John Borland posted an interview with Michael Robertson, founder of the original MP3.com (and, more recently, of Lindows/Linspire), highlighting Robertson's new BadFruit project. Characteristically pugnacious toward the establishment, Robertson's first product is BadApple, a utility that enables non-iPod MP3 players to sync with iTunes. The spirit of BadApple is the same as that of Harmony, the RealNetworks technology that allows iTMS purchases to play in non-iPod players. It has been a few years since Robertson got in the face of the music industry; he founded MP3Tunes, a legit online store that sells indie MP3s, but that's not a truly rebellious venture.
1. I find it interesting that Robertson gets so much press for being such a failure. Had he not spent all his resources settling with 4 of the 5 major labels, mp3.com might have had a chance to appeal the case against Universal, the one label that refused to settle. That's not successful leadership, it's abject failure.
His LindowsOS caved to legal pressure from Microsoft and changed its name to Linspire. And as you say, MP3Tunes isn't exactly rebellious. That's because Michael Roberts isn't truly a rebel. He's a punk kid spray painting "Fight the Man" on the side of a 7-11 and not actually doing any real fighting, because that would be too HARD.
This BadApple plugin is just more of the same. This isn't innovation, it's spray-paint on the side of a convenience store, just to make a few headlines.
Posted at 5:58AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Sage