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Bill Gates Swears Vow Against 'Son of iPod'
Future Linux-Guru writes "The LA Times is running an article on Microsoft's efforts to preempt any single manufacturer from dominating the online video market. Among the scarier revelations is the development of AACS, a new already approved security system designed to prevent piracy on HD DVDs, which subjects users to forced upgrades." From the article: "Whichever way it shakes out, Gates vows not to play the victim in 'Son of iPod.' After learning a hard lesson in the digital music business, 'we're really having to work more closely with partners in the hardware industry and content industry, to really think through the whole end-to-end experience and make it better,' Gates said. 'That's where we've done our mea culpa. We are fixing that.'"
I expect that ultimately customers will decide that DRM and related tech will fail. There will always be new companies and new products that can break into a market that is underperforming for people's needs and wants. Particularly in the age of blogging, this type of breakthrough is getting easier: access to publicity is much much lower. The big companies like MSFT etc. all are probably quite afraid of this... and therefore trying to come up with anti-competitive schemes. Some of these schemes are technology based, some feature based, and some legislative. Only the legislative schemes should be feared. All the others can be fairly easily defeated by consumers. As for the legislated schemes of protection, even those can be circumvented by sufficiently interesting innovation. The problem there is keeping ahead of the legislative encroachment. In the software world, open source is a great way to do this. Hardware-wise it's a bit more difficult.
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I don't think MS wan't to be in on the content-provision side, Apple seem to have proven that (for music at least) large profit isn't to be had.
I think that MS just want to be the sole software technology provider to multiple hardware/content providers, that way they can leverage their desktop OS monopoly to the fullest extent when exacting license fees from several small companies, rather than having a larger corporate entity which could dictate terms to MS.
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I fully expect Microsoft will take the same sort of route they have always taken, by focusing almost exclusively on selling their vision to content producers, rather than focusing on making a product that appeals to the market (and watching as the content producers hop on board).
Apple have been successful with their music store because of course they have made it easy for novice users to access, purchase and manage content. The Microsoft media player is in stark contrast a hideously confusing application as far as most people are concerned, and is an excellent example of why Microsoft will not succeed unless they radically change their approach (which on past form, I do not expect they will).
Getting buy-in from publishers is essential in the long run, but by pandering to them to the extent Microsoft have done (in an attempt to get them on-board), all semblance of a marketable product has been lost, because the focus has been on building a product they want to produce, rather than on one people actually want to buy.
Even if all the major content production companies vow to get behind a Microsoft devised solution, consumers will just largely ignore it and continue to rely on established ways of getting content (either legal DVD's or illegal P2P downloads) until they are offered something they are actually comfortable using.
You have to wonder what's wrong with Microsoft's corporate structure when, with their vast resources and many talented people, they can't even build a useable media player (let alone content delivery and management system). It's so tragic, it's funny.
While Bill Gates is thrashing about in frustration because the online music market didn't bend over and do the usual market submissive act to Microsoft, I'm pretty sure he's going to lose the next market, video, as well. Bill Gates' biggest problem is that he hasn't realised, in 10 years of OS dominance, what ease of use is. Sit Mac OSX and WindowsXP next to one another, and note the difference after a short while. He just doesn't get it.
The same thing with DRMed WMP files and the really bad interface on WMP, where Microsoft thinks it is doing the users a favour by allowing all sorts of skins to be used. Compare that with iTunes' simplicity.
Steve Jobs may be an arrogant prick who deserves a kick in the balls by all the people he's insulted over the years, but he's right on the money when it comes to understanding what the market and above all, the consumer, likes: simplicity.
99% of the world neither cares nor knows what DRM is or how their phone or iPod works. All they really want to do is simply put some songs on the device and press play. They don't care about wireless, bluetooth or whatever. The iPod's simplicity is why it stole the market from Creative, not because of features, and Creative's executive are still moaning about how their devices have more features.
The video device from Apple will be the same, and will fit in just as easily with Apple's online store as the iPod does.
And Microsoft will still be flapping about like a fish out of water, and Bill Gates will still be promising to defeat Apple.