Comments on: Moving beyond the iPod

The iPod blazed a trail, but MediaNet Digital CEO Alan McGlade asks how much longer Apple's closed-technology approach can last.

[MaLvaDo39]

Back it up!

What's so locked in the iPod/iTunes world?
Care to explain it? You seem to state it so matter-of-factly but
provide no back up.

Also, you should clarify iTunes and the iTunes Store within
iTunes. They are separate.

To get to my point- There is no lock in - period.

Here's why-
1. You can use an iPod and NEVER use the iTunes Store.
I am case in point here. I burn all my CDs down into the
software and even have other online store options to download
to my iPod. My CDs are imported as MP3, AAC, and some other
choices. I choose AAC because it's OPEN and superior
compression. (for those nay-sayers, you're probably going to
argue Apple DRM. But that's called FairPlay, that's a different
subject and only from the iTunes STORE not your open and
clean CD imports)
2. You can use the iTunes Store and NEVER use an iPod.
Download music, share it on your network, or even burn it to a
CD and play it anywhere in the world like your car, your home
stereo, your portable CD player... now that's open.

Then you fall into the trap of other players with superior specs.
Customer know a spec sheet isn't the whole story. iPods have
the market for strong hardware PLUS superior software =
iTunes software; NOT THE STORE WITHIN IT. (I hammer on this
point because they are separate pieces)

Finally, here comes the iPod Touch... game changes, Apple
innovates, no one is coming close to this in the digital player
market and will take a few years for competitors to figure out
what to do.

Please, rewrite your rough draft and get us the final paper on
this no later than Friday noon eastern time.

[lkrupp]

Don't bother

People like the author of this hatchet job are a dime-a-dozen.
Talk about a backhanded compliment. Give Apple some credit
for carving out new markets with extremely innovative products
and then pompously announce that they are irrelevant in the
grand scheme of things. How quaint of him to claim that mp3
players were going to become popular eventually anyway.
Anyone care to guess where the market would be today without
the iPod's existence in the first place.

Just another "yeah but" apologist for mediocrity. Move along
boys and girls. Nothing new here at all.

[protagonistic]

RE: Back it up!

Forgive the author for he is clueless. Apple has never been about
being on the bleeding edge. Their forte has been to take
existing technology and put it in an attractive package. And for
the icing on the cake, people can actually figure out how to use
it without carrying around a ten pound manual.

Some people just can't get over that fact that they are irrelevant
in the grand scheme of things. :-)

[rawhead909]

Clueless beyond salvation

The author of this article is so clueless I just had to comment. I
mean, COME ON!!! (GOB style). The iPod-iTunes "lock in" is a
myth. Not only can you buy music from iTunes Music Store and
enjoy it without ever owning an iPod, now with iTunes Plus, you
can download and load the higher bitrate, non-DRM'd files on
player that supports AAC. Clearly that's the direction they are
heading, and I wouldn't be surprised if in 2 years from now, all
the offerings from iTunes were non-DRM'd. What's stopping
them doing that now?

Surprise surprise, it's not Apple, but the record companies! So
complain to them about the closed nature of DRM'd music, not
Apple. On the other end, you can load your iPod with music
bought from any number of sites that offer non-DRM music, the
newly opened Amazon MP3 store included.

So, what lock-in again?

This article is so desperate it's laughable, it almost makes me
suspect you get your check from Microsoft or some other rival
maker that manufactures DAPs ;-)

[rcrusoe]

The author isn't clueless

He's a competitor of Apple's iTunes that hopes that someone will
eventually design a music player, etc. that can eat into the iPod's
market share. This, IMO, is just another case of marketing
thinly disguised as opinion.

"MediaNet provides back-end technology and licensed content
to preeminent digital music services including Yahoo! Music,
MTV?s Urge, Virgin, HMV, Samsung and Microsoft?s Zune, among
others. "

http://mixonline.com/mixline/musicnet-medianet-
digital-080407/

[lenrooney]

Great

Alan McGlade of MediaNet Digital, which pushes Windows-only
WMA solutions, first damns Apple with faint praise and then goes
on to tell us how he thinks the iPod and iTMS is about cave in
because people want freedom from lock-in.

Come back when you're not Windows only.

[williamQ]

Ridiculous anti-iPod FUD

A poorly conceived & written attack piece -- full of errors and
misconceptions. Whose payroll is this guy on?

[samkass]

MediaNet's

"Whose payroll is this guy on?"

He's on MediaNet's payroll, who build back-end systems for the Zune and Yahoo music sites, among others. Yes, this is a completely biased, un-factual "article" that c|net threw up on their site probably without any vetting.

[close5828]

Mac NeoCons

I swear...Mac zealots are the NeoCons of the computer world. If anyone even 'questions' Apple, it's seen as FUD or Pro-MS composure.

[davau]

Unfettered World

The whole premise of this article seems to be based upon, or at
least can be summarized by the excerpt, "...proprietary lockout
of the iPod and iTunes". I for one, and I believe many (millions)
more do not see iTunes as limiting in any way.

The author paints a picture where music consumers will be able
to take their music anywhere and listen at anytime - with no
shackles. He argues that there is some missing element that
when it arrives on scene we will all have reached music panacea.

I can already play my music anywhere and at anytime. No matter
how much music we have in a "...open-source world of
unfettered entertainment..." we WILL require a way to organize
all this content, only more so as time goes on. There is nothing
constraining about iTunes and the way it helps to organize and
maintain order in this unfettered space. The author might
remind readers that iTunes is agnostic. It doesn't care much
about where music or even cover art, for that matter, came from.

[mattumanu]

You sound like...

You sound just like those people who used to trumpet the joys and wonders of AOL's proprietary browser and software package. I used to tell them how wonderful it was to turn on a computer, have an internet connection that wasn't tethered to some proprietary client, and the only thing that runs is what I SAY will run...

Apple's iTunes will go the same way soon enough. If you haven't tried Amazon's answer to iTunes, you need to. It's fantastic.

[flipbird]

Consumers vs. Users

Users willing to tinker with the hardware are no longer the
majority of PC buyers. Haven't been for a while! Crack the box
on an MP3 player? Won't happen, except in Hackerville and
techie reviews. The consumer, "user" if you insist, who drives
profits and stock earnings wants something to work out of the
box, and to keep working the way it did, wait for it...

out of the box.

As for features and convergence, can you say iPhone? The
complaints about the iPhone have come from early adopters,
who are a haxsie bunch. Use-it-as-it-comes consumers have
been, and will be very happy with it. As time goes by,
consumers will outnumber hackers, hands down. Which group
are shareholders most worried about?

[davidwb45011]

Who pays this clown's paycheck?

Two arguments made by this author reveal either his
cluelessness or his agenda in working for an Apple competitor.
First, that Apple is creating a self-contained music system much
like the Macintosh is self-contained.

It is easy to look at the iPod, iTunes software, and iTunes store
and conclude the environment is closed. After all, an iPod owner
could conceivably enjoy a life of music without ever leaving the
Apple store. And, of course, Apple supports no DRM other than
its own nor licenses its own DRM to anyone else. Sure, that looks
closed, doesn't it?

The author also drags out the old locked-in argument - once the
consumer has bought iTunes music he/she is stuck with an iPod
because the music only plays on an iPod. Logical, right?

Of course not. If the iPod were a closed environment users
wouldn't be able to buy their music anywhere but from the
iTunes store. Look around folks - we know that isn't true. Less
than 5% of my own music is from the iTunes store...while nearly
20% is from eMusic and 10% from Amazon's MP3 store - all
online competitors with Apple's store. And let us not forget the
artists who sell their tracks through their own websites. Then
there are those round plastic things...you remember CDs, right?
That's where most of my music came from.

And locked in? Even if all my music were locked down with
Apple's DRM there are plenty of ways for me to concert the
music into formats that other MP3 players will play.

And finally, anyone who thinks that Steve Jobs is sitting back
content with what he has accomplished thus far just doesn't
understand the man at all. At least as long as Jobs is leading
Apple the iPod will lead the music industry.

[Ghillo]

You are a clown

Are you an Apple employee? Or fanboys are completely brainwashed indeed? Don't you understand that
1) Music purchased on iTunes can only be played on iPods
2) The other music you purchased is not DRM restricted, at the moment a very small fraction of the whole music catalog
There is a HUGE difference between the Mackintosh world and what Apple has done with music.
Music, song, tracks don't belong to Apple but you get locked in anyway. It's not like building a proprietary system ground up, the lock is in the playing the content.
So a sexy device can blind million of people, that now can play music only on that device!
Congratulations to the author of this article, especially in a website like CNET that is oftern very biased pro Apple, probably because Apple products bring in a lot of traffic, so ads and money.

[august29of73]

Ah actually ....

Dude, you so need to do some fact checking before writing an Opt Ed piece!!! I can't believe I am seeing such an irresponsible journalistic piece on a CNET site.

As an Old School Mac Fan from way back in the day -- I used an Apple IIe in High School -- I don't think it is harsh to point out that this article is full of assumptions and balderdash opinions.

The Fact is that the GUI desktop was not actually first on the Mac platform. True it first became popular on the Mac, but the guys at Zerox were the first to have a GUI Desktop Computer. Steve Jobs has been clear on this point, as he actually checked out what Zerox was doing prior to getting the GUI Desktop running on a Mac!!

[Len Bullard]

Nope. Not Xerox Either.

Nope. It wasn't Xerox either. It was Doug Englebart at Stanford a decade earlier. Also look up Ivan Sutherland.

With all of the information available, search engines and thus, the web culture remains misinformed, superstitious, and fanatically emotional over the most trivial of technologies.

Predictable.

[Draxon]

sigh.. maybe you should read the article

Xeroex may have "invented" a mouse and GUI but they trashed it Xerox NEVER sold a single mouse before apple. They may have had some in their Labs but apple was first to market like a good lil pirate.

[jcwestbrook]

Ah Actually .... Part 2

It was Xerox Parc - a research arm of Xerox - that developed what is considered the first GUI interface on their Alto computer. And both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs saw it before developing their own GUI interfaces. And when Apple tried to sue Microsoft for stealing their GUI - Xerox sued Apple for stealing it in the first place. The court ruled that, yes, Apple had heavily borrowed from Xerox but Xerox had waited too long to file suit and lost.

[rfsnyder2752]

Maybe the next gen will also be Apple

It's all-so-easy to say the Leader will fall off the mountain some day. Because they always do. The very same words could have been written about SONY Walkman. Everyone, including Apple, is searching for the "next iPOD." No one has it yet. And everyone knows the real problem, which we aren't dealing with, is the RIAA and Hollywood. Their greed is strangling all of us. We need to unite as users and as an industry against their fetters.

[kenohki]

It's The Software Stupid

This guy completely forgets that the ecosystem surrounding the
iPod, including iTunes and the Music Store are some of the main
reason's for the success of the iPod. The iPod/iTunes combination
provided a consistent user experience (including consistent track
pricing in iTMS) and interoperability that was better than the Plays
for Sure devices. This guy thinks that apple just added some
chrome to the hardware but I think he's missing the point.

[DevTop]

True, but iPod is now open

I agree that the superior Macintosh failed to live up to its potential because of its closed system. This too could threaten the iPod's hold on the MP3 market with its proprietary AAC song format. But Apple just announced 99-cent DRM-free songs, meaning the iPod system is no longer proprietary and closed. Given the iPod's superior end-to-end user experience, I believe the iPod will continue to dominate the MP3 market for years to come.

[tundraboy]

Mac: Not the closed system but the insanely high pricing

I remember in '84 getting all excited about the Mac and then seeing the price tag and saying forget it. Latest mythology says it's boffo soda pop salesman Sculley who insisted on this profits-today-market-share-be-damned strategy. So the Mac never got the critical installed mass that any platform needs to succeed.

I mean does a soda pop peddlar really understand what an innovation-intensive industry is all about? Add a little artificial cherry flavoring and change the shape of the bottle - that's innovation for you in the soda pop industry.

[close5828]

iPod isn't open, neither is Mac

...it is closed off to those who cannot afford a $1100 notebook, or a $700 computer w/out a screen. You can tell me of the benefits of a BMW, Mercedes, but a Kia does essentially the same thing (albeit less elegantly). Even Dell, Toshiba, or HP offer machines at price levels from $300+ for Desktops and $400+ for Notebooks.

Tell me where I'm wrong here....anyone?

Also, iTunes is offering 99c DRM-free tracks....wooptiedoo. So 'iTunes' is now open, but the iPod is still closed only to iTunes. That's fine, I like iTunes (even if it sucks under Vista), but don't say that the iPod is open when you can't use it with any other software or service available.

Until I can unlock all my DRM'd iTMS tracks, it is a 'closed system'.

[GGGlen]

Google is your friend

How is it, that what, after FIVE YEARS of iPod, someone can STILL
spout off about Apple and "its proprietary AAC song format"?
Dude... AAC is a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, NON-APPLE, NON
PROPRIETARY CODEC. AAC is the successor to MP3, and it is
ROYALTY FREE.
Got it?
Sheesh!

[daveworld]

Author misinformed

Apple started selling DRM-Free music from EMI in April and currently have over 2 million DRM-Free songs in the iTunes store. If iTunes was such a closed environment they would not offer anything DRM-Free, that can be played on other devices. The industry is slowly moving DRM-Free and Apple with over 2 Million DRM-Free songs seems to be leading the way, again.

And why no mention of the record labels? If they were so willing to offer unfettered digital music from the beginning, we would not be complaining about Apple. They (The Labels) played a huge role in the direction of this digital revolution and to not mention them shows the author's lack of knowledge on this subject. They were the ones that wanted DRM - Apple (Jobs) from the begging knew it would not work. A good read from a Rolling Stones Interview: http://www.keystonemac.com/pdfs/Steve_Jobs_Interview.pdf

[Thomas, David]

Another Shyster?

All I can say is, everyone check your wallets before this guy leaves
the room. Vague comment, sure, but this article does not deserve
more than the truth. He's selling something, and it isn't the truth.

[Draxon]

"No wirelesss, less space than a nomad.. LAME"

There have been Digital music players with "more space and more features" as you claim since BEFORE the iPod.

Look at the nomad when the iPod came out, it had wirless, fm tuner, and more space yet the iPod blew it to smitherines, You my friend just like commander taco don't get it, No one cares about a DMP's spec sheet, no one cares (ok almost no one) if a DMP plays ogg files. The iPod is slick, its sexy, its easy, and it has a entire market of accessories from toilet paper dispancers to BMW's.

[pctec100]

Why he is correct on some points.

As someone who previously owned an iPod and liked it very much but have since switched to a different brand music player. I have to agree with him on some points. It's nice that iTunes if offering non-DRM files but the problem for me was not the format of the files, it was the closed nature of the system. I came to realize that non-Apple devices allow you to switch between service providers with different business models that may better suit the listening habits of different people. With iTunes-iPod I basically got what they gave me.

My new player may not be as stylish as the iPod but I prefer function over fashion. I now get some features that iPod doesn't offer or is only just now offering in their newest products. I have a choice between using a subscription service to download all the DRM protected music I want for one low price per month which has exposed me to all kinds of new music I would have never purchased from Apple. I can also still use iTunes. If I find a new player that I like better I can easily move my music to it. If I find something I really like and want to make sure I keep it if I cancel my subscription service then I can buy it without DRM protection.

[mattumanu]

That's how I see it.

I can sign up to any number of different services, pay a flat rate for say, Napster on the go, and have 30gigs of music on my player and hear music I never would have considered purchasing before.

With iTunes/iPod, the only option I have is .99 tunes and 1.99 videos. That's it, that's all. And, the videos and most of the music will only play on an iPod. How's that open?

[jaspoon187]

Don't you see????

All those "other sources" are just different fronts to the same company! These guys will make you believe that creative, Zune, etc are all allowing you to download from an "open market". In reality they're all just the numerous heads of the same companies I.E. Mr. McGlades company and Micro$oft.
Don't be deceived into thinking you're helping bring down an evil giant by switching to one of these services. They're worse, as Mr. McGlade has demonstrated here with his poor attempt at take a "brought to you by Cnet" shot at Apple.

Everyone cheers the coming of the Zune 2.0 and other MP3 players as a score for the little guy. Need I remind you who makes the Zune? Need I remind you who owns and ultimately gets shares of every one of those supposed "Open Market" services? If I do you haven't been paying attention!

[R. U. Sirius]

Shackles?

Shackles? What shackles? This guy is an out and out liar who is spouting the RIAA/Universal garbage.

Cnet why do you continue to let people like this guy post FUD? The iPod will play mp3's, AIFF, WAV, which are all open formats, and which can be gotten from plenty of other avenues other than the ITMS.

[sunergeos]

cnet needs the click throughs...

These types of stories are used to get the Mac fanatics wound up so they can take advantage of the the click through counts for ad dollars. They have to publish something because "click here" doesn't get it. If you try to put a value to what's being said then your only setting yourself up to be frustrated.

This is historical precedence - just go to the next story.

[J.G.]

iPhone bypasses MediaNet

Because our data accounts are unlimited and we can use iTunes
and other content providers, we don't need to purchase
overpriced news service, ringtones, email, etc. Frankly, most of
us would not have it any other way. The Apple approach is not
all proprietary. I have music from CDs, eMusic and Amazon MP3
on my iPhone, as well as from the iTunes Store.


I would be interested in knowing how his superiors feel about
him publicly attacking a partner as important to
AT&T as Apple.

[J.G.]

Correction

Actually, I am not sure this is the same MediaNet that provides
digital services to AT&T. Perhaps they just have the same name.

Regardlessly, Apple sold 85 percent of music downloads this
quarter, so its reign is not remotely threatened.

[JAnderson1777]

Can't be more wrong

I think everyone else has already hit on the fact that iPod users
are NOT "locked up" in any manner. There is non-DRM software
that you can download from countless sites and there is nothing
stopping people from putting that on their iPods. Furthermore
though, there is nothing that Apple is doing to keep you from
getting non-DRM software so much as greedy record companies
who question the honesty of the public. I think Apple by selling
all music DRM'ed or not they are still moving money toward the
record company. If anything I see Apple as doing the right thing
and still getting money to the record company by urging people
to buy from them....

On the WiFi issue, obviously this author did not do his research.
The iPod touch is just like an iPhone but it doesn't make phone
calls. Anyone who knows their products know what I am talking
about. You can watch videos, listen to music, search the
internet, AND DOWNLOAD MUSIC ANYWHERE. So you can't get a
new song at a party? Wrong! This guy needs to watch whos feet
he tries to step on, he is wrong on many issues and obviously is
working or trying to get money for some Anti-apple company.

[M C]

Not mentioned by CNet: author's company is a competitor to iTunes...

...So the content is unsurprising to say the least. Conflict of journalistic principle for CNet to say the most.

But they got lots of mentions of "Apple" in there, and they care about little else.