There's no love lost between RealNetworks' Rob Glaser and Apple's Steve Jobs and it looks like their war of words may be recommencing.

Apple won't allow music from the RealPlayer to be 'transferred' to iPods. So Real came up with Harmony which lets people hear Real tracks on any player ---- whether Jobs likes it or not. Jobs responded by accusing Real of using hacker tactics.

Harmony mimicked hymn, a free, independent application developed with the same objective and Hymn, in turn, started life as PlayFair (a poke at Apple's misnomered FairPlay consumer control DRM), eventually becoming hymn (hear your music anywhere) after Apple had tried, and failed, to grind it down.

Now RealNetworks, flush with cash, thanks to Microsoft, is on Jobs' case once more.

"At the Digital Living Conference here on Monday, Glaser told a packed hotel ballroom that Jobs & Co.'s refusal to make the iPod compatible with music services other than Apple's iTunes was 'pigheadedness'," says CNET News.

"Glaser also said that Apple's unwillingness to cooperate with other online music vendors promotes piracy of copyrighted materials and will eventually draw the wrath of consumers. These are heady times for Glaser and his Internet multimedia company, which announced in October that it had reached a favorable settlement with Microsoft on the $1 billion lawsuit RealNetworks filed in 2003."

Glaser also "called for the music industry to pressure Jobs into opening up the iPod to other online music vendors," says CNET, which also has him stating:

"Steve makes for a good pinata because he's taken a position against interoperability."

Apple, "being on its own in term of interoperability makes piracy more compelling for consumers. Because, hey, if I take all my MP3s from this illegal site or that illegal site, they'll work on the iPod or anything else. Whereas if I buy them legitimately, they'll only work at one place."

It's all rhetoric, however.

At this point in the game, the corporate music business is insignificant matched against the independent the p2p networks, and the labels seemed determined to keep it that way, maintaining ridiculously high wholesale prices for their digital tracks. In fact, rather than lowering them, they want to increase them.

Apple, meanwhile, entirely dominates what little corporate online business there is with iTunes, its iPod promo vehicle.

But RealNetworks is still trying to grab a piece of the action. Yesterday it announced it's remodelled its Rhapsody music rental service by putting it online.

Also read:-
Harmony - Apple and Real hack it out, July 31, 2005
CNET News - Glaser turns wrath on Apple, Jobs, December 5, 2005
putting it online - Real Rhapsodizes on the Web, December 5, 2005