Glaser: Harmony is the way forward
Published: 18 Aug 2004 11:30 BST
You had attempted to ask Jobs if he was interested in providing a licence to FairPlay and the iPod back in April. But you had the Harmony project already under way at that point?
Absolutely. We had reached the conclusion that technically we had all the bases covered, and that we were going to be able to implement something that was very good. We didn't have all the finish on it, and all the user interface hooked up, and hadn't done all the final tuning and everything, but at the time I contacted Steve, we were well on the way -- which is when he decided to do a Bill O'Reilly on us.
At that point, we kind of kept our powder dry. We were asked, "Can you explain, Mr Glaser, why you sent that message to Mr Jobs?" and we explained that we think compatibility and interoperability is good. And [we were asked], "Now that he's told you that he won't do that, what will you do?" And I said, "Well, we write software here, and we're just going to keep improving our software."
Every time you go into a situation you should have a good plan A and a good plan B. That's been true for us through this whole process.
In that exchange, Jobs leaked your request to the press. That's not standard operating procedure in a lot of business. Do you feel that was fair play?
No, FairPlay is his DRM.
No, look, Steve is a one-of-a-kind guy. You know that about him when you do business with him or when you work with him. I don't take any of that personally. My view is that we're doing something that's important for consumers here. The personalities make for interesting press, but the reality is that we were going to do what we thought was the right thing for consumers, in a way that we thought was completely in the tradition of well-established things like Compaq's compatibility for computers.
Because Apple has had the experience of having a wave of compatibility wash over it, it was and is hard to predict how they would feel if a wave of compatibility came in and they embraced it. Certainly when that happens, that changes the dynamics. But we think Apple does very innovative work. And if they keep driving innovation with the next generation of iPods, they could have a very successful business over the long haul.
This a is case where we think we're doing the right thing for consumers and the right thing for industry, and it might well be the right thing for Apple. But we think it's going to happen in the long haul regardless.
Previous
Did you find this article useful?
273 out of 423 people found this useful
Digg
Slashdot
Del.ici.ous
Stumble
Reddit
Full Talkback thread
1 comment
