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Apple To Beat Google On Cloud Music

Posted by Soulskill on from the hey-guys-what-else-can-we-stream dept.

yogidog98 writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report: "Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies' plans. Apple's plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, said two of these people who asked not to be named as the talks are still confidential."

7 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Amazon beat them both by Enry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm slightly interested to see what Apple does, but it's likely they'll integrate only with iOS devices and iTunes. Amazon's works with web browsers and Android devices (and I hope they release an API soon). Google will likely be the most open in terms of mobile support and maybe more likely to have an API to integrate their cloud with third party apps.

    1. Re:Amazon beat them both by chemicaldave · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm slightly interested to see what Apple does, but it's likely they'll integrate only with iOS devices and iTunes.

      I don't know what they'll do, but you can be sure they'll use the term "revolutionary new service."

    2. Re:Amazon beat them both by Americano · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Be honest: do you really expect any company to announce a new product or service, and say something like, "It's kind of boring, really, and you'll probably hate it, but we hope to sucker a few people into spending their hard-earned coin on it. Thanks for coming by today."

      If you make a new product that you want to sell to the world, then yeah, it's sort of Marketing-101 that you behave as if you're excited about it. If your competitor makes a new product that you wish you had made, then yeah, it's sort of Marketing-101 that you behave as if it's no big deal and it'll never succeed in the market - all while furiously trying to finish your own offering that does the same thing.

      I've never understood why Apple's use of basic marketing strategy seems so *outrageously* offensive to some people - every company does it. So is it just that Apple tends to back up their marketing with fairly solid products, rather than saying "It's amazing!" while they wink and hand you a fresh turd and a DIY polish kit?

    3. Re:Amazon beat them both by degeneratemonkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not the marketing hype that garners resentment. It's the fact that, for some incredible reason, many Apple fans actually believe that hype.

      I have a manager in my company who is completely enamored of Apple. He tweeted about walking past an Apple talk at GDC. He buys every iteration of every Apple device. He actually believes that Apple is fundamentally changing the world with their devices. He's an idiot, and he's not an outlier.

    4. Re:Amazon beat them both by Americano · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I guess what I don't get is, why does somebody else's appreciation for something bother you so much in the first place?

      I'm not a particularly big fan of wine, but I don't get worked up into a lather when wine tasters talk about the sweet tannins and smoky aftertaste of the oak, chocolate and honey notes - I just shrug, and say "I'll have a Guinness, please." I'm not a particularly big fan of Scandinavian death metal, but I don't get overly worked up when people talk about some sort of operatic death metal album as "the best album, hands-down, ever made," I just shrug and say "Oh, so they found a way to improve on At Folsom Prison?"

      There's this odd foreshortening of perspective in some geeks where they seem to get terribly emotionally involved in whether or not somebody else likes something that they don't. See: vi/emacs; Linux/Windows/MacOS; BSD/GPL; Apple/Google; etc. etc. It's not even that somebody is *criticizing the things they love.* It's that *somebody else likes something different,* which seems to just rock their whole universe off its foundations.

      It seems that only the most literal-minded of idiots would hear Apple describe the iPad as "magical," and think, "My god, they actually are trying to tell people they manufacture it out of unicorn farts." Marketing speak is marketing speak: nobody *really* believes that they're going to get the bikini model pictured next to the Toyota Camry. Nobody *really* believes that the iPad is, literally, a magical device, operating under its own set of physics unlike anything else in the world.

  2. How will this beat Google? by chemicaldave · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Assuming you MUST use an iOS device and MUST use iTunes as is Apple's norm. How is this going to beat more open platforms like Amazon or (I assume) Google. Especially as Android overtakes iOS in terms of users.

  3. Still Vaporware... by Z_A_Commando · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to "beat" Google, doesn't Apple actually have to have a service that's available to the public? Until then, this supposed cloud-based iWhatever is vaporware, just like Google's supposed service.