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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."
In the immortal words of Bruce Cambell (Ash):
Its a trick. Get an Axe!
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Admiral Ackbar: It's a trap!!!!
Good karma sticks to me like velcro on a piece of plexiglass.
Move along, citizen.
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.
... a monopoly? Wow. Slashdot actually endorsing monopolies now.
From the article:
"Jobs reasons that since iTunes and the iPod use the vertical integration model that Microsoft could use the same tactic to finally relegate the iPod to the technical trash bin. In theory, the system would work as follows: Microsoft would bundle a music playing program with every PC that, of course, pointed to an iTunes like music store. The model would be completed when people buy a Microsoft produced digital audio player. Consumers, being the lazy slugs they are, would take the path of least resistance. Inevitably, iPod marginalization would ensue."
Did Microsoft get in trouble for this sort of anti-competitive bundling before? If so, are they really stupid enough to try it again on such a large scale?
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
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.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
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.
Does Apple even have any plans on licensing FairPlay, or is this another blogger speculating about the mighty Apple?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
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?
Uh oh, the chairs will be flying at Microsoft over this..
but wouldn't Ballmer doing gorilla dance while stomping on iPod make him a 'Microsoft iPod killer'?
It reminds me of the movie The Princess Bride...
Vizzini: But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
Lets all sing together... "Apple is in the Hardware Business"
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."
When you use iTunes software to rip your CD collection to MP3 or M4A for use with your iPod player, the ripped files do not have any form of digital restrictions management. It's extremely common in the United States and Canada for somebody to own 28 hours worth of CDs, which is enough to fill a 2 GB player at 160 kbps.
... 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.