As an android user, I don't feel this way in the slightest. Actually, when my iPhone friends play with my phone they are pretty much always impressed.
That's because Apple users aren't the "fanboys" you slashdot nerds seem to think they are. When you show a cool lock-screen widget or whatever, we don't get defensive like Android fans do. We're like, "hey, that's pretty cool", then happily continue using our iPhones. We don't feel personally threatened if some other product is nice or better in some way.
Just take a look at the posts and modding going on with this story. This is a perfect example of EVERYTHING negative you all claim about Apple "fanboys". Say what you will about fanboys, but Fandroids are the worst.
It's been a while since I've looked at doing higher end graphics stuff on Android, but doesn't the SDK give you a way to query the device to see if it supports the higher end features like the textures, shading/lighting effects and such?
The problem isn't just whether it supports it, it's whether it supports it *well*.
The Company's consolidated financial position with respect to cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, net of notes payable to banks, decreased to $1,434 million as of September 26, 1997, from $1,559 million as of September 27, 1996.
It also shows that they had $6.9 billion in sales for 1997, and they spent $485 million in R&D for that year.
In other words, their R&D exceeded MS's purchase of Apple stock by over 3x. Apple was not out of cash. They did not need $150 million.
All these things you've "proven", what will you say when they fail to come to pass? What will you say when no one gets reported for piracy by Apple? What will you say when people use iCloud to store their ripped CDs?
Did you even read the article you linked to?
Digital music sales account for 25% of total music sales in the UK. The industry continues to suffer from declining sales of physical formats, with singles down 27% year on year to £6.9m and albums down 14.5% to £863m.
CD sales are on the decline. There isn't some sort of sophisticated CD buying populace in the UK who meticulously rip their CDs, carry around portable hard drives, and store music on RAIDs.
That's cash they have on hand. They never ran out of cash. The never got within $150 million of running out of cash. And even if they *did* run out of cash (which they didn't), they could have easily gotten a loan if *somehow* all they needed was $150 million to survive, which is your entire premise.
Do you even know how money works?
The only thing you "win" is Idiot of the Week. Congrats on that, you were in a bit of a dry spell there for a while.
Maybe you are too young to understand, but in 1997, Apple's continued existance was very far from certain no matter cash reserves (that it as bleeding) - a shitty OS, crap hardware, no vision for the future, stock diving into the ground, loyal customers abandoning the platform - the money MS paid was extremely big news that gave a lot of people confidence Apple would stay around and more to the point stay somewhat relavent.
The money itself was immaterial to Apple's existence.
The bailout gave Apple breathing space to regroup, redesign and for the Jobs reality distortion field to take proper effect.
No, it didn't. Apple had over a billion dollars in cash, and many billion in revenues. They could have paid MS 5x the amount MS invested in AAPL stock, and still survived just fine.
Yes, it saved their collective asses. Deal with it.
That would be a mathematical impossibility.
What saved Apple was buying NeXT, which gave them the OS they needed, and brought back Jobs who, with his team, righted the Apple ship. Why's this so difficult for you to understand?
You keep running in a circle without much understanding, I'll try to help you. He is saying not that the uploader (Person B) is behaving illegally (neither by obtaining the music, nor by uploading to iCloud), nor will the uploader be actioned. However, by uploading a file watermarked with Person A's information, he will be letting the cat out the bag about how Person A did share the file - which is, without doubt, illegal under current interpretations of copyright law, actionable, and actioned on with some regularity.
No, I know exactly what he is saying, and he is wrong.
Person B will not be sued for having the file (none of the MP3 lawsuits were against people downloading or possessing a file), and Person B's possession of the file does not prove Person A's guilt in having shared it.
Further, not all iTunes files are automatically matched, for just this reason. Only files that are watermarked indicating they came from your iTunes account will be matched. This feature is for saving bandwidth, not legitimizing stolen music.
That is wholly incorrect. iTunes will match any song it can identify, regardless of the source (the identification is done via fingerprinting, not watermarking). iTunes songs that were purchased by you are matched without scanning. They use your iTunes purchase records. This has already been implemented and is part of the free service. Songs that were not purchased by you on iTunes will still be matched, if they can be identified, with songs available on iTunes, regardless of the source, and also be made available as part of the $24.99 yearly service. Additionally, it will upload songs it cannot match.
But in no way whatsoever is this going to be used as a honey pot to catch pirates. This whole idea is a farce.
They had ~$1.5 billion in cash. It's in their SEC filing for the year. They had many billions in revenues, they had healthy margins on their products. They also had a lot of write offs and purchases that year, including buying NeXT for over $300 million.
Apple did not need Microsoft's purchase of $150 million in stock. Had the purchase never happened, Apple would still be doing fine today.
That purchase of stock was part of a settlement between Apple and Microsoft, which included ending long-running litigation, cross-licensing of patents, MS committing to continue selling Office for Mac and Apple promising to bundle IE.
The only "fanboys" related to this story are the MS fanboys of today who fail at both math and history, and think MS was some sort of white knight.
What saved Apple was buying NeXT. That one purchase essentially solved all of Apple's pressing problems.
Do please explain how a $150 million purchase of stock saved Apple.
What saved Apple was cutting their costs and selling things at a profit. Also, Apple's expenditures for 1997 included $384 million to purchase NeXT (which is ultimately what saved Apple). Their revenues were fine (well over a billion dollars per quarter). Their margins were fine. What wasn't fine was their expenditures.
These expenditures were manageable, which is exactly what Apple did to return to profitability.
They were *NEVER* at a point in the '90s where $150 million was all that stood between them and bankruptcy.
You're the idiot who keeps asserting that Apple was on the verge of financial collapse in 1997 without providing any evidence. You're the one who keeps stating that Apple needed the money. You're the one who keeps talking about Apple's "balance sheets". You have provided absolutely no proof whatsoever to back up your assertion.
From Apple's SEC filing for 1997:
The Company's consolidated financial position with respect to cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, net of notes payable to banks, decreased to $1,434 million as of September 26, 1997, from $1,559 million as of September 27, 1996.
You keep claiming that Apple needed the $150 million, without any evidence whatsoever. As usual, arguing from ignorance. At the time MS bought $150 million in AAPL stock, Apple had over $1 billion in cash. Actual spending money. If, for some reason, they actually needed $150 million, they had sufficient credit that they could have borrowed it.
Microsoft didn't bail Apple out. They settled a long standing lawsuit with Apple, that included claims of MS stealing code from Apple's QuickTime. How you can't understand how settlements works is astonishing.
I'm not picking out each and every point you've made because arguing semantics in words is going off the topic of discussion and there aren't enough hours in the day to deal with that.
Yeah, don't quote what I wrote or anything, just ramble on like normal, making shit up out of thin air.
I can't really blame you, though. That's exactly what I would do if I wanted to make an argument about something of which I was completely ignorant, and if I had no sense of honesty.
The fact is that Apple will do what the music industry tells it to do because Apple making money from music sales is clearly important to Apple's business model. When you are an absolute colossus as a sales channel, like Wal-Mart in the US or Tesco here in the UK, then you have enough power and mass to dictate to your suppliers how much product you want and at what price.
iTunes is big, granted, but it is by no means the only sales channel, especially when you consider not just download sales but also physical media sellers as well. Therefore, Apple needs the music industry more than the music industry needs Apple.
Aside from the fact that Apple sells more music than any other retailer, the RIAA cannot dictate to Apple that they have to try to trap pirates. Apple *CAN'T POSSIBLY* agree to that. That would utterly destroy Apple.
How do you think negotiations work anyway? Do you think the labels all come to Apple and just dictate terms? Or vice versa?
This piracy honey-pot idea is something Apple can not possibly agree to, so even if the RIAA or the individual labels might *want* such a thing, they will have to accept that it cannot be required if they actually want to make a deal.
With regard to those people like me who buy CDs, unless I was extremely paranoid that I would lose my CD collection through a house fire or burglary (despite having house contents insurance also), then what POSSIBLE use could iCloud have for me such that I wanted to hand over good money for the service?
$25/year buys you backup and remote access to your music that you didn't buy from iTunes. You keep acting like this is both a lot of money and something no CD buying person could possibly want.
Let's assume I did subscribe to that service, what's likely to happen? Presumably, I need to put each and every CD I own such that iCloud can read the ID from it in order to obtain some degree of proof that I own it.
As usual, you are incorrect. You keep arguing from ignorance, yet never seem to grasp that making shit up doesn't make something real.
The economics of downloadable music *ONLY* works in the first place if you are the sort of person that wants "pick n mix" music - i.e. one or two tracks from an album. If you buy the whole album as download, then the chances are it works out more expensive than buying the physical CD - and the one major reason why, as an album listener, I have no interest in the greater expense (and greater lossiness) of downloadable music.
It would be interesting to see statistics from iTunes, Amazon or whoever that show what percentage of their downloadable music sales are full albums, but I suggest the percentage is very low compared to sales of indvidual tracks because of the poorer value offered against physical CDs.
Um, by definition it will be low, since you *CAN'T* buy individual tracks from a CD the way you can on iTunes. CD singles have always been priced to be a poor value. However, none of what you wrote here implies people buy CDs won't find a value in using iCloud.
What I am leading to is the point that there are very few musicphiles out there who, as traditional CD buyers, will have reverted to downloadable music in the first place - I suggest to you, again, in the absence of statistics, that the people who buy individual tracks are those who either don't take music too seriously (and therefore bough
The fact that Apple *DID* take the money suggests that they needed it very badly, and that in turn suggests that they took that money because of cashflow problems.
How does it suggest any such thing? It wasn't a GIFT. It was a part of a settlement to end a long running lawsuit. It was a PURCHASE of AAPL stock by MS, in a deal which had both sides making agreements in exchange with each other.
Apple had BILLIONS of dollars IN CASH the day the deal between Apple and MS was settled. They were not in imminent danger of going under. Apple had enough money to coast for YEARS. $150 million never made an impact on this.
If you read the balance sheets of Apple in 1997, they talk about $1.2 billion in income but how much of that was used up in outgoings or used to cover losses elsewhere in the company is not clear.
Exactly. You are, as usual, posting from pure ignorance. Apple had BILLIONS of dollars. You are acting like Apple needed this money. They didn't.
What they needed was to stop warring with MS and to start making great products again, which is exactly what they did. If you think Apple wouldn't have been able to exist long enough to make Mac OS X, iMacs, MacBooks, iPods, iPhones, and iPads, were it not for the $150 million dollar purchase of AAPL that MS made, you're a fool.
pff I guess you forget history then. Apple was going down the tubes at the time. Their OS was buggy, the computers ran on dated power pc chips which simply couldnt compete, and pretty much everyone who wasnt a graphics designer did not want to use a mac. It looked very much like apple would die, and then microsoft came in and gave them all that money. A few years later the ipod and OSX was born, and they went to intel chips as well.
None of which depended on that relative pittance.
I remember the articles at the time. I remember thinking that microsoft was throwing a bone to apple, so that they wouldn't be considered a monopoly. Not sure if you were in the industry at that time, but it was a common perception. And a correct one. Apple would have surely died if not for microsoft cash in their hour of need.
How so? Apple had actual BILLIONS of dollars in CASH. You and the idiot who started this subthread seems to think this was MS floating Apple a loan so they could pay their bills.
Had this $150 million never been paid (it was actually a purchase of stock, which is not the same thing), Apple would have done just fine.
They were in a death spiral in the late 90s, written off and left for dead by all but the most rabid macophiles. The computer wars were over and PC's won.
Not to say that similar to not taking all your antibiotics, the disease came back hard with the iphone and such. But I can't imagine anyone denying that it looked very bleak for a while for them.
No one said it wasn't bleak. Just that the idea MS "bailed out" Apple is utter nonsense.
Making your customers afraid to use your product for fear of being sued is *not* a stupid idea?
If you are going to constantly stalk my comments, I *DO* wish you'd at least make an attempt to read and digest them.
Hey, dumbfuck. YOU replied to ME.
My core point, once again for the clearly learning impaired, is that the music industry in *DESPERATE* to sell more product due to their perception that piracy is killing their sales.
Your "core point" was in reply to my post, where you started it off by saying:
There is actually a very good motivation and it is not as stupid an idea as you think.
In response to me asking:
That doesn't answer the question. What motivation would Apple have to agree to something like that? It's completely absurd.
So, your point is just aimless, off-topic rambling then? Or was I to take it as a response to my question, as any sane person would do?
iCloud is *Apple's* product, not the music industry's product. Apple pays the industry for their product, which is licensing of the music. Why would Apple destroy their product by making their customers afraid to use it?
That's kind of the same as me saying I've just opened a butcher's shop to sell meat products but not having any suppliers for meat. iCloud exists because the music industry makes product that can utilise it.
What the hell are you talking about? I pointed out that Apple has a supplier. It's right there in the part you quoted! I've bolded it for you for good measure.
As for making their customers afraid to use it? Where did *THAT* deduction come from? Let's get it clear, Apple *NEEDS* the music industry so it can "stock" iTunes and iCloud, not the other way around.
This entire slashdot story is about iCloud being used to sue customers. Where do you *THINK* this deduction came from?
Yes, iTunes is a big music sales channel, I'm not denying it for one minute, but so are Amazon and others.
And how iCloud "couldn't ever appeal to a CD buyer" is unclear. In fact, the $25/year add-on is specifically *designed* for CD buyers (among other groups)!
Well, I'm sorry but as a CD buyer I cannot think of a use for such a service, whether or not it's provided by Apple.
Sorry, I never meant to imply you had much of an imagination. But even so, it can't take much imagination to see why a service that stores your CD rips in the cloud is meant to appeal to people who have CDs to rip. You said that iCloud "couldn't ever appeal to a CD buyer", which is laughably absurd. That's exactly who it's aimed at, and I think it's fair to say Apple will have more than a few customers.
Hard disks and RAID drives are cheap
Cheaper than $25/year? And that's not even what iCloud is. It's not local storage for the user. In fact, it's pretty much the exact opposite of that.
in many cases ripping a CD is as simple as popping it into the PC optical drive and letting it get on with it until it spits it out.
Yes, and iCloud is predicated on this having happened first. What do you think the iCloud matching service actually is?
And when it's ripped, I stick the CD on a shelf as its own backup and carry about a small portable hard disk with my music on. The hard disk lets me access my music whether or not I have an Internet connection and it's not going to take many months of renting the iCloud service to exceed the cost of a portable hard disk.
$25/year.
Finally, the iCloud service exists only as long as I pay a rental fee and Apple provide that service. If that service discontinues, or suffers a service outage. then access to my music stops - unless I have a local copy of it in which case why would I use iCl
I don't think it said anywhere that the upload was the illegal part. It's just a means for pirated data to be detected.
I'm not familiar with any lawsuits over the possesion of illegal music either (as opposed to sharing), but it's hardly a jump to assume that a court, when given evidence that someone has illegal data, would just think "It must have magically appeared!" instead of thinking it was shared (and hence still valid for a lawsuit).
Who said they'll just think, "it must have magically appeared!"?
They've only sued the sharers, not the downloaders. It's definitely a huge jump to think they will start now, and even huger still to think Apple will help them do this!
Which is not illegal to do, and won't happen anyway.
at this point you are proving to be either ill-informed, or sitting in the RDF (both?). there is little hope in helping you understand the gravity and the possibilities; bummer.
Let's put that quote in context, shall we?
Person B uploads his music collection to iCloud.
Which is not illegal to do, and won't happen anyway. iTunes music will be matched, not uploaded.
It is *NOT* illegal to upload your music to iCloud, even if that music was not legally acquired. Second, it *won't* happen, because you were talking about iTunes purchases, and iTunes purchases are matched, not uploaded.
But even *if* iTunes purchases get uploaded, or even if we include the scope to non-iTunes purchases, it's not illegal to upload them to this service! Cite one example of *anyone* being sued for merely *having* a pirated song. The lawsuits you are thinking of are for sharing them, not possessing them.
What user information is that, exactly? Apple will only have a list of what songs you have (it's not illegal to have a song)
Yeah, but Apple doesn't have to prove the songs are illegal.
Apple has no interesting in proving the songs are illegal. In fact, they have a very strong interest in not making their customers fearful that such a thing might happen as a result of being a customer.
The whole point of the program is the assumption that you are replacing illegally obtained songs with good, clean songs. Just by signing up you are admitting guilt.
What? I must have missed that part of the keynote.
So the user information would be names and contact information, a list of illegal songs you used their service to replace, and admission of guilt in the form of the TOS of the program you signed up for. All of the lawyers' work is done for them.
What illegal songs? When has the RIAA *ever* gone after someone for simply *having* a song? The lawsuits you are thinking of were for *sharing* the songs. iTunes Match isn't a song sharing service, nor does it contain a way to determine who has and who has not shared which songs.
Person A downloads album from iTunes. the songs are watermarked with personally-identifiable metadata that indicate to Apple who bought them (this is current fact, not speculation).
Not quite. It has the user's email address in a tag which is easily removed.
Person A shares the album using favorite method with Person B (which is illegal for Person A to do). Person B uploads his music collection to iCloud.
Which is not illegal to do, and won't happen anyway. iTunes music will be matched, not uploaded.
one year goes by RIAA subpoenas Apple for the metadata, and records of who bought what.
On what grounds?
Apple happily complies, as it isn't interested in the legal costs involved with a privacy battle it will lose.
Bullshit. Were Apple to "happily comply", the company would end. Even if they eventually complied after kicking and screaming, the company would be severely damaged.
RIAA parses the data, finds Person A illegally shared the album, adds them to the "to be sued" list.
No, that's *not* what they will have found.
the only way to avoid this situation would be if apple edited the music files that are updated to iCloud, laundering them for the customer. this won't happen because a) their RIAA contacts would have a fit, b) they would have to inform the public that their "stored" data is being altered -which they haven't - and c) it is an extra cost they just don't want.
Um, no, that's not the "only way to avoid this situation". This situation is all but impossible to begin with. You don't understand the law, you don't understand Apple's business model. You, honestly, don't appear to understand much of anything.
What data do you think Apple is going to keep that will endanger their users?
This is nothing more than nerd paranoia combined with nerd Apple hate. It's not going to happen. It's all but impossible.
Apple essentially has to play ball and turn over the data or break the law and try to stare down the U.S. court system.
Let's imagine Apple really fucks this whole thing up so bad that they end up in this position. That their deal with the labels don't prevent this, and the data they keep somehow has the ability to incriminate their users, and the RIAA decides to piss off their single-most important customer.
So, let's just throw reason to the wind and take this absurd possibility seriously for a moment. If this ever did happen, you can bet your life on the fact that Apple will fight this in the courts (and out of the courts) harder than they've ever fought anything. That's because something like this would have the potential to actually end Apple. It would not simply be Apple having "nothing but the best interest for their customers", but an existential crisis.
Which is why I think this is getting such play on Slashdot. It's nothing more than Apple disaster porn.
Um, no. I'm talking about actual liquid assets and liquid investments. Apple had actual billions of dollars that they could spend at that time.
The $150 million had very little impact on Apple and wasn't even *remotely* akin to a "bailout". It was a settlement agreement to end a long-standing lawsuit.
it is a little naïve to assume apple hasn't considered this
Um, if you mean something like:
Person A: "Let's see, can we make money from this in other ways?" Person B: "How about selling out our users?" Person A: "Nope, that's retarded. Any other ideas?"
Then, sure, *maybe* Person B was high enough or something to have come up with the idea for half a second. Otherwise, no. It's all but completely impossible that Apple ever seriously considered the idea.
it is a lot naïve to assume that RIAA and the current content producer-friendly presidential administration (and courts) won't consider capitalizing by subpoenaing user information
What user information is that, exactly? Apple will only have a list of what songs you have (it's not illegal to have a song) and the files you have uploaded to the server (again, which are not illegal to have). And, in fact, Apple (unlike Google or Amazon--hey, where's the "it's a trap!" nonsense about them?) actually has a deal with the labels. A deal which you can be certain does not include a clause which opens their customers to lawsuits.
The only naivety here is in thinking that Apple would ever implement something so abysmally stupid. However, this being Slashdot, naivety (a very generous word) regarding Apple is not only standard, but highly rewarded.
Slashdot Mirror
The Angry Birds dude is allegedly making more money from the ad-supported "free" Android Angry Birds app than the ad-free "paid" iPhone version.
In other words, yes, iPhone users are more likely to pay for apps.
Only on Slashdot would someone spin "more ads" as a good thing!
As an android user, I don't feel this way in the slightest. Actually, when my iPhone friends play with my phone they are pretty much always impressed.
That's because Apple users aren't the "fanboys" you slashdot nerds seem to think they are. When you show a cool lock-screen widget or whatever, we don't get defensive like Android fans do. We're like, "hey, that's pretty cool", then happily continue using our iPhones. We don't feel personally threatened if some other product is nice or better in some way.
Just take a look at the posts and modding going on with this story. This is a perfect example of EVERYTHING negative you all claim about Apple "fanboys". Say what you will about fanboys, but Fandroids are the worst.
It's been a while since I've looked at doing higher end graphics stuff on Android, but doesn't the SDK give you a way to query the device to see if it supports the higher end features like the textures, shading/lighting effects and such?
The problem isn't just whether it supports it, it's whether it supports it *well*.
No. It's "blame apple fanboys for FUD and rhetoric".
You complain about "FUD and rhetoric", then immediately writes FUD and rhetoric. Why am I not surprised you got modded up?
I enjoy the fact that I dumped Apple every time I need to manage media or clean out my SMS messages.
I am less interested in the store, or how much money Google is making, or how much money app developers are making.
I am more interested in the actual phone.
Apparently it's only pompous when Apple users say it. When Android fans say it, it's "+5 Reinforces My Preferences".
I already quoted their SEC filing from 1997:
The Company's consolidated financial position with respect to cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, net of notes payable to banks, decreased to $1,434 million as of September 26, 1997, from $1,559 million as of September 27, 1996.
It also shows that they had $6.9 billion in sales for 1997, and they spent $485 million in R&D for that year.
In other words, their R&D exceeded MS's purchase of Apple stock by over 3x. Apple was not out of cash. They did not need $150 million.
All these things you've "proven", what will you say when they fail to come to pass? What will you say when no one gets reported for piracy by Apple? What will you say when people use iCloud to store their ripped CDs?
Did you even read the article you linked to?
Digital music sales account for 25% of total music sales in the UK. The industry continues to suffer from declining sales of physical formats, with singles down 27% year on year to £6.9m and albums down 14.5% to £863m.
CD sales are on the decline. There isn't some sort of sophisticated CD buying populace in the UK who meticulously rip their CDs, carry around portable hard drives, and store music on RAIDs.
Holy fuck you are stupid.
That's cash they have on hand. They never ran out of cash. The never got within $150 million of running out of cash. And even if they *did* run out of cash (which they didn't), they could have easily gotten a loan if *somehow* all they needed was $150 million to survive, which is your entire premise.
Do you even know how money works?
The only thing you "win" is Idiot of the Week. Congrats on that, you were in a bit of a dry spell there for a while.
Maybe you are too young to understand, but in 1997, Apple's continued existance was very far from certain no matter cash reserves (that it as bleeding) - a shitty OS, crap hardware, no vision for the future, stock diving into the ground, loyal customers abandoning the platform - the money MS paid was extremely big news that gave a lot of people confidence Apple would stay around and more to the point stay somewhat relavent.
The money itself was immaterial to Apple's existence.
The bailout gave Apple breathing space to regroup, redesign and for the Jobs reality distortion field to take proper effect.
No, it didn't. Apple had over a billion dollars in cash, and many billion in revenues. They could have paid MS 5x the amount MS invested in AAPL stock, and still survived just fine.
Yes, it saved their collective asses. Deal with it.
That would be a mathematical impossibility.
What saved Apple was buying NeXT, which gave them the OS they needed, and brought back Jobs who, with his team, righted the Apple ship. Why's this so difficult for you to understand?
You keep running in a circle without much understanding, I'll try to help you. He is saying not that the uploader (Person B) is behaving illegally (neither by obtaining the music, nor by uploading to iCloud), nor will the uploader be actioned. However, by uploading a file watermarked with Person A's information, he will be letting the cat out the bag about how Person A did share the file - which is, without doubt, illegal under current interpretations of copyright law, actionable, and actioned on with some regularity.
No, I know exactly what he is saying, and he is wrong.
Person B will not be sued for having the file (none of the MP3 lawsuits were against people downloading or possessing a file), and Person B's possession of the file does not prove Person A's guilt in having shared it.
Further, not all iTunes files are automatically matched, for just this reason. Only files that are watermarked indicating they came from your iTunes account will be matched. This feature is for saving bandwidth, not legitimizing stolen music.
That is wholly incorrect. iTunes will match any song it can identify, regardless of the source (the identification is done via fingerprinting, not watermarking). iTunes songs that were purchased by you are matched without scanning. They use your iTunes purchase records. This has already been implemented and is part of the free service. Songs that were not purchased by you on iTunes will still be matched, if they can be identified, with songs available on iTunes, regardless of the source, and also be made available as part of the $24.99 yearly service. Additionally, it will upload songs it cannot match.
But in no way whatsoever is this going to be used as a honey pot to catch pirates. This whole idea is a farce.
They had ~$1.5 billion in cash. It's in their SEC filing for the year. They had many billions in revenues, they had healthy margins on their products. They also had a lot of write offs and purchases that year, including buying NeXT for over $300 million.
Apple did not need Microsoft's purchase of $150 million in stock. Had the purchase never happened, Apple would still be doing fine today.
That purchase of stock was part of a settlement between Apple and Microsoft, which included ending long-running litigation, cross-licensing of patents, MS committing to continue selling Office for Mac and Apple promising to bundle IE.
The only "fanboys" related to this story are the MS fanboys of today who fail at both math and history, and think MS was some sort of white knight.
What saved Apple was buying NeXT. That one purchase essentially solved all of Apple's pressing problems.
Do please explain how a $150 million purchase of stock saved Apple.
What saved Apple was cutting their costs and selling things at a profit. Also, Apple's expenditures for 1997 included $384 million to purchase NeXT (which is ultimately what saved Apple). Their revenues were fine (well over a billion dollars per quarter). Their margins were fine. What wasn't fine was their expenditures.
These expenditures were manageable, which is exactly what Apple did to return to profitability.
They were *NEVER* at a point in the '90s where $150 million was all that stood between them and bankruptcy.
You're the idiot who keeps asserting that Apple was on the verge of financial collapse in 1997 without providing any evidence. You're the one who keeps stating that Apple needed the money. You're the one who keeps talking about Apple's "balance sheets". You have provided absolutely no proof whatsoever to back up your assertion.
From Apple's SEC filing for 1997:
The Company's consolidated financial position with respect to cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, net of notes payable to banks, decreased to $1,434 million as of September 26, 1997, from $1,559 million as of September 27, 1996.
You keep claiming that Apple needed the $150 million, without any evidence whatsoever. As usual, arguing from ignorance. At the time MS bought $150 million in AAPL stock, Apple had over $1 billion in cash. Actual spending money. If, for some reason, they actually needed $150 million, they had sufficient credit that they could have borrowed it.
Microsoft didn't bail Apple out. They settled a long standing lawsuit with Apple, that included claims of MS stealing code from Apple's QuickTime. How you can't understand how settlements works is astonishing.
I'm not picking out each and every point you've made because arguing semantics in words is going off the topic of discussion and there aren't enough hours in the day to deal with that.
Yeah, don't quote what I wrote or anything, just ramble on like normal, making shit up out of thin air.
I can't really blame you, though. That's exactly what I would do if I wanted to make an argument about something of which I was completely ignorant, and if I had no sense of honesty.
The fact is that Apple will do what the music industry tells it to do because Apple making money from music sales is clearly important to Apple's business model. When you are an absolute colossus as a sales channel, like Wal-Mart in the US or Tesco here in the UK, then you have enough power and mass to dictate to your suppliers how much product you want and at what price.
iTunes is big, granted, but it is by no means the only sales channel, especially when you consider not just download sales but also physical media sellers as well. Therefore, Apple needs the music industry more than the music industry needs Apple.
Aside from the fact that Apple sells more music than any other retailer, the RIAA cannot dictate to Apple that they have to try to trap pirates. Apple *CAN'T POSSIBLY* agree to that. That would utterly destroy Apple.
How do you think negotiations work anyway? Do you think the labels all come to Apple and just dictate terms? Or vice versa?
This piracy honey-pot idea is something Apple can not possibly agree to, so even if the RIAA or the individual labels might *want* such a thing, they will have to accept that it cannot be required if they actually want to make a deal.
With regard to those people like me who buy CDs, unless I was extremely paranoid that I would lose my CD collection through a house fire or burglary (despite having house contents insurance also), then what POSSIBLE use could iCloud have for me such that I wanted to hand over good money for the service?
$25/year buys you backup and remote access to your music that you didn't buy from iTunes. You keep acting like this is both a lot of money and something no CD buying person could possibly want.
Let's assume I did subscribe to that service, what's likely to happen? Presumably, I need to put each and every CD I own such that iCloud can read the ID from it in order to obtain some degree of proof that I own it.
As usual, you are incorrect. You keep arguing from ignorance, yet never seem to grasp that making shit up doesn't make something real.
The economics of downloadable music *ONLY* works in the first place if you are the sort of person that wants "pick n mix" music - i.e. one or two tracks from an album. If you buy the whole album as download, then the chances are it works out more expensive than buying the physical CD - and the one major reason why, as an album listener, I have no interest in the greater expense (and greater lossiness) of downloadable music.
It would be interesting to see statistics from iTunes, Amazon or whoever that show what percentage of their downloadable music sales are full albums, but I suggest the percentage is very low compared to sales of indvidual tracks because of the poorer value offered against physical CDs.
Um, by definition it will be low, since you *CAN'T* buy individual tracks from a CD the way you can on iTunes. CD singles have always been priced to be a poor value. However, none of what you wrote here implies people buy CDs won't find a value in using iCloud.
What I am leading to is the point that there are very few musicphiles out there who, as traditional CD buyers, will have reverted to downloadable music in the first place - I suggest to you, again, in the absence of statistics, that the people who buy individual tracks are those who either don't take music too seriously (and therefore bough
The only thing I really disagree with is the "pre-emptive" part. The summary at the top of the page bashes MS.
The fact that Apple *DID* take the money suggests that they needed it very badly, and that in turn suggests that they took that money because of cashflow problems.
How does it suggest any such thing? It wasn't a GIFT. It was a part of a settlement to end a long running lawsuit. It was a PURCHASE of AAPL stock by MS, in a deal which had both sides making agreements in exchange with each other.
Apple had BILLIONS of dollars IN CASH the day the deal between Apple and MS was settled. They were not in imminent danger of going under. Apple had enough money to coast for YEARS. $150 million never made an impact on this.
If you read the balance sheets of Apple in 1997, they talk about $1.2 billion in income but how much of that was used up in outgoings or used to cover losses elsewhere in the company is not clear.
Exactly. You are, as usual, posting from pure ignorance. Apple had BILLIONS of dollars. You are acting like Apple needed this money. They didn't.
What they needed was to stop warring with MS and to start making great products again, which is exactly what they did. If you think Apple wouldn't have been able to exist long enough to make Mac OS X, iMacs, MacBooks, iPods, iPhones, and iPads, were it not for the $150 million dollar purchase of AAPL that MS made, you're a fool.
pff I guess you forget history then. Apple was going down the tubes at the time. Their OS was buggy, the computers ran on dated power pc chips which simply couldnt compete, and pretty much everyone who wasnt a graphics designer did not want to use a mac. It looked very much like apple would die, and then microsoft came in and gave them all that money. A few years later the ipod and OSX was born, and they went to intel chips as well.
None of which depended on that relative pittance.
I remember the articles at the time. I remember thinking that microsoft was throwing a bone to apple, so that they wouldn't be considered a monopoly. Not sure if you were in the industry at that time, but it was a common perception. And a correct one. Apple would have surely died if not for microsoft cash in their hour of need.
How so? Apple had actual BILLIONS of dollars in CASH. You and the idiot who started this subthread seems to think this was MS floating Apple a loan so they could pay their bills.
Had this $150 million never been paid (it was actually a purchase of stock, which is not the same thing), Apple would have done just fine.
They were in a death spiral in the late 90s, written off and left for dead by all but the most rabid macophiles. The computer wars were over and PC's won.
Not to say that similar to not taking all your antibiotics, the disease came back hard with the iphone and such. But I can't imagine anyone denying that it looked very bleak for a while for them.
No one said it wasn't bleak. Just that the idea MS "bailed out" Apple is utter nonsense.
Making your customers afraid to use your product for fear of being sued is *not* a stupid idea?
If you are going to constantly stalk my comments, I *DO* wish you'd at least make an attempt to read and digest them.
Hey, dumbfuck. YOU replied to ME.
My core point, once again for the clearly learning impaired, is that the music industry in *DESPERATE* to sell more product due to their perception that piracy is killing their sales.
Your "core point" was in reply to my post, where you started it off by saying:
There is actually a very good motivation and it is not as stupid an idea as you think.
In response to me asking:
That doesn't answer the question. What motivation would Apple have to agree to something like that? It's completely absurd.
So, your point is just aimless, off-topic rambling then? Or was I to take it as a response to my question, as any sane person would do?
iCloud is *Apple's* product, not the music industry's product. Apple pays the industry for their product, which is licensing of the music. Why would Apple destroy their product by making their customers afraid to use it?
That's kind of the same as me saying I've just opened a butcher's shop to sell meat products but not having any suppliers for meat. iCloud exists because the music industry makes product that can utilise it.
What the hell are you talking about? I pointed out that Apple has a supplier. It's right there in the part you quoted! I've bolded it for you for good measure.
As for making their customers afraid to use it? Where did *THAT* deduction come from? Let's get it clear, Apple *NEEDS* the music industry so it can "stock" iTunes and iCloud, not the other way around.
This entire slashdot story is about iCloud being used to sue customers. Where do you *THINK* this deduction came from?
Yes, iTunes is a big music sales channel, I'm not denying it for one minute, but so are Amazon and others.
And how iCloud "couldn't ever appeal to a CD buyer" is unclear. In fact, the $25/year add-on is specifically *designed* for CD buyers (among other groups)!
Well, I'm sorry but as a CD buyer I cannot think of a use for such a service, whether or not it's provided by Apple.
Sorry, I never meant to imply you had much of an imagination. But even so, it can't take much imagination to see why a service that stores your CD rips in the cloud is meant to appeal to people who have CDs to rip. You said that iCloud "couldn't ever appeal to a CD buyer", which is laughably absurd. That's exactly who it's aimed at, and I think it's fair to say Apple will have more than a few customers.
Hard disks and RAID drives are cheap
Cheaper than $25/year? And that's not even what iCloud is. It's not local storage for the user. In fact, it's pretty much the exact opposite of that.
in many cases ripping a CD is as simple as popping it into the PC optical drive and letting it get on with it until it spits it out.
Yes, and iCloud is predicated on this having happened first. What do you think the iCloud matching service actually is?
And when it's ripped, I stick the CD on a shelf as its own backup and carry about a small portable hard disk with my music on. The hard disk lets me access my music whether or not I have an Internet connection and it's not going to take many months of renting the iCloud service to exceed the cost of a portable hard disk.
$25/year.
Finally, the iCloud service exists only as long as I pay a rental fee and Apple provide that service. If that service discontinues, or suffers a service outage. then access to my music stops - unless I have a local copy of it in which case why would I use iCl
I don't think it said anywhere that the upload was the illegal part. It's just a means for pirated data to be detected.
I'm not familiar with any lawsuits over the possesion of illegal music either (as opposed to sharing), but it's hardly a jump to assume that a court, when given evidence that someone has illegal data, would just think "It must have magically appeared!" instead of thinking it was shared (and hence still valid for a lawsuit).
Who said they'll just think, "it must have magically appeared!"?
They've only sued the sharers, not the downloaders. It's definitely a huge jump to think they will start now, and even huger still to think Apple will help them do this!
Which is not illegal to do, and won't happen anyway.
at this point you are proving to be either ill-informed, or sitting in the RDF (both?). there is little hope in helping you understand the gravity and the possibilities; bummer.
Let's put that quote in context, shall we?
Person B uploads his music collection to iCloud.
Which is not illegal to do, and won't happen anyway. iTunes music will be matched, not uploaded.
It is *NOT* illegal to upload your music to iCloud, even if that music was not legally acquired. Second, it *won't* happen, because you were talking about iTunes purchases, and iTunes purchases are matched, not uploaded.
But even *if* iTunes purchases get uploaded, or even if we include the scope to non-iTunes purchases, it's not illegal to upload them to this service! Cite one example of *anyone* being sued for merely *having* a pirated song. The lawsuits you are thinking of are for sharing them, not possessing them.
What user information is that, exactly? Apple will only have a list of what songs you have (it's not illegal to have a song)
Yeah, but Apple doesn't have to prove the songs are illegal.
Apple has no interesting in proving the songs are illegal. In fact, they have a very strong interest in not making their customers fearful that such a thing might happen as a result of being a customer.
The whole point of the program is the assumption that you are replacing illegally obtained songs with good, clean songs. Just by signing up you are admitting guilt.
What? I must have missed that part of the keynote.
So the user information would be names and contact information, a list of illegal songs you used their service to replace, and admission of guilt in the form of the TOS of the program you signed up for. All of the lawyers' work is done for them.
What illegal songs? When has the RIAA *ever* gone after someone for simply *having* a song? The lawsuits you are thinking of were for *sharing* the songs. iTunes Match isn't a song sharing service, nor does it contain a way to determine who has and who has not shared which songs.
spell out the process for you:
Person A downloads album from iTunes. the songs are watermarked with personally-identifiable metadata that indicate to Apple who bought them (this is current fact, not speculation).
Not quite. It has the user's email address in a tag which is easily removed.
Person A shares the album using favorite method with Person B (which is illegal for Person A to do).
Person B uploads his music collection to iCloud.
Which is not illegal to do, and won't happen anyway. iTunes music will be matched, not uploaded.
one year goes by
RIAA subpoenas Apple for the metadata, and records of who bought what.
On what grounds?
Apple happily complies, as it isn't interested in the legal costs involved with a privacy battle it will lose.
Bullshit. Were Apple to "happily comply", the company would end. Even if they eventually complied after kicking and screaming, the company would be severely damaged.
RIAA parses the data, finds Person A illegally shared the album, adds them to the "to be sued" list.
No, that's *not* what they will have found.
the only way to avoid this situation would be if apple edited the music files that are updated to iCloud, laundering them for the customer. this won't happen because a) their RIAA contacts would have a fit, b) they would have to inform the public that their "stored" data is being altered -which they haven't - and c) it is an extra cost they just don't want.
Um, no, that's not the "only way to avoid this situation". This situation is all but impossible to begin with. You don't understand the law, you don't understand Apple's business model. You, honestly, don't appear to understand much of anything.
What data do you think Apple is going to keep that will endanger their users?
This is nothing more than nerd paranoia combined with nerd Apple hate. It's not going to happen. It's all but impossible.
Apple essentially has to play ball and turn over the data or break the law and try to stare down the U.S. court system.
Let's imagine Apple really fucks this whole thing up so bad that they end up in this position. That their deal with the labels don't prevent this, and the data they keep somehow has the ability to incriminate their users, and the RIAA decides to piss off their single-most important customer.
So, let's just throw reason to the wind and take this absurd possibility seriously for a moment. If this ever did happen, you can bet your life on the fact that Apple will fight this in the courts (and out of the courts) harder than they've ever fought anything. That's because something like this would have the potential to actually end Apple. It would not simply be Apple having "nothing but the best interest for their customers", but an existential crisis.
Which is why I think this is getting such play on Slashdot. It's nothing more than Apple disaster porn.
Um, no. I'm talking about actual liquid assets and liquid investments. Apple had actual billions of dollars that they could spend at that time.
The $150 million had very little impact on Apple and wasn't even *remotely* akin to a "bailout". It was a settlement agreement to end a long-standing lawsuit.
it is a little naïve to assume apple hasn't considered this
Um, if you mean something like:
Person A: "Let's see, can we make money from this in other ways?"
Person B: "How about selling out our users?"
Person A: "Nope, that's retarded. Any other ideas?"
Then, sure, *maybe* Person B was high enough or something to have come up with the idea for half a second. Otherwise, no. It's all but completely impossible that Apple ever seriously considered the idea.
it is a lot naïve to assume that RIAA and the current content producer-friendly presidential administration (and courts) won't consider capitalizing by subpoenaing user information
What user information is that, exactly? Apple will only have a list of what songs you have (it's not illegal to have a song) and the files you have uploaded to the server (again, which are not illegal to have). And, in fact, Apple (unlike Google or Amazon--hey, where's the "it's a trap!" nonsense about them?) actually has a deal with the labels. A deal which you can be certain does not include a clause which opens their customers to lawsuits.
The only naivety here is in thinking that Apple would ever implement something so abysmally stupid. However, this being Slashdot, naivety (a very generous word) regarding Apple is not only standard, but highly rewarded.