Monday, April 28, 2003
Did Steve Jobs just take over the world?
Steve's got a plan for worldwide conquest, and Mac users are just along for the ride.
Whew, and I thought it was a good time to be a Mac user before Apple redefined the music industry for us today. Everything about being a Mac user changes starting today, but probably not in the way that you were expecting. Sure, Apple's new iTunes Music Store is open exclusively to Mac users. That alone will arm us with sufficient bragging rights to embarrass even more of our PC-using friends when we show off what we can do and they can't. But enjoy it while you can, because Steve Jobs made as clear a signal as possible today that the days of tiptoeing around the issue of just how much of a taste of the Mac experience Windows users should be allowed to have are over. He's going after the other ninety-five percent by turning them into willing, drooling, credit-card wielding Apple customers long before they're ready to take the plunge and buy their first Mac. I still don't know that I like it, but it's gutsy and in the end, it should work. One thing's for sure though, the era of all of Apple's innovations being Mac-only and staying Mac-only has drawn to a rather loud close. Starting today, Windows users have all been invited to the Steve Jobs ultimate house party. They'll be second-class citizens until they wise up and get a Mac, but it's such better treatment than they're used to that they probably won't even know the difference.
When Apple first introduced the iPod eighteen months ago without a clear indication of when or if there would be a Windows version, I knew that Apple had reached a crossroads. Having stated its intention of digging into the Windows majority and unearthing the potential Mac users, Apple could either make Windows a laughingstock by building the Mac platform into the perfect experience and shutting out the other 95% entirely until they wake up and buy a Mac, or it could use its arsenal of innovation to lure Windows users into becoming minor Apple customers in the hopes of building up that relationship to the point of an eventual Mac purchase. Being a purist at heart, I was always rooting for Apple to go with the former, because the latter sounded too much like giving away the Mac's best features and taking away the reasons for switching altogether.
But then Steve Jobs went and broke my heart last summer when he announced that the iPod would be available for any Windows user with a FireWire card. At the time, I wrote it off as a compromise to boost revenue during this economic mess, at the potential detriment to future Mac sales. If a PC user can buy an iPod and use it with his existing PC, where is the motivation to switch to a Mac? I thought it was one of Steve's silliest and most short-sighted moves since he's been back at Apple, but I should have known better than to think that this was just about selling a few more iPods. Although he's made some rather large mistakes in his time, none of them has involved sitting on the fence. Right or wrong, Steve picks his direction and goes all out, usually leading to spectacular failure or spectacular success. The Windows iPod was just an early hint that there was so much more going on here than any of us sitting at home and speculating could ever have predicted.
The first obvious sign that Steve had something up his sleeve with the Windows iPod was when he inked the deal to start selling iPods at Target. This isn't the kind of retailer that Apple has ever had success selling its wares at in the past. Steve decided he was going to try to sell digital music players to PC users in an unfancy department store, and somehow it worked. Budget-conscious PC users who shopped at Target really were willing to lay out three hundred dollars or more for an Apple product. Who would ever have guessed? But the sure-fire sign that there was oh so much more going on than we were seeing was when Steve made a deal with the devil, literally, as Dell signed on to sell iPods through its own online store. If you're Steve Jobs, you just don't make a move that bizarre unless you've got larger reasons for doing so. The Dell announcement was the first point at which I began to wonder if I was wrong for thinking that Apple should keep the iPod Mac-only. There had to be more to this, and it was beginning to look like Steve was carving out a path that no one had previously taken -- at least not successfully.
When the rumors began to surface that Apple was going to launch an online music download service, I imagined a nice little novelty service in which Mac users would have access to a few dozen songs from popular artists. Then the rumors expanded to include the tidbit that all five major record labels had signed on, and it became clear that this was no little niche service -- and it was no Mac-only service either. When you're the very first company to bring a new product to market, and it has the potential to someday bring in as much or more revenue than your core business all by itself, you don't limit yourself to selling it only to the five percent of your potential market who happen to either currently own or be willing to buy your core product. You just can't pass up an opportunity of that size. The existing customers of your core product can certainly benefit more from the fact that you've doubled your revenues than it can from the fact that you've lured a few new users to the platform.
Unlike with the iPod introduction, there was no question at today's event as to if or when Windows users would get a taste of the action. The if was "yes", and the when was "by the end of the year". Note for the record that it doesn't mean that Apple will actually wait until the end of the year, only that it reserves the right to do so. Every new Apple innovation seems to bring a new batch of switchers on board, so the Music Store, being as groundbreaking as it is, should bring in more than its fair share of Windows deserters. But sometime during 2003, Apple will swoop down and gobble up a good-size chunk of the money being spent on popular music -- not just from its own five percent of the population, but from everyone. And unlike the computer market, in which a consumer buys one product every few years, this new model for the music market will have some consumers buying one product every few hours. Like a turkey gone out of control, Apple will be gobbling up that money non-stop, resulting in a consistent influx of revenue that will make it so much easier to introduce innovative new Mac-related products without worrying about the temporary impact of the transition on the bottom line. The profits from the Music Store will fund future Macintosh innovation and products that will make current offerings look primitive in comparison.
I should have known that Steve was working his way up to this day all along. It was a day in which he declared that the music industry belonged to Apple, and the music industry nodded its collective head in agreement. I knew the man had guts, but I didn't think that even he would take it this far. But the floodgates are all the way open, so now that Steve has chosen this path, I trust he'll go all the way with it. I fully expect to see iTunes released for Windows by the end of the year, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if the rumors of iTunes becoming the embedded music player in America Online are true as well. At this point, I would be a supporter of both moves, and Steve might as well ink deals with Amazon and anyone else who wants to play ball. While the thought of millions of Windows users using iTunes to download music from Apple without ever needing to touch a Mac might seem repulsive at first, it's got so many dollar signs on it, and so much potential to turn them into down-the-road Mac users by sheer force of total immersion in the Apple way of doing things, that I say bring it on.
The kicker is that he's just getting started. Music isn't even Steve's specialty. The relative simplicity of music in comparison to the other forms of multimedia just happens to make music what Apple's board likes to refer to as "low-hanging fruit". You go after it first because it's an easier target, before moving on to the hard work of scoring what you really want. Too often we forget that Steve Jobs is the majority-owner of a movie studio called Pixar. Perhaps he'll take control of music this year, movies the next, and no one might dare to imagine what the landscape might look like by 2005. I do know this, though: Apple is going to be a heck of a lot larger company at that time, and as a result of Apple's new-found power, there will be tens of millions more Apple lovers, if not actual Mac users, by then as well. While that almost seems like spoiling the party by inviting too many people for all the wrong reasons, keep in mind that if Apple at its current size and strength can accomplish what it already has with MacOS X so far, just dream of how much more Apple can do for us Mac users once Apple has grown into its now-inevitable role as the giant ball of glue that links artists, executives, and customers together (and takes money from all three) as they all cling to Apple for guidance on how to successfully move into the online digital era.
Macintosh users, you've never had it this good -- and this time it's not even close. From here on in, we're riding shotgun on Steve Jobs' world domination tour, and right now, the view is looking mighty pretty. Feel free to share your own thoughts from the VIP seat that we've all suddenly realized we're sitting in.
Readers, this site will always be free to anyone who feels they can benefit from it. If you'd like to make a donation to this site to help keep it growing, one dollar would be an excellent amount. To make a one-dollar donation through PayPal, all you have to do is click here. Thanks.
Steve's got a plan for worldwide conquest, and Mac users are just along for the ride.
Whew, and I thought it was a good time to be a Mac user before Apple redefined the music industry for us today. Everything about being a Mac user changes starting today, but probably not in the way that you were expecting. Sure, Apple's new iTunes Music Store is open exclusively to Mac users. That alone will arm us with sufficient bragging rights to embarrass even more of our PC-using friends when we show off what we can do and they can't. But enjoy it while you can, because Steve Jobs made as clear a signal as possible today that the days of tiptoeing around the issue of just how much of a taste of the Mac experience Windows users should be allowed to have are over. He's going after the other ninety-five percent by turning them into willing, drooling, credit-card wielding Apple customers long before they're ready to take the plunge and buy their first Mac. I still don't know that I like it, but it's gutsy and in the end, it should work. One thing's for sure though, the era of all of Apple's innovations being Mac-only and staying Mac-only has drawn to a rather loud close. Starting today, Windows users have all been invited to the Steve Jobs ultimate house party. They'll be second-class citizens until they wise up and get a Mac, but it's such better treatment than they're used to that they probably won't even know the difference.
When Apple first introduced the iPod eighteen months ago without a clear indication of when or if there would be a Windows version, I knew that Apple had reached a crossroads. Having stated its intention of digging into the Windows majority and unearthing the potential Mac users, Apple could either make Windows a laughingstock by building the Mac platform into the perfect experience and shutting out the other 95% entirely until they wake up and buy a Mac, or it could use its arsenal of innovation to lure Windows users into becoming minor Apple customers in the hopes of building up that relationship to the point of an eventual Mac purchase. Being a purist at heart, I was always rooting for Apple to go with the former, because the latter sounded too much like giving away the Mac's best features and taking away the reasons for switching altogether.
But then Steve Jobs went and broke my heart last summer when he announced that the iPod would be available for any Windows user with a FireWire card. At the time, I wrote it off as a compromise to boost revenue during this economic mess, at the potential detriment to future Mac sales. If a PC user can buy an iPod and use it with his existing PC, where is the motivation to switch to a Mac? I thought it was one of Steve's silliest and most short-sighted moves since he's been back at Apple, but I should have known better than to think that this was just about selling a few more iPods. Although he's made some rather large mistakes in his time, none of them has involved sitting on the fence. Right or wrong, Steve picks his direction and goes all out, usually leading to spectacular failure or spectacular success. The Windows iPod was just an early hint that there was so much more going on here than any of us sitting at home and speculating could ever have predicted.
The first obvious sign that Steve had something up his sleeve with the Windows iPod was when he inked the deal to start selling iPods at Target. This isn't the kind of retailer that Apple has ever had success selling its wares at in the past. Steve decided he was going to try to sell digital music players to PC users in an unfancy department store, and somehow it worked. Budget-conscious PC users who shopped at Target really were willing to lay out three hundred dollars or more for an Apple product. Who would ever have guessed? But the sure-fire sign that there was oh so much more going on than we were seeing was when Steve made a deal with the devil, literally, as Dell signed on to sell iPods through its own online store. If you're Steve Jobs, you just don't make a move that bizarre unless you've got larger reasons for doing so. The Dell announcement was the first point at which I began to wonder if I was wrong for thinking that Apple should keep the iPod Mac-only. There had to be more to this, and it was beginning to look like Steve was carving out a path that no one had previously taken -- at least not successfully.
When the rumors began to surface that Apple was going to launch an online music download service, I imagined a nice little novelty service in which Mac users would have access to a few dozen songs from popular artists. Then the rumors expanded to include the tidbit that all five major record labels had signed on, and it became clear that this was no little niche service -- and it was no Mac-only service either. When you're the very first company to bring a new product to market, and it has the potential to someday bring in as much or more revenue than your core business all by itself, you don't limit yourself to selling it only to the five percent of your potential market who happen to either currently own or be willing to buy your core product. You just can't pass up an opportunity of that size. The existing customers of your core product can certainly benefit more from the fact that you've doubled your revenues than it can from the fact that you've lured a few new users to the platform.
Unlike with the iPod introduction, there was no question at today's event as to if or when Windows users would get a taste of the action. The if was "yes", and the when was "by the end of the year". Note for the record that it doesn't mean that Apple will actually wait until the end of the year, only that it reserves the right to do so. Every new Apple innovation seems to bring a new batch of switchers on board, so the Music Store, being as groundbreaking as it is, should bring in more than its fair share of Windows deserters. But sometime during 2003, Apple will swoop down and gobble up a good-size chunk of the money being spent on popular music -- not just from its own five percent of the population, but from everyone. And unlike the computer market, in which a consumer buys one product every few years, this new model for the music market will have some consumers buying one product every few hours. Like a turkey gone out of control, Apple will be gobbling up that money non-stop, resulting in a consistent influx of revenue that will make it so much easier to introduce innovative new Mac-related products without worrying about the temporary impact of the transition on the bottom line. The profits from the Music Store will fund future Macintosh innovation and products that will make current offerings look primitive in comparison.
I should have known that Steve was working his way up to this day all along. It was a day in which he declared that the music industry belonged to Apple, and the music industry nodded its collective head in agreement. I knew the man had guts, but I didn't think that even he would take it this far. But the floodgates are all the way open, so now that Steve has chosen this path, I trust he'll go all the way with it. I fully expect to see iTunes released for Windows by the end of the year, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if the rumors of iTunes becoming the embedded music player in America Online are true as well. At this point, I would be a supporter of both moves, and Steve might as well ink deals with Amazon and anyone else who wants to play ball. While the thought of millions of Windows users using iTunes to download music from Apple without ever needing to touch a Mac might seem repulsive at first, it's got so many dollar signs on it, and so much potential to turn them into down-the-road Mac users by sheer force of total immersion in the Apple way of doing things, that I say bring it on.
The kicker is that he's just getting started. Music isn't even Steve's specialty. The relative simplicity of music in comparison to the other forms of multimedia just happens to make music what Apple's board likes to refer to as "low-hanging fruit". You go after it first because it's an easier target, before moving on to the hard work of scoring what you really want. Too often we forget that Steve Jobs is the majority-owner of a movie studio called Pixar. Perhaps he'll take control of music this year, movies the next, and no one might dare to imagine what the landscape might look like by 2005. I do know this, though: Apple is going to be a heck of a lot larger company at that time, and as a result of Apple's new-found power, there will be tens of millions more Apple lovers, if not actual Mac users, by then as well. While that almost seems like spoiling the party by inviting too many people for all the wrong reasons, keep in mind that if Apple at its current size and strength can accomplish what it already has with MacOS X so far, just dream of how much more Apple can do for us Mac users once Apple has grown into its now-inevitable role as the giant ball of glue that links artists, executives, and customers together (and takes money from all three) as they all cling to Apple for guidance on how to successfully move into the online digital era.
Macintosh users, you've never had it this good -- and this time it's not even close. From here on in, we're riding shotgun on Steve Jobs' world domination tour, and right now, the view is looking mighty pretty. Feel free to share your own thoughts from the VIP seat that we've all suddenly realized we're sitting in.
Readers, this site will always be free to anyone who feels they can benefit from it. If you'd like to make a donation to this site to help keep it growing, one dollar would be an excellent amount. To make a one-dollar donation through PayPal, all you have to do is click here. Thanks.
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