From Sunday's Washinton Post:
RealPlayer's iPod-Compatible Update 'Stunned' Apple By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, August 8, 2004; Page F06
RealNetworks' RealPlayer program once defined digital multimedia online -- it was the only way to listen to scratchy Web radio or watch grainy Web video. Today Apple's iPod holds a similar role in the MP3-player market -- it's the gadget everybody seems to want.
Both of these products were recently updated: Apple's newest iPod adds the best design features of the iPod mini, while RealPlayer 10.5 adds the unprecedented feature of iPod compatibility.
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But with the older iPod models vanishing from store shelves and the iPod mini perpetually back-ordered, the new iPod may be the only game in town.
RealNetworks would like to get into that game. Months ago, the Seattle firm asked Apple to license the FairPlay software that lets people copy songs purchased from Apple's iTunes Music Store to iPods, so that it could offer the same option to its own customers.
Apple turned Real down, so Real set about making its downloads iPod-compatible without Apple's help.
The results are on display in RealPlayer 10.5, a test release for Windows that incorporates the company's new "Harmony" software (
www.real.com/harmony/). Beyond being less pushy during its installation (it no longer embeds Real's own bookmarks in your Web browser), RealPlayer 10.5 allows you to move songs purchased from Real's store -- plus most other music files -- to an iPod, just as you might in iTunes.
The Harmony software converts them to a form that an iPod will recognize, without installing any software on the iPod itself.
Getting RealPlayer to talk to an iPod -- I tested it with an iPod mini and a fourth-generation iPod -- involves a little work. It took me two or three tries to get Real's software to recognize each iPod, but once I had coaxed it past that step, the file transfers proceeded without incident each time.
Harmony can also convert Windows Media Audio files (excluding those bought from such online stores as Napster, Wal-Mart and Musicmatch) to an iPod-ready format, although this vastly stretches out song-transfer times.
Harmony is a major achievement -- it lets users play music downloaded from different stores on one device without resorting to intermediate steps like burning the purchased songs to audio CDs and then re-ripping them to a computer in MP3 format.
In other words, Real has made the iPod even more useful.
And Apple is outraged. "We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod," the company sputtered in a statement released last week. Apple suggested it might sue RealNetworks and issued an unsubtle warning to its users: "When we update our iPod software from time to time it is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods."
Apple's iPod product manager, Stan Ng, wouldn't expand on that statement Friday evening, not even to say whether Apple had received any complaints from iPod users about Real's software.
So Apple's get-your-hands-off-our-product stance remains a mystery to me. Throughout its existence, the iPod has benefited from third parties who broke into it to add features, such as calendar and address-book capabilities, that Apple later adopted. I don't recall Apple threatening any of these people with lawsuits. Nor do I remember Apple suing the developers of the software that lets Linux users use their iPods with that operating system.
But if Apple really is that upset about RealNetworks "breaking into" the iPod, it shouldn't get mad -- it should get even. It should update iTunes so it can play songs purchased from Real's online store. Customers can then make their own choice of what program to use, and Apple and Real can compete like any other pair of music retailers.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at
rob@twp.com.
