Sony Clones iTunes

[MacBytes]

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Category: Opinion/Interviews
Link: Sony Clones iTunes (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20050909102849)

Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)
Approved by Mudbug

[gwuMACaddict]

wow- that is pretty lousy...

[Lacero]

sad... Sony is becoming like Microsoft.

[xli_ne]

that is very sad on sony's part

[DeSnousa]

Wow for the first part it looks like Apple is going to sue, instead of it being the other way around ;)

[lopresmb]

losers...

[mrsebastian]

i think this certainly qualifies as lawsuit material. hey sony, stick with making tvs and some other cool hardware and forget the music business.

[ppc_michael]

Man that's pitiful. I thought Sony was better than this.

[Lacero]

Anyone know the update on Sony Connect? I haven't heard anything on it; no sales figures; no nothing!

[Savage Henry]

Man that's pitiful. I thought Sony was better than this.Took the words right out of my keyboard. This is hardly helping pushing the industry through innovation. When big guns like Sony are little more than wannabes you can see why AAPL is reaching record highs....

[dizastor]

if you can't innovate... immitate

[shadowfax]

remember pirates of silicon valley?

"picasso said, 'good artists copy; great artists steal.'" I guess that makes sony good artists...

[Photorun]

An absolute truth of the industry, ever since 1984, possibly before that, Apple creates, the industry imitates. This isn't even arguable, it's self evident! Apple leads, everyone follows. And there's so many examples of bad versions of following, laughably bad to just plain rip off. Peecee weenies don't get it, and if Microsuck wasn't such snakeoil to the masses, their only thing going for them is marketing, something Apple seems to not have a CLUE how to do. Goes to show you anybody can be fooled, there's more than one born every minute... and they're known as Windoze lusers. Without Apple though, they'd be using typewriters.

[TwitchOSX]

Ripoff yes. But to the guy above me - You apparently havent seen the marketing for the iPod's have you? Granted, Apple does have finicky marketing.. as in.. next to NO marketing for Powermacs and notebooks.. or hell, even the iMac for that matter. But I wouldnt say they are not good at marketing.

[shadowfax]

An absolute truth of the industry, ever since 1984, possibly before that, Apple creates, the industry imitates. This isn't even arguable, it's self evident! Apple leads, everyone follows. And there's so many examples of bad versions of following, laughably bad to just plain rip off. Peecee weenies don't get it, and if Microsuck wasn't such snakeoil to the masses, their only thing going for them is marketing, something Apple seems to not have a CLUE how to do. Goes to show you anybody can be fooled, there's more than one born every minute... and they're known as Windoze lusers. Without Apple though, they'd be using typewriters.

Ah, come on, don't be such a zealot. Apple doesn't always create. they do their fair share of underhanded crap. The thing that they really do is make better stuff. than anyone else, even when everyone else copies what they designed (or copied themselves). That's the funny thing about them. it doesn't matter if it was their idea or not. they make it great. that's what you're supposed to do when you take someone else's idea, make it better. No one else does this when they take Apple's ideas.

You don't seriously think that the GUI was apple's idea? that they came up with the idea of a portable mp3 player?

Apple just does it best, not always first.

[nagromme]

For a good laugh, look up the previous version of Connect--a true train wreck. Terrible reviews for a full year. Almost from the beginning, Sony promised to scrap it and start over :o

Of course this new version is not an exact copy of iTunes--in fact it's considerably more cluttered and less simple. But I agree that is is a bit too close in some ways.

[coolfactor]

I just downloaded their most recent version of Connect SonicStage software, and it's very different than it was a year ago, but it still doesn't look anything like iTunes (or that screenshot). It still sucks potatoes. All of these music stores are mercy to the Microsoft god. They all use IE as the foundation of their music stores, usually by wrapping a horendous interface around it.

[mad jew]

w00t! :rolleyes:

[Vader]

Sad.

[maya]

Did any of you expect any better from either Sony or MS. I would not be surprised if Dell follows soon. :rolleyes:

[PlaceofDis]

and even imitating it looks like crap for the result.

[crees!]

You don't seriously think that the GUI was apple's idea? That would be Xerox correct?

[nagromme]

That would be Xerox correct?
Actually... Xerox's GUI work introduced some of what we are used to today, but Xerox was only part of an evolution that started with writings of Vannevar Bush in the 1930s and 40s that predated digital computers! Bush's writings inspired Douglas Englebart, who made the first working GUI and invented the mouse. BEFORE he worked for Xerox.

Then came Xerox's important PARC work (which mainly stayed in the labs), and then Apple came along and added a great deal themselves. They perfected the mouse hardware (it wasn't a practical, reliable device before Apple's) AND introduced much of what we now expect in a GUI. (Jobs' NeXT went its own way and innovated some things we now expect from GUIs too--and of course NeXTStep is a big part of Mac OS X's lineage.)

So for the record, some things Apple/NeXT contributed to the GUI:

Drag-and-drop
Pulldown menus (including the File Edit View structure still used today)
Checkmark-selected menu items
Keyboard shortcuts for menus
Graying-out unavailable items
Trashcan (aka recycle bin)
Double-clicking
Every file being an icon (and dragging for file management)
Hierarchical file browsing with windows representing directory contents
Metadata fork, including assigning what app would open what file
Redrawing of only the necessary part of a window when something in front of it is moved (which Quartz now makes moot--but Windows XP is still that primitive)
Shaded/beveled look for windows and icons (NeXT is the first I'm aware of that went all the way with that)
"X" symbol for closing windows (NeXT had it, then it showed up in other UNIXes and Windows... now it's on Mac too)
Dock that can be placed at any edge
Dialogs ("sheets") visually attached directly to their associated windows
Exposé

So Xerox PARC introduced a lot of important concepts--scrollbars for instance, and some limited use of icons--but to appreciate Apple's contribution to the GUI, just imagine life without the above.

An of course Apple made a successful real-world PRODUCT with a GUI. Xerox never managed that, although they did release the unsuccessful Star.

For more on GUI history, see:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars/

[Phat_Pat]

Sony still sells music?


I didn't know 7 people could spend so much.

[Chaszmyr]

Anyone know the update on Sony Connect? I haven't heard anything on it; no sales figures; no nothing!

There haven't been enough sales to warrant figures ;)

[shamino]

An of course Apple made a successful real-world PRODUCT with a GUI. Xerox never managed that, although they did release the unsuccessful Star.
Although you can blame the marketing department for this. Technologically, the Star (and its successor, ViewPoint) were lightyears ahead of the rest of the industry.

I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play with a Xerox ViewPoint (http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox6085/index.html). I was a kid at the time, but my father used it every day at his job.

In his opinion (and in mine, although I had little first-hand experience), the ViewPoint system software was decades ahead of its time. Here's a great article (http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/retrospect/) from 1989 about the Star/ViewPoint. It's a fascinating read, especially if you remember the time frame we're talking about. (The Star was released in 1981 - years before the Mac, and ViewPoint in 1985, shortly after it.) Here (http://www.digibarn.com/collections/software/xerox-star/index.html) are some more images of its UI.

The Star/ViewPoint's features (some of which didn't appear in other computers until over a decade later) include:

Purely document-centric. You didn't have even a hint that there were applications. You just opened documetns and worked on them.
Network-integrated. Network file-servers and printers. Multi-user. Roaming profiles. Real novelties for the early 80's.
Fully internationalized. Alternate keyboard layouts for a wide variety of languages, including Asian languages. Including an integrated system for quickly switching keyboard languages on the fly and a key-caps-like utility to allow users unfamiliar with a layout to access all characters. (Apple didn't get this until WorldScript debuted in system 7. Microsoft didn't get this right until system updates that were bundled with Internet Explorer 5.5.) Even today, some apps (like MS Word on the Mac) still have serious problems in this area.
Object embedding. Embedding one document (e.g. a drawing) in another (e.g. a text document) is simple to do. Included editors for a variety of specialty objects, including equations, drawings, bitmaps, spreadsheets, database tables, etc. Microsoft didn't get this until OLE was introduced much much later.
Style sheets
Collaborative documents, including revision tracking.