August 2, 2004 12:20 PM PDT
Readers speak: Who's right in iPod fight?
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CNET News.com asked: Which side wins out?
The responses came down fairly heavily on Apple's side, though it was hard to tell whether that reflected agreement with the Mac maker's argument or general favor for the company.
"The simple fact is that Apple has a (dominant) position in the digital music market, because they offer a product, the iPod, and a service, the iTunes Music Store, that are far superior and a must-have for consumers," Craig Nori wrote. "Beating your competition by building a better product and offering superior service should be applauded. And it's the complete opposite of Microsoft's way of doing business."
Ron Stark wrote: "Apple deserves to reap the benefits of its labors without having someone else nose in on their work."
One reader pointed out that "if an individual had done something like this--say, to create a driver allowing people to watch DVDs on Linux systems--they would be dragged off to jail."
Not everyone came down on Apple's side, however. Some warned that Apple has been down this path before, and it hasn't always ended well for the company.
"By not taking advantage of their lead, Apple is going to doom itself to irrelevance yet again, just like they did with the Mac," another reader wrote. "They didn't want to license; they wanted to control both the hardware and the software. Where did that get them? Three to 5 percent of the market share, that's where."
Others pooh-poohed the predictions of Apple's demise.
"Apple has been on the forefront of many technological advancements lately, digital music being only one of them. Apple will continue to focus on producing the most technologically advanced product on the marketplace in conjunction with their 'exclusive' motif," Mike Kruger wrote.
"Apple will not license its FairPlay DRM (digital rights management)," he added. "They are too concerned about the entire product--how software and hardware interact. Someone will come out with an MP3 player that will be cheaper and maybe be superior, but it won't bother Apple. Then more pundits will predict Apple's downfall, but they will survive."
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Apple iPod
revolution on portable digital music began...
There were (pirated) music file exchange... and then came iTMS
and gave "the labels" 199 millions "paid" songs in 440 days.
And Apple did all this from the scratch, alone, only with their
understanding of what the user wants (ok, except for the price).
More than 3 years later for iPods and one for iTMS, Sony comes
with a "not so good" (read Mossberg) product and do-not-ask
for Sony Conect.
Microsoft is still promising to "kill" both products "next month"
(please, next month change this to next month).
So Real copyes (reverse ingeniering) the DRM...
Why do companies do not "copy" the creativity and risk-taken of
Apple? (From the first GUI, the first digital camera, the first
postcript laserwriter, wireless conection, etc. etc.... and donīt
forget FireWire et al.)
One last thing you mentioned sony's new player negatively the real truth is none of these toys faithfully reproduce the artist music and that is what this is supposed to be about. Anything less than fully delivering the product the artist created is placed under the category "yeah we have some cheap crap under the desk if you don;t care about the sound"