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Jobs' Invitation To Microsoft a Trap?
An anonymous reader writes "Chris Seibold over at Apple Matters, has written up an interesting analysis on Steve Jobs' suggestion that Microsoft make their own mp3 player. He argues that it is more bait than business plan, a deft move by Steve Jobs to lure Microsoft into a can't-win war. The key, according to the article, is the licensing of FairPlay." From the article: "The folks who stick with Microsoft get to fight over, roughly, twenty percent of the market. The folks that go with Apple would be aligning themselves with what has become the industry standard. The players that license FairPlay would have access to the iTunes store, backwards compatibility with the songs consumers have already purchased, and a chance to compete on a perfectly level playing field with the iPod. It doesn't take a Stanford MBA to deduce that the potential rewards of opting to use FairPlay far outstrip the rewards of going with PlaysForSure."
or a consumer could just stick with their own music sources that require no DRM at all. That's what I'll be doing, no thanks Apple/MS/anyone else.
M$ should continue to focus on software. Maybe an itunes-killer; let everyone else worry about an ipod-killer. There is still money in selling music.
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For some reason, FairPlay and PlaysForSure both remind me of products in dystopian science fiction novels by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson...
I guess that the truth is stranger than fiction.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They got in "trouble," but its quite likely that the benefits of doing this and killing the iPod would far outweigh any consequences.
This looks more like Apple leveraging on their near monopoly on digital audio players in order to bring their competitors down on their knees.
You know... like Microsoft leveraging on their near monopoly to force down your throat Internet Explorer, MSN, Media Player, Anti-vírus, personal accounting, etc...
Even though it's a sweet irony, it's just as bad. By the way, I know very few in Portugal who have an iPod versus other brands, is this monopoly only in the USA?
You mean like how developer developers are better off targeting the dominant platform to maximize the return on their development effort by creating software for the largest audience possible with the least work possible?
There is no reason whatsoever to license FairPlay, but the reason for this is not obvious.
The truth is that there cannot be meaningful competition in the field of online RIAA music stores because all the music comes from the same handful of sources. There is no way for the different stores to have a meaningfully different collection or meaningfully different price structure. Apple could license FairPlay as Microsoft licenses PlaysForSure, but that merely obscures the fact that the music industry is still in control of the entire process.
Given a lack of competition in the music industry, Apple opening up the iTMS would not actually create more customer choice; rather, it reduces Apple's leverage on the industry and we can assume that the music industry will keep the extra power for itself. Without control over the iPod, Apple has nothing and the music industry will force everyone toward things like subscription services, whole-album downloads, and probably higher prices.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
20% of the MUSIC BUYING market? I highly doubt that PlaysForSure is 20% of the music market. I hardly belive that iTunes even makes a 20% dent in the music buying market.
The facts are that iTunes might be 80% of the online market but it doesn't matter. That is a tiny segment of the market. Most people who are buying MP3 players are ripping music from their new CD's, their old CD's, and their friend's CD's. Backwards compatible doesn't mean crap with apple. They break it every other year anyway. So will MS's DRM.
The market doesn't have any clear winner YET for a DRM for music. Until it does it is pretty lame of anybody to say that FairPlay is the standard (it isn't. not even close)
As of today, the standard and vast majority of music which is being played on mp3 players (including ipods) are DRM free ripped music from CD's. Period.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
There is no reason whatsoever to license FairPlay
Of course there's a reason to license FairPlay - actually quite a few.
Firstly there's allowing your customers to play the music they purchase from you on the device of their choice, whether a competitor to one of your own or one in a market you don't support - for example a network media player (e.g. Squeezebox or Sonos) or a car-based player (e.g. Phatbox). Secondly there's bringing new customers to your music store by attracting those who, for whatever reason, don't choose to buy your players (say goodbye to Rhapsody, Napster, et al). I'm sure there are more I can't think of right now (income from licensing fees? Could be quite substantial in itself).
However, of course, these are not good reasons (well, not good for Apple's accountants) because as we all know iTMS (and therefore FairPlay) exists for one reason and one reason alone - to sell iPods. Anything which dilutes the iTMS/iPod coupling is bad for Apple, hence they will never license FairPlay. Don't kid yourself that Apple are keeping FairPlay locked up for your benefit, they're a corporation just like any other - their only driver is the bottom line.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Microsoft would never come up with such a catchy name, they'd call it something stupid and bland like MS Portable Audio
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
Thank you! I'm very disapointed in this post... it seems to root for apple when the whole damn drm thing is evil... I don't know about you but I'm not going to participate in anything that requires me to "buy" or "licensce" protection. It's fundamentally evil. It's called racketeering.
I am a monkey. This is slashdot.
I call Bullshit.
How is anything an industry standard when only one company sells it? Even Motorola has dropped it from their ROKR phones. Something becomes an industry standard when an entire industry adopts it, and not just because the largest current player in that market uses it.
Even the claim in this article that MS should make their own MP3 player is bogus. By definition an MP3 player doesn't user FairPlay. It plays MP3 files. A FairPlay player uses FairPlay.
This is just badly written all around.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
i don't think the iPod would exist if somebody else made a half decent music player that integrated well with the Mac OS. there were (and are) other brands that support drag and drop on the Mac OS, but none seemed to really work as cleanly. same can be said for the iPod's interface. the iPod was far from the first MP3 player, but they simplified it, and more importantly, let Mac users play along. remember the iPod was a hit before the MS Windows support was anywhere near what it is today.
the same thinking could possibly also say:
iTMS would not exist if the other music stores were iPod friendly, and had relatively lenient DRM (like Apple was eventually able to wrangle). iTMS was not created to be a huge financial hit, it HAD to exist because Apple could not let their iPods have no access to legal digital music sales. Apple never intended it to make much money, and flat out said so in their quarterly earnings reports and in interviews.
Maybe because there's sufficient market share of people (like me) who want their phone to be JUST A FSCKING PHONE! I don't want it to be a camera, I don't want it to be an MP3 player, I don't want it to be a GPS, just a goddam phone.
... The folks who stick with Microsoft get to fight over, roughly, twenty percent of the market. The folks that go with Apple would be aligning themselves with what has become the industry standard. The players that license FairPlay would have access to the iTunes store, backwards compatibility with the songs consumers have already purchased, and a chance to compete on a perfectly level playing field with the iPod. It doesn't take a Stanford MBA to deduce that the potential rewards of opting to use FairPlay far outstrip the rewards of going with PlaysForSure ...
... Apple enjoyed a hardware lead and an application software lead when they mocked IBM's entry into the personal computer maketplace. Apple's computer lead then, and their digital audio lean now, may be more similar than many people around here realize. Basically, digital audio is only in it's infancy, as personal computer ownership was in the early 80s. As personal computer ownership became "mainstream" Apple became marginalized. The same could happen with digital audio, the bulk of the population is still not committed to any player/format. Microsoft could, I'm not saying will - only could, be the choice for the bulk of the population for a variety of reasons. One of which is that it is not going to be portable players that decide the digital music issue, it is going to be car stereos, home stereos, etc. Whoever get's their digital media appliance in the living room is probably going to be the ultimate winner. It might be Apple, it might be Microsoft, it will be years before the issue is really decided.
I own an iPod, I'd be perfectly happy to see Apple win. But declaring the issue already decided, that's just Apple's spin, and the wishful thinking of fans. This could turn out like Apple's mocking welcome of IBM to the personal computer business in the early 1980s.
Apple is not "really" the industry leader for digital audio in any real sense, only in a transitory early adopter phase sense. Calm down, hang on for a few lines
iPod's popularity may be transitory, we don't know how many owners are truly locked in by a large library of DRM'd iTunes Music Store (iTMS) purchases. Whatever people rip themselves with iTunes is not DRM'd and my understanding is that the vast bulk of digital audio is ripped, not from iTMS. Even if a person has DRM'd files that are not portable, the fact that they paid for the music lowers the barrier to their getting replacement files via file sharing, they are not really "stealing" in their own minds, they already "own" the song. It's much like people who in the napster days felt OK downloading a song they owned on vinyl or cassette rather than CD.
If you can't understand at least this much, I submit that you haven't the proper attitude or aesthetic taste to understand anything else about Apple, its customers, or its market.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Simply put, it's a dream to ask for DRM-free music from any major company these days (although lack of DRM on CD's and purchased downloads makes sense to me - the people actually buying the CD's or online tracks are generally not the people stealing music). Apple at least does its best to not treat its customers like thieves from the begining - their DRM is less obstrusive (provided you don't own a non-iPod mp3 player), easy to circumvent if neccessary (though still annoying), and their music sharing (listen but not copy from other iTunes libraries on your network) is simple and effective. gekko
You (and everyone else I've read) missed one big thing that the iPod has on all of the other digital music players - accessories.
I'm not talking about the speakers, cases, and fm transmitters. I'm talking about Audi, BMW, and Ferrari. I'm also talking about Pioneer, Monster, Alpine, and Kenwood.
These companies know where the market is and where it is moving. While GM and Ford are not on the list that Apple haves of iPod-compatible cars, I would not expect them to wait much longer. The fact that your _car_ doesn't work with anything other than an iPod is pretty good incentive to get an iPod.
to OWN their own tunes.
If Apple and the iTMS die tomorrow the iPods will still play and there are plenty of other sources for MP3s.
With Microsoft's approach, if you're late with the credit card payment, there's just wind blowing between in your ears.
While that approach might work for someone who just plays elevator music, in elevators, it truely bites the big one for any music fans.
Gates doesn't understand the first thing about what Apple has done and why its meshed in so well with Joe Sixpack, his wife, his sons and daughters, and what they want from a portable music player.
He'd probably try to shove Windows in it and tell them they should WANT to edit a Word document.
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My experience with integrated devices is this: If putting an MP3 player in your cellphone works for you, you can save money by just getting an MP3 player, because you sure as hell aren't making any calls on the cellphone.
It's the batteries, stupid.
Cellphones already push the limits of battery life as it is. Add a music player that drains the battery continuously while it's in use, and you end up with a cellphone that's dead when you need to use it.
Been there, done that, got the spare battery that's ALSO dead because I forgot which one was charged...