Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

nullphonic

nullphonic

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5548240/

I'm gathering that the iPod was supposed to be a 'closed' product to facilitate the purchase of their (Apple) software products only (in this case, music). Now he's tripping.

This just came out so I haven't formed a complete opinion, curios what others thought.
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

Yeah, that's interesting. I know that within the last year the Prez of Real tried to sell Real to Apple. Steve Jobs made the e-mailed proposition public and balked at their offer.

Hmmm...™  ???

Guess there's some bad blood there along with some monopolistic intentions (?).
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

I would think that compatilbility would be a benefit and incentive.
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

I tried iMusic [so I could legally pay for any music I downloaded] downloaded some songs and tried to burn them to a CD “not-gonna-happen,” and you need an iPod if you want to play them on an MP3 player.

Apple has great products – but they suck! I guess its hard to argue with success even if they only have about 4% marketshare. >:(
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

[quote author=ChuckS link=board=Offtopic;num=1091117899;start=0#3 date=07/29/04 at 11:56:35]I tried iMusic [so I could legally pay for any music I downloaded] downloaded some songs and tried to burn them to a CD “not-gonna-happen,” and you need an iPod if you want to play them on an MP3 player.

Apple has great products – but they suck!  I guess its hard to argue with success even if they only have about 4% marketshare.  >:(
[/quote]

This isnt true thugh, i dont know whybthat happened but music bought off iTunes can be burned I think 4 times to cds.

As far as Jobs pulling a Gates, i suppose thats an accetable comparison, but the difference is that Microsoft control of the market has allowed them to simply release inferior products fro the very begining. Apple has always produced superior software and hardware, so I'd only buy there stuff anyway.

The only reason i can see to go with MS IS there market control, not the product its self. You wanna play games or use certain business software u have to go with MS. Fortunatly. Virtual pc allows me to use all the bsiness software i want on my Mac and all of the big pc games are releaced on macs now, with more smaller companies following suit.

Anyway sry, MS pisses me off lol
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

You can burn a playlist in iTunes 7 times (unchanged). This is to avoid someone duping off 100 discs and selling them. Other than that, iTunes is incredible. I suppose that's why they've sold 100,000,000+ songs so far.

ChuckS, just because of a low marketshare doesn't reflect a product's quality. Think of it more as an "elite" product. There aren't as many Ferrari's out there as Hyundai's now are there...?

NOTE: Don't start some mac vs pc flamefest. If anyone does, my head will explode and you will receive the dreaded Mexican-Dull-Spatula-Technique.
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

[quote author=Kai link=board=Offtopic;num=1091117899;start=0#5 date=07/29/04 at 14:41:58]You can burn a playlist in iTunes 7 times (unchanged). This is to avoid someone duping off 100 discs and selling
NOTE: Don't start some mac vs pc flamefest. If anyone does, my head will explode and you will receive the dreaded Mexican-Dull-Spatula-Technique.[/quote]

lol sry kai, I aplogize
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

[quote author=Kai link=board=Offtopic;num=1091117899;start=0#5 date=07/29/04 at 14:41:58]NOTE: Don't start some mac vs pc flamefest. If anyone does, my head will explode and you will receive the dreaded Mexican-Dull-Spatula-Technique.[/quote]

Yeah, I DEFINITELY didn't want to do that (or have whatever that is applied to me :o), I just thought that Real pulling that was sort of inevitable and the "Apple Reaction" (that sounds like a movie) was monopolistic (thanks for the word Terry  ;)).
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

WSJ and The Post both report that denying REAL access to the DRM for iPod is a good idea, and that REAL's desperation shows up in their doing what is actionable in court (according to the opinion of WSJ, I have no idea).

The bad blood stems from G2 by REAL. At that time, Apple had finished the work on getting MPEG-4 up and running on QT and was pushing open formats for media to control music, video, and the like. They tried to get REAL to come on board since MS was set to release a version of MPEG-4 designed to be incompatible with the open standards, and hobble it so that their own WMV would become the choice on the PC platform. REAL balked, and you got G2 not being compatible with Quicktime.

REAL though screwed itself out of a win then because QT turned out to be popular for anything requiring quality (movie promos get done in it a lot) MPEG-4 became popular for good quality pedestrian downloads (porns mostly) and WMV was popular because it ran on PCs. REAL had no niche in which to slide.

Now, REAL is about done, as MPEG-4 is blooming, QT is stable for high quality stuff, and WMV of course has a monopoly behind it. Music is the one place where their model is working. MS wont play ball and cannot be defeated, so REAL turns its sites on someone whose coat tails they can ride.

Steve Jobs apparently never forgets. According to WSJ, the REAL offer ammounted to corporate welfare, basically you give us your DRM and we will sell songs and let you sell iPods or else we will take you down with us. The problem is that REAL doesn't sell as many songs in a year as ITMS sells in a week, and has no leverage, and no other player has anywhere near the market power that iPod has. Apple apparently always planned to license the DRM in the future once iPod sales and ITMS are solid, but has no desire to have another company blackmail it into releasing.

It is tough because an open DRM would be perfect, and no other product, not even the Sony release, comes close to iPod. But everyone I think is scared of when the MS juggernaut releases its big dog. They have the ability, controlling the OS, to break anyone elses DRM and make theirs the last one standing on the PC platform (as they did with browsers) and MS is already supposedly in the works with its "pay for play" software, which you pay for each time you launch (if they can ever get micropayments worked out) which would be similar to its system of paying for songs each time you spun the disk and movies each time you viewed the movie, which is different than the iTMS model of permenant ownership. But people may like (in the beginning) this model since you pay something like 1 cent to play a song, 50 cents to burn a song, and so forth, making iTMS 98 cents more expensive in some people's minds.
 
Re: Steve Jobs pulling a Bill Gates? Kinda?

excellent post Slap... Very informative!
 
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