JD on EP

"the iTunes client is a way of shopping from the Adobe store"

a freudian slip? or too many companies starting with "A"?

[jd sez: Under-caffeination, I think. ;-) Fixed now, thanks.]

There is no such crime as "being a monopolist." You can't be convicted of it. A court can find (1) that you have monopoly power [necessary for step 2] and (2) that you abused that power. It is not exactly a "conviction" even then, unless someone goes to jail.

I know we love the phrase, but it distorts the reality really badly. Please don't use it any more.

One of the best lessons for me about this, in my early career, was back when IBM had to divest itself of the Service Bureau Corporation (it also had to allow other people to make punched cards), which was eventually completely sold off and has now disappeared into some other service business.

At the very same time, I worked for one of the 7 dwarves and we ran a service bureau at Remington Rand Univac (later Sperry Univac, later ... Unisys) with no problems. Because there was no prospect of monopoly power and nobody cared. I am sure that IBM folk found this particularly irritating, but good on them.

I am not a legal specialist in any region, much less globally. But if you search on the phrase "convicted monopolist", one business group comes up again and again and again in the results.

Nice little quote in an interview with Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith: "Adobe Flash is far and away the leading Internet-based technology for the streaming of media."

I'd say the iTunes comparison isn't apples to oranges at all. Maybe it's Empire vs McIntosh (pun intended), but still apples and apples.

I've rarely used iTunes for its interface to the iTunes Store. That may be Apple's most important feature for business reasons, but to me (and many others, I'm sure) the best part about iTunes is that it is a quality media player.

You mentioned "managing your other assets" as the other reason why iTunes and WMP can't be compared. I don't understand that one either. Managing my music library is an essential part of a media player experience for me. In fact, I think recent versions of WMP have library management features too.

You're right about Flash Player, though. No comparison.

You can say a lot of things about MS, and I too have a long list of issues with them and their business practices. However, anyone who ever tried to use Real software (I use the term ironically) or admin systems where it would be installed or uninstalled, know what killed Real.
[jd sez: I think it was the whole "Progressive Networks" sociopolitical stance, myself....]

And yeah, if I was responsible for that heap of manure, I'd want to take attention away from myself too...

We did labtests to find out why we were seeing so many issues with our NT4 machines (yes, this is long ago) and the most impressive stuff some version of their player did was to take with it 80% of the registry user hive when uninstalling, rendering the user profile useless.

It's not MS' fault they couldn't code...

Josh raises a point about "What's 'a media player'?", and I don't think I wrote my original post as well as I might've, so let me ramble here, see if I can pull my thoughts together better.

Back in the 90s, Progressive Networks did try to monetize its Real Player media viewer. Microsoft forcibly changed Real's business model, by bundling a follow-the-featurelist media player of their own. It always seemed to me similar to what Microsoft had done to Netscape, when Netscape was counting on software sales to provide a ROI for engineering. Netscape and Progressive Networks were damaged as businesses once Microsoft bundled a followup competitor to their products. Once those two businesses were defanged, Internet Explorer for Mac was discontinued, Windows Media Player for Mac was discontinued. And we never saw what else the Netscape or Progressive businesses might have been able to do.

The situations with "media players" today is different. Nobody's looking for runtime revenue, so a competitor runtime with a bundling advantage doesn't matter as much.

Is Apple's iTunes client "competition" for Microsoft's Windows Media Player desktop app, or its Silverlight browser plugin? No. Apple Store is looking for sales, not viewings. Microsoft is moving from selling a hyperintegrated software stack, to selling audiences to advertisers, but Apple doesn't seem to be doing much with advertising revenue. The iTunes client and Windows Media Player both deal with audio and video, but after that it gets harder to compare them.

And Adobe Media Player? Very, very different. We'll learn more at MAX, but right now AMP is (a) an example of AIR -- a convincing testcase for those evaluating their own projects; (b) a way for content creators and content consumers to meet on more equal terms than in a web browser (no Greasemonkeying your UI); (c) new ways for you and an external advertising service to find ways to monetize your work. AMP will contain advertising, but Adobe itself isn't in the advertising business -- AMP will connect creatives and existing ad networks.

The thing about AIR and AMP is that anyone can build a competitor player -- every Adobe Media Player installation makes that system current with Adobe Integrated Runtime, which then reduces the consumer adoption costs of each subsequent AIR project. For every installation, AMP makes it easier for alternative media players to succeed.

It's hard to say the same about Windows Media Player. ;-)

MS delivers an executable. AMP delivers a platform. It's hard to compare them.

Anyway, that's why the argument "the old Real decision should be reversed because of Apple iTunes and Adobe Media Player today" just sounds so bizarre to me -- just makes no sense to me, all they have in common is the audio, video, and "media player" in their names.

Interesting comments coming from an Adobe guy, considering the fact that Microsoft's deal with Macromedia to bundle Flash with XP played a large role in displacing Java from the web applet space.

Can you say, "hypocrisy"? I knew you could.

[jd sez: Macromedia Flash Player was indeed the only non-Microsoft software included with Windows XP. But Flash Player adoption rate is many, many times that of any operating system. And at that point, Flash and Java had very different capabilities. (Anonyms who call others "hypocrites" enter a strange loop.)]

"I am not a legal specialist in any region, much less globally. But if you search on the phrase "convicted monopolist", one business group comes up again and again and again in the results."

//////////////////////////////////////////////

No duh. Microsoft haters coined that term and use it all the time, just as you do, so it appears in internet searches. That doesn't mean it has any basis in reality. Come on, you can't be that stupid. Are you really lowering your blog to slashdot's level? You have more pride than that, surely.

"Convicted Monopolist" makes no sense.
1. It's not illegal to have a monopoly. You have one in the internet applet space, btw.

2. "Convicted" doesn't apply to civil cases, only criminal ones. (Look up "conviction" at dictionary.com.)

"Convicted monopolist" is cheap rhetoric that Microsoft haters throw around.

As orcmid said, "I know we love the phrase, but it distorts the reality really badly. Please don't use it any more."

I know that you understand this, but I guess the temptation to use cheap rhetoric is just too much for you to handle. Sad, that.

[jd sez: "Orcmid" seems to resolve to a real person, via Dennis Hamilton's blog. "Bugs" lists email as "Pepe Smythe", rather than a legal name but does have Google footprint in many MS/Mac advocacy discussions. I'll leave these comments in, but these guys don't give themselves as much credibility as they might if they owned their opinions, and especially their evaluations of a disclosed person's personality and motivations. Your opinion means more if you own it, and stake your rep on it.]

I've had orcmid as a handle since the late 70's and have used it consistently. At Xerox I even managed to have it in my e-mail alias while I was in Rochester, NY.

The link I provide identifies me, a google search on orcmid finds me only (it is, in English at least, a unique 6-letter identifier across the Internet), and I am clearly not anonymous. [jd sez: Did you pick up that I had gone to the website cited, and done additional websearches, to see to what degree the unnamed ad-hominem commenters here backed up their words?]

Are you staking your rep on your opinions in this post? If I used my legal name, you would find many more people on Google. How would that help?

Actually, I don't know what this means: as much credibility as they might if they owned their opinions, and especially their evaluations of a disclosed person's personality and motivations. I don't think you are talking about me, because I don't think I've done that. Where do you seem me "evaluating a disclosed person's personality and motivations?" I see you doing more of that to me than I have of you.

- Dennis

It takes no more work to find out who I am that it takes me to find out who "jd" is.

I think the bugs analysis is accurate, and I am not hiding. I don't know who he is. I have the same concern with you citing the conventional wisdom as authority, and you know I have chided you about that in the past.

You can find out more about me than you want to know (try the contact links on any of my blogs, try this too: http://orcmid.com/construction/orcmid.com, among other places). Oh, and my e-mail address, which you have, has my name and an affiliation of mine.

I got that orcmid "seems to resolve" to a real person, which seemed to remain edgy. Please show me where I have been an "unnamed anonymous ad-hominem commenter here."

Psuedonymous and anonymous are not the same thing.

I take great care to avoid ad-hominem attributions to anyone. Maybe we don't have the same meaning for that too? Show me where I have done that here and I will willingly apologize at every such place.