It’s always the small guys that want to ’share’… seems logical.. look at Apple’s Desktop Apps.. they want MS to share, they want everyone else to go Open Standard… they look like Robin Hood..but when they have the dominant position they’re protective. Let’s be honest here.

And here’s Real, pretty much a nobody with annoying software (and a notoriously annoying website) begging for part of the action.

Will this scheme work? Uh.. okay, maybe, but not as well as the iTMS, so Apple will not want any part of it. Legally, Real may be out of the woods, but they won’t be promoting this break-even store with the same frenzy that Apple will promote it’s own.

So who stands to win? Well.. Real wins because its customers can now get in a (long, long, long) line for iPods…too bad they didn’t just download iTunes about 6 months ago, they could avoided this hassle.

Why on earth would anyone use one of those junky stores like Real or MusicMatch?

<< However, there appears to be little downside for Apple, according to Tim Deal a senior analyst with Technology Business Research. RealNetworks does not appear to offer anything that would cause IPod users to switch to other devices, he says. In any case, while IPod hardware generates close to 14 percent of Apple revenue, the ITunes Music Store generates only about 3.6 percent of revenue, Deal says.

“The RealNetworks software might be attractive if they have exclusive content not available though Apple….but even so, why would an IPod owner bother to switch devices?” Deal says, noting that RealNetworks Music Store tunes can be played on IPods. >>

My iPod will play all sorts of file-types; perhaps not WMA, but most others. And if I was to purchase WMA files, iTunes will easily convert WMA into any file-type of my choice before uploading it to my iPod.

So exactly what has RealNetworks done? And how will my iPod experience be any better as a result of it?

I can already purchase music from RealNetworks and listen to it on my iPod.

Sad case of mass misinformation.

It seems to me that Apple shouldn’t care in the least about this — it would be Microsoft, Napster, Puretracks et al who use Windows Media Player format (WiMP) who should be upset.

As I read it, this is a WiMP DRM stripper, not an iTunes DRM stripper.

Why would Apple care? This is good news for the iPod (if not for the ITMS).