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Real Begs Apple for Alliance
hype7 writes "In a an extremely forward move, CEO of Real Networks Rob Glaser has emailed Steve Jobs, imploring him to open up Apple's AAC Digital Rights Management System - FairPlay - to Real. The upside for Real - all music sold by them would be compatible with the iPod. The upside for Apple - Real would make the iPod its primary device for the RealNetworks store and for the RealPlayer software. However, Mr. Glaser wasn't just dangling carrots - he implied that should Apple not be a receptive partner for an alliance, he would be forced to look towards Microsoft. There was a similar post made not too long ago, with BusinessWeek's take on the whole thing." There's a Reuters story as well.
Anyway, Apple is hedging its bets in a few places. You can easily play OGG formats in iTunes (a tutorial in this month's MacAddict tells how to use the codec), and Apple even includes an OGG icon to use in OS X, though you have to do one or two (easy) things to make it work seamlessly. I don't think Apple is afraid of opening things up except that, for instance, supporting WMA or Real playback on iPods would endanger the iTunes Music Store sales, which provide zero or very little profit to Apple, IIRC, but which sure improve the sales of iPods. Where Real fits into the risk/reward equation is unclear, but why let Real just have a piece of the action? Doesn't look like the profit to Apple is that great.
Dear Apple,
Please please please open Fair Play to use. Please please please. We'll be your best friend. Promise. Plllllleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaassssee! Come on, be a pal! Please please please.
Love,
Real
-m
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# Modus Ponens
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Real won't be missed, it hasn't done anything of value to the marketplace or userbase for years now.
Maybe they'll all reject Real and it'll just go away!!!
Granted, I don't care for real, even though "Air America" seems to like it (hello? Streamed MP3, folks - more universal, damn it!)
Anyway. It all boils down to "What does Apple want?" If it wants to sell iPods, this is part of the whole "killer move" thing. Right now, I can use my iPod with iTunes Music Store and Audible.com. And since I already shelled out $300 for this portable hard drive/music player, if you're not compatible, I don't want to hear it.
Licensing Fairplay to Real (and yes, I know that Fairplay isn't owned by Apple, but I'm willing to bet they've got an "exclusive agreement" and enough clout to convince the actual owners to let Real in on the fun) would, as the header notes, make the iPod work with Rhapsody. I'm not about to sign up for Rhapsody, but all of the sudden, those "Apple's trying to lock you into their own technology" arguments go out the window. And it sets a good precident: ask Apple nicely, and you can use their service.
But - this is only if Apple sees the prize as iPods. If they see the prize as becoming the de facto standard for online music, which would put them in a very powerful position, they could say "Hm - we have about 60% of all legal music downloads now, and the #1 portable MP3 players. Forget it, Real."
Personally, I think a combination of the two is in order: license with Real as they did with Audible.com. Let Real sell "iPod compatible" songs off of Rhapsody and whatever - but make those same tunes available through iTMS, just like you can buy Audible's site or through the iTunes interface. Everybody gets to sell something, and Apple will gain the "subscription services" so people can pick and choose thier poisen.
Of course, I could be totally wrong - but I won't mind if this scenario plays out.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Exactly. Even though Apple may be accused of high prices, when it comes to software and things like iTunes and its music store, Apple seem to have pleasing consumers as a top priority, the whole Fairplay system is only as cool as it is because Apple wrestled with the Music Indistry on our behalf. Okay I know they are far from altruistic, they are there to make a profit, but they do this by not pissing customers off.
Cut to Real. Ouch, just finiding their free player on their site is a pain in the ass, not to mention all the spyware, the bloated nature of their products... their number one seems to be their advertisers, then their bottom line, then the consumer. My opinion of Apple would go down if they associated themselves with these fools.
Yup...
The Real apple player?
The Fairplayer?
iReal player?
or just call it the RIAA (Real itunes apple authorized) player?
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
...RealOne Player 9 for Mac OS X actually includes none of the ads and crap that plague the Windows version. Like, at all. No popups, no shit ads, nothing. Just a player. As it should be.
I'm not sure.
(geek tries to impress prospective female)
geek: "Look at my cool iPod mini, it's wonderful." (hands the device to female)
female: "wow. it's pretty cute. kind of like you. let me play a song. (pushes button). hmmm. nothing is happening...what does 'buffering' mean?"
(girl walks off not impressed)
1. Not allowing a person to upgrade a DVD/CD drive to a Superdrive. I bought my PowerMac two months before the superdrive was released. I get to use stupid DVD-RAM disks, but I can't burn DVD's unless I buy a whole new computer.
.Mac program.
.Mac, yet I can still use every iApp with ease. Perhaps Joe Sixpack needs his hand held, but I don't.
Or you could just buy an superiour quality DVD recorder from a third-party. Unlike Microsoft, Apple allows you to use all standards-compliant hardware with their DVD burning software.
2. Apple keeps its iSync API locked up. There are millions of really cool things I could do to make Apple able to synchronize with things like LDAP servers, competing browsers, PC's, etc. But then Apple could use it as a leverage-point to keep people subscribing to the overpriced
Funny that you mention LDAP; Apple supports LDAP in its acclaimed Mail application, so you don't need to write so much as a speck of code to enable it. Getting LDAP support to work is easy as pie.
I don't subscribe to
3. USB video cameras, like the ubiquitous Logitech QuickCam, just don't work (well) and Apple seems to have put blocks into place to refuse iChat AV from working with anything but their iSight hardware product. (I exaggerate a little bit here, but not much.)
Such is the price of progress. Face it: USB cameras simply don't have the throughput to push television-quality video the likes of which iChat AV with Pixlet can support. Would you take vacation photos with a so-called "camera phone"? I know I wouldn't. My wife and children enjoy seeing me using iSight: it's a high-quality multivisual experience. Sorry that your piece-of-junk QuickCam won't work with it.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
I'm sure Glaser has "no idea" how his proposal was leaked.
There's no way Jobs (or anyone at Apple) is going to respond to such a blatant PR move by a floundering company less than 1/10 its size.
Microsoft has the deep pockets and market power to win with these kinds of strong-arm blackmail tactics, but Real? Come on.
I think it's sad Glaser is doing it this way, because there are good arguments for Apple opening up Fairplay to other music services. But Apple is very secretive about its partnerships and alliances (Apple writes into its contracts with manufacturing outsourcing and component producers that they can't publicly admit to it) and they won't want to be seen as even responding to this kind of public pressure from a piss-ant company like Real.
you have it all wrong. Its more like:
(geek tries to impress prospective female)
geek: "Look at..."
(girl walks off)Douglas P. Price
1. Not allowing a person to upgrade a DVD/CD drive to a Superdrive. I bought my PowerMac two months before the superdrive was released. I get to use stupid DVD-RAM disks, but I can't burn DVD's unless I buy a whole new computer.
.Mac program.
.Mac is overpriced, don't use it.
Actually, anyone is free to add any internal or external hardware device they wish, including DVD+/-R/RW drives. However, if you wanted to use *specific* software, like iDVD, with your drive, then you needed to mirror one of Apple's OEM offerings with your purchase. The reason Apple tried to tie iDVD to their "SuperDrive" systems was more one of ensuring a very cohesive user experience, as opposed to the nightmare of support issues and bad reputation for iDVD as people with 400 MHz G4s tried to use iDVD with any old random DVD recorder.
2. Apple keeps its iSync API locked up. There are millions of really cool things I could do to make Apple able to synchronize with things like LDAP servers, competing browsers, PC's, etc. But then Apple could use it as a leverage-point to keep people subscribing to the overpriced
It's only a matter of time before there's an iSync SDK. And the second statement is kind of unrelated; if you think
3. USB video cameras, like the ubiquitous Logitech QuickCam, just don't work (well) and Apple seems to have put blocks into place to refuse iChat AV from working with anything but their iSight hardware product. (I exaggerate a little bit here, but not much.)
ANY FireWire video source will work with iChat AV. Any video source at all will work with iChatUSBCam. Again, this decision was made to ensure a good user experience across the board with iChat AV, rather than letting people use any old crappy USB camera, which, right or wrong, reflects poorly on iChat AV.
There is a reason why Apple products work and look great: because Apple tries hard to keep it that way.
The iPod Quicktime-AAC is just another example. Where Microsoft fights to protect it's OS dominence, Apple refuses to make its customers' lives better if it suggests that they might loose the odd dollar in missed hardware sales opportunities.
Well, first, you have to have a monopoly to start talking about monopolistic practices. Even with iPod, Apple doesn't have nearly a "monopoly". And QuickTime, while proprietary, is one of the best media architectures out there, with free live encoding, free streaming servers for multiple platforms, ability to use open standards for playback anywhere, etc. Not to mention that it was primarily Apple and Apple alone that made MPEG-4's licensing - one of the only hopes against Microsoft's VC9 - licensing leaps and bounds more palatable than it originally was. And Apple has to keep its hardware sales up, lest the analysts start a death knell for the 1000th time.
2. Apple keeps its iSync API locked up. There are millions of really cool things I could do to make Apple able to synchronize with things like LDAP servers, competing browsers, PC's, etc. But then Apple could use it as a leverage-point to keep people subscribing to the overpriced .Mac program.
.Mac, yet I can still use every iApp with ease. Perhaps Joe Sixpack needs his hand held, but I don't.
Funny that you mention LDAP; Apple supports LDAP in its acclaimed Mail application, so you don't need to write so much as a speck of code to enable it. Getting LDAP support to work is easy as pie.
I don't subscribe to
While the LDAP integration is handy, I don't think it addresses the original poster's point.
My company has a fairly extendable product suite that includes mail, calendar, and contact management. If I could write an iSync conduit to our database, I'd be able to check my calendar and get alarms from my Powerbook, iPod or Bluetooth phone.
That would let me use the interface(s) I like with the data I need, and would let us market OS X as a fully-supported platform. No, my company would probably never have an impact on Apple's bottom line, but as it stands now we can only offer syncronization with Windows users. In the meantime I've got this great all-in-one syncing solution that's completely useless to me, which is pretty frustrating.
Morpheus: BUFFERING...and turn a human being into this. (Morpheus holds up a titty that produces money labeled "consumer")
....BUFFERING....
..BUFFERING.. I didn't. I chose not to. ...BUFFERING...
BUFFERING....
Neo looks down and sees a black cat and then BUFFERING.... BUFFERING... he sees it again.
Neo: deja vu
*Trinity and Morpheus turn around quick, the fast movement of their heads producing a blurred mass of pixels*
Trinty: WHAT DID you say? (audio volume goes from high down to low half volume tin-can resonance for some unknown reason)
Neo: I said... BUFFERING... *screp* *scraaW*
Trinity: *screp* *sreeep*.... BUFFERING....a glitch in the codec
FIVE MINUTE WAIT, 86% LOADED.
Cut to an action scene in slow-mo lots of trails and effects behind the bullets. But it's slow mo in the part where Agent Real comes from hiding behind the grocery bag and shoots at neo.... the part that wasn't slow-mo in the cinema. Directors cut maybe... BUFFERING.....
POPUP - WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY REALPLAYER GOLD!
BUFFERING..70% RELOADED...
Neo: but I thought I uninstalled you.
Agent Real: I knew I was supposed to follow orders and remove my files and registry entries but