Zane sent me this article: http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1082142779.html which claims that Apple turning down a relationship with Real is similar to their refusal to license its operating system to other hardware vendors, which many claim is the reason that Apple lost market share in the late 80s and early 90s while IBM clones sprang up all of the place making for a cheap and bundant environment for Microsoft to spread it’s evil seed.
I think the analogy isn’t great. It might be sort of similar from a business point of view, but in terms of technology and user choice, it’s not at all. The iPod can play any old mp3, mp4, wav, or aiff, and they aren’t trying very hard to lock out hackers (people are putting custom stuff, including linux, on ipods). Same with iTunes… there is a Windows version and it plays all the formats from any source.
With the iPod and the iTunes Music Store (ITMS), Apple is #1 in terms of user experience quality, sound quality, AND market share. Which was not the case when they were refusing hardware clones.
Also the whole iPod/iTunes/ITMS system is very flexible. they can adjust their price structure and interoperability at any time.
Not to mention that the whole digital media scene is going to change a lot over the next five years or so, and maybe I am naive, but I get the feeling that Apple is trying to be as unevil as possible while still making money. They do have copy protection built into their ITMS files, and don’t allow anything but iTunes or an iPod to play ITMS files (unless of course you burn them to CD first, then you can do whatever you want with them). But they did build music sharing over a network directly into iTunes, which is potentially a partial “solution” to stealing of copyrighted files. Also they have signed a good number of independent artists to distribute through the ITMS. Don’t get me wrong, I think the music industry is pretty much completely evil and I condone the stealing of music that is distributed by any of the big five. (For more info, see http://www.downhillbattle.org and http://www.whatacrappypresent.com).
But back to the issues of closed platforms and partnerships with other companies. Even with OS X, it is pretty much widely accepted that they have a x86 version sitting around ready if they need it. This is probably the case with all the i-applications too. And my guess is
they even have elaborate xcode support for seamless multi-target development, maybe even with single-binary deployment (if you are running Mac OS X, control-click on any application and select “Show Package Contents”; the apps are structured to contain binaries
and resources for multiple platforms).
Also, Real? I don’t know the numbers but my feeling for a long time has been that they are a flailing company with bad products. The user experience is certainly pretty terrible, at least on OS X. When I have a choice between Real and Microsoft media, I choose Microsoft.
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