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Apple Rejects RealNetwork's Pleas
TheJoKell writes "In a followup to a previous article, Apple has denied a meeting with Rob Glaser, Chief Executive of Real Networks, to discuss an alliance between the two companies. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Steve Jobs said, 'The iPod already works with the No. 1 music service in the world, and the iTunes Music Store works with the No. 1 digital-music player in the world. The No. 2s are so far behind already. Why would we want to work with No. 2?'"
Its not that we like Real now... Its just that we can recognize when Apple rejects business opportunity to feed Apple's zealous fanatics.
Too late. It appears that Creative has created a nice little stylish portable audio player that works with MP3 and WMA files and is considerably less than the iPod.
This is an excellent comment! It was just as good when *I* posted it YESTERDAY on the original thread here.
Couldn't you have at least tried putting a different sig on it?
Or, you can just download MPlayer for OSX.
http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/
The NeXT platform was a precursor of what Linux has been for the last decade. Filled with highly technical people who do a lot of rolling their own code. There was never a solid customer base for commercial apps for NeXT, hence there was never any kind of market that Microsoft would want to tap.
When the NeXT cube came out, the crowd I was hanging with didn't take it seriously. Even when the 'fire sale' occured and they got really cheap, everybody scoffed at it. I wouldn't mind having one now, but as a historical curiosity for my collection, and not much else.
resigned
Name any publisher of sheet music. They license music to radio stations, to record labels, and to movie studios.
Interesting to note, they don't have full control of their copyrights. Once sheet music and lyrics are published, anybody has a right to perform them in public on a recording for a price that is set by law. This is what's known as the "mechanical royalties" because there's no barganing in the mater, the songwriter (or holder of the songwriter's copyright) gets paid the price the law says they're owed and that's that.
Britney Spears's recording company, therefore, has the exclusive rights to her performance of Baby One More Time... but absolutely any artist can do a cover of the song at the mechanical rates, and there's nothing Britney's label can do about it.
Streaming radio's problem right now is that their mechanical payment process has too high a rate set, and far too detailed of a reporting requirement because they have to pay per actual person listening to the stream while the song is playing, while radio stations by comparision just have to pay by their average daily listeners according to the ratings. They're basically on a fixed playing field tilted against them, while songwriters seem to have a level one with the rest of the world.
If only there was a way to measure and collect mechanical royalties fairly for the unencumbered transfer of MP3s/ACCs/OGGs...
According to their quarterly report, which was released earlier this week, the iTunes music store did make a small profit. I don't think details were released as to how much of a profit, but they did say it was.
Presumably, the more they can grow the user base of the store, the more money they can make on it. Allowing Real to set up shop in their turf with their tools would only likely decrease the user base of their store.
Real just wants a free ride, but Apple wisely won't give it to them.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Assuming that Real wants to enforce the DRM, there would have to be some standard to verify the keys, authorize computers, etc.
When the NeXT cube came out, the crowd I was hanging with didn't take it seriously. Even when the 'fire sale' occured and they got really cheap, everybody scoffed at it. I wouldn't mind having one now, but as a historical curiosity for my collection, and not much else.
When the Sun Starfire came out, the crowd I was hanging with didn't take it seriously. Of course, I didn't know anything about it. I'm guessing the same is true here.
A 1994 NeXT is still sufficiently more advanced (speed aside) in many ways than more ``modern'' computers. For example, I can write a GUI application on the one in front of me in just a few minutes that can be run natively on a m68k (black hardware), x86, HPPA or Sparc processor.
OPENSTEP took it a step further and allowed you to deploy on NT (OPENSTEP Enterprise).
There was a pretty decent market for NeXT where people needed GUI applications written quickly. Consider the following:
NeXT Order of Business.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
I'd love to see your numbers. Especially when they disagree with you so.
the obligatory link to the jargon file
I am Jack's witty signature line
macs that are the #3 (linux is surpassing macs)
I'll buy that argument for desktops when the google sample tells me it's true. Last month it was Mac 4%, Linux 1%
iPod: 2.4" x 4.1" x 0.62"
Zen Xtra: 3" x 4.4" x 0.86"
That's an increase of 25% x 7.3% x 38.7%, or 86.1% in volume. That's almost twice the volume, far more than you think.
And that percentual increase in volume is huge: the white iPod is only 69.5% bigger than the iPod Mini (2" x 3.6" x 0.5"), and clearly the Mini has been such a success due to it's size (not so much for it's colors).
i know more people running desktop linux than desktop mac. And I even own an ibook (but run linux on it).
mac is all very nice, but i just cannot do some real work on it. I hate the interface. For most other people, the hardware is just to obscure and expensive.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I was thinking more along the lines of "uncharitable." Because, at this point, that is what Real is looking for: Charity. Let's face facts here. Real is a crappy company with a crappy technology. Yes, they were first in the market and, for a time, they were good. But they have been surpassed in quality and performance by Apple and Microsoft and should have died out a long time ago. They have not improved their technology at the same rate as their competitors, seeming to prefer concentrating on how to squeeze even more crap into to their already bloated shovelware.
The fact that they are still prevelant on the Net (see: Amazon, Comedy Central) suggests to me that it is probably more the difficulty in migrating to a different content-delivery platform than excellence that keeps them around. (I should disclose, however, that I have not installed the latest version of RealOne. I am just too sick of the spyware, pop-ups and other intrusions that come along with it.)
This isn't arrogance on Apple's part. It is a sound business decision.
In other news, I am very impressed with your id #. I think 137 is the lowest I have seen here.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".