Microsoft Considered iPod Rival, Apple Partnership (Update3)...

[MacBytes]

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Category: 3rd Party Hardware
Link: Microsoft Considered iPod Rival, Apple Partnership (Update3) (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20070120224208)
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Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)
Approved by Mudbug

[Lord Blackadder]

Interesting...so much we didn't know about back in '03...:D

[MacNut]

``My goodness it's terrible,'' Allchin wrote about one of Creative's devices. ``What I don't understand though is I was told the new Creative Labs device would be comparable to Apple. That is so not the case.'classic.:p

[macEfan]

Allchin at the time was leading development of Longhorn, the code name for Windows Vista, which reaches stores Jan. 30. Allchin, who is retiring after Vista is released, referred to Longhorn as ``a pig'' and said ``we have lost our way.''

lol no wonder vista sucks...even microsoft employees don't like it :D

[Ha ze]

Shares of Microsoft rose 11 cents to $31.11 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. They have risen 4.2 percent this month

MS stock is only $31?? Apple is $88?? hmmm...

I'm a little surprised

[balamw]

MS stock is only $31?? Apple is $88?? hmmm...

I'm a little surprised

They have lots more shares...

Don't compare stock price, compare Market Cap (# of shares * stock price) and/or EPS:

AAPL: 76.05B EPS 2.76
MSFT: 305.83B EPS 1.25

Even though MSFT is a much bigger company (~4X), AAPL earns more money per share. (> 2X).

B

[Eric5h5]

MS stock is only $31?? Apple is $88?? hmmm...

I'm a little surprised

You do know that the individual stock price is meaningless when comparing the relative worth of companies, right? If Company A has 500 shares of stock going for $100 each, and Company B has 1,000,000 shares of stock going for $10 each, which company is worth more? What happens when the stock splits? Does the company suddenly become worth half as much? I think not. ;)

--Eric

[spork183]

You do know that the individual stock price is meaningless when comparing the relative worth of companies, right? If Company A has 500 shares of stock going for $100 each, and Company B has 1,000,000 shares of stock going for $10 each, which company is worth more? What happens when the stock splits? Does the company suddenly become worth half as much? I think not. ;)

--Eric

ahh, but the intrinsic value. Doth not an apple, once tasted, remain sweet upon the lips?

[Chaszmyr]

lol no wonder vista sucks...even microsoft employees don't like it :D

Several times Allchin has said things bashing Microsoft and/or praising Apple. While some might say it is a miracle he has kept his job, it is probably the reason he has kept his job. Microsoft is in need of people with vision and people who don't settle. Unfortunately, Allchin clearly doesn't do a good enough job of motivating the developers to work at their best.

[cwt1nospam]

Everyone knows that Microsoft isn't a good partner. Their partners either end up getting bought and dismantled or crushed when Microsoft decides to make a competing product.
:eek:

[Chundles]

Everyone knows that Microsoft isn't a good partner. Their partners either end up getting bought and dismantled or crushed when Microsoft decides to make a competing product.
:eek:

Same thing happens with Apple as well.

[emptyCup]

Same thing happens with Apple as well.

Except for the cloning program, I am not sure that is true. Being bought doesn't count for either company (except in cases where a company is bought just to put it out of business). It is the buyee's choice whether or not to sell.

What examples do you have in mind?

[emptyCup]

From the article:
Majidimehr replied ``Now you feel our pain.'' He said Microsoft was providing cash incentives to get the partners to improve devices. If that doesn't work ``it is time for us to roll up our sleeves and do our own hardware,'' he wrote.

So having rolled up their sleeves for 4 years the best they could do was a rebranded Toshiba player?

Microsoft's plan was to lock down the media market with their Janus DRM, not to abandon it for Fairplay. Every failing music company has tried to partner with Apple. Apple has refused all of them. While it sounds good in retrospect to say you wanted to partner with Apple, Microsoft's mindset is that of a utility. They like automatic, preferably monthly, payments. That is why they went with partners who paid them for WMA and took all the risk, and that is why they are still pursuing monthly rentals.

[Frisco]

When I bought my first generation 5GB iPod back in the Fall 2002 I had to use MusicMatch to manage my iPod. It was terrible, but I am glad that Apple didn't partner with Microsoft to use Windows Media Player. It is equally as bad. iTunes for Windows was a great move by Apple.

Of course it really didn't matter to me personally because in Decemeber 2002 I bought my first Mac and never looked back!

[slidingjon]

From the article:


So having rolled up their sleeves for 4 years the best they could do was a rebranded Toshiba player?





My thoughts exactly.

[slidingjon]

When I bought my first generation 5GB iPod back in the Fall 2002 I had to use MusicMatch to manage my iPod. It was terrible, but I am glad that Apple didn't partner with Microsoft to use Windows Media Player. It is equally as bad. iTunes for Windows was a great move by Apple.

Of course it really didn't matter to me personally because in Decemeber 2002 I bought my first Mac and never looked back!

Congrats on being able to get a 5G back in 2002! ;)

[cwt1nospam]

Same thing happens with Apple as well.

You can't point to anything on the Apple side that even remotely compares to the "Plays for Sure" knife in the back that Microsoft has pulled on not one, but ALL of their mp3 player partners.

Congrats on being able to get a 5G back in 2002! ;)

5GB and 5G are two separate animals. One is size, the other, generation. The original iPods were 5GB but 1st generation.

[Sesshi]

So having rolled up their sleeves for 4 years the best they could do was a rebranded Toshiba player?


It's not about the player.

Software development takes a while. And that's where all other manufacturers have really lost compared to the iPod universe. They either don't have software (i.e. are UMS devices) which is fine for the geek and essential for the avid illegal downloader, they developed their own software without Apple's mindset, or they have to rely on PlaysforSure.

The only people apart from Microsoft to write their own software in a big way are Creative with MediaSource, and Sony with Sonicstage. iRiver took a crack at it, and you will still find the die-hard iRiverists using it but it is so crappy as to be laughable. Both Mediasource and Sonicstage have been developed in a very similar way to the respective company's hardware. e.g. Sony's software started out not as media management software as such, but specifically as a piracy prevention and music lock-in tool. Mediasource was designed to do virtually everything you would want to do with your MP3 player and your soundcard - so you can even record music in it. As a result, Mediasource is feature-packed but unwieldy - not to mention very rough in terms of the user experience, and Sonicstage, because it was never really developed for the user but for Sony's benefit, blows chunks even now (and it is a thousand times better than it used to be).

Strictly speaking, Apple didn't win with the iPod. Apple won with iTunes. That's what every other manufacturer has missed. Most of the major MP3 vendors couldn't even interface reliably with the software Microsoft specifically developed for this purpose, Windows Media Player. And Microsoft presumably tired of waiting, then decided to take a leaf out of Apple's book. I guess this happened about 18-12 months back, bearing in mind rumours that the Zune hardware took only 7 months from start to launch. Back then devices which supported PlaysforSure were indeed rather woeful.

I guess it was then they decided to keep PlaysforSure development going for those companies who don't have the resources to develop their own software, but work on their own 'real' competitor to iPod + iTunes. If you think about it, if M$ were to match Apple in terms of the stability of the user experience it wouldn't have made sense for M$ to enter the market with a PlaysforSure device. I don't think the way the new Zune + Marketplace implementation is that good, but it is by all accounts what M$ is aiming for - i.e. a stable user experience, which is more than you can say for the raft of Asian PlaysforSure players with poorly implemented and improperly tested firmware.

The companies involved can't exactly bleat that they've been knifed - their stuff works with media management software that ships on every PC. It is up to them to make sure it actually works anywhere near as reliably as the iPod does, and to date only a real handful of companies have managed it (and Creative isn't one of them).

[123]

mistake.

[zap2]

I wonder if Apple would have partnered with MS or not?


By 2003 iTunes for Windows was out(or if MS had talk to them before Oct it would have been worked on for a good amount of time for Apple to drop it), so they had to be working on it for a while, so I don't think Appple would have thrown iTunes away just because MS said please

[Willis]

When I bought my first generation 5GB iPod back in the Fall 2002

Congrats on being able to get a 5G back in 2002! ;)

See... a First Gen 5GB iPod... not a 5th Gen iPod :p

[IJ Reilly]

So having rolled up their sleeves for 4 years the best they could do was a rebranded Toshiba player?

They rolled up one sleeve, didn't like what they saw, and rolled it back down again.

We seem to get a little hilarity every time the door is cracked open and we see how Microsoft operates internally.

[Chaszmyr]

They rolled up one sleeve, didn't like what they saw, and rolled it back down again.

We seem to get a little hilarity every time the door is cracked open and we see how Microsoft operates internally.

Well we already knew that everything didn't operate like clockwork. If it did, they'd have no problem keeping up with Apple.