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Real Feels iTunes Backlash
BunkAsInBed writes "CNET reports RealNetwork's recent campaign against the iTunes music network that involved tactics like slashing the costs of their downloads in half, reverse engineering Apple's FairPlay format (Harmony), and recently an online petition and bulliten board have received the opposite reponse that was anticpated."
I don't think it is surprising that apple fans (iPod, iTunes folks) are energetically against competition for their little cash cow. They want to support apple. They know that this working well for apple; they don't want anybody to rock the boat.
Realone is trying to break apple fans from apple loyality... and it just isn't going to work. Of course I am stereotyping but Apple's success is based in their loyal, vocal, energetic community.
The linux community and the apple communities are a lot alike in this manner.
What is interesting is that trolling the site got success...
The deluge of anti-RealNetworks sentiment prompted the company to take down the original petition and replace it with one without a comment section, but where the names of those who signed up were visible. Most signed up as 'Real sucks' or something similar. The ability to see names was then removed.
Proprietary is anticompetitive by definition.
Apple is banking that proprietary is profitable. I'll guess we'll see if they are right.
Davak
There would be a time when *CONSUMERS* would be the ones AGAINST reverse engineering DRM?
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
Hell hath no fury like a Mac user scorned.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
People just hate Real.
Real has always treated the Mac has second class. We get RealPlayer after the Windows version. Their jukebox software has never worked on the Mac. And now they want us to sympathise?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
We want Freedom of Music Choice
.rm format first so that I can use any player I want. Then we can talk on the same terms. Until then, Real, you can kiss my a$$.
How about opening up the
And before you come in with Real Alternative, don't bother. I know about it and it's not the same thing.
Free XBox, PS2
That's some pretty famous people coming to Apple's defense.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The way I understand it, Apple makes most of the money on iPods. The iTunes business is to make ipods more attractive and brings almost no profit. Why don't they want to let others sells songs for ipod?
It is sad when a salient point is ruined by vulgarity.
The fuckers.
Film (Quicktime or Real) at 11!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Real just can't seem to figure it out. When they first opened their whole "Helix Player" project, they locked everyone out of the "Open Source" source code unless you signed an NDA. They fixed that after they figured out what a problem it was.
Even worse, they launched the Helix website with nothing there except a blurb saying that it would be coming soon. That sort of dissipated most of the momentum they'd built up by announcing it to the Open Source community.
Believe it or not, I really like Real Player for streaming content. The problem is that their execs just don't "get it". They can't present a unified marketing front, and it IS killing them. Even worse, they continually lose customer goodwill by installing spyware (now fixed) and intentionally hiding the link to download the free RealPlayer (not fixed).
Now they're off trying to steal Apple's thunder with a format that the market doesn't want, and no integrated media center to compete with.
"Load gun. Point at foot. Pull trigger. Repeat.", should be their motto.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If there's one thing that Apple as a company has managed to succeed with for a very, very long time, it is building a fiercely loyal customer base. Apple customers don't jump ship when the company is at its worst, let alone when it appears to be sailing relatively smoothly. Apple customers also of late really, really seem to want stuff that "just works" without any extra work on the part of the user.
While I don't doubt that RealNetworks is going out of their way to make it relatively easy to ultimately play their stuff on Apple's hardware, the user still has to get third party software, still has to subscribe to another service that isn't affiliated with their computer (in fact being a direct antithesis), and has to do extra work. Combine that with the large amount of market burnout regarding Real, and I'm really not surprised by this. I'm more surprised that Real pursued this attempt to begin with.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That was from the CNET article, and I cannot say I agree. While what RealNetworks did is not entirely ethical, it isn't theft. It's essentially what the Linux on iPod group is doing (on some level) and I believe it's wrong to condemn them for it.
The major issue I have with Real is that they tried to cut a deal with Apple and *THEN* decided to go and 'hack' the iPod. It seems to me that Apple has no problem with an agreement with Motorola -- so what did Real do wrong?
My guess is that Real was unwilling or unprepared to make the necessary accomodations to get on Apple's boat (so to speak). The best-selling hard disk digital music player isn't going to be pushed around by Real, so it seems obvious to me that the lack of negotiation skills on the part of Real is the problem.
As such, *that* is the problem people should be focusing on: why Real's management was too inept to make a deal happen.
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
maybe some ipod users here could explain why they would be against one more digital music store's songs being compatible with their ipod?
just want to know
I heard Apple put up a big billboard across the street from Real's main office, with only one word in big bold letters across it:
BUFFERING
- sm
...have it spot-on. Why should Real have any say in what the iPod plays? They may rant on about it being 'freedom of consumer choice', but that's not a little hypocritical from Real - whose own music store isn't even Mac-compatible yet. Perhaps it Real were to support the Mac crowd, create a player that people would prefer to use, and generally better themselves, they'd have more success in luring people away. As it stands, however, people have exercised their freedom of choice - and they've chosing the iPod and iTMS.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
The lesson to be learned from this? Don't mess with Jobs' Reality Distortion Field(TM)!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Another problem is that Real's music store isn't Mac compatible.
Yes, we only have 3-4% of the market, but hello, aren't we also the same market that catapaulted the iPod, and then the Music Store, to success? It's not like we aren't a valid economically sound market.
It's silly to champion choice like Real is if they won't support the platform they are arguably trying to break into: Apple's market. That includes Mac users.
GPL Deconstructed
Apple - Software and hardware that is not only intuitivly easy to use, it is also beautifully designed. And of course they were the ones that jumpstarted the online music craze between iPod and iTunes. Not to mention the hoards of loyal Apple fans.
Real - Software that has always (imo) had a horrible interface, rife with ads slapped anywhere they would fit, and a constant nagging to buy their pro version (ok Apple does this too with Quicktime, but you don't need that for mp3s). Add to that their file formats are constantly changing requiring upgrades, and their encoding has always been sub par.Combined with the fact that they basically stole Apple software and you wonder why people are mad.
in bed.
That doesn't constitute a monopoly. It's a good head start with most of the race ahead of them. For Real (a company which has time and again shown it's contempt for end users) to act like Apple is an evil monopoly for not licensing to them is ridiculous. Real is a non-starter that is desperate to try and be part of the game. I'm avoiding them like a bottle of Perth Pink. This is not a company for buying from. This is a company for laying down and avoiding.
The full quote is "Competition' doesn't give you any right to reverse-engineer when you feel like it, but come down on those that hack into your IP rights."
The quoter claimed Real had no right to reverse engineer when the company itself will not allow others to reverse engineer. It's not about law, in the quote, but about reciprocity. If they think it's okay for Real Co to RE the iPod and iTunesMS, then it should be okay for others to reverse RA stuff as well, which you didn't pick up.
GPL Deconstructed
Let the zealots win.
Lets have 15 different proprietary "standards" out there for music. That way if you buy a player from Apple, you buy your music from Apple. If a song you like is only available on some other service, why you buy another player.
I don't care. I'm through with music. I wont buy any CDs or download any songs.
In my day, it was pretty decent. I could go buy a CD from any store I wanted, and it would work in any of my CD players. Before that was cassette tapes, before that 8-tracks and LPs.
But I don't care about todays kids. Go let yourself get screwed over by a bunch of corporate assholes. Tell yourselves that the company is some great benevolant force that truly cares about you, if that makes you feel better.
I could give a fuck if iTunes is completely incompatible with Real and every other music service. I could give two shits what kind of DRM Apple or Real or Napster or anyone else want to use. Who gives a shit if you're allowed to burn it to one CD, or only listen to the song on the third tuesday of every month.
Hey, do it to TV too. I don't care. When video-on-demand rolls out, make sure each service is compatible only with a suitably branded TV set or cable tuner. Sony Video-on-Demand only works with Sony sets, etc. Ruin TV. See if you can make a buck doing it.
Have your legions of Sony fans go around swearing and acting like idiots if Phillips starts trying to compete.
Not my problem, and I don't care.
The entire "entertainment" industry can jump up my ass. It bores me. I don't look to any corporate messiah for my entertainment anymore. Fuck em all, and fuck all their fans and zealots.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Real's done lots of decent (appearing, anyway?) things like open-source/helix, etc; but people have a hard time getting over the time that they were the obnoxious-spyware-company.
I think this is interesting because it's a case where Branding is meaningful to techies. A good brand image (Apple) vs. a bad brand image (Real) influences people at least as much as the technical details (yeah, it'd be cool if all content played anywhere).
Let's get one thing straight here. For the actual audio compression, Apple uses 128kbps AAC for ITMS downloads. AAC stands for "Advanced Audio Compression", not "Apple Audio Compression" or anything else. AAC is an MPEG standard, just like MP3, only better. RealNetworks uses 192kbps AAC in their store. It's the same damn format. The quality will be slightly better, if you have some nice headphones to plug into your iPod, you'll probably hear the difference. The only new thing that Real has brought with Harmony is that they've enabled tracks bought from the Real store to play on the iPod by wrapping the AAC tracks with FairPlay DRM. The fact that the tracks cost $0.49 and are encoded at a higher bitrate makes this a good buy for anybody who isn't an Apple groupie or against DRM on principle. If you don't trust Real, then don't buy from them, but I fail to see how this is anything but a net positive for consumers. I'm amazed that there are people screaming "Please! Give me a monopoly in the digital music market!"
Well, their crappy products too, but hypocrisy as well.
"Proprietary is anticompetitive by definition. Apple is banking that proprietary is profitable. I'll guess we'll see if they are right.
Though cross-platform proprietary solutions are not completely anti-competitive. If every service was cross-platform, then you'd be free to choose whatever service simply worked best. That's true choice.
Frankly Real's efforts wouldn't annoy me as much if 1) They hadn't kept their own .rm format proprietary and, 2) Their crappy Rhapsody music service worked on OS other than Windows Not that I'd use it anyway, but it's funny to see them ranting for "choice" and against closed formats when they themselves pursue the opposite.
Real: "Proprietary formats are evil! (Unless they're ours)
Real: "Consumers deserve freedom of choice! (As long as you choose Windows)
Maybe they can strike a sweet cooperative deal with SCO. They could save so much by merging their PR departments, since the overlap is complete.
>Apple's codec sucks compared to even MP3
What was the format of those tracks? What bitrate? What makes you think Real is using their own codec for the iPod (It isn't, the iPod can't play RealAudio) What music store sells MP3's? (OK I know of ONE, but I doubt anyone has heard of any of it's bands) AAC compressed music actually sounds pretty good at comparable bitrates to MP3.
>I'll continue to stick to SHN/FLAC
Then your portable music player must have FLAC/SHN support and a gargantuan hard drive for the terrible 2:1 compression ratios you get. MP3/AAC usually gets about 10:1.
>Perhaps these Apple lovers have become so accustomed to vendor lock-in
You mean the way the Realaudio music store ONLY WORKS ON WINDOWS?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Let's please get one thing straight - Real is not doing "freedom" any favors with harmony. All it does is reapply the same DRM limitations on the resulting iPod-compatible file. You're still stuck with a hobbled, limited file.
Meanwhile, look at it from Apple's perspective (please, give it a try, just for a moment). User buys songs from Real, with their DRM limitations. User converts them, loads them on iPod, assumedly through iTunes. Now, the user tries to play them on multiple computers, etc like Apple DRM allows... and it doesn't play. Who are they calling? Do they remember which store they bought it from? No, they see that iTunes isn't playing something, and they call Apple. Now some Apple tech has to figure out that this is a Real AAC, not an Apple AAC, and figure out how the hell their DRM integrates (or doesn't) with iTunes, etc. This is a support disaster waiting to happen, and it will be Apple's, not Real's.
And finally, for those who read veiled threats into the press release Apple sent out about the iPod maybe not working in the future with such files - why not take it at face value for a moment? It's widely known that third parties supply the chips and guts of the iPod, so it's not such a reach that one of these new generations of chips and software just won't be prepared for whatever hack Real has done, and it will break. No conspiracy, no revenge, just simple fact of life in development.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I'm all for opening up the ipod to other formats, DRM'd or otherwise. After all, who wouldn't want OGG on an ipod?
The problem is, that's not what real is doing. They're simply adding the ability to play music from their music store on the iPod. In other words, they basically just added a new proprietary format to the ipod for a store that no one likes. So real is now giving me the "choice" to buy from their store? No thanks real, when you hijacked my quicktime preferences, put spyware into your PC version, and made it near-impossible for me to find the link to your free player, you lost the moral high ground. Don't act like you're the good guy. Your store doesn't even run on my mac. Freedom of choice?
Now, if an open source group found a way to add any format of my choosing onto the ipod, I would support that. But when it's a company that's been historically evil, I'll take the chance to give them some bad publicity.
i'm in the same boat i think. i can't recall the last CD i bought...really, no idea which one it was or when. Same for DVD's. i have many of both, but it's been so long since i've put down cash for one.
"Oh, you must be stealing all that then through p2p," some might guess. Um, no. i go see local bands. i buy their homemade discs to help the guitarist buy that new amp he needs. i listen to legal streams from websites promoting small, more-to-my-liking artists.
i agree witb you on the media companies - they can go fuck themselves and the rest with them. When is the last time some worth buying the entire cd for was featured on TRL? Nevermind that it's a 40sec clip whilst some moron talks over the music. i can't stand riding in the car with my gf b/c the radio MUST be on some Clearchannel top-40 station.....all the time. No news, no local stations with local dj's and artists. Nothing, just the shit that gets pumped 3 times an hour in a loop. Tiring and frustrating.
Yeah, i'm sick of all of it too.
Fair to concede the Mac market, but not the Windows market?
I'm a zealot because I love Apple products, but I wouldn't discard the option of Real music. Real wants to compete, then fine, compete. Maybe I'm being greedy, but why shouldn't I want $0.49 192kbps AAC files? You really have to ask, "Why would mac+iPod users want an alternative to iTunes+iTMS"?
I would be using iTunes+RMS because it's cheaper and higher quality. Duh.
GPL Deconstructed
Somehow I think that if Apple had reverse engineered Real Audio and added it into Quicktime, Real would be singing a different tune (no pun intended).
Sell your Real stock now - it's going down. MS now has the power to dispose of Real once and for all.
Real is selling these songs at a loss. MS has a huge cash reserve. All MS has to do is hire some temps, give them a company credit card, and have them buy songs from Real all day long. The more they buy, the more money Real loses. Eventually, no more Real!
So I thought, ok, I am an apple user, I have an ipod, there is a valid point about companies opening up their platforms. So I thought, let's try to buy a 50 cents song on the real site. "Mac not supported". Wankers.
Indeed, Why are people suddenly against reverse-engeneering and freedom of choice?
Because there just aren't any parallels. The situations are completely different.
[The Samba Team/Real] reverse engineered [SMB/Fairplay] so that they could serve [Files/Music] from [Linux/Real's Store] to [Windows/iPod Users] but still have it be compatible. Clearly [The Samba Team/Real] are [Good/Evil], as such reverse engineering is [Required for compatibilty/Theft].
The poor [Windows/iPod] users are having choice [Offered to/Forced upon] them, and clearly that is [Right/Wrong].
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
You are confusing ACC and Fairplay. ACC is a compression format and is open and available for anyone to use. Fairplay is Apple's DRM and is basically proprietary, just like the grandparent poster stated.
Anyone can put make an ACC file and have it play on the iPod. What anyone cannot do is develop or sell a DRM format other than Fairplay and have the iPod understand and play it.
Apple has no control over ACC or who uses it.
It's almost like when you were a kid and were about to run off with your friends and go play in the woods/creek/abandoned wherehouse and your mom made you take your little brother. But you didn't want to take your little brother because he'd get hurt and screw up your fun - but of course mom won and you had to take your little brother along so he wouldn't feel excluded.
And he got hurt, ruined all of your fun AND got you blamed for it.
I think that if I were Apple, I'd be damn scared that Real was going to bust all the damn iPods and I'd get blamed for it.
The system is a pimp; and I refuse to be a whore -- Chuck D.
Actually, Real's mistake in underestimating the Mac Fanatic's loyalty was in not making their music store Mac compatible.
We are the iPod and iTMS early adopters. We (I) wouldn't mind cheaper music. I'm not decrying Real's RE tactic, I'm decrying their hypocrisy in declaring consumer choice and market competition as their logo when it is not.
GPL Deconstructed
And I don't mean a suit by Apple - I mean the Fed and the RIAA.
What I can't beleive is that we have a company willfully admitting that they went out of their way to crack a DRM related schema, and that no arrests have been made.
Shouldn't Real Networks have its hardware seized?
Kulakovich
[BEGIN QUOTE]
I Want Apple To License The DRM, BUT what Real is doing is tantamount to slander.
The iPod works with MP3s, ripped CDs, as well as lossless formats like WAV and AIFF. John Gruber's been acting the "Scott McCloud" role of late with regards to the Mac platform, but he's right on the money about the popular media's misconceptions about Apple's music player. (He's been posting articles on Daring Fireball for the last week on this topic.)
The conspiracy theorist in me is starting to think that the RIAA let Apple "get away" with their more forgiving DRM just so Apple can get battered in the popular press since the Apple modus operandi is to be less promiscuous with their tech than Microsoft is. This way the public will be suckered into backing the more restictive (yet more "free") WMA format.
[END QUOTE]
The only part of the whole "AAC" deal that's Apple/iPod specific is the DRM, which due to industry politics must be proprietary. The codec is not Apple's to license, the file format is no longer under Apple's sole control. (They "released" the QT container format to support the MPEG-4 initiative.) My understanding is that Apple didn't even do the intial research into the DRM, but had it forced upon them by the recording industry.
Apple's "closed" nature is simply a manifestation of their understandable defensiveness in the industry. They once had an "open" platform, the Apple II. They once tried to open the Mac as well, only to be raked over the coals financially. Apple now uses commodity hardware like PCI, DDR memory and even USB. Their current OS is built over a BSD/Open Source core.
What does Apple have to do be considered a valid firm in this industry?!? Admit it people, the hatred you had for Apple during FSF and GNU boycott last millenium never went away, did it?
Those who complain about affect & effect on
That depends on how you define "media outlet."
News.com ranks slightly above my own "media outlet" for usefulness, if you get my drift...
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Once upon a time streaming audio was available on many sites in both Quicktime and Real. Then several major radio sites (notably NPR ) made the decision to drop Quicktime coverage, If I was Steve Jobs I'd really want to crush Real just to get a bigger market share for Quicktime. And Quicktime has got to have a huge profit margin compared to a piece of hardware. So maybe this battle is about more, and subtler, goals than just the iPod.
Ok, first of all, even if Real Rhapsody or Jukebox or whatever was available for the Mac platform, most Mac users probably wouldn't use it.
Now, who does this interoperability "improvement" benefit? Windows users of course. iTunes and iPods both work well with Windows. Real is simply undercutting the iTunes song prices. I really see nothing inherently wrong with offering a lower price, it benefits the consumer.
In my opinion, why not buy some albums you wouldn't ordinarily buy for 4.99? I am sure the whole reverse-engineering of DRM will be taken to court. May as well benefit from the lower prices while you can. I am sure Real's Rhapsody/Jukebox files sound just as good on your iPod at half the price.
Keeping a business like Apple alive simply by running a "music" store seems like a flawed way of operating a hardware/operating system business.
woha, hold on pal! even more closed than M$???
I dont know where you took this wisdom from, but Apple's base system and kernel are open source, they released e. g. Rendezvous as open source, help sqash bugs in e. g. mono etc.
But that gets beaten by M$ releasing a Windows installer thingamabob as open source...
The BBC made a deal with Real to dejunk their player or else the BEEB would ditch Real.
l
The dejunked player is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/audiohelp_install.shtm
So, if you must use Real, use this one and thank the BBC.
My father is a blogger.
Real has the reputation of being jerks.
Why? Because their software has a very annoying nagware component. The default real player installation leaves a blinking and blinking icon on the Windows toolbar. Even the new real one player that came on my Dell computer attempts to modify the registry every time it runs to add a "realsched" program of somesort that takes up my precious CPU cycles.
Thank god I 1) don't use real products all that often; and 2) have a nice utility pop-up that warns me whenever any software tries to add to the registry (I wish I could remember what the program is, and where I found it).
To me, even as a Windows user who bought an iPod and will never ever buy an Apple PC, Apple has been for the most part a class act. Real has not. Although, admittedly, quicktime does the same thing... Why can't they be more like Adobe Reader, which has the common decency to check for updates only when it runs, rather than wanting to do it every time you turn on the damn computer?
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
The fact that ... makes this a good buy for anybody...
Well, any iPod user who (1) has built their music collection in Windows and (2) never wants to use iTunes or the iTunes Music Store in the future.
'Cuz the next time you plug your iPod into your WinPC, iTunes will update the 'pod by adding any new songs & playlists, and removing any that are not on the iTunes list... just like it was originally designed to, way before the Real issue arose. As a result, you erase your Harmony tracks every time you use that marvelously easy/fast update. Then, you will need to either (a) manually re-copy all those tracks to your iPod, or (b) stop using iTunes and switch permanently to the Real jukebox, losing any iTMS music you got from Pepsi caps, free downloads of the week, or your hard-earned $$$.
And Real wants to claim they're offering a superior alternative?
Real justifies this lock-in with fine print as to "why you want to use the Real jukebox." Either all the songs you bought from iTMS or from Real, will become useless on an iPod, or you become a low-paid servant to that little tune player that you used to love.
The big deal with the iPod -- for me, and I think I'm typical with this -- is that it lets me just listen to music without all those techno-horrors. Not that it's cool, or sexy white, or Apple®. Real is offering a techno-horror of gotchas.
No wonder there's outrage. Mine is directed at Real's bait-and-switch, false sanctimony and their phony Dot-ORG marketing BS.
A universal DRM format? It'll probably have to be imposed on the hardware and software types by our friends the "music industry." Real, MS and Apple all have vested interests in promoting their kits. The only twist is that Apple actually has the upper hand here. And while it may look like the labels would benefit from selling the same program many times because of Balkanization, sooner or later they'll realize that commoditizing the players and stores leaves more money for them.
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
I hope I don't get flamed or modded down, but this is real.
I have paid for RealOne since 2001. I love CNN and ABC News on-demand, and also BBC. I am willing to pay for content understanding that it cost money to produce, and it is the same reason I purchase iTunes songs.
I have to use the RealOne player to watch CNN and ABC on their website.. It is a closed licensing deal. I understood it was a closed system using Real's interface and I was ok with that. I cannot copy CNN newsfeeds and put them on my PocketPC, I can't watch RealOne content in Quicktime. That is their right.
However, now they are wanting to preserve that right they have with their content providers yet seek to access other closed systems through inflammatory websites that only quote people that agree with them.. it's not even a feedback or debate site but a propaganda website in it's purest form..
I cannot give my money to a company that would use my money to be so low and dispicable. This isn't a battle for fair-use, this is a business bully taking their desire for marketshare to the consumer thinking they'll buy that it's "just about consumer choice"
I guess I have to get cable now...
There is a rage in me to defy the order of the stars, despite their pretty patterns.
Not trying to be negative, but is the base system & kernel open sourced from Apple or didn't Apple take somebody else's work and lock it down? In other words I have the understanding that Apple took FreeBSD which is somebodyelses hard work and added their own stuff on top without releasing the stuff on top or how it interacts with the stuff provided by FreeBSD, or any changes they might have made to FreeBSD to make it better.
Apple bought a company called NeXT that had a proprietary BSD386 based OS running on the Mach Micro-Kernal. In the company was an employee who had done a large amount of the original work creating the Mach Micro-kernal. Apple took the NeXTStep / OpenStep operating system as the basis for its Mac OS X operating system. Apple ported it to the PowerPC Chip sets, fused it with knowledge gained from Apple's earlier Unix OSes A/UX and MkLinux and then re-synced the userland with FreeBSD 4.x (now they sync the userland to FreeBSD 5.x).
This might need more explaining. Unlike Linux where all each distribution has the same Linix kernal (sometimes compiled in different ways, but still the same kernal code), BSD branches do NOT have the same kernal. NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD and Darwin(Mac OS X) are each different kernal code bases. Sometimes they share components / code, but mostly they do not. The different branches are designed to provide the same working userland to users and applications. By "re-synced the userland to FreeBSD" Apple did little more then confirm their OS is compatible with FreeBSD and either updated their own /bin and/usr/bin applications to feature / function compatibility with FreeBSD or ported the FreeBSD apps over, whichever made the most sense. Again all work was done by Apple Engineers.
So what Apple did was not "take somebody else's work and lock it down" but rather take the work Apple Engineers and the Engineers of a second company Apple bought (and retained the employees of) and release the code for no cost onto the internet.
OpenDarwin.org
While this is certainly valid given the license of FreeBSD, strictly speaking that's just being a thief as far as I'm concerned.(Yes I know MS has done this too with it's Unix Services layer).
If someone gives something to you for free, it is not stealing. The only people who are allowed a moral objection to how you use the freely given object are the ones who gave it to you. Far from being upset at it, BSD users "shouted for joy" that Apple choose to base their new OS on BSD. Daemon News: Apple -- What's in it for BSD?
I also understand however, that Apple has given some changes back to the KDE community for the web browser, locking up other changes however behind a proprietary license. In other words it looks to me like Apple is trying to garner some favor while stealing the "open source" community blind.
Every single piece of OpenSource software Apple has used (irrespective of the license it was released under and the requirement, or NOT, to release the code) they have release the code to. The code is available either through the Darwin OS , one of the other Apple Open Source Projects, or by giving the code back to the original developers. In addition to that Apple has also released code that was never before opensource, with projects such as OpenPlay , Darwin Streaming Server and
However, as I said, Real didn't just reverse engineer FairPlay. They also announced the very next day that they were going to license their own FairPlay compatible DRM to other businesses. Now they were encroaching upon Apple's business. Mac zealots still sat back and watched to see the fireworks. Most Mac guys had personal reasons to despise Real having used their products and having been left out in the orphaned cold one time or another, but this issue still didn't affect them. Only Windows users could use Real's online store.
But when Real foisted a propaganda website in the guise of a grass roots movement slamming Apple in the name of music loving people netwide, Mac users took notice. Mac users were the ones who put iTunes and the iPod on the map. Did you read the "interview" with Devo? It read like a commercial. Everything on the site was about choice, but Mac guys were once again left out in the cold. Where was the choice? Mac users couldn't access Real's Rhapsody. It was clear this was a manipulative, corporate powergrab benefitting only Real and Windows users. So most Mac guys laughed at it as some sort of joke. But if some of them were immature geeks with no self-restraint then try to forgive the Mac population as a whole. You don't write off all of /. as bigots because of the GNAA do you? Neither should you clump all Mac owners in with the pottymouthed zealots.
What I find interesting about this whole fiasco is the absence of Steve Jobs. If he hadn't had cancer surgery this month we would most likely have seen some strong action by Apple. And his one month hiatus is half over, so look for the real fireworks in September.
In the meantime, give Mac users a break. Not all of them plastered four lettered insults all over Real's music site. And if Apple spent time and money licensing and developing FairPlay, iPod, and iTMS, don't be so surprised they might take issue with some third party coming in and trying to make money off their labor. This issue isn't as clean cut as the Lexmark issue. Unless Bob's Cheap Ink was also licensing their cracked ink technology to third parties...
Fun with Inkwell | www.coo
Hold on a second. Apple isn't abusing anything. They went forward into a market that just about everyone on the planet, including a lot of people posting here, said was foolish. They did so at great expense and at great potential embarrassment to themselves should it have failed. They developed iTunes, the music store, the iPod; they negotiated probably pricey agreements with music labels and more lenient DRM than most of us would have assumed possible; they sell songs, paying for the massive bandwidth, and just about break-even. They dumped cash into the R&D for this and they did it right and made a massive success out of something that everyone else had written off largely because nobody thought the P2P networks could be beaten or than nobody was interested in music that wasn't on CDs.
And now, because Apple doesn't want to let lazy, visionless competitors in on that for almost nothing, I hear claims that they are abusing their market position. Huh? If Apple had appropriated all these great ideas from a little company and used its influence and power to take over things and lock everyone into their standards, then there would be a legitimate gripe. Apple did ALL OF THIS on their own. It's their pie. And it's wrong because they won't let Real have a free slice of it? What did Real do to earn a seat at the table? Nothing.
And then I hear the argument that the iPod/iTunes is a closed system and that Real is just doing what's best for the market. That's terribly over-simplified. Until the day comes that I can't play mp3s or import CDs into an iPod or iTunes, then that complaint is meaningless. Look at Sony's music player and then tell me the iPod/iTunes system is a closed one.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
I have never been more enraged at a computer in my life.
Just as some background I am your target customer. I own an iPod and have purchased multiple CD's online from both the Apple iTunes Music Store and buymusic.com. I am the person you want out there yelling from the rooftops how great your product is. You're going to hear quite the opposite.
I bought into the hype from various press outlets about Real offering $.49 track downloads and $4.99 CD's. I visited your site and searched your media catalog without downloading your software. I was very impressed by the quantity of artists in your catalog. It seemed too good to be true. Mom told me what to expect when I had that feeling, but, like an idiot, I ignored mom yet again.
First, I downloaded your software. The installation can, at best, be considered painful. Two reboots! C'mon! I am doing this at work! I am supposed to put all my important projects on hold while I reboot twice just so I can start my computer again to give you money. Ridiculous. The worst part is I knew Real was likely sinking their greedy hooks deep into my system with evil DRM type underpinnings. But, once again, I ignored mom's advice to stop before I was "too deep" and continued down the path of Real evil.
So I decided to purchase a Godsmack album. $4.99. I created my Music Store account and paid for my purchase. I was pretty excited as I saw the file sizes were relatively large (as opposed to buymusic.com which obviously have fairly low bitrates). The files came down quickly from your servers.
I excitedly went to burn my CD to a CD-R. Bzzzz! No rights! No freaking rights! Yes, I am sure that is buried deep within some subclause of some clause of some crappy contract I "OK" clicked my way through, but holy cow. I cannot wait to tell the world that today, in 2004, you actually pay Real.com honest money to honestly purchase a music track and support an artist and you are rewarded with idiotic DRM that doesn't allow you to burn the tracks to a real CD. That's funny, I thought I bought a CD! Wrong!
This seriously chapped my behind and I heard my mother laughing in the back of my head. She knew how this was going to turn out, and my mother can't even turn on a computer. But she has more common sense than me and she would have steered far clear of your unReal offering.
So, continuing on, I was mightily frosted and began investigating ways to rip the tracks even with your DRM hooks clawed maniacally into my machine. (Hey, let's be realists, people are going to get the music onto CD whether you like it or not, if they are motivated. And since I was at work I figured I was doing it for the sake of science and whatnot.) I set out to play the tracks to listen to the quality, figuring I would work out a way to capture the audio stream to a WAV file and compressing it into an MP3 later. With just the Real Player running on my computer, I started playing Track #1.
My computer instantaneously shut down.
My mom is having hysterical fits of laughter at my expense by this point. Reminder to self: send mom flowers for all her great advice. She was so right.
So, there goes a few hours of work that I didn't save. Silly me I thought I was just playing a music track. I didn't realize I was connecting to the WHOPR and trying to play Global Thermonuclear War.
So I had enough hate boiled up inside of me to last the rest of the day and didn't attempt to use your crappy player again.
So, I arrive again this morn and figured I would take on "the challenge". I loaded the fugly Real Player and clicked on "Purchased Music". I selected all 11 tracks from the Godsmack album and clicked "Play Selections". I held my breath and closed my eyes and imagined a whole group of mothers laughing at me all chanting: "What do you think you are doing! You know it isn't going to work you fool!" What? It didn't crash! Yippie! Strike up the band. Oh wait... I have to login? What? What is this. Oh yes, I have to log in to your freakin site for permissio
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