They have sold 1.5 billion songs and there has to be some level of backward compatibility, otherwise it is going to be very painful for their users. What if Apple finds out how this works and updates its technology to block your hack? Or do you not think this can happen? User-friendliness-we thought that through extensively. We have technology that basically guarantees that it works for them. An important element is that the user will not need to do anything on their part.
We have our own way to make sure it works and keeps on working.
We hope to make sense of that, and we have developed a technology to enable that.Īnd this technology isn't something that Apple can easily shut the door on, as they've done in the past with RealNetworks' Harmony? Will we see update after update to keep it working? It is kind of like the zoo: Every animal is singing a different tune. When you buy a DVD, you know that the DVD will play on your Toshiba or Sony or Philips player, but when you buy music or video online, you don't have that. We also plan to allow competing devices play iTunes content. So we have developed a method for making content compatible with the iPod. If you want to offer DRM protected content and you want it to play on the iPod, you have to use FairPlay. Major labels and studios do not release their content unprotected. One is to enable other online stores to wrap their content with FairPlay so that it works on the iPod. Farantzos, a biophysicist by training but now into technology business development, talked about the company's plans and challenges with CNET .įarantzos: We have two components in the business. If successful, DoubleTwist could break through the wall Apple has built around its music business. The first customer has signed on, though its name is not being disclosed. They started working on this in the spring and are now talking publicly about it. The pair sees a business in making digital media interoperable. Farantzos said she made contact with Johansen after reading a profile of him in The Wall Street Journal.