The Partnership That Could Have Changed Everything 167
DesertBlade writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, at one point, Microsoft had considered an Apple/iPod partnership before it released its own MP3 player. Microsoft was apparently displeased with MP3 players partnerships they had already made, notably the Creative and Dell models. This information came from court documents introduced in an antitrust lawsuit from Iowa. From the article: 'Microsoft had been working with partners on music devices for at least a year before Apple introduced the iPod in 2001 and catapulted to a dominant position in the market. Microsoft and its partners failed to come up with compelling hardware and had difficulty getting software to properly connect music collections on computers with their devices.' If this Apple/Microsoft partnership was formed how would this have changed the Microsoft and Apple dynamics?"
Musings... (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt it would've changed much as whatever they would've come up with, most likley being different than the I-pod is today, wouldn't have been as popular. I'd imagine lawyers woulda have the ultimate field day with connecting the dots for anti-trust violations and M$ and/or Apple would've backed away saying "Just joshin, we'll make humourous commercials instead."
Although the whole "what-if" scenario will still get to those who bother. If anything derived from such a past-possible parternship was indeed sucessful, any more collaboration probably would develop over a much longer-term period of time.
Unless of course, it were to just own everything on the planet, which in the literal sense of the word, M$ aspires to and Apple likes to own hardware and sell it at fairly expensive prices while both buy/own into the flawed concept of DRM.
The thought of a Win-Pod, or I-win (perhaps Irwin?) is funny though.
Needless to say, I'm bored right now ... XD
*continues the 9 to 5*
Thank God it didn't happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, how fast could they have forced DRM out (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't you wish you worked at MSFT? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also revealed that the company has been violating the terms of the court order stemming from their conviction for breaking federal law.
The result (according to TFA):"Shares of Microsoft rose 11 cents to $31.11 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. They have risen 4.2 percent this month."
This must be what is known as "being able to do no wrong".
it was always about user experience, not functions (Score:3, Interesting)
Creative had an ok product, licensed with M$ to be able to play DRM-protected WMP files...only M$ didn't succeed as well as they wanted to get online downloads to use WMP.
What Apple had was not just one great product, but 3, which when combined won the day.
They had an mp3 player that was aesthetically impressive, had new inventions for user simplicity (like the volume/menu wheel, which though faulty at first, got better), and easily licensed for 3rd party accessories so you didn't feel like the only way to use it was through the normal headphones.
They had iTunes the desktop software, with its slick look (though why they insisted on the mac look on a windows box i'll never know, but it seemed to work), a look so impressive that it made the users want to use that as their playback software even without the iPod. Windows Media Player kept changing its look, and kept bumping into wars of codecs and DRM license issues that users simply didn't want to deal with. When prompted to auto-upgrade WMP to a new version, users panic because history with Microsoft software shows that such upgrades often break backwards compatibility or at the very least completely lose all of their existing settings. If upgrading WMP suddenly means you can't watch movies you already have or listen to music you already have, then you won't do it, and upgrades did that with WMP and Real Player a LOT.
Creative's tool was ok for loading stuff onto the box, but it wasn't "right" for actually playing the tunes as the desktop player, so the integration factor wasn't there the way it was with iTunes/iPod.
Finally, they successfully got iTunes the store to work (sounds like Spaceballs: the t-Shirt). One stop shopping, fully integrated into the player. Buy the song, put it into a desktop playlist, sync to the iPod, BAM, new music for 99 cents and i never had to change software anywhere.
Such integration is difficult, but Apple did it where Microsoft never could with their partner relationships as they licensed them at the time.
Hence the Zume. They now know the only way to play on Apple's field is to do that same integration - player, desktop software as load tool and preferred player, and music store all in one.
But they'll never get it...or at least not until the "version 3" that it takes Microsoft to have a success for any product launch.
The analysts were wrong... and so were we (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I've come to the conclusion that we were wrong. I have to take a step back though, to the time when analysts kept arguing that licensing Mac OS to run on other machines was the way to go. The analysts never understood, as Steve Jobs did, that Apple is not a software company. That where Microsoft believes that the profits are in the software, that only works if your goal is to be the Wal-Mart of the computer industry... brand dominance by quantity, not quality.
We saw what happened when Apple licensed out its OS... it was a total disaster. Apple's strength was not the OS alone. They have always been a hardware company that made an operating system only because it allowed them to manage every level of the user experience in one integrated package. No other PC manufacturers have this advantage, and must instead rely on only the hope that a third party OS manages to work just well enough with zillions of third party apps and drivers so that consumers aren't driven away. Well, they're being driven away now... and they're going to Apple. Maybe not in a flood, but one by one they're popping up at Apple's doorstep because the iPod has shown them what a tightly integrated hardware and OS can do -- when it's done right, anyway.
But could it have been done right if Apple won the suit? I don't think so. By the time it would have happened, Steve Jobs was out of the picture, and Jonathan Ive hadn't yet carved a place as Apple's product design genius. At the time of the 9th Circuit's decision, Spindler was CEO. There's every likelihood that then-bloated and corporatized Apple would have gained some market dominance but would have played it just as complacently as Microsoft has.
The fact is, the underdog position Apple has held has been very good for pushing them to require better design than Microsoft and Apple's PC manufacturing competitors like Dell, Toshiba, HP, etc. It's possible the company's premature financial success, at a time when Spindler and Amelio were more concerned with turning out "beige boxes" just like the next guy, would have pre-empted any return by Steve Jobs and Apple would not have emerged as the brand zeitgeist to which all other companies designs aspire. Today, while they do not dominate the market in terms of sheer volume, they dominate the market in brand perception, regarded as the most desirable brand by consumers across all products of all types. They have a reputation for quality that PC manufacturers do not. They have a following that PC manufacturers do not. So strong is this following that Apple was forced to announce its iPhone before FCC filings because there's a voracious appetite for Apple rumors. Can anyone imagine throngs of consumers digging through FCC filings to be the first to announce what Motorola's next new whiz-bang product is going to be?
So, would a partnership with Microsoft be good for Apple or Microsoft? No. Not only would it risk Apple's name being dragged in the mud by inferior multimedia standards managed by a company that doesn't have half the design aesthetic or QC concerns that Apple NEEDS to have. Microsoft can make a shitty product and sit back and watch people have no choice but to buy it... Apple has to work to impress people
It wouldn't work for Microsoft either. They've had this fanciful notion that they can make people love their feeble attempts at multimedia domination simply by latching on to Apple's superior product. Where's the benefit for Apple? We already tackled that one. Ok, what happens to both Apple AND Microsoft when customers see