October » 2006 » The Macalope

Death by anecdote

Posted October 6, 2006 By The Macalope and has 15 comments.

Sven Rafferty declares the iTunes Store a fad that will be killed by CDs.

Apple is up against a difficult problem before it. DRM. What to do about it.

Uh… well… put.

While the most lenient in the business, it still won’t let you play it on other non-iPod devices such as Creative’s offering or the home entertainment system by Sonos.

OK, one more time for the slower students in the class: that’s how Apple tries to keep you buying iPods. That’s their business model. They make it inconvenient – but not impossible – to move your music to another player.

They also just make cool players.

This is starting to become an issue not just with techies but with regular non-technical users as well. I’ve already heard a few people tell me they went back to buying CDs because, “It won’t play on my [insert hardware device here].”

The anecdotal evidence is incontrovertible! The iTunes Store will fail!

With such a change in current, Apple will start to see its sales level off at the Store.

Really? And that’s supposed to start, what, now? Just because “a few people” told you they were going back to buying CDs? Did people just suddenly become aware there’s DRM, even though it’s been on every song ever downloaded from iTunes?

Sure, the lazy at heart may still go with a quick download here and there…

OK. Stop.

…but for the most part, you’ll start seeing more and more CDs being purchased (or visits to AllofMP3)…

Stop. Stop. Stop.

…as more users become aware of Apple’s desire not to share FairPlay with others.

STOP!

Sven uses the example of Beck’s latest release The Information to try to prove his point. He says you can easily buy the CD for $12.99 – presumably from a brick and mortar outlet – compared to $11.99 on iTunes. He derides the videos as “cheesy” and says “no one cares about those”, probably because he doesn’t realize the CD actually comes with a DVD with the videos on it.

But let us conjecture two possible purchasing scenarios.

A customer buys Beck’s album off the iTunes Store and burns it to a CD. Cost: $11.99 + 50 cents for the CD media = $12.49. Elapsed time: maybe an hour for the download and the burn.
A customer goes out to the store and buys the CD and included DVD. Cost: $12.99. Elapsed time: maybe an hour if he doesn’t stop at Starbucks.

Now, the results are not exactly the same as you can’t burn the videos to DVD via iTunes. But nobody cares about those, right Sven? (In this instance there is some backup for that as the videos are not studio productions, but lower-quality home-made stuff.) But you end up with a DRM-free copy of the music for 50 cents less from iTunes and, more importantly, you didn’t have to get off your ass to do it.

While Sven is apparently against the vice of sloth, he also has a problem with the virtue of thrift. Possibly he’s a Presbyterian.

Truth is, the iPod will not be number one for ever and when that happens…

Intelligent chimps will rule the Earth?

…Apple will no longer make money off of the iTunes Store as other venues for the other players will be available.

Unlike now, when no other venues for purchasing music online for other players are available.

Wait, what?

Further, as additional music lovers become more frustrated with DRM in the coming months…

What is so freakin’ special about the next few months? Is it DRM Awareness Dayz or something? Is Cory Doctorow going door-to-door to tell YOU about the evils of DRM? WHAT?!

…they, too, will find themselves back in Target, Wal-mart, or online at Amazon, purchasing hard copy material as they once did in the ancient times of the digital frontier.

Because a couple of dudes Sven knows are doing that. And Rick is, like, a total trend-setter. He had a troll patch way before they were cool.

Until that happens, legitimate stores such as Apple’s iTunes Store will see a leveling and most likely a spike in illegal downloads…along with some rise in hard copy sales. Maybe. Hopefully, however, Apple will be smart enough to avoid this and really play fair.

Groan.

Look, it’s FairPlay that brought the record companies to the table in the first place. Without FairPlay, the iTunes Store wouldn’t exist. But Apple also benefits from FairPlay. The reason you can’t play a FairPlay-protected song on a Zune is the same reason you can’t use Schick blades on a Gillette handle.

If Sven and his buddies want to “stick it to the man” by buying CDs (wait, don’t the record companies want you buy CDs anyway?), that’s their business. But none of the rest of us really need to watch another episode of “The Anecdote That Crushed Cupertino”.

Mac tool

Posted October 4, 2006 By The Macalope and has 14 comments.

Hadley Stern of Apple Matters declares Vista good enough for most users, which strikes the Macalope as not particularly surprising since most users are already using Windows.

But Stern believes the operating system race is over. And the Internet has won!

What this means for Apple is that the edge with OS X will disappear. And what is left? Better hardware? Perhaps. More software selection? Certainly not. The so-called advantages of a closed hardware/software platform? Most assuredly not as iTunes availability and success on the Windows platform shows.

Not having to go through the technological equivalent of a proctologic exam when registering your products? Maybe. An operating system that doesn’t throw up a thousand modal warning screens every time you try to do something because that’s the only way they could think of to fix their security problem – by making everything so difficult that you don’t even want to use it anymore? Mmm, could be.

Etc. Etc.

Stern seems to believe that the development of operating systems will cease after Vista is released and seems to not know about this “Leopard” of which we speak.

All signs in the future point to the end of the importance of the operating system. Or, maybe it is time for Apple to start thinking about what needs to come next.

Phew. All the pedanticism of Jef Raskin without any of the vision.

This is a familiar refrain from Stern – having recently argued that because most anyone would choose a Windows machine with an Internet connection over a Mac without one, the operating system doesn’t matter anymore. The Macalope is loath to get into this because it leads to endless analogies and absurd desert island scenarios, but this is the beat the Macalope chose so it’s a little late to complain about it now.

Reduced to their most basic purpose, operating systems are tools you use to accomplish something. When given the choice between accomplishing that thing and not accomplishing that thing, it should prove unsurprising that 99 out of 10 [sic] users are going to choose to accomplish that thing.

They are also likely to choose to not get stuffed in a duffle bag full of angry bees and beaten with sticks. Again, not surprising.

Stern wants to pretend that this is something new. It is not. This is the way it has been since tools were first invented. If you could have asked an australopithecus if he’d prefer a large bone to beat a boar to death with or a leafy frond, he’d have knocked you over, taken the bone and beaten both you and the boar to death with it. So, yes, the Macalope will happily stipulate the point that between a tool that gets the job done and one that doesn’t, the one that does is more useful.

Yippee.

This says nothing about how quickly and efficiently the job gets done, or how fricking awesome you look doing it.

Perhaps it’s that Microsoft has been out of the fight for five years that’s causing Stern to believe we’ll reach the end of history when Vista is released. But here in 2006, we’re still years away from an “always on” zero-latency Internet with applications that don’t look like “teh azz”.

So let’s not pretend otherwise.

But we can all laugh about it now…

By The Macalope and has 3 comments.

Perusing Peter Coffee’s Dirty Dozen IT Embarrassments, the Macalope was a little surprised by the jovial cartoon that accompanies number 3.

In this instance, eWeek probably should have reconsidered the format of the piece based on the content.

UPDATE: Peter Coffee responds in comments:

We wrestled with precisely this question during development of this list; my conclusions, and my decision to use the incident as one of our twelve examples, are elaborated at [this link].

I invite discussion there.

And they call Jobs a megalomaniac

By The Macalope and has 1 comment.

Dunn, four others, to be indicted.

UPDATE: Dunn apparently has ovarian cancer There’s something we can all hope she’ll beat.

Dear Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal:

By The Macalope and has 11 comments.

The Macalope just finished reading your review of the new iPods, The New iPod: Ready for Battle? ~~(subscription only)~~ (thanks to Brian in comments for a non-subscription link), and as a follower of iPod punditry, he was confused.

Next month marks the fifth anniversary of one of the most successful products of the digital era, Apple Computer’s iPod music player. Since 2001, potential iPod-killers have come and gone like autumn foliage. Apple claims an astonishing 76% market share in the U.S. for the iPod and an equally amazing 88% share of the U.S. legal music download market for its companion iTunes online store. Over 60 million iPods and 1.5 billion songs have been sold.

Well, yes, but where’s the reference to how iPod sales fell leading up to the day before the Showtime event? Clearly the devastating decline from Apple’s monstrous first fiscal quarter right up to the announcement of new models means the iPod is doomed. You should look into that.

But, Walt, that’s not the only place where you drop the ball of conventional iPod punditry. You mention the Zune and RealNetworks’ forthcoming player as potential threats, but then just launch into your iPod review.

Still, this autumn, the iPod could face its greatest challenge. Microsoft, after failing for years to combat the iconic gadget, will launch a new assault Nov. 14 with a player called Zune.

…

Not only that, but this week, RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service, the best of the iTunes competitors, will announce its own player, jointly developed with SanDisk, which is the second-place player maker, albeit a distant second.

So, this holiday season Apple has made some of the biggest changes to the iPod and iTunes in years.

No, no, no. Walt, Walt, Walt, this won’t do at all. You devote the rest of the article to reviewing actual features of iPods you can currently buy. That’s simply not how it’s done.

The Macalope shall elucidate.

Take a look at Vic Keegan, Sven Rafferty, Kieran McCarthy and Mike Elgan. You’re supposed to parlay the fantastic but ultimately unsustainable success the iPod has had into some kind of failure – don’t forget to call falling sales growth “slipping sales”! – and breathlessly list imaginary features the Zune may one day have and ask why the iPod doesn’t have those today.

It’s impossible to know if Apple can sustain its remarkably high market shares in the face of new competition, but it is going into the battle with better products at better prices.

Aagh!

Walt, no! The iPod is doomed! Doomed!

Tsk.

And you write for one of the most respected daily newspapers in the world.

…

Actually, that explains a lot.

Sincerely,
The Macalope

Dear Computerworld's Mike Elgan…

Posted October 2, 2006 By The Macalope and has 21 comments.

The Macalope read your latest correspondence entitled “Why Microsoft’s Zune scares Apple to the core” and he believes you may have accidentally left out a critical fact. Nowhere in the piece did the Macalope find the names of the employees at Apple you spoke with to back up your claim. Surely this was simply an oversight in editing, so please advise at your earliest convenience who at Apple is so a-scared of the Zune.

The Macalope has some other comments that he will break down as responses to your six points.

1. Microsoft is hatching a consumer media ‘perfect storm’.

…

Apple fans are overconfident in the iPod because Apple once commanded 92 per cent of music player market share, a number that has since fallen to around 70 per cent. About 30 million people own iPods.

Please define “perfect” as used in this instance, as when Paul Thurrott is asking re the Zune “What the heck are these people thinking?”, the Macalope is concerned that you might have the boat/storm metaphor backwards.

As for the market share figures you quote, the Macalope believes you’re comparing apples (no pun intended) and oranges. The 92 percent market share number was the percentage of the U.S. market for digital music players that were hard-drive based. The 70 percent number is the percentage of the U.S. market for hard-drive and flash-based digital music players. Apple’s market share was recalculated with the introduction of the flash-based iPod shuffle.

The Macalope will leave it up to his readers to decide if that error was due to laziness or dishonesty.

Frankly, the Macalope thinks the 92 percent number is a little silly. While he wouldn’t go as far as John Gruber did here (certainly not with the benefit of hindsight), there is little differentiation from a consumer’s perspective between hard-drive and flash-based units.

Also, you may not be aware of it, but the iPod actually works on Windows. And while the Zune ties into the Xbox, Microsoft has sold probably a bit over 25 million of those and Apple has sold over 60 million iPods.

2. The Zune is social and viral

Like a disease!

Think of it as a portable, wireless, hardware version of MySpace.

Ah! Like a venereal disease! One that’s easy to catch that leaves ugly festering sores! Gotcha!

3. Zune may have more programming

…

While Apple launched its movie business with movies from Disney (where Apple CEO Steve Jobs sits on the board), Microsoft has already lined up Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictuers, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Lions Gate Entertainment and MGM.

Which will be available… some time next year. Apple, by your assumption, will only ever have Disney.

4. Zune’s screen is better for movies

True. It is larger, but it’s the same resolution.

5. Zune is actually pretty cool

The Zune is unlike any product Microsoft has ever shipped. It’s actually very nicely designed, surprisingly minimalist and (dare I say it?) ‘cool’. (Zune marketing looks cool, too. The user interface is fluid and appealing – and, again, like MySpace – customisable. Users will be able to personalise the Zune interface with photos, ‘themes’, ‘skins’ and custom colours.

Oh, so they can crap it up. Make it look like a five-dollar whore, just like MySpace. Excellent.

The Macalope should warn you, the minute a 40-year-old says something is “cool” to “tweens, teens and 20-somethings”, it instantly becomes uncool.

Way to go, Mike.

Even if Apple is able to retain its lead, it could still be hurt – badly – by the Zune, which will capture mind share, grab market share and squeeze Apple on pricing.

OK, now you’re just making things up. The cheapest Zune – which, remember, is not on sale yet – is priced 99 cents higher than the second most expensive iPod.

Apple is scared. And for good reason.

Again, who did you talk to at Apple who said they’re scared? Please advise as nowhere do you quote anyone even off the record saying this.

Apple has recently and preemptively lowered the price of iPods, announced an iTV set-top box – which will ship later than Vista – and is probably working feverishly on a bigger-screen, wirelessly enabled iPod.

“Which will ship later than Vista”?

This production of Non-Sequitur Theater will return after a commercial break.

Please, please, please, for the love of god, please tell the Macalope what could possibly be the relevance of juxtaposing the fact that Microsoft announced an operating system upgrade five years ago and – after gutting feature after feature – is finally shipping it in January (maybe!), and the fact that Apple announced a product in September that it’s shipping in the first quarter of 2007.

Because any possible explanation must – by the laws of logic that govern the universe in which we live – be simply hysterical.

Ultimately, your failure to treat any of the Zune’s numerous shortcomings as such and your failure to even mention others (doesn’t play any currently available DRM-protected songs or videos) at all tend to make the piece seem more like propaganda than analysis.

There seems to be this great determination on the part of a number of silly pundits to get ahead of some imagined curve and be the first to declare the iPod dead.

All analysis must be made on the basis of currently available information, so the Macalope is not saying the Zune will never overtake the iPod. But let’s just say he finds the reports of its death to be greatly exaggerated.

Sadly, being a technology pundit is truly never having to say you’re sorry. You can be wrong for years and never lose your job.

It must be good work if you can get it, so hang on to that gig, Mike.