Real Reply
Mar 06, 2004
My recent post about the media player everybody loves to hate has been generating a lot of traffic, mostly thanks to Kottke, Daring Fireball and Boing Boing (but thanks to all of you).
Nevertheless, I didn't expect a reply from Real Networks.
Well, not an official reply. An internal memo was sent to me by a person who works at RealNetworks. The RealNetworks employee wrote that after "a lot of external and internal complaining", they're finally seeing some progress. He, or she, asked me to not disclose his/her name or e-mail, which of course I won't.
To easier refer to the anonymous RealNetworks employee, I'll henceforth call him/her "John", simply because it's the most common name I could think of.
Subject: Company Announcement
From: "Dan Sheeran" <dsheeran@real.com>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 18:14:08 -0800
Team,
When I sent out mail to the whole company on January 6th to announce the new RealPlayer 10 and new content services, I described the product at "the easiest and friendliest RealPlayer ever." A few people have asked me since then specifically how the player and our services have gotten better, and whether we plan to market it in the same way as RealOne Player. So with help from a number of people on the player and consumer services teams as well as in Consumer Marketing, I have put together a partial list of the many, many new things we've done across those three areas.
Keep in mind that this e-mail is in regard to the new version of Real Player, called Real Player 10, the successor to RealOne. Real Player 10 is currently available as Beta.
Consumer Friendliness in Our Marketing
-- Rob tasked us at the beginning of the year with making the real.com home page welcoming, inviting, and clear to consumers as to what their choices are. The new real.com home page is intended to do this, including making it very easy to find the free player. See www.real.com.
The free player link will be even clearer when a new version of the page goes up later this week.
"John" told me that the Real.com homepage differs depending on things like geographic location, and probably referer and browser, too. The new website, which should be the one all Americans see, makes it easier to find the link to where you can download the free player, than the older version of the website, which will be phased out, does. The latter seems to do its best to hide the fact that there is a free version at all. Sloppy design or intentionally misleading? You be the judge.
Compare website interfaces: US (new) version, European (older) version (comes in different languages).
-- The AOL desktop icon is no longer offered as part of the player installation
-- There is no more opt-out selling of third-party software in the point-of-sale of subscription services
When an application has reached rock bottom and started digging itself and its users down to hell, doing the obvious thing and climbing out of the hole, is a feature.
Consumer Friendliness in RealPlayer 10
-- The player install screens show all set-up preferences in a clear, easy to use format
-- The player provides users with even more control over how/when the player claims file types (like MP3)
-- The player Message center can be completely turned off
-- The "Product Updates" category for messaging can be turned off
-- The player provides improved 'uninstall' functionality that provides users with more control
I think it's pretty obvious that whoever is in charge of the invasive, user hostile features of Real Player, is very aware of the fact that it is not just badly or ignorantly designed, but blatantly designed for maximum hostility. Due to what "John" refers to as "much internal and external complaining", they've softened their tone and are now pulling their punches a bit.
Note the single-quotes around the word "uninstall" in the quoted paragraph above. I didn't put those there, they did. I'm not sure exactly what that's supposed to signify, but it seems like RealNetworks are quite aware of the fact that Real Player is horribly hard to completely get rid of. The use of single-quotes can be interpreted to indicate that the Real Player's refusal to leave the (Windows) system when asked to, isn't due to sloppy programming, but to evil management.
Consumer Friendliness in Our Content Services
-- Premium content can be played for 30-seconds free
-- Premium content from most partners can be browsed within RealGuide rather than being sent (or "hurled") to the partner's web site
-- There is less advertising within the content services
Financing "premium content" with advertisement is not something I have a problem with.
Again, this is only a partial list, but I hope that from just this list you can see that we are very serious about delivering a great consumer experience. We have a powerful new product and the best content experience we've ever built, so we want to make sure it's easy to find and easy to use. We are already seeing more downloads of our player since instituting the new real.com home page. We're doing everything we can to get the word out to the world that our player and Web site are a quantum leap forward from where we were, and your help in this area is vitally important.
Gee, great. No, really. This is like Osama bin Laden were to tell his minions that they henceforth will only be killing men and women, not children. Unless they get in the way. Great, but that makes you only slightly less repulsive.
I am sure that some of you would prefer to see us do even less advertising than we now do. The marketing and advertising we do enables us to build world class software and make it available to consumers for free. I can assure you we believe everything we are doing is reasonable and responsible, and we know it is fully within the norms of how other Web sites market software products and content services. But we know that we need to continue working to strike the right balance, and your input is welcome. If you do have input, please feel free to contribute it to RealThoughts. Richard Wolpert and I will collect input contributed to RealThoughts and respond to it on a regular basis. We will also be discussing this topic at today's company meeting, and will welcome questions and input at that time.
Thanks and I look forward to seeing you later today.
Dan
According to the person who forwarded this e-mail to me, who shall remain anonymous, the memo quoted above was first verbally ok'd to be forwarded outside of Real, but then they were given a new stripped down and modified version for that purpose, which had "gone through the legal department". Among other things, the quotes around the word "uninstall" had been removed in the legal department's version.
If RealNetworks are serious about making their application less invasive, obnoxious and outright user hostile, that's just great. Unfortunately for them, they are beyond ratification. Their software has been violating users for too many years, and especially during times when users were more dependant on their products than they are now, since Real's relative market share has shrunk.
Update: I got an e-mail from another employee at Real. He/she, let's call him/her "Jane", also wished to remain anonymous. Jane said she didn't enjoy reading my post, but she was glad I wrote it, and also that it should be required reading for everybody at Real.
"Jane" said that she could never figure out how pissing people off can be a revenue generator, she and others have for many years now been vocal critics of their employer's user hostile attitude, and that it's finally starting to have effect.
Some direct quotes from Jane's e-mail:
The problem stems from the way this place is organized: some teams build the core components and another group builds the UI, customer "features", etc. This second group has always had their head up their asses.
Until recently, the marketing and sales people never installed our products themselves (someone would do it for them), so they had no idea how hostile the experience could be.
Well, I can't say I enjoyed your post, but thanks for writing it.
P.S. the BBC player meme is BS. There is no customized BBC player.
Oh, and "Jane", if you're reading this: I didn't reply to thank you for your e-mail, because you left your real.com e-mail adress and I didn't want to risk your employer getting it.
Update: Here's a snippet from another e-mail from a person who used to work for Real:
What hasn't come out IMHO is why, so here's my take. Real's #1 biggest problem, and it has been since day 1, is people management. Now, this isn't a slam at Real because they're a low salary, high stock option place. That by itself isn't a bad thing; if you want a high salary and no options, you work for a bank or something. What Real has been unable to do has been to create a good work environment where people are motivated to create something really amazing. What they have created is a culture of fear, where everyone does whatever is necessary to please management. As it turns out, what pleases management is shipping software, so software is shipped, regardless of its quality. When the bubble burst, what pleased management was making money on the client, so again, software was shipped that made money, regardless of its impact on future revenue, loyalty, or brand affinity. People are rewarded not for taking a stand and shipping quality software that will last, but for shipping low-quality software that hits the date.
This is why, in a year when they didn't lay off 15% of their work force as in the past two years, they were rumored to have 30% churn --- that's 300 people in a 1000 person company like Real walking out the door to be replaced by new people. This is why, after a year or two of working there, many people just give up fighting for what they believe in (high quality, high-value, customer-friendly software) and just do as little as possible in order to get the product shipped.
If you found this post interesting, you might like to read the post that preceeded it, and the one that came after it:
- Real Obnoxious This is the rant about Real's fantastically crappy product that caused the reactions from former Real Networks employees.
- Real Proof I got an e-mail from a consultant who used to work for Real, he/she offers some interesting information about the attitudes at Real, and why the product sucks so bad.
Comments
I've had hit and miss experiences with the alternative real players. It's just such a shame that so many content providers choose to use realplayer. Although, I've noticed a shift over to Windows Media Player recently.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire perhaps?
Comment by snowman at 07:31, 06 Mar, 2004 #
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Comment by Thomas Edwards at 13:29, 06 Mar, 2004 #
The only thing I'd be willing to download from Real at this point is the codec. Remember codecs, interchangable plug-ins that would work in any media player app? Until I can play Real streams in any player other RealPlayer, I'll pass. I don't care how "less-invasive" they make their crap.
Comment by CBX at 14:02, 06 Mar, 2004 #
It's a good start, but you're right, they've made too much damage - but I'm much happier with that and feel happier that the BBC contiue to use them.
Prefer WMP though.
Comment by Thomas Edwards at 14:23, 06 Mar, 2004 #
I heard the BBC have a "special" version of real player that doesn't have any of the crap spyware included. You have to download it from the www.bbc.co.uk site. Their agreement to use real format was made only if they could supply a scum free version.
I've no idea if this is true or not but hopefully it is. I use JetAudio to listen to the BBC. If I wasn't so lazy I would email them for a confirmation.
Comment by Jimmy Barr at 17:58, 06 Mar, 2004 #
I think I'd read the quote marks around the word "uninstall" less maliciously than you do. It seems to me that the author of the memo was using the word "uninstall" -- which is usually a verb -- as an adjective ("uninstall functionality"), and added the quotes as a bit of insurance to let you know that he's doing something unusual with the language. He does a similar thing in the previous sentence ("Product Updates" category).
An awful lot of people slip into this grammatical usage, especially in writing that is considered somewhat formal or professional. It's similar to the way people put quotemarks around terms which the writer is considering to be colloquial (see, for instance, the quotemarks around "hurled" in the "Consumer Friendliness in Our Content Services" passage).
Comment by Bill at 18:47, 06 Mar, 2004 #
I don't want to come across as some Linux fanboy or anything, but the RealPlayer 8 for Linux, doesn't do most of that hostile stuff you describe. It DOES ask if you want to register everytime it's started though, so I have to click the same two boxes everytime to make it go away.
Come to think of it, that is a pretty hostile thing for them to do...hmmmm
fyi,
JP
Comment by jp at 19:50, 06 Mar, 2004 #
I refuse to install Real because of its invasiveness. Consequently, I refuse to partake of any content encoded in Real formats. My life is not worse for it.
Comment by brew at 20:21, 06 Mar, 2004 #
Speaking of alternative realplayer, realplayer for Mac is good too. Many of these complaints are with the win version.
Comment by Bill at 21:24, 06 Mar, 2004 #
I'm still a fan of Media Player Classic. It’ll play just about anything you throw at it, whether it’s an MP3, an Ogg, a WMA, RealMedia...even a QuickTime file.
Comment by karsh at 22:14, 06 Mar, 2004 #
Let's get straight about "Real Alternative" and "Media Player Classic." I want to clear up confusion that I've seen here. It may matter to you!
1. Media Player Classic is not an old product of Microsoft. It is freeware/donationware produced by an individual in Hungary.
2. "Real Alternative" is a complete set of codec files. This file set is used with Media Player Classic. On my system, it is also called by jetAudio (another media player that can play Real streams).
From examining this file set, I have concluded that Real Alternative is a wholly-owned product of Real Networks, offered as a method for Real to deliver and control content via players other than their own. This content may or may not include contracted advertising (I don't know).
- All the files that I examined contained statements identifying Real Networks as the source.
- One of the files is a Real Player icon: their logo.
3. Real Alternative contains a reporting file that can be used by spyware, and may be included for that purpose.
- The name of this file is "COOKIES.TXT."
- COOKIES.TXT is the customary name used for cookie files.
- Real's COOKIES.TXT is not placed in the usual Windows location: C:\windows\cookies, but it resides in a Real Alternative directory instead. Thus, this file is invisible to cookie management software.
- I found the streaming sites I'd downloaded from all listed neatly in this file, along with other sites that may or may not have been used for reporting.
I encourage any of you with Real Alternative on your systems to investigate this file: read the contents of your own COOKIES.TXT that you'll find in one of the Real Alternative directories ("folders" to you winnies).
If you also have snooping software, check out the actual source for every file, too.
Is this a "Real Alternative?" Make up your own mind.
Richard
Comment by Richard at 06:22, 07 Mar, 2004 #
I remember the low-grade completely illegible resolution of their viewer from 4 years ago, and their obnoxious invasive installs. The value proposition was nil! Sadly, if the capitalist marketplace worked properly these assholes would be out of business already. It's really sad that such a shitty product is still out there. Bankruptcy teaches real lessons.
Comment by jpeg at 21:01, 07 Mar, 2004 #
I shudder when I see REAL content. Why can't everyone just use quicktime?
Comment by homer jay at 05:51, 08 Mar, 2004 #
many other ppl have written about the evil Real Player. One article for example
is at http://www.searchlores.org/rea_kane.htm
Comment by shinohara at 06:27, 08 Mar, 2004 #
Nice FUD there, Richard. Work for Real do you?
Comment by Foole at 08:34, 08 Mar, 2004 #
It is too little too late. Real had already screwed themselves four years ago: http://pms.colonpee.com/irc/realplayer.txt
Comment by Phillip at 08:37, 08 Mar, 2004 #
The comments about Real Alternative above by Richard are lies. Not mistakes. Lies.
There is no advertising in RealAlternetive so how can it be an alternative advert delivery system? It doesnt work for paid content and doesnt advertise it so how can it be a revenue raiser?
Comment by CdBee at 09:57, 08 Mar, 2004 #
As a third party software company, I remember the 400$ subscription to their developer partner program. They would not answer in dev forums, would not fix the obvious bugs in Real 6, neither in Real 7 nor Real 8, and best of all would not even advertise the third party product on their third party section partner.
The person I remember to have had a few email communication with, which was a developer relation person at Real back in 1999, eventually said she moved to the legal department to pursue other goals. Fine, indeed.
Since then, I am not surprised of what Real has become. And quite honestly, the Helix initiative is the worst move they could do regarding the people still working there.
Comment by anon at 10:07, 08 Mar, 2004 #
I think Real lost my faith when they charged $10,000 per seat for the Real Audio Server back in 1996. I've installed the player about five times since then, and I will never install it again. The media player "business" is not a business, it's a service that no one is willing to pay for.
Comment by Michael Earls at 20:54, 08 Mar, 2004 #
Real is not alone in creating crap software. Macromedia's suite of web development software, Studio MX 2004, is a huge piece of crap. Specifically, Dreamweaver MX 2004, released in the fall of 2003, was tragically slow and frightfully buggy software. The chorus of anger rose up in the Macromedia forums and hasn't abated. Macromedia has been promising a fix for months but nothing, NOTHING has been delivered.
The shame of the Internet is how much we rely on these completely fucked-shitty software packages: Flash, Real, Dreamweaver...
viva open source and the death of big software!
Comment by PoorSchmuck at 08:08, 10 Mar, 2004 #
Two points.
1) BBC Player means the streaming player used within the BBC Radio site (like Radio1). You can stream it from within the browser, but it requires the real codecs.
2) RealAlt isn't related to RealNetworks. Considering their history (once read, can't find, remember quite well), they basically ripped off the Real codecs from a Real install, and rebundled them for distro in the Media Player Classic software package. As a result, Real (and QuickTime) codecs are bundled, but not the players themselves. They use an older version of Media Player as UI only!
Btw, great site!
Comment by nas at 18:22, 10 Mar, 2004 #
A big thank you! I always knew and avoided Real completely. But my uncle needed explanation why not. He always wanted RealPlayer installed in his machine. This is it.
Also the Macromedia Studio MX 2004 one big mess. Damn slow. Crashes like hell. Went back to Studio MX.
Need some real rant for Macromedia stuff too. They used to produce quality software. Now blotted.
Comment by Sans at 04:49, 11 Mar, 2004 #
Awesome stuff!
It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who can't stand this _terrible_ product.
I am a network admin at a university. I work with Novell ZENworks application management software. It took me two full days to rip all the crap out of RealONE to create a clean distributable app. I spent hours just figuring out how to keep the stinkin search bar installation 'option' from popping up everytime the player is launched! WHY CANT THEY JUST SETTLE FOR BEING A SOLID SIMPLE MEDIA PLAYER?
*Viva la WinAMP!*
Comment by Iain at 16:09, 11 Mar, 2004 #
Re: Reply 21
The codecs that Real Alternative use are supposedly based upon earlier, freely available specifications done by Real. If that is true or not I do not know. And even then, it will NOT play the RM files I throw at it.
Comment by David Silva at 03:50, 15 Mar, 2004 #
Let's not forget the web pages you are put through AFTER you cancel the Real One account you didn't want in the first place.
Here too, everthing seems to be consciously geared towards misleading the customer. You've cancelled your account. You confirmed your choice. You expect to get a page confirming the changes you've made, right? A "thank you, have a nice day" page. Right?
Wrong! Even after you confirmed you're cancelling your account, pay close attention to the page that's put before you, because you have to "confirm" your cancellation AGAIN!
Of course, I missed that one, and my credit card was charged. After complaining to my credit card company, Real promptly refunded, no questions asked.
It probably still pays off, because not everbody complains. The ones that don't mean money in Real's pocket. It's a shame a company has to make its money in such a deceiptful way...
Could this just be bad design? Sure it could. They've designed their whole site towards getting paid more, by mistake.
Who DID design their site? The same company that created the famous butterfly ballot form in Florida?...
Comment by Allerbe at 16:20, 22 Mar, 2004 #
...relentlessly eschewed all respect for the customer’s privacy, religiously enforced a proprietary audio format, and purposefully misled customers...
Trackback from compooter at 02:51, 29 Jun, 2004 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.