article: RealPlayer 10.5 bypasses iTunes, uploads to iPod

nice to see moderators takin the chance to advertise their own site :)
any confirmations there too ?
 
soulseek, this was not done to promote my site (not necessary, anyway), but to add my point. And rather than writing what I just had written once more, I linked to my article. I hope that's fine with everyone. :)
 
fryke, I agree with part of your article, but one strong point for Apple superiority on the player business was that once you bought a song from iTMS, you can only play it on the iPod, and remember they currently have 70% of the songs sales. So that all they songs buyers are linked to the iPod and will not change to another player. If Real is selling songs that can be played on any player, this strong fidelity link is broken. This is good for us (songs listeners), but maybe not so good for Apple.

In addition, if the iTMS is not yet a revenue source for Apple, it may well become one in the future as iPod sales continue to grow. Real wants a part of this business.

I can imagine that if no strong link remain between iTMS and iPod, Apple will sell the iTMS to have more strengths ($$$) to push on the iPod (and other new hardware) development and sales.
 
Songs bought from iTMS can still only be played on iPod (and Macs, and CDs etc.). That link remains equally strong. Also being able to buy from other sources (which you already can, remember that albums are also available as 'hardware', i.e. CDs...) extends iPod's power rather than diminishing. It's 'just' iTMS which might see a little hit. But I think Apple can take that. They're at some 70% market share there...
 
Apple Legal has probably already sent Real a letter containining the words "DMCA Lawsuit"
anyway - so i would not worry too much about this, lol.
 
Good for Apple. This is the ONLY time I hope DMCA gets involved! If we have to live (for now at least) with DMCA, Apple might as well use it to their rightful advantage.
 
bah, Apple's all upset over a venture that's going to fail - read: who uses Real to purchase music anyway?
 
gerbick said:
bah, Apple's all upset over a venture that's going to fail - read: who uses Real to purchase music anyway?
Click to expand...
This is so not the point. Two things get lost in all of this. The iPod is single-user hardware, it is not a common carrier. The iPod does what it does better than the competition, but there are many alternatives. The iPod is also its operating system. Therefore, Apple is fully within its rights to establish the conditions under which it is used. It has done so. Harmony explicitly violates the terms of the EULA. There are those who claim that Harmony does not harm the iPod in any way. It is my understanding that this claim in not true. Rather than being a benign DRM converter, Harmony requires that only Harmony be used to access the iPod. Harmony and iTunes don't interoperate.

"Oh, but Harmony will allow more customers to use the iPod. And isn't the whole purpose of the iTunes Music Store to increase sales of the iPod. Since the iTMS makes little, if any, profit Apple should not care about lost iTMS sales." Hogwash. The iTMS, like almost every other technology-based enterprise has high fixed cost and low variable costs. Once Apple sells enough content to cover its fixed costs, each additional song, audio book, etc. sold will represent a growing profit. Apple sacrifices iTMS sales in the knowledge that it delays the day when the iTMS is a license to mint money.

Now this is really important: When the iPod was introduced, it was seen the best designed music-piracy enabling technology. However, Apple decided to enhance the iPod, by opening an online music retail store, the iTMS. After a lot of hard work, Apple was able to convince the music labels that the iTMS and the iPod would be good for the music labels. Apple does not own the music it sells at the iTMS or the music that is played on the iPod. Real was not a consideration when Apple signed its contract with the labels. Harmony did not exist. Harmony seems now to be a monkey wrench in the works. We know that the terms of Real's contract with the industry is not the same as Apple's. If Apple were to allow Real on its system, then that may represent violation of Apple's contract with the industry. The iTMS/iPod combination that we love so much may be endangered.

One more thing: Real may want to give consumers a choice, but only if they have already chosen Windows. Harmony is exclusively for Windows. As a Mac user, Real does not even pretend to benefit me.
 
Real ported quicktime to there player a while ago, why didn't apple get upset then, i wished they had... Why doesn't quicktime just port real's crap and then tell everyone that pays real to use their services that we'll let you use it for free since we reverse engineered there garbage also. Two can play at this game. The thing that is somewhat ironic is that real says they are doing this for the consumer... then where the hell is the mac version of harminoy???
 
RealPlayer plays quicktime movies, but I don't think Real reverse-engineered QT. I think you still have to have Quicktime installed on the machine, and RealPlayer just uses the QT API to display the movies in the RealPlayer window. In other words, they didn't replace Quicktime per-se, just Quicktime Player.

At least, that's how it was explained to me.
 
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