Apple's mixed message
May 5, 05:29 PM
Some of you may own iPods and remember the packaging which included the “Dont steal music” sticker. It was sort of odd and a lot of people thought it was either forshadowing, contradictory, or just plain funny. I personally thought it was Apple playing lip service to the music industry all the while they were giggling, running to the bank with my $300 iFee. Well they seem to be back at it…
A few days ago I was browsing Apple’s High Definition H.264 content when I came across this funny little sidebar on their site. Hmm… “Don’t Steal Movies.”
Nevermind the fact that this page is trying to sell “View Fullscreen” as a feature exclusive to a Pro level video product even though it comes built into iTunes (This has been covered before elsewhere) but I can’t figure out the point of this sidebar. It seems to be saying all of the following:
- Don’t Steal Movies!
- You can steal movies if you buy Quicktime 7 Pro
- Creative Commons is a source for free movie content
- In ten years, movies are going to be super expensive because you’ll be downloading movies instead of paying for them
- Maybe we can help you download movies
Maybe indeed… They already got the digital music industry heated up, their top guy owns a content comany and is already well known among movie execs, are coming down into the mass market hardware and are seeing a lot of success there and have declared this “The Year of HD” while trotting out Sony’s top dog at their keynote to echo it. Between Sony, Microsoft, Tivo, Netflix, the cable companies, and now Apple as well, the battle for the living room is in full swing. Expect the iMovie Store soon.
The best part of all of this is the little footnote about exaggerated claims at the bottom. Very funny.
