The Pipeline: Mossberg on Napster to Go, Dvorak on the blogosphere
Welcome to The Pipeline, Engadget's new weekly roundup of the latest comments from the major tech and gadget pundits. This week, we check out Wilson Rothman and Walt Mossberg's comments on Napster to Go, John Dvorak on the conformity of bloggers (and Mac fanatics), Edward Baig's take on the PSP and Rob Pegoraro on the future of BitTorrent.
Wilson Rothman may have called the iMac G5 "super suave" in a Time article last year, but in his column in this week's New York Times Circuits section (filling in for the vacationing David Pogue), Rothman practically gushes over Apple's latest foe, the Napster to Go service, commenting that the service "made me re-examine my life." Says Rothman: "When used to its fullest extent, Napster to Go lays iTunes flat, financially speaking." Indeed, other than somewhat balky software, the worst thing Rothman could find to say about NTG was that the players that work with the service are "not iPods." Surprisingly, Rothman failed to mention one big problem with NTG – at least for the 1% of the populuation using Macs: it's not Mac-compatible.
Over at The Wall Street Journal, Mossberg — who often recommends Macs in his column, but is also sympathetic to the needs of PC users — also took a look at NTG, and had similar complaints about the software, calling it "clumsier than iTunes." But like Rothman, he said that NTG represents "what may be the stiffest test Apple Computer has faced in music." More to the point, both Mossberg and Rothman reiterated something that's been the buzz of the blogosphere in recent weeks: that NTG may just force Apple to offer
a subscription service of their own. Here's Mossberg:
"Until the addition of portability, Napster and the other subscription plans had attracted a solid audience, but they hadn't been able to mount a major challenge to Apple. ... RealNetworks and other subscription companies are expected to add a similar portability option in the coming months. Apple has scoffed at the rental/subscription model. But if it takes off, the computer maker may be forced to respond with its own subscription service." Since we already own a few iPods, we can't wait.
While Mossberg and Rothman were discussing the finer points of legal downloads, The Washington Post's
Rob Pegoraro declared BitTorrent —
which, of course, can be used to facilitate not-quite-legal file sharing — an unstoppable force. His rationale: since BT is spyware-free, relatively easy to use and decentralized, it avoids most of the problems that plagued the original Napster, Kazaa and other P2P services. "Most file-sharing programs aren't the most upstanding citizens of the computing world," Pegorraro says. "[M]any of these programs ... fail to treat their own users well, often installing an unadvertised, unwanted load of advertising and spyware. BitTorrent is different. This free, open-source program offers a spyware- and nuisance-free installation." He also points out that the MPAA — BitTorrent's main nemesis — hasn't gone after developer Bram Cohen or end-users, instead focusing on major uploaders. "This represents a shift from previous practices, in which the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America and other groups have tried to have entire products — for example, the first Diamond Rio MP3 player or the networked ReplayTV video recorder — taken off the market." Pegorraro says that BitTorrent's saving grace may be that it's also used extensively for "legitimate"
file-sharing, adding that it could end up being used by studios and record labels to distribute their wares. We're not holding our breath; we're confident that the studios and labels will continue to work on convoluted, DRM-locked programs that will frustrate users and drive them to other alternatives. But it's nice to dream.
Meanwhile, at least one columnist
wasn't writing about file-sharing this week. USA Today's
Edward Baig took a look at one of our favorite new toys: the PlayStation Portable. His verdict: the PSP "just about does walk on water — at least for playing games." However, Baig is less excited about the PSP's other features, saying that for movies, music and photos, it's not as simple to use as other devices, and that without studio support, Sony's UMD format for video discs will have a hard time catching on (of course, studios are starting to rally
behind the format as the PSP juggernaut starts to roll). None of that will matter to gamers, of course, and Baig says they won't be disappointed. "There's a lot to love about this very slick device, especially for devoted gamers. But folks looking to do other things may want to see how Sony improves PSP later on." We're not going to wait; we'll
count on the hacker community to solve these problems for us.
Finally this week, we check in with the ever-cheerful John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine, who takes on bloggers and concludes that the blogosphere is much smaller than we've been led to believe. Referring to numbers from IBM, he points out that "officials have determined that there are maybe 2,800 or so [employee] blogs out of a universe of maybe 330,000 employees. It's believed that perhaps 200 of these are active. Microsoft has promoted blogging within its company, and if you visit the blogs there you see a similar phenomenon: lack of interest." He then sneers at a Blogcount post that claims that up to 20% of Koreans have blogs: "IBM cannot even muster 0.1 percent of its employee base, and Korea manages over 20 percent of its entire population? This is how delusional the blogging-crowd members have become about their hobby." Dvorak also cites as anecdotal evidence the fact that Mac users always send in scathing comments when he disses their religion platform, but that he doesn't get the same rise out of bloggers. Well, maybe he will now.