Apple Upset at Real Audio

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by Pangloss, Jul 30, 2004.

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  1. Pangloss More 'pop' than a Google IPO! Registered Senior Member

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    Apple is all upset because the "Real Audio" guys hacked the iPod and now provides a music downloading service for it.

    http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/07/29/realharmony/

    What's so funny about this to me is that Apple and its fans think that competition is the bee's knees when PROMOTING Apple, but when someone decides to COMPETE with Apple, oh no, we can't have that!
     
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  3. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    well, the point behind Apple getting pissed is that the DMCA (a law passed at the behest of the WTO) has been outlawing just this sort of thing for a while now. Now, there is a clause in the DMCA which allows for the reverse engineering of products for the sake of "software compatability", but that really hasn't been exersized much.

    Is Apple Pissed at this? Of course. Why? Because Apple's main selling point is the integration between the hardware and the software. If people go out, buy and iPod, download some tracks from the Real store, and for some reason, they don't work on the iPod, then APple is most likely going to get the support call.
    Any company which is relying on the quality of their service in order to sell hardware is going to cringe when a competitor moves into their support area, possibly damaging their product reputation.

    However, I am on Real's side on this issue. The DMCA is a horrible, horrible law, and needs to be removed from the books ASAP. Do you think that IBM was happy when the PC was reverse engineered, and clones were popping up everywhere? What would the world be like today if the US courts had sided with IBM, and stopped cloning in its tracks?
    I feel that reverse engineering is a fact of life, and while I hate Real as a company (for past buisness practices), and I love Apple's products, I think that Real should be allowed to make their Harmony product. Apple should likewise feel free to break Real's Harmony product in their next firmware update if they wish.
    If Apple wants the iTMS to be the major market leader, then they should leverage the popularity of the iPod, and keep everything locked together. If Apple wants to sell iPods, then Apple should suport MS's Janus DRM, allowing the iPod to work with Music Match, Napster, and Real's Store.
    That said, the varying liscences in that arena is just a mess - the work needed to properly support all of the different liscencing schemes would be ugly.
    Having used all the stores up right now, the iTMS is by far still the best, and I think Apple should try and leverage it's advantage a while longer. IMO, however, they should liscense Fairplay within the next year - hopefully before Janus is released. Otherwise, MS bundling it's music store with XP SP2 and Longhorn will push iTunes to the corner of the market, just as Netscape was pushed out by IE.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2004
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