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The Partnership That Could Have Changed Everything
DesertBlade writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, at one point, Microsoft had considered an Apple/iPod partnership before it released its own MP3 player. Microsoft was apparently displeased with MP3 players partnerships they had already made, notably the Creative and Dell models. This information came from court documents introduced in an antitrust lawsuit from Iowa. From the article: 'Microsoft had been working with partners on music devices for at least a year before Apple introduced the iPod in 2001 and catapulted to a dominant position in the market. Microsoft and its partners failed to come up with compelling hardware and had difficulty getting software to properly connect music collections on computers with their devices.' If this Apple/Microsoft partnership was formed how would this have changed the Microsoft and Apple dynamics?"
If they teamed up, we would have Windows running on Macs. Oh, wait...
...and you will be treated to the comment that's going to be my next .SIG line here.
"Longhorn is a pig!" -- Jim Allchin
And this was said when Allchin was heading up development on Longhorn. Hilarious if it weren't true, even more hilarious because it is.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"Hey! You got chocolate in my peanut butter!"
"You got peanut butter in my chocolate!"
In this case, though, read "strychnine" instead of "peanut butter".
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Microsoft in a pink skirt.
...Here we are, with Microsoft having rejected other manufacturers' hardware as deficient, going it alone, and still coming out with a laughably bad product, even after having all that time to learn from both the successes and failures of others.
Admittedly, most of Apple's competition seem to have great difficulty getting their head round what seems to me a very simple proposition (make it nice to use and nice to hold, like an iPod, but make it do stuff an iPod can't), so it's not just Microsoft at fault here, but yet again I find myself wondering what the hell their problem is. Sometimes it seems like they just don't want to get it right.
Although it's probably a good thing that this partnership came about. Because if you think the iPod has a monopoly now, imagine what it would have been like with Microsoft shoving it down everybody's throats. And imagine how little the product wuold have improved over time - I mean, Apple spent the last couple of years sitting on their hands and not implementing relatively trivial features like gapless playback, because they could get away with not bothering. Recently the competition's started to get their act together and they're making noticeable improvements to the iPod line. But we all know what happens when MS is the only show in town, don't we? Not a whole lot, that's what.
I would hope Apple has learned to be wary of any 'partnerships' that Microsoft may offer them. And given how they left all their partners in PlayforSure holding the bag, it looks like nothings really changed.
I doubt it would've changed much as whatever they would've come up with, most likley being different than the I-pod is today, wouldn't have been as popular. I'd imagine lawyers woulda have the ultimate field day with connecting the dots for anti-trust violations and M$ and/or Apple would've backed away saying "Just joshin, we'll make humourous commercials instead."
Although the whole "what-if" scenario will still get to those who bother. If anything derived from such a past-possible parternship was indeed sucessful, any more collaboration probably would develop over a much longer-term period of time.
Unless of course, it were to just own everything on the planet, which in the literal sense of the word, M$ aspires to and Apple likes to own hardware and sell it at fairly expensive prices while both buy/own into the flawed concept of DRM.
The thought of a Win-Pod, or I-win (perhaps Irwin?) is funny though.
Needless to say, I'm bored right now ... XD
*continues the 9 to 5*
We'd probably have gotten a situation where Apple developed a version of the iPod for the Mac, and MS developed one for Windows. My guess is that the Windows version would have been tied into WMP, while Apple would have gone with iTunes. It would have been a mess. I seriously doubt MS would have allowed support for AAC+ on their version, while Apple would have shunned WMA. The market would have been split between the two companies, and the iPod would have likely been a failure. One of the reasons the iPod took off (other than its UI) was the fact that it works across both Macs and PCs. Another reason is the simple design of iTMS. It just works. I seriously doubt that MS could have developed something similar, and they would have stuck their fingers into iTMS just enough to ruin it. Look at the Zune. MS has had years to pick the iPod and iTMS apart, and this is the best they can do? Pathetic.
How about a MS product that won't give you a BSOD?
I'm glad the mods were wise enough to mod you down - any OS can suffer that - in Unix and Linux it's called a Kernel Panic. And yes, I've seen enough Kernel pancis in Linux to know that it can happen in any OS...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Reading the article, it seems this wasn't a partnership deal being considered so much as Microsoft wishfully thinking they could convince Apple to interoperate with Microsoft. I can sit in my office and dream of "what if..." scenarios where I partner with Apple or Cisco or IBM, but if I were to approach any of them I can't expect more than being laughed at.
This Bloomberg article says more about Microsoft's sense of desperation than anything.
but I don't think apple would have considered microsoft.
So... essentially all this news article is saying, or rather... proposing, is "what if Microsoft and Apple teamed up for the iPod."
Really just one thing.
1. There wouldn't be a Zune.
Considering the way the Zune has been selling, that point doesn't even count.
FTFA: ... also suggested he talk to Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs to get the iPod to work with Microsoft's media software for fear the iPod would "drive people away from Windows Media Player.''
Allchin,
Why would Apple have agreed to that? What would have been in it for them? In 2003 (when the article seems to indicate the above took place) the iPod was taking off without any help from Microsoft and had been available for Windows since August of 2002. There is no advantage to having the iPod use WMP on Windows machines instead of iTunes. It would have meant that a team of Microsofties would have had to work closely with Apple and likely have had access to privileged information about the iPod to get it to work with WMP.
That sounds an awful lot like many partnerships Microsoft did in the past: They work with a company, get a good look at the company's closely-guarded crown jewels, and then 'change their mind' about doing what the partnership set out to accomplish. And then a little while later they use the information gleaned during the partnership to come up with a competing product and sink the other company, using high-priced lawyers and weasel clauses buried in contracts to avoid any penalty.
They already pulled that bit on Apple once when they developed Windows by copying the Mac while they had access to a few prototypes to develop Mac apps, and then hid behind a terribly vague licensing agreement. I don't think Jobs would have fallen for it again.
~Philly
I don't think Jobs would have fallen for it again.
Change that to "I don't think Jobs would fall for it," as it was not him who fell for it the first time-- Jobs was gone from Apple in November of 1985 when Sculley signed the agreement with Microsoft.
~Philly
I guess my thought would be related to MS' ability to push out DRM, license content, and other stuff. I guess in 2001, I saw no ability on their part to push out ground breaking stuff at any clip. At the time I think it would have been difficult for even MW to come up with a credible DRM platform on the desktop. Further I'm not sure they can execute on a strategy of low end consumer devices where the profit is made in content which they can somehow get in position to license. Yeah, I suppose one might observe that they did this with O/S sw, but I don't think it is the same thing for content. Think about it, although I know given the same innvovative nature as Apple they could have easily convinced BMG, Columbia, etc into licensing, and they would have been great at pressuring the labels, but they would have failed totally on the platform side. Finally based on observation they would have been impatient with the consumer device profit margins. Nah, unless the tiger could have changed it's stripes, they could not have changed the outcome.
"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous." "I hear and I forget. I see and I rem
I haven't seen a BSOD in years in either XP or Linux. Have you considered that you may suck at life?*
*No, I didn't actually mean that.
Hm, brown iPods anyone?
Microsoft and its partners failed to come up with compelling hardware and had difficulty getting software to properly connect music collections on computers with their devices.
Before USB, I had a handheld computer. It required MS Active Sync. That by itself was not a problem. The problem was the software remained active looking for the device to connect. This was a major problem for everything else I have that uses a RS-232 port. The solution was to abandon Active Sync and let the handheld be it's own island so I could have my serial ports back.
After USB, Flash drives worked quite well and would work on Mac, PC, and Linux. MS desicded to play a do it our way game which crippled some flash players. Some manufactures kept the devices open so they would attach and transfer as a flash drive. Some went so far as to play music transfered in this way and allowed copying to and from the device. This was not in Microsoft's best interest as they wanted full DRM handshake and a one way transfer. You can delete songs off the device, but copying from it is prohibited. This needing someting other than drag and drop, means a special application which may mean Windows only which is a problem in addition to any other USB port driver issues and corrupt handshakes and keys.
Drag and drop worked. Flash player manufactures know that. Making a player that has to change mode to handle connections for Plays for Sure simply added a level of complexity to the device. MS tried arm twisting to drop the complexity of 2 modes of operation. In doing so, it broke compatiblility with everything else. For an example of broken drag and drop, try a Creative Zen. You can set aside space for drag and drop, but it won't play any files there, including non-DRM MP3's.
I bought a Coby flash player. They work fine in drag and drop mode. It will record off the mic or radio and save it as MP3's. I can drag the MP3's off the player. For Coby to have these fine features, they simply dropped support for DRM WMA Plays for Sure content. The player will play MP3's and non-DRM WMA files. The best part is I can save files to it from home on Windows PC's, Linux PC's and at work. It doesn't delete everyting to sync to a new PC unlike Plays for Sure, Zune, or FairPlay crippled things.
The truth shall set you free!
You left the strikethrough tag on when you wrote the S in 'MS'. I'm not sure how you got it to go vertical, but I'd definitely look into that.
It's revealed that the manager of Vista calls it a pig, and would buy a Mac if he had a choice.
It's also revealed that the company has been violating the terms of the court order stemming from their conviction for breaking federal law.
The result (according to TFA):"Shares of Microsoft rose 11 cents to $31.11 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. They have risen 4.2 percent this month."
This must be what is known as "being able to do no wrong".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Which was Jobs's point all along.
Creative had an ok product, licensed with M$ to be able to play DRM-protected WMP files...only M$ didn't succeed as well as they wanted to get online downloads to use WMP.
What Apple had was not just one great product, but 3, which when combined won the day.
They had an mp3 player that was aesthetically impressive, had new inventions for user simplicity (like the volume/menu wheel, which though faulty at first, got better), and easily licensed for 3rd party accessories so you didn't feel like the only way to use it was through the normal headphones.
They had iTunes the desktop software, with its slick look (though why they insisted on the mac look on a windows box i'll never know, but it seemed to work), a look so impressive that it made the users want to use that as their playback software even without the iPod. Windows Media Player kept changing its look, and kept bumping into wars of codecs and DRM license issues that users simply didn't want to deal with. When prompted to auto-upgrade WMP to a new version, users panic because history with Microsoft software shows that such upgrades often break backwards compatibility or at the very least completely lose all of their existing settings. If upgrading WMP suddenly means you can't watch movies you already have or listen to music you already have, then you won't do it, and upgrades did that with WMP and Real Player a LOT.
Creative's tool was ok for loading stuff onto the box, but it wasn't "right" for actually playing the tunes as the desktop player, so the integration factor wasn't there the way it was with iTunes/iPod.
Finally, they successfully got iTunes the store to work (sounds like Spaceballs: the t-Shirt). One stop shopping, fully integrated into the player. Buy the song, put it into a desktop playlist, sync to the iPod, BAM, new music for 99 cents and i never had to change software anywhere.
Such integration is difficult, but Apple did it where Microsoft never could with their partner relationships as they licensed them at the time.
Hence the Zume. They now know the only way to play on Apple's field is to do that same integration - player, desktop software as load tool and preferred player, and music store all in one.
But they'll never get it...or at least not until the "version 3" that it takes Microsoft to have a success for any product launch.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
And Steve asked him to fuck off
-S
Remember once upon a time even Mac fans such as myself wondered what a better world it might be if Apple had won its suit against Microsoft? This is relevant to the topic at hand because here are the analysts again wondering what a wonderful world it might be if Apple and Microsoft held hands and sang Kumbaya.
... ESPECIALLY core mac fans whose expectations of Apple have never been higher as evidenced by the post-announcement iPhone backlash.
Well, I've come to the conclusion that we were wrong. I have to take a step back though, to the time when analysts kept arguing that licensing Mac OS to run on other machines was the way to go. The analysts never understood, as Steve Jobs did, that Apple is not a software company. That where Microsoft believes that the profits are in the software, that only works if your goal is to be the Wal-Mart of the computer industry... brand dominance by quantity, not quality.
We saw what happened when Apple licensed out its OS... it was a total disaster. Apple's strength was not the OS alone. They have always been a hardware company that made an operating system only because it allowed them to manage every level of the user experience in one integrated package. No other PC manufacturers have this advantage, and must instead rely on only the hope that a third party OS manages to work just well enough with zillions of third party apps and drivers so that consumers aren't driven away. Well, they're being driven away now... and they're going to Apple. Maybe not in a flood, but one by one they're popping up at Apple's doorstep because the iPod has shown them what a tightly integrated hardware and OS can do -- when it's done right, anyway.
But could it have been done right if Apple won the suit? I don't think so. By the time it would have happened, Steve Jobs was out of the picture, and Jonathan Ive hadn't yet carved a place as Apple's product design genius. At the time of the 9th Circuit's decision, Spindler was CEO. There's every likelihood that then-bloated and corporatized Apple would have gained some market dominance but would have played it just as complacently as Microsoft has.
The fact is, the underdog position Apple has held has been very good for pushing them to require better design than Microsoft and Apple's PC manufacturing competitors like Dell, Toshiba, HP, etc. It's possible the company's premature financial success, at a time when Spindler and Amelio were more concerned with turning out "beige boxes" just like the next guy, would have pre-empted any return by Steve Jobs and Apple would not have emerged as the brand zeitgeist to which all other companies designs aspire. Today, while they do not dominate the market in terms of sheer volume, they dominate the market in brand perception, regarded as the most desirable brand by consumers across all products of all types. They have a reputation for quality that PC manufacturers do not. They have a following that PC manufacturers do not. So strong is this following that Apple was forced to announce its iPhone before FCC filings because there's a voracious appetite for Apple rumors. Can anyone imagine throngs of consumers digging through FCC filings to be the first to announce what Motorola's next new whiz-bang product is going to be?
So, would a partnership with Microsoft be good for Apple or Microsoft? No. Not only would it risk Apple's name being dragged in the mud by inferior multimedia standards managed by a company that doesn't have half the design aesthetic or QC concerns that Apple NEEDS to have. Microsoft can make a shitty product and sit back and watch people have no choice but to buy it... Apple has to work to impress people
It wouldn't work for Microsoft either. They've had this fanciful notion that they can make people love their feeble attempts at multimedia domination simply by latching on to Apple's superior product. Where's the benefit for Apple? We already tackled that one. Ok, what happens to both Apple AND Microsoft when customers see