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Microsoft Developing iPod, iTMS Competitor
Software writes "Reuters reports that Microsoft is developing an iPod and iTunes Music Store competitor. Few details are available, but it's known that Robbie Bach (the man behind the Xbox) is heading up the project." From the article: "Most iTunes rivals charge monthly fees to access a catalog of entertainment, but some allow consumers to buy individual songs for about $1 each. Microsoft's service will emphasize the pay-per-download, or a la carte, model, the sources said. A subscription component will also be offered, according to early accounts of the planned service. One source, who has seen a demonstration of the service, said it was an improvement over iTunes."
!!?
<grrr
Now that the market is almost saturated... why would I bother to switch from iTunes and my video ipod (which I just bought with my Macbook Pro) to an MS service? Are they going to seriously undercut prices? No.
Does anyone seriously disagree with me that Windows Media Player is a bloated piece of shit? Ever since like.. version... 6.4? MS has been trying to add every possible little thing to it... they are trying to make it so that it is the ONLY program you will ever need to run on your PC... personally I am all for decentralization but I realise there are some users who want to open up one program and then start typing an e-mail and buy movie tickets within the same app (a few years off in WMP)...
Come on, don't they make this announcement every second week?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Frankly, I'm confused why Microsoft thinks it needs to be designing a music player in the first place. This company enters so many markets for no valid reason. iTunes runs on Windows, and most iPod users are Windows users, so why is Microsoft wanting to take out a popular Windows-based service? I wonder the same about Microsoft's obsession with Google. Most Google users are browsing Google through Internet Explorer on Windows. Microsoft apparently believes that's not enough, or, more likely, Microsoft's managers are trying to please stockholders by making half-hearted attempts at every market they can.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Possibly just because there's money to be made. That's why they have an Xbox: if they can turn a profit on it, they will.
But in the case of the iPod, they want to compete against it for the same reason Apple created it: to introduce people to the Macintosh. Apple doesn't turn much in the way of profit on iTMS; it's just there to drive people to the iPod. The iPod does turn a profit, a pretty good one, but more importantly it gets people used to the idea that Apple products just work.
The iPod has astonishing market share despite the presence of cheaper, better-equipped alternatives. If people jump from Windows to Mac on the strength of that, it jepoardizes Microsoft's market share. At this point they depend vigorously on being the default OS choice. Erode their market share a little, and you open the door to eroding it a lot, as people no longer have to buy a Wintel box just to keep on the same page with their friends.
There's also the fact that a big company can never stand still. Just producing revenue isn't enough; they have to produce more revenue. One way to do that is to diversify, especially if you can diversify and still leverage your products in other areas. MS can do that big time.
For example, if they have a new, stronger DRM scheme (based, say, on Palladium), they may be able to get record companies to give them a price break, or even sign up those companies who don't trust Apple's FairPlay to protect their property.
MS can leverage their OS control (to give their device a performance hack that Apple can't get). Maybe they can leverage the Xbox, perhaps a plug on the side of an Xbox for their music player, or being able to build a handheld game device leveraging both the Xbox and music player platforms.
I don't know what they've gamed out, but basically, MS will try all of it. The downside, of course, is losing focus: it's usually better to make 1 good product than 10 shoddy ones. That's less about technology and more about management. MS thinks it has good management. On that, we'll have to see: the slips in the Vista schedule don't speak well to that.
One way MS could "support the iPod" would be to release their own, replacement, OS for it that incorporates support for PlaysForSure(tm). When you connect your iPod to Vista it would ask you if you would like to configure your iPod to use music from MSSuperMusicStore(tm), and would flash your iPod with their OS.
There are already replacement OSes for the iPod running Linux, it wouldn't be difficult for MS to make a WinCE-based OS that supported their DRM, etc. I don't know that Apple would have any chance or recourse then...
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Likewise "Search". There's quite a bit of revenue there, of course, but it wasn't until GMail, GTalk, GExcel (just kidding) popped up that MS really felt the heat from google's platform.
No, the iPod is not a platform. But OSX is, and if there isn't a microsofty competitor to the iPod then that little device's users are eventually going to discover that Macintoshes are -- as a whole -- quite a bit better than XP boxes. (Vista I set aside for the time being)
Just thinking aloud here.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Many Universities require you to own a PC these days. WHen I went to school 5 years ago, the percentage of people who didn't own their own PC or laptop was vanishingly small- under 10%. The computer labs were only used for special software (say a CAD program), alternative OSes (Unix), and people who wanted to check their email between classes.
I can't say I know anyone who doesn't have their own PC at home. And definitely noone who owns an Xbox but doesn't own a PC.
THey still have access to a PC. If mom and dad are going to buy them an MP3 player, they'll let them on for a few minutes to download music.
Thats utter bullshit. Even in the US where Xbox came in second, less than 10% of all Xbox owners ever logged into Xbox Live, by MS's own numbers. You read a fluff piece on the Xbox somewhere.
I'm trying to find more recent numbers, but 40% of households owned a PC in the US in 1998 with 76% ownership in urban middle class households. The telephone was only 93%. This is a decade later. The people who don't own a PC don't have it because they can't afford one. And they sure as hell aren't buying $50 a month internet access for a game console.
There is nobody who does not own even a shitty PC, yet owns an Xbox and is willing to pay $50 a month for internet access to play online with it. MS may have other ways it can push its service, but the market you think it can address just doesn't exist.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
What they'll produce is a second rate player and service. It will attempt to be all things to all record companies and not be all that great a service. What you have to understand is how much Apple pushed the music companies in order to get them to support ITMS.
Remember the major record producers originally had their own "stores". They charged a monthly fee, charged for downloading, and then your music couldn't be transfered to other devices and would expire after two or three months. For some strange reason, it wasn't very popular.
Remember that iTunes and the iPod came out before the ITMS. Apple used it as a demonstration on how popular an MP3 player could be, and how easy it was to copy songs from CDs and share them with friends. There was *no* DRM on the original iPods. Jobs turned around and negotiated the store. He insisted that they sell all music for the same price, that the music wouldn't expire, and that users would have some means of sharing it. In return, Apple created FairPlay which made the record executives a bit less nervious about selling electronically.
Apple also made ITMS "Mac Only" as a demonstration product. This way, the music executives could see how it might actually be good for the industry. Once they were satisfied about the security and sales, they allowed Apple to ship the Windows version of iTunes.
Apple recently again did battle against the record industry. Remember a few months ago that the industry wanted to do away with "one price" pricing? Apple insisted that 1). All music would be the same price, and 2). That it would remain under a dollar.
Does Apple do this because they love us? Nope, it's because Jobs has a clue of what people want, and has a vision how things should be done.
Microsoft will simply try to overload the player with features, then use its Windows monopoly to push it upon the market. All PCs will come with the software, and the service. If you put in a CD, the service will be the default way it will play. The Microsoft designed music players will be unhappy on any machine, but Windows, and will insist upon Windows Vista. They'll come up with the service specs, and will design, but not necessarily produce the system. They will put pressure upon their "business partners" to produce the players, and to bundle them with their PCs. You will get the Microsoft approved device and you will love it.
This is a bit old, but explains why Microsoft couldn't make an iPod: .
I'm noticing this a lot lately, but this is one of the most glaring examples. Someone out there has tagged an article in which Microsoft pledges to compete with iTMS as "fud". "FUD" is an acronym that stands for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" and refers to the practice of deliberately spreading misinformation about a competitor's product in order to convince customers that switching would not be beneficial. The character of said misinformation is typically the sort that inpires fear (ie, "Early adopters of the Macintosh experienced extreme losses in productivity, pushing many small business owners into bankruptcy"), uncertainty (ie, "It's not clear that switching to the Macintosh is worth the cost anyway, studies show the Mac is quite expensive and offers no tangible benefits over MS Windows"), and doubt (ie, "Company XYZ failed to lose productivity when they switched to the Mac for some tasks, their representatives said, but they didn't switch all workstations and the ones they did switch were the ones used by effeminate hello-kitty product designers who used them primarily in the design of advertisements directed at the SF Castro district community. The question you need to ask yourself is, does your company fit this particular niche for which Macintoshes are ideally suited?")
Obviously there are probably better examples of FUD (U and D in particular overlap somewhat).
This is rather like the lamentable practice that some losers have of abusing the moderation system to bury posts they disagree with. Troll and Flamebait do not mean I disagree, nor does Overrated. When you disagree with a post or a story, the proper response is to REPLY. Let's face it, the reason we all come to Slashdot is for the comments. The days when Slashdot was the place to get current news are long gone -- there are a host of other sites that post this stuff days earlier, fail to dupe, and care about accuracy more than sensationalism. The reason that I don't read these much (and my guess is that it's the same for 90% of the rest of Slashdot) is because regardless of how many spelling mistakes there are in the story submission here, the comments are filled with lucid and interesting analyses of anything and everything.
I guess what this means is that you have a choice: you can either be a coward and use loaded tags or abuse the Troll/Flaimbait mods to comment, or you can actually post content that will help keep Slashdot interesting and the Slashdot masses informed.
Despite what everyone says about "the hive mind" and "getting modded down for going against the grain", I personally have never experienced this phenomenon. Have you ever noticed that nearly every lucidly written post that goes against established mantras and includes the magic line "I'll probably be modded down for this" makes it to +5? The whiners who go on and on about how "The Slashbots are against me!@@!!11one" usually can't write worth squat and such fail to inspire any reaction other than "You're stupid" from the Moderators. It's true that the reverse is not true, which is sad: some twat who clearly didn't pass elementary school English can write "M$ is the suxor! Lin0x is the win@!!" and get to +5 if he posts early enough, but despite this unfortunate reality the truth of the matter is that you can post wildly unpopular opinions and get modded up if you phrase your ideas in an interesting, informative, and non-flamebait way.
Since I'm going on about not abusing the tagging and moderation system, it's only appropriate that this be modded Offtopic, which it is. Mods, do your worst.
Apple's approach is to not announce anything, let the speculation build, and then surprise people, usually with a great, well thought out product. Almost every time they release a product it has at least one feature that no one saw coming. Microsoft's approach is FUD, rushing products to market despite issues, and using their monopoly power to try to create other monopolies. Having a long run approach with an inferior product means you have to be cheaper and you have to be considered "good enough." They pulled it off with the computer because it's a big expensive purchase. It won't work with a $150 portable music device.
Music - www.richardmac.com