[clue-talk] iPhone Madness

[Nate Duehr]

Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> On 07-03 02:18, Nate Duehr wrote:
>  
>> Nah, Apple's genius was in making the iPod connector proprietary, and  
>> then grabbing enough market share that even automotive manufacturers  
>> put them in vehicles.  The other manufacturers can only hook up  
>> through a dumb, no-data, "aux" jack for audio to things like cars.   
>> Keeping the iPod connector backward compatible throughout multiple  
>> versions of the product was a great idea.
> 
> Yeah, the fellow I was talking to was quite different - you are making
> rational arguments with facts involved. His reaction bordered more on
> someone trying to defend their religion - he was perceiving it more as a
> personal attack on him for me to even make the suggestion.

Typical of a LOT of products... ever met a BMW/Corvette/Jeep/Chevy fan?

:-)

I always get a kick out of techies who complain (not you, just in 
general) about Apple marketing and hype and then tell you they'd never 
drive anything but a [insert their favorite car/truck here].  Blindsided 
by the very "hype" they hate, and if pressed, they can always justify 
it.  We all can.  Human nature.

People love to feel like they "belong" to some group.  Marketers love to 
help them feel that way, even if it's all worthless and fake.

How many Hobbs-peeing-on-Ford's-bow-tie-logo bumper stickers have you 
seen on Chevy's this year on the road?  Those have been popular for 
years, Just as one example.  Imagine the hub-bub if Apple fans made up a 
Apple-peeing-on-a-Microsoft-logo sticker for their cars?

There's plenty of brand-name flame-fests to go around, techie or 
non-techie.  We all do it, some more than others.

(I drive a Jeep, and like it... but find those "It's a Jeep thing, you 
wouldn't understand" stickers to be utterly retarded... so such 
marketing hype CAN backfire.  But the Jeep shaking off the mud 
commercial was cute.)

> I still contend that it's possible for MS to eat iTunes/iPod's lunch.

Of course, It's possible for me to walk on the moon too, but not likely. 
   Momentum is the problem for MS.  They'd need a LOT more hype than 
Apple to beat Apple's hype.  Your "friend" above is case-in-point.

Well that and "Zune" is a stupid name for a music player... and it's 
shit-brown colored.  (Sorry, had to say it.  LOL!)

> 1. Wal-Mart. Wal-mart demonstrates that there are an awful lot of people
> that like to get junk for low prices. I think ipod will no doubt have a
> place in the market, but it might have to appeal to the same crown that OS X
> does, which is what, about 9% of desktops. 

There's plenty of MP3 junk out there.  Check out the reviews of MP3 
players at C|Net.  If the crowd wants junk, there's already a glut of 
junk players available.

And there's also the more high-end stuff, like some of the (really nice) 
iRiver player/recorders.  (iPods are horrible at recording, low bitrate, 
crappy audio).

> 2. Bundling. I've seen it argued that what Apple has actually made is a
> multi-layered platform - ipod->itunes->istore, and there is truth to that.
> But, MS can bundle their version of itunes into their OS. As long as it's
> not irritating, they would already have one component of that tier. They
> already have a store, IIRC, and I suppose they could even talk some OEMs
> into bundling some low-end version of whatever comes after Zune. 

Apple bundles together all of their OWN products, driving more sales for 
them.  They're pretty good at it.  Make one product that drives the sale 
of another...

It makes folks feel like they're getting a complete "system" that all 
works well together... me included.  I just plug my old 3rd gen iPod 
into the MacBook and as usual, it "just works".

Are there better players out there?  Sure.  Was I able to buy a sub-$200 
car stereo for my Jeep that had a real "iPod connector" on it and just 
plug it in and be able to control the player completely?  Yup.

The simplicity of Apple's "stuff" is that they pay attention to the 
details, so you don't have to.  Right now in my life, I'm busy and 
screwing around with ripping things to OGG (perhaps as one example) or 
figuring out how to make some stupid USB connection to a third-party 
player work under Linux falls into the category of "stuff I *used* to 
have time for"... and yeah, I did have my entire music collection ripped 
to OGG once... then the hard drive died.  Would I ever do it again? 
Hell no.  (Well, I did, but I ripped to 192-bit MP3 the next time.)

But after that experience I realized my time was worth something to me. 
  I'd now rather pay someone else $0.99 per song to deal with it for me, 
and then just copy the songs to both my laptop and my wife's, where they 
conveniently built-in that 5-machine "authorization" system... so her 
machine can also listen to the DRM'ed music I purchased.  Simplicity and 
thought about before it was released.

So, so far... I like the Apple products I own.  They just do what Apple 
claims they will, hardware problems notwithstanding on 1st gen stuff.  I 
learned that lesson the hard way, no fussing around.  And if I want to, 
I can still fire up a shell and do other "stuff" on the computers.

I'm still undecided about the iPhone, though -- it's missing too many 
things I feel I need.  The Blackberry does a better job for me, right 
now.  Especially for 1/5 the price!!!

> 3. Never underestimate MS. They may be thought of as a dinosaur what with
> "the Google" and all, but I still think they have some fight in them. Sony
> is hurting right now from the PS3, but I wouldn't count them out, either.
> This is the company that did the same for portable tape players.

I NEVER underestimate any company with multiple billions of dollars in 
liquid assets available to their upper-management as a strategic asset.

:-)

> One counter-argument is branding. I suspect many people that buy ipod have
> awareness of the ipod brand than even Apple itself, much like Java is better
> known than Sun. So they gave the market a better name than the very non-sexy
> term "portable mp3 player", and it had such force that it even generated the
> misnomer "podcast". 

Yep.  More Marketing than MS.

> Another is lock-in. If you ripped all your CDs to AAC and bought stuff on
> iTunes, then you're not likely to switch.  

Yep.  I'm in that boat, but... it should be mentioned that one can 
change the default ripping mode in iTunes to any bit-rate MP3 you 
want... and that's one of the first things I do to iTunes on any 
freshly-loaded copy.

That, and you are allowed to burn a few copies (there's a limit, I 
forget what it is -- three?) of audio CD's from playlists made up of AAC 
format stuff.  The resulting MP3 has some identifying info (easily 
removed) in it, presumably so they could cooperate with the RIAA if you 
were stupid enough to take AAC stuff, rip it to audio CD, rip it back to 
MP3, and then share it on P2P networks.  I don't do any of that, so I 
don't care.

And of course, there's folks that have hacked AAC on Linux if you're 
also a Linux geek, so getting your music "back" from the DRM'ed format 
isn't really hard if for some reason you'd already gone over the audio 
CD limit, burning your AAC content to other formats.

iTunes also now has some music available non-DRM'ed for an additional 
$0.30 a song or so, if the record label agrees to it.

Apple's making more headway against DRM by embracing and then pushing 
back later, now that their delivery system is popular, than any of the 
ranting and raving anti-DRM crowd has ever accomplished.

DRM always was, and is... about the money.  Slowly embrace and extend is 
the only way to really fight that, to coin a Microsoft phrase.

> I would say that neither of those two counter arguments are because
> istore/itunes/ipods are a superior experience for users, though. It's hard
> to say which will have the most force - but Nike has proven branding can be
> done for years. 

Brands are some of the most powerful marketing tools ever.  Many 
purchasing decisions are made by people with no time/priority to read 
reviews, investigate things... they buy things on perceived quality 
only.  Me, I'm a freak and love reading Consumer Reports, and tons of 
review sites, comments, etc.  Heck, I'd love to review things, but I 
think manufacturers would hate me.  I can ALWAYS break something or find 
the annoying parts of any product and take a guess at the design 
decision that led to that annoying "feature"...  :-)

> It will be interesting to see how it plays out with the mp3 player market,
> as well as the smartphone. I guess more competition is good, even if phones
> are still locked down to a great extent in at least the U.S.

It's ALREADY playing out... plenty of MP3 players out there.

Many of them are built/designed FAR better than the iPod, but... Apple's 
still got the business momentum in their advantage today.  I think they 
see it slowing, thus -- the iPhone.

They knew they needed something different to drive more people to 
iTunes, really.  The video iPod thing was okay, but no one really 
watches movies on a 3" screen.  They might watch video "podcasts" but 
there's no revenue in those for Apple.  Call me a "traditionalist" but I 
never bought into (figuratively or literally) the video iPod.

> The idea behind the open source phone [TuxPhone]is interesting, but I have
> to say that the pictures don't seem too enticing...but I applaud them
> anyway.

I applaud them and a couple of others, but they're fighting a lost 
battle.  Telco carriers are some of the most stodgy, set-in-their-ways 
companies on the planet.

Engineers in the telco world won't be opening up the on-air or back-end 
networks to really allow innovation -- it's not in their DNA.

I say this, having worked at a telco vendor of large carrier-class gear 
now on and off for over 10 years, this year.  The Bell system may have 
been "broken up" by Judge Greene, but the mentality still hasn't left 
the biz.  Another generation or two of "attitude dilution", maybe.

(Hey, I like that phrase I just came up with... "attitude dilution".  Cool!)

Nate