this person obviously does not understand the technical hurdles of delivering massive amounts of content in an easy and functional manner. this is not easy, or cheap.

Yes google could do, but lets be clear, thousands of competitors could not do this on scale of what apple has done. not even close.
he also makes one massive error in judgment, that apple is inflexible.
Sure they are closed now, there is no reason they cant change faster in market than a a competitor could gain traction.

the difference in being open or closed is a firmware update, this is starkly different than OS/platform wars of past.

finally, and most glaring, where are the profits for these 1,000 of stores? or even googles hypothetical store?

It is well known, (apparently not down under) Apple makes it profit on iPods, that they run the store that fuels their iPod is only way it is feasible.

How is Yahoo's store doing now?



this is one of most obtuse tech writers i have ever read.

You know, we keep making fun of the people who point this out, but I bet we'll eventually see some non-Apple devices work with protected-AAC files.

Probably not anytime soon, mind you, but I wouldn't rule it out.

(Of course, the point of this article is "iTunes will fail" where my point is "iTunes will get stronger" but underneath that is the idea to protected AAC files will eventually need to be shared with other manufacturers. I agree with that concept.)

You could point to Motorolla's phones, I guess, although I don't really count phone/player hybrids. I'm talking about actual, dedicated PLAYERS. It will happen once a Shuffle costs Apple $10 to make and they sell for $12. At that point the profit is so small they'll be more than happy to allow other companies in. They'll still be focused on the $300 to $400 market whatever THAT is at that point in time.

Hi,
I'm not sure that Google would use a Windows Media DRM system for a music / video store. Perhaps but I would have thought they'd go for something non-microsoft. Chris Gorog from Napster's comments about WM DRM system are pretty negative so I'm not sure how it would fare better for Google to use this option.

Perhaps a much bigger issue is use of DRM systems as a whole, obviously the recent French Law is aimed at preventing *any* company locking people into one specific player or DRM scheme. I see this as perhaps a bigger issue than whether any other Online Music / Video store uses WM DRM or any other DRM as a basis of a store trying to compete with iTunes.

Very interested to see the active response from Apple to the consequences of the French Law, moreover I'm interested to know the response from the Record and Movie companies who have put their eggs in the DRM basket.
Will Apple shut down the French iTunes store? If not and they opened up the DRM would Record companies pull their Artists from iTunes?

I think most people are like me. Very protective of my mobile phone's battery usage. After all, if my iPod runs down its battery, I'm just out of music. But if my mobile phone goes dead, then I'm out of (in my mind) a crucial safety device/emergency lifeline.

When battery technology allows cell phones and iPods to run for weeks (not days)on a single charge then I think people will start to buy music phones.

When that day comes, guess who is going to make the music phone that dominates the market?

Even if the battery life allows it. A significant segment of the market will still resist iPod-phone convergence.

Like me. When I get home and I wish to listen to music, I stick my iPod in the dock which connects to my hifi. Sometimes my kids borrow my iPod, I can't lend it anymore if it's also my cell phone. I read about people who swap iPods as a form of social interaction. Can you listen to your iPod-phone while you're flying across the Pacific? (Well, that last one is easily fixed by the mfr.)

I buy music from allofmp3.com and it works great on my ipod and in itunes. How is this a closed system that forces me to buy from a particular vendor? Licensing != Open.

Yep, Google has had such amazing success with their video store (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/11/goog_vid_store/), it's a given they'll eat Apple's lunch in the online music and video markets.

Do reporters, analysts, and pundits ever get sick of this? Every week, we here so-and-so is going to kill the iPod, or iTMS, or whatever. Sure, it might happen, one day, or it might not. But what's annoying is the matter-of-fact style in which this is reported.

Quote

Guest wrote:
I think most people are like me. Very protective of my mobile phone's battery usage. After all, if my iPod runs down its battery, I'm just out of music. But if my mobile phone goes dead, then I'm out of (in my mind) a crucial safety device/emergency lifeline.

When battery technology allows cell phones and iPods to run for weeks (not days)on a single charge then I think people will start to buy music phones.

When that day comes, guess who is going to make the music phone that dominates the market?

Here's how:

1) Download music from iTunes music store
2) Burn music to a audio CD
3) Take audio CD you just burned, and rip the music to MP3, WMA or unprotected AAC.
4) Load ripped files onto ANY music player
5) Enjoy iTunes music on your non-iPod player

Why is this so hard? Nobody is locked into iTunes music. And if you are really picky about the sound quality, then buy the damn CD in the first place, and rip the songs yourself to higher-bit level AAC or other lossless formats. Thats what I do with all classical music.

Tell the French legislators to stop whining!

What a joke.

I've watched a few moments of video on my fiancee's iPod video. It's OK. But the screen is awefully small and detail is lost exponentially.

Now, move it to a cell phone with pretty much all models are locked into a portrait layout versus a video friendly landscape layout, and it's 33% smaller. Geez.

Not even realistic.

I mean, did he say Apple would die? or just iPod and iTunes? and then they would just move into a 'niche market' . . .

hmmm

Quote

Guest wrote:
I buy music from allofmp3.com and it works great on my ipod and in itunes.

This time from the Napster CTO

http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7483&TopicID=0


Happy End of Days!!
-HMCIV

Actually it's already being done. A self-charging quartz watch. Ever heard of the Seiko Kinetic watch? Instead of winding a spring, the motion runs a generator (dynamo?). I seriously thought of getting one but boy talk about clunky. So I'm back to my old reliable Seiko automatic.

"http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7483&TopicID=0"

Hahahahah. Somebody needs to tell mister Senior Vice President of Napster that music subscriptions services are already dead, and infact, have been for quite awhile.


Then somebody needs to tell Alan Kohler that MP3 player/cellphone hybrids are such an inherently ackward idea that they'll never, ever, ever even come close to replacing dedicated cellphones and dedicated MP3 players.

Quote

Guest wrote:
Actually it's already being done. A self-charging quartz watch. Ever heard of the Seiko Kinetic watch? Instead of winding a spring, the motion runs a generator (dynamo?). I seriously thought of getting one but boy talk about clunky. So I'm back to my old reliable Seiko automatic.

I'm wondering if someone's not fallen for ...

Nah, it couldn't be.

So let me see if I understand: I'm going to pay $2.50 per song and then when my minutes run out pay 40 cents a minute to download songs to my phone or I could pay an additional $40.00 a month for unlimited time and then $2.50 per song. So in 10 months I will have paid for the cost of an iPod in monthly charges even if I don't buy any songs. At the end of a year I will have paid for an iPod plus 80 songs. Next year I'll do it again? How would anyone with half an ounce of intelligence buy into this?