| Thursday, January 8, 2004 |
23:24 - Critical Mass?
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Lots of stuff happening in Mac land lately. Yyyyyep.
If I didn't know better, I'd say there's a change in the weather afoot. At least, my ol' trick knees been sayin' so. Never do know when to trust it or not.
But I can usually trust news stories sent to me by vigilant readers. Looking through my inbox over the last two or three days, I'm struck by what seems to be a wholesale industry-wide diplomatic lurch in Apple's direction. Normally it's Apple vs. The World, Apple with its stubbornly proprietary solutions versus the rest of the world's defaulting to the prevailing breeze. But is that starting to change?
Take, for example, this story sent by Kenny B: HP is planning to resell OEM'ed iPods, and preload iTunes on their PCs.
HP expects to begin shipping its own iPod this summer at what the company calls a "competitive price". In addition, the company will produce its own branded version of Apple's iTunes jukebox software that connects to Apple's iTunes Music Store.
HP plans on pre-installing iTunes software on all of its consumer PCs and notebooks. According to internal HP research, more than half of its consumer PC customers download music.
They could have partnered with Dell, or Rio, or Creative, or any other portable player makers-- all of whom support WMA music-- just as they could have gone with BuyMusic.com or Napster or any of the other WMA-based music stores. But they haven't. Instead, they're throwing in their lot with Apple. Apple has said, Who will stand with me? Who? --And after a long, awkward, and shameful beat, HP has stepped forward: I will.
And look who else has joined them: RealNetworks, in a story sent by Aziz.
Net multimedia company RealNetworks announced a sweeping overhaul of its digital audio and video software Wednesday, along with a digital song store aimed to compete with Apple Computer's leading iTunes service.
Real is betting that the flexibility of its RealPlayer 10 music-playing software--thelatest entry in an increasingly crowded digital-download market--will distinguish it from rival stores and software packages.
To this end, the company has created a jukebox that will play all the media formats used by its own and other song stores--including secure downloads from the iTunes store.
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On the audio front, Real is substantially updating its technology in several ways.
Songs sold in the music store will be distributed in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, an open standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), rather than a proprietary RealNetworks format. However, they'll be wrapped in Real's own Helix digital rights management technology, which will limit the number of players or other software applications they can be used in.
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That support for iTunes songs is likely to prove controversial. However, Real says it has tapped into the workings of Apple's well-publicized QuickTime technology without any need to break through the digital rights management features that protect iTunes songs against unauthorized distribution.
Instead, RealPlayer 10 essentially triggers the QuickTime and iTunes content-authorization process in the background, instead of breaking through it. That means that a computer must already have iTunes installed, and be authorized to play a given song, in order for the iTunes song to play in RealNetworks' software.
"We don't believe in violating digital rights management," said Ryc Brownigg, general manager of Real's consumer products. "We work with copyright holders, and we make digital rights management software ourselves."
In other words, the big news here isn't that Real is competing with Apple-- that's no news. What's new is that Real is implicitly siding with Apple, opting for the AAC format that previously was only used in iTunes and the iPod. This amounts to the first big endorsement by a monster player in the digital media field for Apple's technology versus Microsoft's, heretofore the default choice for everybody but Apple. Real has evidently acknowledged the reality of the iPod being where it's at for digital music players, and iTunes being a foolish thing not to get behind when it comes to music management and downloads. So AAC it is.
I was at MacWorld today, and though I missed seeing Mike (due to scheduling mishaps, dangit), I did get to spend quite a bit of time with several friends poring over GarageBand and (over at the Guitar Center booth) Soundtrack and Logic, the upmarket tools to which a GarageBand user will graduate. Soundtrack, the sales guys explained, is all about looping; it's not so much a composing tool as just a thing where you can mix loops to your heart's content, essentially creating new music without having recorded any input yourself. But Logic, by Emagic (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple), is the Final Cut Pro of music composition, whereas CakeWalk is the Premiere. Apparently if you're seriously in the music business, it's all about Logic-- which is no longer available for Windows. Their booth dudes said, in fact, that when they got word that Apple was buying them and discontinuing their Windows product, they all heaved sighs of relief, because they knew how awful it was to try to support their software on Windows. Now they can focus on making the software better, not slogging through support issues caused by Registry instabilities and the like. I don't know how much of this was spontaneous and heartfelt, and how much was party-line propaganda; but frankly, I have never seen so dedicated and enthusiastic a group of software guys. These fellas mean it. They got so excited talking to us about the products that we stood there watching them demo it for over an hour, before leaving with a copy of the $200 entry-level toolkit for Van.
(And in the course of the conversation. Sinbad walked up to the booth. Sinbad. The comic. It said "Sinbad" right on his badge. There he was, the dude himself, there as a happy Mac-addicted show attendee. Just walking around, putting tchotchkes in his bag, talking to sales guys. Sinbad. He's fat now.)
And my friends got to play with things they hadn't seen before, like Exposé. And as J Greely points out, Windows is getting into the act on that front. Well, of course they are; it's too cool a feature for them not to. Apparently some third-party developer has come up with a workalike, which they're selling for $10 in a box. According to the Flash demo, it kinda works the same as Exposé-- but not quite. Windows don't slide off the screen in "Desktop" mode; they just disappear (like when you click the "desktop" icon in Windows). When application windows tile, the rest of the windows don't fade into the background, they just disappear. And you apparently can't zap from one tiling mode to another-- the super-cool Minority Report interface. It's another of those "nice try" things. Like the Windows implementation of the Dock that some guys tried a while back.
(And I have to imagine that it's only a matter of days before Apple's lawyers jump on "WinExposé" and make 'em change the name.)
These are features of Mac OS X that are so undeniably useful that rather than even trying to do them better, Windows developers are spending all their effort points doing their level best just to emulate the Mac. There's no mockery going on here, just a tacit acknowledgment that the Mac's interface keeps shaming Windows at every turn, and they'd better hop to it and get the same features in place on Windows-- some way or another-- or live in the grim knowledge that there are things they're just missing out on. Sometimes they don't quite "get it"-- ending up with cargo-cult interfaces that work like the Mac but without the unity of UI design that makes it all seem so seamless in the original article-- but they're gamely keeping at it.
Or giving up, and-- like one of my PC-using friends-- perusing the halls of MacWorld, telling me in the car on the way home that he was blown away by how much more effort clearly went into the polish and fit and finish of all the Mac versions of his familiar Windows apps, and how everything just looks better, works better, and feels better. More and more, I find that I'm actually playing devil's advocate, reminding these guys that there are downsides to using the Mac-- fewer games, fewer compatibility options, no ASX movies, no iPaq syncing. But they don't want to hear about it. They're smitten.
The Mac, it seems to me, has officially shed its pariah status. Steve has done himself proud over the last six years. Nice job, sir.
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Brian Tiemann
