford a sig!
The problem with that approach is that Real is up against MS and Apple, who don't charge for the server, the encoder, or the player. Both quicktime and windows media exist because they contribute to the MacOS/Windows "user experience". They use qt and wmp as minor bonuses to sell the products that make them real (no pun intended) money: selling more Macs or more Windows licenses.
Real can't do that. Streaming media *is* their product, so they can't afford to just give it away just because Apple and Microsoft are. That means Real is doomed. It's been pretty obvious that Real lost he streaming media war ever since Apple started getting exclusive deals to do movie trailers online and MS started pushing for streaming wma/wmv on every site they could get.
And that's just looking at their business model The outlook for Real is even worse if you start considering the quality of their software compared with wmp or quicktime...
0 1 - just my two bits
What about doing a raw copy of the floppy disk?
Well, let's look at Freeamp. First of all, it's now called "Zinf", continuing the tradition of stupid names for open source programs. Second, when we go to the Zinf home page, we have to click on "Download", one of a number of options (including "SF", which developers know as SourceForge but users do not.) On the "Download" page, the first option, in typical user-clueless style, downloads the Linux source distribution. You also have to download and build the "MusicBrainz 2.0 client library", whatever that is. "RPMs will be available soon for RedHat 9". No date is given.
Further down, there's a Windows version, but it's three revs behind. But at least there's an installer and a binary.
If you want to build the thing, there are obscure instructions. ("You'll need perl and NASM in order to compile the latest MP3 decoder assembly optimizations. If you don't have NASM, you can still compile successfully, but you'll only be able to use some of the older optimizations written in gas.")
The Windows version is built with MSVC 5, circa 1997. Builds require some workarounds. ("NOTE: In order for the build to succeed you will need to install the SGI STL. ")
Now consider a typical Windows user. Will they be able to figure out what they're supposed to do?
Or worse, someone who bought a Linux machine at WalMart and wants to run Freeamp, er, Zinf. Will they succeed building this on Thiz Linux? What do you think?
This is halfway on topic, talking about crappy software. I hate it when software is not multi-user aware:
Broderbund and Maxis are infamous for this. Both "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 15" and "The Sims" require you to run as Administrator.
There is absolutely NO FUCKING REASON why any app -- except for certain system utilities (and games and typing tutors aren't those) -- should require Admin. It's fucking lazy sloppy programming.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
It seems to me the 'Jane' is missing a computer industry standard. "...how pissing people off can be a revenue generator" seems like an obviously bad tactic, but lets seriously think about this. Microsoft does this all the time. So does AOL, and many other companies.
As for my best example of how companies do exactly this to make money.
A) Visioneer Paperport Scanners.
Used to work right next to the people that were the outsourced support for them. Thier first response was that the customer "needed to upgrade" thier version of the software for like $40 if I remember right. And then, the problem they called on may or may not work with the new version of the software.
-or-
B) Crappy Utah Based Computer Manufacturer that has nothing to do with Hewlett Packard. They had the toll support line, and then the pay-per-incident ($34.95) 800 support line. If someone called in we got a credit card before we would help them, or else refer them back to the toll number.
But then there is the old "your system does not meet the minimum system requirements" line that takes care of a lot of people. They have opened the software and installed it, so there is no chance for a refund so just one less end-user to support.
Then for Microsoft, try to set Windows Messanger to disabled on XP Home.
And AOL never seems to uninstall once you connect through them. And it installs with everything.
It seems like in a country of "the best and the brightest" we have a lot of lazy companies that would rather make money out of mediocrity than through products and service. Companies are more excited to get on to someone's monthly credit card and fly below the radar for a couple years than to assure the customer is not too frustrated to use thier service.
Just another anonymous $0.02.
I can't see what's so wrong with this? I don't really think these services make any difference in system performance, and if this is what it takes for Apple to maintain their good user experience, then I think it's perfectly fine.
Martin
Sir, I object to your characterisation of the /etc directory. It is there for a reason. What you describe is fine and dandy for games and assorted disposable desktop crapola but not so fine for most (serious) applications. Having a centralized (but easilly maintained and repaired) repository of configuration data, makes it easy to backup this critical part of the system and also allows for better control of access to it.
I agree -- etc is a good idea, but so is having a self-contained application directory. Each has its own merits.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
That is not the way he described it. Besides, current Linux scenario is close to this with /etc being the system-wide repository and ~/.myapplication being the place where an app will put its per-user config.
What he was praising was a Mac OS X method whereby everything is in "personal preferences" and application directories. That is neither robust or wise muti-user policy, because it exludes centralized administration which is crucial to any corporate deployments of applications.
This is a sign of a Microsoft-like desktop-centric small thinking, which is then followed by a panic flood of kludges and contorted "fixes" to remedy a fundamental design flaw when it comes to scaling up the system.