Dear Apple, Your company has long stood for innovation and open competition. Wasn't it Apple that ran the famous Super Bowl ad encouraging consumers like us to stand up for our right to make our own choices? We're asking that you do the same now and support the right of your own customers to make their own choices about where they buy music for the iPod. We want Freedom of Music Choice! Don't lock us in to purchasing digital music from one source. That's bad for competition. It will stifle innovation. And it will slow the adoption of digital music devices like the iPod. Do the right thing. Stand with us for Freedom of Music Choice! Sincerely, The Undersigned
Before I begin my rant, I would like to address the fact that Real has removed the hotlink to the petition from its Freedom of Music Choice web site, due to an overwhelming amount of negative comments directed at RealNetworks.
When I read the above news story, I was furious. First of all, launching websites that personally attack and "flame" the competition is shooting dirty pool. A tactic like this is purely juvenile, low, and dirty. I am amazed and appalled that a company like Real would resort to such dirty tactics in an attempt to win back their share of the audio technology market they once had.
It wasn't that long ago that Real was the leading company in the development of streaming Internet audio and video. An overwhelming large percentage of Internet audio and video was distributed using the RealAudio streaming codec. It was an ingenious technology for the time. The quality was high for the file size, the technology was (generally) free to use, and it exercised digital rights management (content was streamed from a server, but rarely could the recipient be able to save the content to their computer for future use).
Today, the RealNetworks audio and video technology is hardly being used anymore. Why? Advances in technology, and poor choices led RealNetworks back down into the cellar. Real's success was largely due to the bandwidth squeeze. Five years ago, almost everyone who was on the Internet connected through a dial-up modem. To view or listen to any quality media on the computer at the time would require a person to wait anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours to view a small clip. RealNetworks allowed the content to play immediately, and larger files would continue loading while the content was playing. No more waiting. Sure, the quality was lower, but at least you knew what you were getting right away, instead of waiting 30 minutes for a clip to download, only to realize that it wasn't what you were looking for in the first place.
So what happened? Well, MPEG-4 was developed, for instance. New versions of QuickTime were available free to computers of all platforms. And don't forget the behemoth of them all: Windows Media. Bundle any software with the Windows operating system, and it is a safe bet that it will wipe out the competition (anybody remember Netscape?). In all these cases, the new versions of the codecs were superior in all respects to the previous releases.
I believe at one time RealNetworks stopped development of their software for the Macintosh. It may have been that they had no intention of releasing a version that would be compatible with OSX. Or, perhaps that they thought that Apple users would be timid to test the UNIX waters of the Aqua Operating System. Or, perhaps they didn't anticipate that Apple would bundle OSX with every machine sold, and kill the archaic OS9 once and for all. The new breed of UNIX-Apple users only had once choice when it came to Internet audio and video: QuickTime. This trend remained for nearly two years. I think that it has only been in the last 18-months or so that RealNetworks have actually released an OSX-compatible player for their content. The same can be said with Windows Media Player. But now it's too late.
Today, many computer users are on broadband connections. They can transfer and view high-quality audio and video in a fraction of the time than they used to on the old dial-up connections. They don't have use for the old-grainy technology that Real offered. Now, I have a pretty good feeling that Real's audio and video content are up to snuff with MPEG4, QuickTime, or Windows Media, but does anyone care? All they remember is the old, heavily compressed technology Real once offered.
When I viewed Real's webpage "Freedom of Music Choice", their attacks at Apple, and their online petition, I could not believe their position. It is not about consumer rights; it is blatantly propaganda. People have all the choice in the world as to what content they can put on their iPod. File formats are meaningless if the content is the same. One file format is not better than the other; it is the quality of the encoding that really matters. People are being steered in the wrong direction if they are being coerced to believe the only material they can download to their iPod is available only from the iTunes Music Store. I would have had to spend a fortune if I had paid 99 cents (US) for all my 2500+ songs that are on my iPod. People must not forget that they can import songs into iTunes (and their iPod) if they have the CD available to them. It seems that the competition doesn't want people to know that. As I have stated in an earlier post, The iPod supports a number of audio codecs, but not Windows Media, and not Real either.
I, as a consumer still believe I have all the choice in the world. I do not feel like I am forced by Apple in any way to download their music or use their technology. I use their technology because I chose to in the first place. Apple has their reasons to restrict what file formats can be used on the iPod. It's simple marketing. If the iPod was not such a hot seller, perhaps Apple would allow competitors' file formats to be compatible with the iPod in an effort to bump sales. It is more likely that if it were not for the iPod, Apple would never have developed the iTunes music store in the first place. Even Steve Jobs said publicly that the iTunes music store was designed to sell more iPods; not to make billions with 99-cent downloads. Even Apple knows that the money isn't in the sale of music. The sale of music hasn't been very profitable since the advent of Napster and the rising popularity of peer-to-peer networks.
It is also because the iPod is such a hot seller that, all the competing companies have their panties in a twist. I would hope that RealNetworks would take their propaganda machine offline, as it seems that few of us are buying their story anyway.
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