Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Gap between iPod and Mac universes growing or shrinking?
So in amongst the latest shipment of new iPod accessories today from Speck Products was the new SeeThru for MacBook. I don't request samples of Macintosh accessories, nor do I normally review them, but from time to time the companies who make both iPod and Mac accessories like to send along their Mac stuff as well for good measure. I've seen the SeeThru in action before, but at that time it was only available for the MacBook Pro, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. Now that it's available for the MacBook, and now that I've got one sitting in my office, I figured "why not" and went ahead and snapped it onto my MacBook this evening.
Seeing as how the SeeThru they sent me is translucent blue, I suppose there are cosmetic motivations behind the product in addition to the obvious protective ones. In that sense I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. In the nine months I've had my MacBook I've tended to carry it in a traditional shoulder bag when traveling (or more recently a backpack with an internal laptop sleeve in order to balance the weight across both my shoulders), but I haven't hesitated to grab my MacBook and carry it around sans any protection when the occasion calls for it. This far into its lifespan I suppose it's too late to keep my MacBook scuff-free, and since it's the black model the scuffs and scratches don't really show anyway. For that matter, the blue hue isn't highly visible against the underlying black surface unless the lighting is strong. What is highly noticeable right off the bat is the fact that the white backlit Apple logo on the lid is now glowing blue. But the cosmetic aspects of the product would stand out far more if my MacBook were a white one.
I'll have to spend more time with the product before I can evaluate its protective aspects (so far I've been using it for about eight minutes), but I find it intriguing that a long-time ipod accessory such as the SeeThru has been adapted for a laptop like the MacBook. Maybe it's some small sign that the space between the iPod and Macintosh universes isn't as wide as it sometimes seems.
Of course that depends upon which side of the fence you originally entered the iPod universe. Several iPod accessory companies started off as Mac accessory companies and just followed what they considered a natural progression into the iPod space. Other companies targeted the iPod as an electronics device that just happened to be an Apple product. It always surprises me when I sit down with an iPod accessory company executive who proceeds to show me something on his or her Windows laptop. It only happens a minority of the time, but it's frequent enough to be reminded of the fact that it's been a long time since the iPod universe was a subset of the Mac universe.
Nowhere is this more clearly highlighted than in the fact that by all accounts, more than eighty percent of all iPod users are Windows users. Sure, plenty of them end up switching to the Mac in due time, but they end up getting balanced out by the fact that most of the people just now buying their first iPod are coming from the Windows side. In fact, one of the main reasons why we don't publish full-on reviews of products like the SeeThru on iProng is the fact that the majority of our readers are in fact Windows users. I find suitable irony in the fact that an outspoken Macintosh blogger such as myself ended up publishing a website that gets frequented mainly by Windows users, but I see it as an opportunity to enlighten them when the time is right. After all, every iPod user is either a current Mac user or a future Mac user, right?
One of the more interesting arenas in which to observe the iPod and Mac spaces rub up against each other is in the world of podcasting, a universe that by and large originally found its roots independent of either the Mac or the iPod (although Apple did later manage to largely attach podcasting to the latter by the hip after the fact, at least on the consumption side). As a general rule content creators tend to find their way to the Mac out of necessity if nothing else, as that's where they're usually going to find the best tools for the job. There's a tendency on the part of someone like me to almost automatically assume that a podcaster (or a musician or a filmmaker) is a Mac user, and that usually ends up being a valid assumption. It's funny, though, to go to an event like PodCamp and see a fair number of Windows laptops in tow.
What's more intriguing is the attitude that some podcasters take toward the iPod space, some seeing it as a necessary evil and a few even seeing it as just plain evil. Not all of those original podcasters were pleased to see Apple add podcasting to iTunes a couple years back, and in fact some of them are still harboring a level of resentment to this day. Just look for the ones who introduces themselves with "I have a podcast but you don't have to listen to it on an iPod" all in a single breath, trying hard to make their point as early in the conversation as possible. They do have a point, as there are some folks out there who are sufficiently clueless that for instance will use iTunes to manage their music but have never ventured into the iTunes Store because they're under the mistaken impression that purchased songs will only play on an iPod and not on their computer.
What I've never understood is why at this point in the game anyone would still want to manage their podcasts with anything other than iTunes. One might argue that it's all too typical for someone in my position to be making such a case, but I believe it's just reality. I think it's important that we all keep in mind that podcasting was not invented, imagined, or engineered by Apple or iTunes, and we should continue to recognize the folks who did in fact make all that happen. Let's hope those folks don't ever stop contributing to the evolution of podcasting, as Apple's not always going to get it right. But from a consumption standpoint, as far as I'm concerned, podcasting is a function of iTunes these days. I know some other podcasters will disagree. And I know why.
But putting podcasting aside, there are other signs that the iPod and Mac universes are indeed getting closer than farther. AppleTV is a product that's so tightly tied into the iTunes universe that it's a no-brainer for a publication like iProng to cover it, even though it looks less like an iTunes companion and more like a Mac Mini. And then there's the iPhone, which while I can be synced with either a Mac or a Windows PC, the iPhone essentially is a Mac, right down to the (admittedly stripped down) operating system. On the other hand, the iPhone also is an iPod, by any measurable we can apply.
So nearly two months after first posing the question, I think it's every bit as valid as it was on the day of the iPhone's release: can Windows-using iPhone users be legitimately counted as also being Mac users? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
So in amongst the latest shipment of new iPod accessories today from Speck Products was the new SeeThru for MacBook. I don't request samples of Macintosh accessories, nor do I normally review them, but from time to time the companies who make both iPod and Mac accessories like to send along their Mac stuff as well for good measure. I've seen the SeeThru in action before, but at that time it was only available for the MacBook Pro, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. Now that it's available for the MacBook, and now that I've got one sitting in my office, I figured "why not" and went ahead and snapped it onto my MacBook this evening.
Seeing as how the SeeThru they sent me is translucent blue, I suppose there are cosmetic motivations behind the product in addition to the obvious protective ones. In that sense I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. In the nine months I've had my MacBook I've tended to carry it in a traditional shoulder bag when traveling (or more recently a backpack with an internal laptop sleeve in order to balance the weight across both my shoulders), but I haven't hesitated to grab my MacBook and carry it around sans any protection when the occasion calls for it. This far into its lifespan I suppose it's too late to keep my MacBook scuff-free, and since it's the black model the scuffs and scratches don't really show anyway. For that matter, the blue hue isn't highly visible against the underlying black surface unless the lighting is strong. What is highly noticeable right off the bat is the fact that the white backlit Apple logo on the lid is now glowing blue. But the cosmetic aspects of the product would stand out far more if my MacBook were a white one.
I'll have to spend more time with the product before I can evaluate its protective aspects (so far I've been using it for about eight minutes), but I find it intriguing that a long-time ipod accessory such as the SeeThru has been adapted for a laptop like the MacBook. Maybe it's some small sign that the space between the iPod and Macintosh universes isn't as wide as it sometimes seems.
Of course that depends upon which side of the fence you originally entered the iPod universe. Several iPod accessory companies started off as Mac accessory companies and just followed what they considered a natural progression into the iPod space. Other companies targeted the iPod as an electronics device that just happened to be an Apple product. It always surprises me when I sit down with an iPod accessory company executive who proceeds to show me something on his or her Windows laptop. It only happens a minority of the time, but it's frequent enough to be reminded of the fact that it's been a long time since the iPod universe was a subset of the Mac universe.
Nowhere is this more clearly highlighted than in the fact that by all accounts, more than eighty percent of all iPod users are Windows users. Sure, plenty of them end up switching to the Mac in due time, but they end up getting balanced out by the fact that most of the people just now buying their first iPod are coming from the Windows side. In fact, one of the main reasons why we don't publish full-on reviews of products like the SeeThru on iProng is the fact that the majority of our readers are in fact Windows users. I find suitable irony in the fact that an outspoken Macintosh blogger such as myself ended up publishing a website that gets frequented mainly by Windows users, but I see it as an opportunity to enlighten them when the time is right. After all, every iPod user is either a current Mac user or a future Mac user, right?
One of the more interesting arenas in which to observe the iPod and Mac spaces rub up against each other is in the world of podcasting, a universe that by and large originally found its roots independent of either the Mac or the iPod (although Apple did later manage to largely attach podcasting to the latter by the hip after the fact, at least on the consumption side). As a general rule content creators tend to find their way to the Mac out of necessity if nothing else, as that's where they're usually going to find the best tools for the job. There's a tendency on the part of someone like me to almost automatically assume that a podcaster (or a musician or a filmmaker) is a Mac user, and that usually ends up being a valid assumption. It's funny, though, to go to an event like PodCamp and see a fair number of Windows laptops in tow.
What's more intriguing is the attitude that some podcasters take toward the iPod space, some seeing it as a necessary evil and a few even seeing it as just plain evil. Not all of those original podcasters were pleased to see Apple add podcasting to iTunes a couple years back, and in fact some of them are still harboring a level of resentment to this day. Just look for the ones who introduces themselves with "I have a podcast but you don't have to listen to it on an iPod" all in a single breath, trying hard to make their point as early in the conversation as possible. They do have a point, as there are some folks out there who are sufficiently clueless that for instance will use iTunes to manage their music but have never ventured into the iTunes Store because they're under the mistaken impression that purchased songs will only play on an iPod and not on their computer.
What I've never understood is why at this point in the game anyone would still want to manage their podcasts with anything other than iTunes. One might argue that it's all too typical for someone in my position to be making such a case, but I believe it's just reality. I think it's important that we all keep in mind that podcasting was not invented, imagined, or engineered by Apple or iTunes, and we should continue to recognize the folks who did in fact make all that happen. Let's hope those folks don't ever stop contributing to the evolution of podcasting, as Apple's not always going to get it right. But from a consumption standpoint, as far as I'm concerned, podcasting is a function of iTunes these days. I know some other podcasters will disagree. And I know why.
But putting podcasting aside, there are other signs that the iPod and Mac universes are indeed getting closer than farther. AppleTV is a product that's so tightly tied into the iTunes universe that it's a no-brainer for a publication like iProng to cover it, even though it looks less like an iTunes companion and more like a Mac Mini. And then there's the iPhone, which while I can be synced with either a Mac or a Windows PC, the iPhone essentially is a Mac, right down to the (admittedly stripped down) operating system. On the other hand, the iPhone also is an iPod, by any measurable we can apply.
So nearly two months after first posing the question, I think it's every bit as valid as it was on the day of the iPhone's release: can Windows-using iPhone users be legitimately counted as also being Mac users? I guess we'll find out soon enough.
iProng Radio 2-28-07: interview with PodCamp Atlanta's Amber Rhea
iProng Radio is back! In this week's episode, Bill interviews Amber Rhea, co-founder of the Georgia Podcast Network, about her role in organizing the upcoming PodCamp Atlanta and why you should consider attending the event.
Also covered is the iPod and iTunes news of the week, including the AppleTV delay, iPod-related school violence, a new game for the video iPod, and a former iProng Radio guest releases a live iTunes EP recorded in an Apple Store.
Listen to this episode now in your browser
Subscribe for free through iTunes
iProng Radio is back! In this week's episode, Bill interviews Amber Rhea, co-founder of the Georgia Podcast Network, about her role in organizing the upcoming PodCamp Atlanta and why you should consider attending the event.
Also covered is the iPod and iTunes news of the week, including the AppleTV delay, iPod-related school violence, a new game for the video iPod, and a former iProng Radio guest releases a live iTunes EP recorded in an Apple Store.
Listen to this episode now in your browser
Subscribe for free through iTunes
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Will pervasive public WiFi arrive in time for the iPhone onslaught?
One of the enlightening aspects of traveling to so many big cities over the past year has come from being able to observe various localized attitudes toward the mainstream use of technology. Which is a fancy way of saying that people look at me differently when I type away on my laptop in public places depending on what city I'm in. I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country (South Florida), but even here in 2007 I find other patrons looking at me like I'm an alien when I plop my laptop onto the dinner table in a restaurant, even one that offers free WiFi. And yet I can remember sitting in a cafe in downtown San Francisco all the way back in early 2000, pecking away on my then-new clamshell iBook, and I was far from the only one (although a lot fewer of the other laptops were Macs in those days).
In fact, when I sat down for lunch in a San Francisco "free WiFi" restaurant after Apple's Showtime Event six months ago, there were so many dozens of nearby open wireless networks available that I had trouble figuring out which one belonged to the restaurant I was eating in. There's just an assumption that you're going to be toting a laptop, I guess. Not so much the case around here, where you'll find instances of a fast food restaurant inexplicably offering free WiFi while the sit-down restaurant next door to it fails to do so. But why should the latter bother installing access if none of the patrons are going to use it?
The same thing holds true when it comes to iPods, of course, but the circumstances are different. Visit a walking city like New York City and you'll find so many iPod users on the streets that they're considering legislating their use in crosswalks. Around here there might be just as many iPod users but since everyone's tucked away into their cars it's a bit trickier to gauge things. I know that I see a whole lot more iPods in stores, restaurants, and other public places down here than I ever did in my time up in comparatively rural Central Florida, where during those three years I managed to see a grand total of one iPod that didn't belong to me or a family member.
I suppose it's all just a matter of taking time for new technology to filter its way into mainstream use in areas that aren't necessarily ahead of the curve. But I find it curious that nearly eight years into the wireless revolution, pervasive public WiFi has still yet to become anything more than a far-off vision, even in those places that are indeed ahead of the curve. Restaurants, hotels, convention centers, airports. Oddly enough, the small town I left did try to install a city-wide WiFi network, as of now it's still not usable. I guess no one considered the fact that the signal was going to have to travel through walls into people's homes. You wan to use city wireless, you've got to sit on the porch with your laptop, I guess.
Like it or not, I think the future of pervasive wireless, at least in the near to mid term, will rely more on businesses and public places collectively flooding the area with so much signal strength that you can almost make your way through a big city without losing network access. The feasibility of such a scenario will likely come down to each establishment being willing to not lock down their network with passwords and access codes, which so often make the networks sufficiently cumbersome as to be useless even to those who are supposed to be the ones using it. I know it goes against traditional corporate thinking (and makes their lawyers apoplectic), but leaving those networks open is the key to making it all work. Let me tap your network when I need it, and I'll patronize your establishment when I can.
The reason I bring all of this up now is the realization that even though the iPhone is capable of surfing the internet across cellular networks, anything beyond the lightest of websurfing is going to leave you wishing there were a WiFi source to tap into while you're sitting in a restaurant or even walking down the street. The quest to find publicly available WiFi, a task long confined to laptop junkies like me and the relative handful of current smartphone users out there, is about to go mainstream once the iPhone becomes as mainstream as the iPod is now. That won't happen right away, but I have to wonder how much further the march toward pervasive WiFi will have advanced by the time the general citizenship is suddenly demanding high-speed access for their iPhone in every public place they find themselves frequenting.
One of the enlightening aspects of traveling to so many big cities over the past year has come from being able to observe various localized attitudes toward the mainstream use of technology. Which is a fancy way of saying that people look at me differently when I type away on my laptop in public places depending on what city I'm in. I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country (South Florida), but even here in 2007 I find other patrons looking at me like I'm an alien when I plop my laptop onto the dinner table in a restaurant, even one that offers free WiFi. And yet I can remember sitting in a cafe in downtown San Francisco all the way back in early 2000, pecking away on my then-new clamshell iBook, and I was far from the only one (although a lot fewer of the other laptops were Macs in those days).
In fact, when I sat down for lunch in a San Francisco "free WiFi" restaurant after Apple's Showtime Event six months ago, there were so many dozens of nearby open wireless networks available that I had trouble figuring out which one belonged to the restaurant I was eating in. There's just an assumption that you're going to be toting a laptop, I guess. Not so much the case around here, where you'll find instances of a fast food restaurant inexplicably offering free WiFi while the sit-down restaurant next door to it fails to do so. But why should the latter bother installing access if none of the patrons are going to use it?
The same thing holds true when it comes to iPods, of course, but the circumstances are different. Visit a walking city like New York City and you'll find so many iPod users on the streets that they're considering legislating their use in crosswalks. Around here there might be just as many iPod users but since everyone's tucked away into their cars it's a bit trickier to gauge things. I know that I see a whole lot more iPods in stores, restaurants, and other public places down here than I ever did in my time up in comparatively rural Central Florida, where during those three years I managed to see a grand total of one iPod that didn't belong to me or a family member.
I suppose it's all just a matter of taking time for new technology to filter its way into mainstream use in areas that aren't necessarily ahead of the curve. But I find it curious that nearly eight years into the wireless revolution, pervasive public WiFi has still yet to become anything more than a far-off vision, even in those places that are indeed ahead of the curve. Restaurants, hotels, convention centers, airports. Oddly enough, the small town I left did try to install a city-wide WiFi network, as of now it's still not usable. I guess no one considered the fact that the signal was going to have to travel through walls into people's homes. You wan to use city wireless, you've got to sit on the porch with your laptop, I guess.
Like it or not, I think the future of pervasive wireless, at least in the near to mid term, will rely more on businesses and public places collectively flooding the area with so much signal strength that you can almost make your way through a big city without losing network access. The feasibility of such a scenario will likely come down to each establishment being willing to not lock down their network with passwords and access codes, which so often make the networks sufficiently cumbersome as to be useless even to those who are supposed to be the ones using it. I know it goes against traditional corporate thinking (and makes their lawyers apoplectic), but leaving those networks open is the key to making it all work. Let me tap your network when I need it, and I'll patronize your establishment when I can.
The reason I bring all of this up now is the realization that even though the iPhone is capable of surfing the internet across cellular networks, anything beyond the lightest of websurfing is going to leave you wishing there were a WiFi source to tap into while you're sitting in a restaurant or even walking down the street. The quest to find publicly available WiFi, a task long confined to laptop junkies like me and the relative handful of current smartphone users out there, is about to go mainstream once the iPhone becomes as mainstream as the iPod is now. That won't happen right away, but I have to wonder how much further the march toward pervasive WiFi will have advanced by the time the general citizenship is suddenly demanding high-speed access for their iPhone in every public place they find themselves frequenting.
Monday, February 26, 2007
iProng Radio returns this week with a bang
So I know y'all have had to put up with a wee bit of a hiatus when it comes to iProng Radio, but this is the week we make our grand return. The guests alone are going to make every episode intriguing for the foreseeable future. The tentative schedule has us kicking off this week with an interview with Amber Rhea, one of the organizers of the upcoming PodCamp Atlanta. Next week we talk with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. Week after that, iProng Radio travels to the west coast where we'll bring you an episode from the LA Podcasters Studio in Los Angeles, with guest co-host Lance Anderson and I expect we'll have some surprise special guests drop in as well (it is LA after all). And then the following week we come back east to bring you an episode in front of a live audience at PodCamp Atlanta, complete with interviews with everyone we can get our hands on. Week after that we come to you from CTIA in Orlando.
And that's just the first five episodes. No telling where things go after that. I didn't want to bring iProng Radio back until we were ready to dance, but at this point we're more than ready.
So I know y'all have had to put up with a wee bit of a hiatus when it comes to iProng Radio, but this is the week we make our grand return. The guests alone are going to make every episode intriguing for the foreseeable future. The tentative schedule has us kicking off this week with an interview with Amber Rhea, one of the organizers of the upcoming PodCamp Atlanta. Next week we talk with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. Week after that, iProng Radio travels to the west coast where we'll bring you an episode from the LA Podcasters Studio in Los Angeles, with guest co-host Lance Anderson and I expect we'll have some surprise special guests drop in as well (it is LA after all). And then the following week we come back east to bring you an episode in front of a live audience at PodCamp Atlanta, complete with interviews with everyone we can get our hands on. Week after that we come to you from CTIA in Orlando.
And that's just the first five episodes. No telling where things go after that. I didn't want to bring iProng Radio back until we were ready to dance, but at this point we're more than ready.
It's a small world after all
I love how small the world has gotten here in the internet age (or should we start calling it the communications age?). Friday night I'm watching an episode of NUMBERS on television, and one of the main plot points centers around voice over IP. Earlier that day I was exchanging PodCamp-related emails with my friend Chris Brogan, who works with Jeff Pulver, who created voice over IP.
It seems like these days, everyone and everything is just a shout or two away. The beautiful thing about the communications age is that it allows you to develop (and maintain) friendships, connections, and relationships without being limited by, well, anything. The only limitation is you.
I think the real challenge now lies in not who you know, but knowing who they know. Last week I set out to set up an interview with a certain famous individual whom I've never had any contact with, but after quite a bit of research I found out in a roundabout manner that she's essentially a friend of a friend. Who knew?
Truth be told, as seemingly unlikely of a connection as it is, I probably should have. No one's going to connect the dots for you. And truth be told, not everyone out there is going to be as altruistic as the podcasters and bloggers who like to lay their connections bare for all the world to reap. But still, in a time when there are fewer limitations than ever when it comes to amassing your connections arsenal, you've got to know what all you've already got in that arsenal before you go looking to make things happen the hard way.
I love how small the world has gotten here in the internet age (or should we start calling it the communications age?). Friday night I'm watching an episode of NUMBERS on television, and one of the main plot points centers around voice over IP. Earlier that day I was exchanging PodCamp-related emails with my friend Chris Brogan, who works with Jeff Pulver, who created voice over IP.
It seems like these days, everyone and everything is just a shout or two away. The beautiful thing about the communications age is that it allows you to develop (and maintain) friendships, connections, and relationships without being limited by, well, anything. The only limitation is you.
I think the real challenge now lies in not who you know, but knowing who they know. Last week I set out to set up an interview with a certain famous individual whom I've never had any contact with, but after quite a bit of research I found out in a roundabout manner that she's essentially a friend of a friend. Who knew?
Truth be told, as seemingly unlikely of a connection as it is, I probably should have. No one's going to connect the dots for you. And truth be told, not everyone out there is going to be as altruistic as the podcasters and bloggers who like to lay their connections bare for all the world to reap. But still, in a time when there are fewer limitations than ever when it comes to amassing your connections arsenal, you've got to know what all you've already got in that arsenal before you go looking to make things happen the hard way.
Looking for a digital camcorder / digital camera combo
My digital camera is due to be replaced soon, and I also find myself looking to add a digital camcorder to the mix. Since I tend to use such products most often while traveling and I'm looking to travel light these days, I'm exploring the possibility of buying a single device that does both. I know that such combo devices have been on the market for years, but that until recently they were something of a compromised novelty - you either ended up with a camera that also (poorly) did video, or a camcorder that also (clunkliky) did still photos. I've been told by a few folks that those days are over and that you can now buy a single device that is fully functional as both a camcorder (DV tape slot, firewire port, iMovie compatible) and a camera (memory card slot, USB port, iPhoto compatible).
And so I'm looking both for advice on whether such devices are all that they're cracked up to be, and advice on specific models that'll get the job done. I'm looking at the Canon ZR850 in the online Apple Store, which sells for about three hundred bucks and claims to do everything I need it to. I like both the price and the size, and since Apple's selling it, I'm assuming it's as software-compatible as I need it to be. I know there are tinier ones out there that sell for closer to a thousand bucks, but I'm not interested in paying such a huge premium just to get something a bit smaller; it'll be good enough that I can get one device that takes the place of two. And as much as Steve Garfield likes the Nokia N95, I don't need one that's also a cell phone. Advice welcome.
My digital camera is due to be replaced soon, and I also find myself looking to add a digital camcorder to the mix. Since I tend to use such products most often while traveling and I'm looking to travel light these days, I'm exploring the possibility of buying a single device that does both. I know that such combo devices have been on the market for years, but that until recently they were something of a compromised novelty - you either ended up with a camera that also (poorly) did video, or a camcorder that also (clunkliky) did still photos. I've been told by a few folks that those days are over and that you can now buy a single device that is fully functional as both a camcorder (DV tape slot, firewire port, iMovie compatible) and a camera (memory card slot, USB port, iPhoto compatible).
And so I'm looking both for advice on whether such devices are all that they're cracked up to be, and advice on specific models that'll get the job done. I'm looking at the Canon ZR850 in the online Apple Store, which sells for about three hundred bucks and claims to do everything I need it to. I like both the price and the size, and since Apple's selling it, I'm assuming it's as software-compatible as I need it to be. I know there are tinier ones out there that sell for closer to a thousand bucks, but I'm not interested in paying such a huge premium just to get something a bit smaller; it'll be good enough that I can get one device that takes the place of two. And as much as Steve Garfield likes the Nokia N95, I don't need one that's also a cell phone. Advice welcome.
I've had just about enough of Amazon's clunkiness
So my sister finally decides to replace her antique G3 iMac with a new bottom-of-the-line MacBook and asks me to help her find the best deal. After looking around for deals and finding that (no surprise) there are none, I end up recommending that she use Amazon due to the fact that A) there's no sales tax and B) there's a $75 rebate. Realisticaly there's no other way to get a new MacBook for less than $1099 these days, so despite my growing concern over Amazon's Marketplace nonsense and questionable rebate practices, I went ahead and told her to use them anyway. It wasn't going to be a Marketplace purchase anyway, and even without the rebate it still the cheapest option.
One problem. She calls me up and says that she's looking on Amazon.com and can't find what she's looking for. She's too computer savvy to not be able to find something right in front of her face, so I go to Amazon myself and try to figure out the problem. I click on "computers" on their main page and go to the "laptops" section and click on "Apple". I should be looking at a clean, concise listing of the current MacBook and MacBook Pro models, right? Nope, not a chance. I'm looking at a list of search results whose first three results are various AppleCare packages, followed by an iBook, followed by a PowerBook, followed by AppleCare for the Mac Mini. The MacBook Pro clocks in at the fourteenth spot on the list, and the MacBook appears in the sixteenth slot. What is this, someone's scattered garage sale?
So I try typing "MacBook" into Amazon's search box, and the results I get are a mish-mosh of MacBook and MacBook Pro models, with no indication of which ones might be the current models and which ones are discontinued stuff they're trying to blow out, and worse, no prices. In a stunning display of cheesiness, you actaully have to place the darn thing into your shopping cart in order to find out what it costs. This would be like picking up a milk carton in the grocery store and having to take it to the register and have the cashier run it through checkout in order for you to find out what the price is.
No wonder she was confused about what she was looking at. If I hadn't known enough to look up the precise specs of the current low-end MacBook on Apple's website, I couldn't have been sure that the model I was pointing her toward on the Amazon site was the correct one.
What a freaking mess. Amazon, at least when it comes to computers, is such an absolute disaster these days that I don't know how anyone but those in the know can go computer shopping at Amazon and actually end up with what they were trying to buy. It's not enough to keep me from shopping there, at least when they offer a substantially lowest price, but I'm finding it ever more difficult to recommend them to anyone else. I'm not sure which is the more relevant question: how on earth the world's leading internet retailer can offer such a joke of a shopping experience, or how on earth they can still be in business.
So my sister finally decides to replace her antique G3 iMac with a new bottom-of-the-line MacBook and asks me to help her find the best deal. After looking around for deals and finding that (no surprise) there are none, I end up recommending that she use Amazon due to the fact that A) there's no sales tax and B) there's a $75 rebate. Realisticaly there's no other way to get a new MacBook for less than $1099 these days, so despite my growing concern over Amazon's Marketplace nonsense and questionable rebate practices, I went ahead and told her to use them anyway. It wasn't going to be a Marketplace purchase anyway, and even without the rebate it still the cheapest option.
One problem. She calls me up and says that she's looking on Amazon.com and can't find what she's looking for. She's too computer savvy to not be able to find something right in front of her face, so I go to Amazon myself and try to figure out the problem. I click on "computers" on their main page and go to the "laptops" section and click on "Apple". I should be looking at a clean, concise listing of the current MacBook and MacBook Pro models, right? Nope, not a chance. I'm looking at a list of search results whose first three results are various AppleCare packages, followed by an iBook, followed by a PowerBook, followed by AppleCare for the Mac Mini. The MacBook Pro clocks in at the fourteenth spot on the list, and the MacBook appears in the sixteenth slot. What is this, someone's scattered garage sale?
So I try typing "MacBook" into Amazon's search box, and the results I get are a mish-mosh of MacBook and MacBook Pro models, with no indication of which ones might be the current models and which ones are discontinued stuff they're trying to blow out, and worse, no prices. In a stunning display of cheesiness, you actaully have to place the darn thing into your shopping cart in order to find out what it costs. This would be like picking up a milk carton in the grocery store and having to take it to the register and have the cashier run it through checkout in order for you to find out what the price is.
No wonder she was confused about what she was looking at. If I hadn't known enough to look up the precise specs of the current low-end MacBook on Apple's website, I couldn't have been sure that the model I was pointing her toward on the Amazon site was the correct one.
What a freaking mess. Amazon, at least when it comes to computers, is such an absolute disaster these days that I don't know how anyone but those in the know can go computer shopping at Amazon and actually end up with what they were trying to buy. It's not enough to keep me from shopping there, at least when they offer a substantially lowest price, but I'm finding it ever more difficult to recommend them to anyone else. I'm not sure which is the more relevant question: how on earth the world's leading internet retailer can offer such a joke of a shopping experience, or how on earth they can still be in business.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
I always knew Steve Jobs was on our side
Ever since the launch of the iTunes Store in 2002 I've had to listen to listen to music lovers, the media, and even some of Apple's biggest fans complaining about how Steve Jobs and Apple were trying to "lock us in" to using their products. The only reason iTunes downloads contain Digital Rights Management, they've claimed, is so that Apple can ensure no current iPod user ever switches to some other brand of MP3 player in the future. If the music you've bought for 99 cents a pop can't go with you then you're not going anywhere, right?
As if that had anything to do with it. As if Steve Jobs sat down with the record labels five years ago and said "let's cripple iTunes downloads in such a way that it doesn't really cause problems for anyone but it casts a pall over the concept of legal downloads such that sales will be significantly less than what they otherwise could be," and then the record labels said "Okay Steve, if that's what you really want to do, we'll go along with it."
Sorry, but Steve Jobs isn't that stupid and the record labels aren't that smart. And thanks to Steve's open letter regarding DRM, now we have proof.
As should have been easily surmisable for years now, it turns out the record labels didn't want to let Apple (or anyone else) make music available for download at all. After all, why let the consumer buy one song for less than a dollar online when you can continue trying to force them to buy one song on CD for eighteen dollars? Nevermind that this is exactly the kind of myopic thinking that led to the mainstreaming of online music theft in the first place. The labels only went along with Steve's plan because they knew something was wrong, even if they couldn't put two and two together to figure out that it was their own mafia-like behavior over the past several decades that led to this state where far too many otherwise good-natured consumers feel that music is theirs to acquire without payment as they please.
But the labels weren't going to let it happen unless they could do something to rig it, something to make sure that none of these legal downloads ever turned into illegal downloads. Nevermind that every song on every CD ever sold has always been able to be converted into a freely uploadable and downloadable file in less than ten minutes, in a feat of technical genius that involves clicking the "import" button and then going for a soda break. Nevermind that iTunes downloads were going to be the least likely candidates for piracy because they require someone to pay for them, whereas store-bought CDs get passed around by teenagers so frequently these days that they often can't remember which CDs originally belonged to which friends.
So Steve and Apple managed to come up with what has to be the wussiest form of DRM ever, a set of limitations so weak that you'd darn near have to be robbing a convenience store to ever run afoul of them. No burning the same CD, in the same order, more than seven times. No putting the music on more than five computers unless you master the technical magic of (gasp) burning an audio CD of the music and then handing it to someone, after which they can do anything they please with it. And the record labels, being the idiots that they are, actually bought into this as a system that was going to stop iTunes downloads from contributing to piracy, which they were never going to do anyway.
In actuality all it's done is to give iTunes downloads (and all other legal music downloads) a bad name. People who understand enough about iTunes DRM know that it won't be a problem for them. But those who don't follow the technology quite so closely, the majority of folks out there, have merely been confused by it to the point that many of them are afraid to purchase iTunes downloads Ð and that holds true even for many current iPod users who happily use iTunes to organize the music they keep buying on CD. The only reason many of them still buy the CD is because of rampant misunderstanding as to what iTunes DRM really is.
And for the past five years I've been saying that, through all of this record label idiocy, Steve Jobs was on our side. Not because he's some altruistic saint, but because unlike far too many other businessmen out there, Steve understands that within reason, what's good for us is good for him. Steve knew he could boost iPod sales by making music available for inexpensive legal download, and if the labels were only going to let it happen with restrictionsk then he'd accept those restrictions for the time being and worry about shedding them later.
I knew Steve was on our side with this when the labels first publicly expressed interest in overcharging for singles and other popular songs and Steve shot them down without hesitation. Unlike the greedy labels, Steve understood that consistently fair pricing is a big part, perhaps the biggest part, of what makes the iTunes Store work. And again, when consumers complained that the original three-computer limitation on iTunes purchases wasn't enough, Steve fought the record labels to get it increased to five computers, knowing that there are in fact some households with more than three computers, and plenty more households who worry that they might someday have more than three computers, and that all of them were going to be more likely to buy iTunes Store music if the limitations were eased.
And now Steve Jobs is publicly calling for the complete abolition of Digital Rights Management, whether it be Apple's or anyone else's. That's right, the guy who first convinced us that we could live with a bit of DRM is now publicly asking the record labels for permission to run that very same DRM through a shredder. The company that sold us this ever so slightly crippled music is now telling us that they don't like it any more than we do.
You know what? I always knew this day would come. I knew that Apple's position in the music industry would eventually become so powerful that Steve would push for being allowed to sell content with no restrictions at all. I just didn't think in a million years that it would happen so soon. And I didn't think he'd do it so publicly, either. He's drawn a line in the sand that the record labels are going to have to deal with head-on now. There's no dodging this anymore: it's now out there that even the iPod/iTunes company doesn't think there should be DRM. This takes the discussion out of the corporate boardrooms and geek recesses of the internet and pushes it into the living room of every music lover on the planet.
So why is Steve so willing to put this out there in such a public way while knowing that the abolition of DRM might end up loosening Apple's grip on the competition just a bit? Well, for one thing, he knows that even with the publication of this open letter, it won't happen any time soon. He's asking for the help of the apathetic public, the bureaucratic governments of the world, and perhaps even his own competitors, and he'll rest easy knowing that none of that help will come quickly. By the time we're within range of actually seeing it happen, Apple's position in not only the music industry but also the movie and television industries will be so much stronger that it'll be too late to matter that you can buy content from another download service and put it on your iPod; no one will even consider doing so to be a viable option.
In perhaps too polite of a way, Steve Jobs is finally, publicly telling the record labels what they've needed to hear for decades now: try to rip someone off over and over again, and they're going to find a way to return the favor. We bought the White Album on vinyl, and then a decade later we had to buy it over again on cassette. And a decade after that, nevermind that we'd already paid for the White Album twice, we had to buy it a third time on an absurdly flimsy new medium called the compact disc. And with our old CDs scratched up, thanks to the new Apple/Beatles deal, later this year we'll all get to buy the White Album a fourth time as a digital download.
And you wonder why so many people could care less about playing by the rules, or even the law, when it comes to acquiring content. The record labels haven't just been ripping us off all this time, they've been ripping off our parents and their parents as well. It stands to reason that after all these generations of mafia-like behavior from the labels, the level of respect toward the concept of paying for music that far too many of us are passing along to our own kids has been right around zero. It wasn't that these teenagers all got together one day and decided that none of them should have to pay for music; it's that they were raised by parents who had to keep paying for the White Album every ten years and passed that resentment along to their offspring. It's not that today's kids are more desirous of acquiring music without paying for it; it's just that these days it's a lot easier to pull off.
How on earth can the record labels reverse this downward spiral of disrespect and distrust between themselves and consumers, in which far too many instances has dissolved into each side seeing who can rip each other off the fastest? Someone's got to take a step forward and show the other side just a bit of respect, just a tad of trust, and that's not going to be easy. But here's the thing: over the past five years consumers have been willing to spend close to two billion dollars on legal music downloads even though they've known that the music was just a little bit rigged. Sure, it's still dwarfed by CD sales, but it's no longer just a drop in the bucket. The iTunes Store is now the fourth-biggest seller of music, period, and you can't ignore that. Consumers have shown, if nothing else, that if you make it easy for them to do the right thing, a good number of them will do just that.
Now it's time to increase that number. And if the labels haven't figured it out, then Apple has: let the world know that there will no longer be any restrictions on legal music downloads, that they'll no longer get stuck with music that has more limited usage rights than what they get from buying a CD, and that they'll no longer have to worry about what on earth DRM is or what hassle it might cause them, only that's it's been eliminated from existence.
Steve knows it won't happen any time soon, and that's why he's sleeping easy tonight even after opening what just might be the biggest can of worms in the history of digital music. But let the record show that it was Steve who chose to take the issue of DRM and cast a spotlight upon it; it was he who asked the question of whether we even need it. And he's set things in motion this week that, while they'll take years to sort out, will make it a whole lot harder for the record labels to convince any consumer or any government that DRM is reasonable, moral, legal, or tolerable.
Steve Jobs just took over the music industry today. If it wasn't official before, it is now. Good thing he's on our side. I guess we'll just have to settle for the fact that it's mere coincidence that his best interests happen to line up with ours. But as long as Steve and Apple don't forget that what's good for us is good for their business, I think it's something we can all live with.
Ever since the launch of the iTunes Store in 2002 I've had to listen to listen to music lovers, the media, and even some of Apple's biggest fans complaining about how Steve Jobs and Apple were trying to "lock us in" to using their products. The only reason iTunes downloads contain Digital Rights Management, they've claimed, is so that Apple can ensure no current iPod user ever switches to some other brand of MP3 player in the future. If the music you've bought for 99 cents a pop can't go with you then you're not going anywhere, right?
As if that had anything to do with it. As if Steve Jobs sat down with the record labels five years ago and said "let's cripple iTunes downloads in such a way that it doesn't really cause problems for anyone but it casts a pall over the concept of legal downloads such that sales will be significantly less than what they otherwise could be," and then the record labels said "Okay Steve, if that's what you really want to do, we'll go along with it."
Sorry, but Steve Jobs isn't that stupid and the record labels aren't that smart. And thanks to Steve's open letter regarding DRM, now we have proof.
As should have been easily surmisable for years now, it turns out the record labels didn't want to let Apple (or anyone else) make music available for download at all. After all, why let the consumer buy one song for less than a dollar online when you can continue trying to force them to buy one song on CD for eighteen dollars? Nevermind that this is exactly the kind of myopic thinking that led to the mainstreaming of online music theft in the first place. The labels only went along with Steve's plan because they knew something was wrong, even if they couldn't put two and two together to figure out that it was their own mafia-like behavior over the past several decades that led to this state where far too many otherwise good-natured consumers feel that music is theirs to acquire without payment as they please.
But the labels weren't going to let it happen unless they could do something to rig it, something to make sure that none of these legal downloads ever turned into illegal downloads. Nevermind that every song on every CD ever sold has always been able to be converted into a freely uploadable and downloadable file in less than ten minutes, in a feat of technical genius that involves clicking the "import" button and then going for a soda break. Nevermind that iTunes downloads were going to be the least likely candidates for piracy because they require someone to pay for them, whereas store-bought CDs get passed around by teenagers so frequently these days that they often can't remember which CDs originally belonged to which friends.
So Steve and Apple managed to come up with what has to be the wussiest form of DRM ever, a set of limitations so weak that you'd darn near have to be robbing a convenience store to ever run afoul of them. No burning the same CD, in the same order, more than seven times. No putting the music on more than five computers unless you master the technical magic of (gasp) burning an audio CD of the music and then handing it to someone, after which they can do anything they please with it. And the record labels, being the idiots that they are, actually bought into this as a system that was going to stop iTunes downloads from contributing to piracy, which they were never going to do anyway.
In actuality all it's done is to give iTunes downloads (and all other legal music downloads) a bad name. People who understand enough about iTunes DRM know that it won't be a problem for them. But those who don't follow the technology quite so closely, the majority of folks out there, have merely been confused by it to the point that many of them are afraid to purchase iTunes downloads Ð and that holds true even for many current iPod users who happily use iTunes to organize the music they keep buying on CD. The only reason many of them still buy the CD is because of rampant misunderstanding as to what iTunes DRM really is.
And for the past five years I've been saying that, through all of this record label idiocy, Steve Jobs was on our side. Not because he's some altruistic saint, but because unlike far too many other businessmen out there, Steve understands that within reason, what's good for us is good for him. Steve knew he could boost iPod sales by making music available for inexpensive legal download, and if the labels were only going to let it happen with restrictionsk then he'd accept those restrictions for the time being and worry about shedding them later.
I knew Steve was on our side with this when the labels first publicly expressed interest in overcharging for singles and other popular songs and Steve shot them down without hesitation. Unlike the greedy labels, Steve understood that consistently fair pricing is a big part, perhaps the biggest part, of what makes the iTunes Store work. And again, when consumers complained that the original three-computer limitation on iTunes purchases wasn't enough, Steve fought the record labels to get it increased to five computers, knowing that there are in fact some households with more than three computers, and plenty more households who worry that they might someday have more than three computers, and that all of them were going to be more likely to buy iTunes Store music if the limitations were eased.
And now Steve Jobs is publicly calling for the complete abolition of Digital Rights Management, whether it be Apple's or anyone else's. That's right, the guy who first convinced us that we could live with a bit of DRM is now publicly asking the record labels for permission to run that very same DRM through a shredder. The company that sold us this ever so slightly crippled music is now telling us that they don't like it any more than we do.
You know what? I always knew this day would come. I knew that Apple's position in the music industry would eventually become so powerful that Steve would push for being allowed to sell content with no restrictions at all. I just didn't think in a million years that it would happen so soon. And I didn't think he'd do it so publicly, either. He's drawn a line in the sand that the record labels are going to have to deal with head-on now. There's no dodging this anymore: it's now out there that even the iPod/iTunes company doesn't think there should be DRM. This takes the discussion out of the corporate boardrooms and geek recesses of the internet and pushes it into the living room of every music lover on the planet.
So why is Steve so willing to put this out there in such a public way while knowing that the abolition of DRM might end up loosening Apple's grip on the competition just a bit? Well, for one thing, he knows that even with the publication of this open letter, it won't happen any time soon. He's asking for the help of the apathetic public, the bureaucratic governments of the world, and perhaps even his own competitors, and he'll rest easy knowing that none of that help will come quickly. By the time we're within range of actually seeing it happen, Apple's position in not only the music industry but also the movie and television industries will be so much stronger that it'll be too late to matter that you can buy content from another download service and put it on your iPod; no one will even consider doing so to be a viable option.
In perhaps too polite of a way, Steve Jobs is finally, publicly telling the record labels what they've needed to hear for decades now: try to rip someone off over and over again, and they're going to find a way to return the favor. We bought the White Album on vinyl, and then a decade later we had to buy it over again on cassette. And a decade after that, nevermind that we'd already paid for the White Album twice, we had to buy it a third time on an absurdly flimsy new medium called the compact disc. And with our old CDs scratched up, thanks to the new Apple/Beatles deal, later this year we'll all get to buy the White Album a fourth time as a digital download.
And you wonder why so many people could care less about playing by the rules, or even the law, when it comes to acquiring content. The record labels haven't just been ripping us off all this time, they've been ripping off our parents and their parents as well. It stands to reason that after all these generations of mafia-like behavior from the labels, the level of respect toward the concept of paying for music that far too many of us are passing along to our own kids has been right around zero. It wasn't that these teenagers all got together one day and decided that none of them should have to pay for music; it's that they were raised by parents who had to keep paying for the White Album every ten years and passed that resentment along to their offspring. It's not that today's kids are more desirous of acquiring music without paying for it; it's just that these days it's a lot easier to pull off.
How on earth can the record labels reverse this downward spiral of disrespect and distrust between themselves and consumers, in which far too many instances has dissolved into each side seeing who can rip each other off the fastest? Someone's got to take a step forward and show the other side just a bit of respect, just a tad of trust, and that's not going to be easy. But here's the thing: over the past five years consumers have been willing to spend close to two billion dollars on legal music downloads even though they've known that the music was just a little bit rigged. Sure, it's still dwarfed by CD sales, but it's no longer just a drop in the bucket. The iTunes Store is now the fourth-biggest seller of music, period, and you can't ignore that. Consumers have shown, if nothing else, that if you make it easy for them to do the right thing, a good number of them will do just that.
Now it's time to increase that number. And if the labels haven't figured it out, then Apple has: let the world know that there will no longer be any restrictions on legal music downloads, that they'll no longer get stuck with music that has more limited usage rights than what they get from buying a CD, and that they'll no longer have to worry about what on earth DRM is or what hassle it might cause them, only that's it's been eliminated from existence.
Steve knows it won't happen any time soon, and that's why he's sleeping easy tonight even after opening what just might be the biggest can of worms in the history of digital music. But let the record show that it was Steve who chose to take the issue of DRM and cast a spotlight upon it; it was he who asked the question of whether we even need it. And he's set things in motion this week that, while they'll take years to sort out, will make it a whole lot harder for the record labels to convince any consumer or any government that DRM is reasonable, moral, legal, or tolerable.
Steve Jobs just took over the music industry today. If it wasn't official before, it is now. Good thing he's on our side. I guess we'll just have to settle for the fact that it's mere coincidence that his best interests happen to line up with ours. But as long as Steve and Apple don't forget that what's good for us is good for their business, I think it's something we can all live with.
