A Translation ...

Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser said some pretty serious things recently about Apple, iPods, and those of us who use them.

If you want interoperable music today, there is a very easy solution: it's called stealing. The average number of songs sold for the iPod is 25, and there are many more songs on iPods than 25. About half the music on iPods is music obtained illegitimately either from an illegal peer-to-peer networks or from ripping friends' CDs, which is illegal. But it's the only way to get non-copy protected, portable, interoperable music.

Now, notice he never gives any sources for this information. And he ignores the fact that you can rip your own CDs and put them on your iPod. I got to thinking -- he's either incredibly uninformed, or there's another motive. I refuse to believe that he's that dim, so I've provided what I think is a pretty good translation of what he said:

You can't play Real media files on iPods. Apple got to the portable MP3 market before we did, and Rhapsody isn't catching on. We were too short-sighted to see that people would want to take their music with them, and not we're in trouble because people are using iTunes rather than our software. So I'm going to bash Apple and iPods. Maybe someone will feel sorry for us.

I've currently got 141 songs on my iPod, and a bunch of podcasts. They're all legal. I'd LOVE for someone to show me where he got that 25 songs number.

The whole interview with Glaser is at the Guardian site.

Posted by Warren Kelly at May 12, 2006 03:36 PM | TrackBack