Apple to Buy Roxio?

[MacRumors]

LoopRumors claims that reliable sources indicate that Apple is looking to purchase Roxio.

Roxio currently produces Toast for the Mac as well as CD-R software for the PC. In addition, Roxio has recently acquired Napster as well as Pressplay.

 

[applemacdude]

Apple owning Napster. LOL. MAybe they'll buy to enchance their cd burning compabalities..Even though its ok NOT GONNA HAPPEN or is it?

 

[mac15]

hmm, well I think this is crap. looprumors is full of **** all the time

 

[MetallicPenguin]

I doubt this will happen. But who knows?

 

[From Win to Mac]

what's the point ??
Napster is supposed to launch next year, half a year after the project iTMS release for Windows.

 

[stefman]

If it was true, wouldn't this be a good thing (tm)?

Apple would control a great piece of CD burning software and control a new "competitor" for the Music Store.

 

[Sayer]

Why not?

If this was MS everyone would be whining about how Apple *should* buy them instead. I don't get it.

What is wrong with you people?

Apple buying Roxio would wipe out a soon-to-be competitor to their music store.

Who cares about PeeCee CD burning software. Of course Apple could augment their slim offerings on OS X with Roxio's tech and maybe integrate it into iTunes for Windoze (what a shock, synergy emerges!).

Gee whiz you people are frickin' nuts when it comes to what Apple should do and what Apple should not do.

 

[Sol]

Could be good

I think an Apple owned Roxio would be a good thing. So far most of Roxio's products have not been ported to the Mac and the Napster intellectual property would be a useful bonus for Apple.

 

[pyrotoaster]

I don't trust LoopRumors, but consider how funny it would be if Apple actually did this.

Imagine, why even bother with iTMS competition, just buy the parent company and let Napster and Pressplay vanish completely!

 

[dguisinger]

Everyone is posting their doubts, so I guess it probably wont happen. But want to know whats funny? Every windows user would have an apple tax.

Windows XP's built in CD burning is actually written by Roxio.

 

[AndrewMT]

How much would Apple have to pay to buy Roxio?

 

[Nermal]

I'd love to see this happen. Get rid of Napster, and maybe Pressplay. But as dguisinger said, XP's CD recording is made by Roxio, so maybe MS would have to pay Apple for every copy of XP sold?

 

[jettredmont]

Feelings mixed ...

I was a long-time user of Adaptec's Easy CD Creator, from the 3.0 version that came bundled with my HP drive through 4 and 5. Roxio "spun off" from Adaptec, and the quality of the product plummetted. Easy CD Creator 5 was the root cause of massive instability on my Windows box for quite a while, and was nearly impossible to uninstall (I ended up reinstalling Windows). And I'm by far not the only one who's had instability from Roxio's recent offerings.

IMHO, Roxio has massive QC problems. I was astonished to see Microsoft outsource their CD writing to Roxio (and not all that surprised when XP's CD-writing software turned out to be buggy as hell on my equipment while the "unintegrated" Nero works swiftly, safely, and error-free). But, they make good business deals, and by hook or crook practically owned the PC CD-writing market for a few years (now Nero is gaining dominance and a few others get airplay).

I've never used Toast on my Mac, so I can't say what kind of quality Roxio puts into its Mac products. However, if Apple were to buy Roxio and didn't immediately clean house on the Windows division, we'd see users blaming Apple for their PC crashing. Buggy software, no matter what its market share, is no calling card for switchers.

Add to that the Netscape brand and PressPlay contracts/back-end: Apple needs neither, as it has better name recognition, better contracts, and a more battle-tested and tuned back end. This can only be seen as a defensive play, keeping MS or the like from easy entry into competing with iTMS.

So, mixed feelings here. I don't see the advantage to Apple buying Roxio. But then, maybe that's why I don't have an MBA

 

[maradong]

perhaps were gonna see an even better toast version. ;-) not to talk of Winoncd

 

[chewbaccapits]

Originally posted by dguisinger
...Every windows user would have an apple tax.

LOL...Thats the best IDEA I've heard all year!!...nice!

 

[Nermal]

Re: Feelings mixed ...

Originally posted by jettredmont
I've never used Toast on my Mac, so I can't say what kind of quality Roxio puts into its Mac products. However, if Apple were to buy Roxio and didn't immediately clean house on the Windows division, we'd see users blaming Apple for their PC crashing. Buggy software, no matter what its market share, is no calling card for switchers.

Is there anything stopping Apple from keeping the Roxio brand name? They could fix Easy CD, then announce that they're actually Apple.

I've got Toast, I haven't used it much but it seems to be much more reliable than Easy CD was.

 

[macnews]

I use toast a lot and it is a great product. I can not say the same thing for their windows Easy CD - that has given me more fits! Toast is nice in that it burns CD's faster (not much but a little) and allows me to burn DVD RW's!

 

[bigjohn]

Ack!

First, regardless of whether rumors are true or not is beside the point - it gives us something to speculate on pro and con until it's either proven untrue or just doesn't happen (or in the rare instance, it does happen). IF Apple let Toast retain it's functionality as my daily uber-burn .app, then I'm cool with the acquisition. IF Apple decided to somehow disable the ability to burn either VCDs or Multitrack CD-ROM XAs (you who know, know what I'm referring to), then I'd be pissed.

I'd be pissed since everytime I do an upgrade of an iApp, it seems to not add the new version but supplant the old with the new. That's fine for the most part, but today I was thinking about putting iTunes v1 onto my oldest Mac and was in a dilemma on where to find it. I'd hate for Apple to replace Toast with a non-VCD friendly version and somehow I'd lose the ability to burn, um, stuff altogether.

OR, Apple has that cash in reserve and it's burning a hole in Steve's pocket.

One or the other I think...

 

[bennetsaysargh]

this would be awesom! then, there would be no competitor for the music store, and they could put toast in a bundle that thery can sell to switchers. switcher bundle-a bunch of software to help ease the switch to mac.

 

[bikertwin]

Originally posted by chewbaccapits
LOL...Thats the best IDEA I've heard all year!!...nice!

Microsoft never pays royalties.

I hated Roxio when I upgraded to EZCD 5, as another poster mentioned. Being a switcher, I used Toast with much trepidation but then found out it's a much better product. Maybe they just need better QA on the Windows side. Of course not much has happened with Toast since I switched over a year ago.

If Apple could leverage the Napster brand on the PC side of things I think that would be a good idea. But napster.com should just point to iTMS.

Apple buying Roxio doesn't seem too likely, but would be a Good Thing if it happened.

 

[dricci]

Makes sense... they could use Roxio's technology to integrate CD Burning into the iTunes for Windows app, that way they wouldn't have to write their own CD burning code.

 

[JPGR_Fan]

There is a pretty good analysis of this at The Register.

 

[ebow]

Initial reaction...

My initial reaction is to worry they'd take something like Toast Titanium and dumb it down, losing some important things like format options and multi-session ability. It happened with Sound Jam (though it's been so long that I forget what was taken away to make iTunes). However, the analysis by The Register is interesting... Hmm.

 

[AppleMatt]

Originally posted by dguisinger
Windows XP's built in CD burning is actually written by Roxio.

I was going to say that!

Anyway hopefully this means Apple will add multi-session burning straight into the finder.

Also buying Napster/pressplay, I think, could be very valuable, partly due to knowledge and partly due to eliminating competition (something Microsoft and Apple like doing) and keeping record companies happy.

AppleMatt

 

[MorganX]

>>There is a pretty good analysis of this at The Register.<<

Did iTunes really start off as Casady & Greene's MP3 Jukebox?