Friday, March 31, 2006

HAPPY BIRTHDAY APPLE

Apple turns thirty with another one of its periodic battles with the Beatles. The nearly-impoverished Beatles have hauled Apple into court claiming the iPod and iTunes breaks a 1989 agreement to, erm, not distribute music on physical media such as compact discs.

You'd think that someone at the Beatles would understand that the whole point about digital downloads are, erm, they're not physical media.

It's hard to see why The Beatles are wasting their time on this (their money, of course, they have so much of, frittering it away on lawyers is not a problem for them.) Nobody thinks that iTunes is anything to do with them. They would be hard pressed to find any evidence that anyone assumes Steve Jobs is behind their back catalogue and a few Mary Hopkins records. They should just let it go.

Of course, it'll be interesting to see if Apple manages to be relaxed in the face of Barratt's horrible iPad concept. The homebuilder freely admits it's trying to ride on the back of iPod mania:

Barratt plans to build about 1,800 iPads in more than 40 towns and cities, including Coventry, Slough, Edinburgh and Reading. The iPad hopes to catch the tailwind of the iPod, Apple's popular digital music player. "We haven't cleared it with Apple, but we have registered the trademark," Mr Dearlove said. An Apple spokeswoman said she was unaware of the flats.

Since the key thing about iPods has always been how tiny they are, we're not sure invoking their name in the context of homes, especially ones which are hugely "compact and bijoux, Mostyn", is the wisest marketing move. (And at up to £125k for a piddly 380 square foot, their flats make the Nano seem cumbersome.)


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"It's hard to see why The Beatles are wasting their time on this (their money, of course, they have so much of, frittering it away on lawyers is not a problem for them.) Nobody thinks that iTunes is anything to do with them. They would be hard pressed to find any evidence that anyone assumes Steve Jobs is behind their back catalogue and a few Mary Hopkins records. They should just let it go."

ehm why are they wasting their time on it? Because the people at Apple computers have broken the agreement numerous times. It's not about what people assume about the connections between the tow, it's about Apple Computers committing a CRIME by breaking the ruling AGAIN! If Apple corp broke the agreement and started releasing Beatles computers you can sure as hell bet that Steve Jobs would all but kill them.

Quite frankly I'm shocked that No Rock'n'Roll Fun are siding with the evil empire on this and not with the musician

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Well, firstly, and most importantly, the agreement was that Apple wouldn't release physical formats of music and they haven't. The multimillionaire Beatles are trying it on in order to become multimultimillionaires.

And this has bugger all to do with musicians - The Beatles are a leisure industry brand and, in case you haven't noticed, it's their record label which is bringing the case.

Of course it's about people assuming there's an connection between the two - that's the only possible basis for the Beatles having an objection to the use of what is, after all, an English noun for a totally different product.

When you say Jobs would "all but kill them", do you suppose he would send someone round to break a few bones, or were you picturing him hanging them from hooks in a freezer at 1, Infinite Loop?

Anonymous said...

If I may quote the mighty HMHB:

If you're going to quote from the Book of Revelation
Don't keep calling it the Book of Revelations
There's no "s" - it's the Book of Revelation
As revealed to St John the Divine.
See also "Mary Hopkin" - she must despair...

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