It’s about cornering the market.<\/p>\n
Don’t complain that the ROKR phone only holds 100 songs.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask if anybody else has a better solution.\u00c2\u00a0 Never mind tied into the iTunes Music Store.<\/p>\n
I’d like to tell you I’m bowled over by Apple’s announcements today.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m not.\u00c2\u00a0 So far, I’ve seen nothing revolutionary.\u00c2\u00a0 But as a business story, it’s utterly fascinating.\u00c2\u00a0 By creating the best products, improving them before anybody is CLOSE to catching up, Apple owns online music.<\/p>\n
Did we need the iPod nano?\u00c2\u00a0 Did Apple need the nano?\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly not today, iPod Minis were flying off the shelf.\u00c2\u00a0 But now, it’s like you’re having sex with Heidi Klum and Joss Stone has jumped in.\u00c2\u00a0 When you thought you had enough, when you were fully happy, you got MORE!<\/p>\n
Which, in this case, is less.<\/p>\n
I think this is about as small as we go.\u00c2\u00a0 We learned this lesson in phones.\u00c2\u00a0 After a certain shrinkage point, usability goes down.\u00c2\u00a0 I actually use a slightly larger cell phone than I used to.\u00c2\u00a0 And most other people do too.<\/p>\n
And I don’t need a nano.\u00c2\u00a0 But, most people don’t have iPods.\u00c2\u00a0 And for these people, the chance to get the latest cool gadget, to be a member of the club, to enter the game on the CUTTING EDGE, that’s too much of an enticement to turn down.<\/p>\n
All sold with a hucksterism that would make P.T. Barnum proud.<\/p>\n
If only the record industry introduced the DualDisc the same way.<\/p>\n
But they couldn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a lame product fraught with problems that most people didn’t want.<\/p>\n
But, they could have introduced SACD or DVD-A this way.\u00c2\u00a0 With a dog and pony show.\u00c2\u00a0 But, for all the showmanship in this business, it’s eclipsed by a guy in Silicon Valley.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of laughable if you think about it.<\/p>\n
The labels have lost control.\u00c2\u00a0 Apple’s got control.\u00c2\u00a0 And the reason is the iPod.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got a player universe ECLIPSING that of VHS twenty five years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve won the war.\u00c2\u00a0 You CAN’T have success if what you’re purveying is not iPod-compatible.<\/p>\n
Not that Steve is fucking the labels.\u00c2\u00a0 God, the deal he’s given them with the iTunes Music Store is…one no other retailer would settle for.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, he’s giving the labels the LION’S SHARE of the revenue and they’re STILL complaining.\u00c2\u00a0 As if they knew how to run a business, never mind an online one.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean not only has Apple created the iPod business out of thin air, but the company’s computer sales are up.\u00c2\u00a0 What’s going up in the record industry other than executive salaries?<\/p>\n
The whole Apple paradigm is based on simplicity.\u00c2\u00a0 The simpler you make something the less daunting it is, the more usable it becomes.\u00c2\u00a0 You get all these options in the Microsoft world that you never use.\u00c2\u00a0 And click the wrong button and you can never get things back to the way they used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S why songs are 99 cents.\u00c2\u00a0 To make it CONCEPTUALLY easy.\u00c2\u00a0 To simplify the buying process.\u00c2\u00a0 The only decision is WHETHER you want the track, NOT if it’s a good deal.<\/p>\n
As for licensing FairPlay…\u00c2\u00a0 Despite all the industry jawboning, Apple’s not going to do it.\u00c2\u00a0 Give up their near-monopoly to satiate some overpaid wankers who don’t even understand the game, who have no real concept of the playing field?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, maybe the industry was too stupid to foist an open standard of copy protection on Steve, then again, the brass at IBM was too stupid to buy MS DOS from Microsoft.<\/p>\n
So, this is the story of a juggernaut.<\/p>\n
As for the details…<\/p>\n
You want a phone that plays music, now you’ve got one.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not what I want.\u00c2\u00a0 But this ends the carping that Apple is going to be eclipsed by music on mobile phones.<\/p>\n
And, in its battle with Verizon, Cingular now has an advantage.\u00c2\u00a0 They can use the ROKR phone as a come-on.\u00c2\u00a0 For people to sign up.\u00c2\u00a0 You know it won’t cost $249 for long.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they’re not even interested in selling songs, that’s chump change in comparison to getting millions signed up at fifty bucks a month.<\/p>\n
This could change the whole paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 Forestall the selling of songs via cell phones.\u00c2\u00a0 Which were overpriced in the conception and barely usable because they weren’t easily transferable to other devices.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, SOMEDAY there will be wireless delivery in quantity.\u00c2\u00a0 But not tomorrow, and when it happens, will Apple be leading the way anyway??<\/p>\n
As for the new version of iTunes…<\/p>\n
Searching capabilities I thought of upon the introduction of version 1.0 but have forgotten since.\u00c2\u00a0 You can just click on "Artist", "Name" or "Album" in the greyed-out bar, just like the quick links in Safari.<\/p>\n
AND, the software engineers at Apple fixed the glitch in the previous Mac version that caused some files to be changed to QuickTime Movie format and stutter upon playing.\u00c2\u00a0 They play fine now, and go back to MPEG.<\/p>\n
And the installation…seamless.<\/p>\n
And so far the usability is too.<\/p>\n
Such a change from the old days of computerdom.\u00c2\u00a0 Such a change from the Windows world.<\/p>\n
The naysayers have been proven wrong again.\u00c2\u00a0 When it didn’t even need to, Apple has pulled a rabbit out of its hat once again.<\/p>\n
All eyes are on Steve Jobs, not musical stars.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, the musicians are in thrall TO HIM!\u00c2\u00a0 They want to work with HIM!<\/p>\n
It’s fun to watch.\u00c2\u00a0 It gives you something to believe in.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, there’s a ton of hype, but underneath it is EXCELLENCE!<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s about cornering the market. Don’t complain that the ROKR phone only holds 100 songs.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask if anybody else has a better solution.\u00c2\u00a0 Never mind tied into the iTunes Music Store. I’d like to tell you I’m bowled over by Apple’s announcements today.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m not.\u00c2\u00a0 So far, I’ve seen nothing revolutionary.\u00c2\u00a0 But as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-apple","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}