The Psychology of iPhone 3G Pricing
Michael Rosenwald in The Washington Post on the effect of the iPhone 3G’s $199 starting price. â
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â Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations Regarding the Just-Announced iPad
Automatic Transmission Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal. That’s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn’t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it. That’s not to say there aren’t trade-offs involved. Car enthusiasts (and genuine experts like race car drivers) still drive cars with manual transmissions. They offer more control; they’re more efficient. But the vast majority of cars sold today are automatics. So too it’ll be with computers. Eventually, the vast majority will be like the iPad in terms of the degree to which the underlying computer is abstracted away. Manual computers, like the Mac and Windows PCs, will slowly shift from the standard to the niche, something of interest only to experts and enthusiasts and developers. Popovers and Split Views Across the iPad system, Apple has introduced a new UI element, which they’re calling popovers. It’s a perfect name. Popovers are like a cross between dialog boxes, drop-down menus, and inspector palettes. One example is the list of mailboxes in Mail when in vertical mode. When iPad Mail is in horizontal mode, you see a split view with two panels at once: accounts/mailboxes/messages on the left, and an always-present message detail panel on the right. But when iPad Mail is in horizontal mode, you just get one panel, but you can tap a button at the top left to show a popover of messages in the current mailbox. They’re very well thought-out. As their name implies, they appear on-screen “over” existing views. But you can’t drag them around. They aren’t windows. They’re in a fixed position, always with an arrow pointing to the button or other control (like an event in Calendar) that the user tapped to open the popover. To close a popover, you just tap away from it — tapping anything other than within the popover closes it. Perhaps conceptually, it’s more like tapping the view under the popover to make it disappear. So popovers don’t have an “X” button in the top-left corner, or anything explicitly labeled “Close” or “Cancel” or “Done”. You just tap away. This is one of those aspects of the iPad UI that you just have to feel to get it. It feels perfect. According to the iPad Human Interface Guidelines (which, alas, are only available to registered iPhone SDK developers), there is a modal variant: Popovers and modal views are similar, in the sense that people typically canât interact with the main view while a popover or modal view is open. But a modal view is always modal, whereas a popover can be used in two different ways: Modal, in which case the popover dims the screen area around it and requires an explicit dismissal. This behavior is very similar to that of a modal view, but a popoverâs appearance tends to give the experience a lighter weight. Non-modal, in which case the popover does not dim the screen area around it and people can tap outside its bounds to dismiss it. This behavior makes a non-modal popover seem like another view in the application, not a separate state. I don’t recall encountering the modal variety during my all-too-brief iPad spelunking expedition; the non-modal ones seem far more prevalent. The overall effect of popovers is that you do far less view switching in an iPad app than you do an iPhone app. Things that slide an entirely new full-screen view on screen on the iPhone — like say going back from a message to a list of messages, or displaying your Safari bookmarks, or showing the details of a calendar event — on the iPad instead appear as popovers on a main view. So imagine, say, an iPad Twitter client in horizontal mode. You could have a split view with a list of tweets running down the left. On the right, you could have a web view for reading web pages linked from tweets. Rather than sliding over and replacing the tweet list, they could exist side-by-side. And then a popover could provide an interface for switching between different accounts. Information Density The iPad display offers 1024 × 768 pixels. At 9.7 inches diagonally, the pixel density is roughly 132 pixels per inch. That’s less than the iPhone and iPod Touch, which have 480 × 320 displays with roughly 162 pixels per inch. So text looks a little less sharp on the iPad. But it seemed to me that I naturally held it further away from my face than I do my iPhone, such that it seems just about equally sharp effectively. What I found interesting is that I’m very familiar with this resolution — for years I used PowerBooks and iBooks with 1024 × 768 displays running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X. 1024 × 768 somehow seems very different on the iPad than on Mac OS — physically smaller but conceptually bigger. The full-screen concept, without Mac-style overlapping draggable windows, leaves the iPad free to use as many pixels as possible for display content rather than UI chrome. With the iPad Calendar app for example, the month view seemed more efficient and information-dense than iCal running on my 1440 × 900 pixel MacBook Pro display. Also interesting is iPad Safari. Even though the screen offers the same pixel count as what was once the standard size for a laptop display, iPad Safari renders pages like iPhone Safari. The web surfing experience is all about zooming and panning. Hardware Keyboard Support The announcement that most surprised me is the iPad’s support for hardware keyboards — not just the new docking unit, but also Bluetooth keyboards. I’m surprised because it is a very practical decision, but not elegant. There’s a certain beauty to how, with the iPhone and iPod Touch, input is completely and utterly limited to the touchscreen. Needless to say, though, I’m surprised in a happy way. I can totally imagine traveling to conferences (or events like this) without a MacBook, but rather with an iPad and a keyboard. The on-screen iPad keyboard is not bad at all, for what it is, but it’s exactly what you think — it’s for pecking not typing. If you want to do actual writing, you’re going to want a hardware keyboard. Having used the hardware keyboard yesterday, though, it is clearly a secondary form of input. You cannot even vaguely drive the iPad interface by keyboard alone. It is almost entirely only for text input. The arrow keys really only work for text editing. Shift-arrow combos work for selecting ranges of text, and Command-arrow combos work for moving the insertion point to the beginning/end of lines. Option-arrow combos do not work for moving a word at a time, though. Arrow keys don’t work for navigating the interface though. This is the sort of thing I expect to improve over time (and who knows, maybe even before it actually ships), but there are some glaring holes. For example, in iPad Mail, when you start typing in the To: field to address a message, and the iPhone-style autocomplete suggestion list appears under the field, you cannot select from it using the keyboard. You have to touch the screen. The docking keyboard has no Esc key, replacing it instead with a key to simulates the iPad Home button. But so if you try to dismiss a popover with “Esc” and hit that button, boom, you’re dropped back to the home screen. And once back at the home screen, there doesn’t seem to be a way to launch other apps via keyboard alone. It just seems like it’s not finished yet. Typography and iBooks The iPad’s version of iPhone OS contains more fonts than iPhone OS 3.1, including my beloved Gill Sans. The iBooks app lets you switch the text face, but only from a choice of five fonts. iBooks uses full-justified layout for books, with no apparent option to switch to ragged right. It doesn’t do hyphenation, so you wind up with very unsightly word-spacing gaps. No e-reader I’m aware of does justice to proper book typography, but I was hoping for better from Apple. It’s decent web-caliber typography, not print-caliber typography. As for Amazon, they might wind up delighted with this thing. Apple’s in the business of selling devices first, content second. I think Amazon is in the content business first, the device business second. A world where Kindle hardware sales pale in comparison to the iPad but where there’s a very popular Kindle app for iPad that competes against iBooks is not a bad situation for Amazon. Apple is only selling e-books for use on their own devices; Amazon is willing to sell e-books anywhere they can. Money on the Table Lastly, a thought regarding the iPad’s aggressive pricing. Apple is obviously leaving money on the table here. They could easily charge $999 as the starting price and have hundreds of people lined up outside every Apple Store ready to buy one on day one. Then they could drop the price later in the year, as the holiday season approaches. Clearly they’re more interested in unit sales than per-unit margin. The mobile computing landscape is in land-grab mode, and Apple is trying to stake out a long-term dominating position.
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Ask TUAW: Shopping for new Macs, iPhone home screens, home folder on external disk, and more
Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAWWelcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about whether to buy a 27" iMac or a MacBook Pro, increasing the number of iPhone home screens, moving your home folder to an external disk, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have. Bayuze asks I have a iPhone 3G 8GB. There are 11 home screens on my device now and I noticed that when I install new apps they don't appear anywhere and are only available if I search for them. How can I rectify this? Does this mean that 11 is the maximum number of home screens? You are correct that the default maximum for iPhone home screens is 11, though additional apps can be accessed by searching. It turns out that there is a hack that may allow you to access more than 11 home screens. However, this appears to be unreliable and is probably not the kind of thing one should depend on. If you really consistently want more than 11 home screens I think you'll have to jailbreak your phone. Joe asks My 27" iMac's hard drive is slow. I've decided to replace it with an SSD. OS X, applications and my Aperture Library are the only things that will live on the SSD. Everything else, which is just my user's home folder, will live on a FW800 external drive.My question is this: When I get the SSD and install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard, do I create a new user with the same name as my current user then point that account to the external drive or will SL see the user account that's already on the external drive? What's important in the Advanced Options for a user account -- i.e. should I note the User ID, Group ID, Short Name, Login Shell, and UUID of my current user and replicate that with the new install? As it turns out, our own Robert Palmer discussed moving a home folder last year. It certainly can't hurt to note all of those things you mention (the easiest thing to do is just take a screenshot), but all you really should have to do is change the home folder location in the Advanced Options. Although I get the sense you're already aware of this, for everyone else you can get to these options simply by right-clicking on the account name in the Accounts Preference Pane. This will allow you to select the location of your home folder just by navigating to the external drive with the standard Open file sheet. Do keep in mind Robert's warning that "in the past, some security and software updates have been confused by the fact that a user's home folder isn't on the startup disk." amiga_tone asks I don't get the whole 3G/WiFi version of the iPad. If the device comes with BlueTooth and iPhone tethering (in general) is supported in your country then the only point of selling a 3G compatible iPad is if you don't own a mobile phone. Based on this why would you own an iPad but not a mobile phone?... If they offer no 3G tethering here in Australia then you have to pay 2 monthly service fees (iPhone and iPad) and have 2 separate caps. If tethering is allowed then you will only have to pay 1 monthly service fee but share you data cap across 2 devices - though you would be more inclined to use the iPad for data access than your iPhone - or would you? This isn't really a technical question, but I would point out a couple of things. There are lots of people who purchase USB cell modems (or MiFi devices) even though they already have mobile phones. Furthermore, in the US, AT&T still hasn't gotten around to allowing tethering on the iPhone officially, so you're out of luck if you live in the States anyway. Finally, the pricing difference really seals the deal. Again in the US, the standard tethering price for smartphones is $60/month. So if you think about it, the additional price of the 3G iPad will be made up in only a little more than four months given the much lower monthly data charge of $30/month. Given the pricing model (and lack of contract), plus the convenience of not having to set up the tether, I think the 3G iPad is definitely worth it if you're ever going to use it outside of a Wi-Fi hotspot. And I'll put my money where my mouth is once it's released. jakejohnson asks I want to purchase a new 27" iMac with the i7 processor. However, the reports of DOA units and yellow screens on various forums has me worried. I have decided to pull the trigger and buy one in the next couple of weeks, UNLESS(!) there is reason to believe that the iMacs will receive a small spec bump in the coming months. A slightly more powerful i7 chip as well as the addition of an eSATA port and SSD options have been rumors. Do I have any reason to believe that any of these rumored rumors might have some truth to them, and that I might see any one of them happening in the first half of this year? As always with Apple products, you can't really act on the basis of rumors. There's obviously no guarantee that any of those features will be included in the next revision. That said, the MacRumors iMac Buyer's Guide is a handy resource for the time since the last update. You can see that the present model is only about half-way through the normal iMac product cycle, so if you choose to wait for a new model you're likely to be waiting several months (and it may still not have those features you mention). As regard the potential problems with the 27" iMac, particularly the yellow screen issue, a good place to look is over at Gizmodo where they've been keeping track of the problems. Their recommendation at this time is that it's safe to buy a 27" iMac, but that you should run this lcd test when you get it and return it for exchange if there's a problem. sinX asks Will the ipad be able to use that NetShare app that was on the app store for a bit to connect through? Well, obviously we won't know for sure until the iPad is released, but I rather doubt it. According to this NetShare setup guide you have to create a Computer-to-Computer network for this to work. It seems unlikely to me that the iPad will be able to do that, and if so, it seems unlikely that it will work with NetShare. If you're willing to jailbreak (along with all that entails) I suspect that the iPad will be able to connect though MyWi ($10). Jay asks My MacBook Pro is getting pretty old (bought it with the first wave of MBPs back in law school - still running Tiger) so I'm considering upgrading to a fancy new model sometime soon. Seeing as how there haven't been any MBP refreshes lately, should I wait a little longer until they push out some new models? How long do you think I'll be waiting? I'm all for instant gratification, but if waiting an extra three to four weeks means a much better computer for the same amount of dough, I'm willing to put up with my current laptop for the time being. What say you, TUAW? As with the last question, you can't guarantee anything with product refreshes. However, the MacRumors Guide for the MacBook Pro suggests that an update is really due. PC manufacturers are starting to put out Core i5 and i7 laptops, which is making the MacBook Pro line look increasingly dated. Part of the problem seems to be an issue with the graphics chipset, because of a licensing squabble between Nvidia and Intel. In short, in your shoes I would definitely wait for a few weeks because the performance improvements on the Core i7 will very likely be significant. sn0man1 asks I love the idea of the 'find my iPhone' for mobileme but was wondering if there was a 'find my MacBook' feature as well? I recently had my MacBook stolen and replaced it, but would like to be prepared if it happens again. It wouldn't really be feasible for Apple to implement this, at least in the same way, because the MacBook lacks a GPS component. That said, there are third-party laptop recovery applications out there that do offer some similar protection by getting general location data through Wi-Fi or IP addresses. Check out our recent post on hidden for more information on one such service (and links to others). I should point out, though, that even Back to My Mac has helped recover a stolen MacBook. TUAWAsk TUAW: Shopping for new Macs, iPhone home screens, home folder on external disk, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - iPhone - Mac OS X - Robert Palmer - Mac OS X Snow Leopard
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Apple May Lower the Price of the iPad: This is Not News
Sometimes I have to wonder whether everyone has taken leave of their senses. The big ânewsâ doing the rounds in the last twenty four hours is that Apple execs have admitted they are prepared to change the price of the iPad should consumer reception (read: sales) demand it. Yeah, thatâs right; Apple admitted it might revisit the price of the iPad sometime in the future, and change it according to sales performance. Shocking, that a company might operate according to a business plan designed to encourage sales and make money, eh? Apparently, thatâs somehow mind-boggling news. It got started because of a report by Matt Phillips of the Wall Street Journal, who wrote; Apple intends to stay ânimbleâ on pricing of the iPad, possibly lowering prices if the newly unveiled tablet device fails to gain traction among consumers. (Top prize goes to Engadget for their humorous response/headline, âApple to be ânimbleâ on iPad pricing, athletic on pommel horseâ.) Phillips quoted a note from Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope who, following a meeting with Apple executives, said; âWhile it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated),â This only bolsters my long-held belief that analysts are, apparently, paid for pointing out the blindingly-obvious. That tendency to wrap together common sense and âwhat we all knew anywayâ as âsomething new and worthy of reportingâ is usually exemplified by Gene Munster, but since heâs been quiet for the last week or so, I guess Shope will have to do. (I predict that, in the weeks ahead of the iPad launch, Munster, or some inspired analyst like him, will issue a note to the press proclaiming, âAppleâs App store sales will perform better in this quarter than in the same quarter last year.â Or itâll be something even more obvious, like âApple will sell more iPads this year than they did in 2009âŚâ and I guarantee the tech press will rush to report that âadviceâ like itâs vitally important ânews.â You just wait and see.) Confidence The point here is that Apple is doing nothing revolutionary or surprising by admitting the fact that, according to the ebb and flow of consumer demand, it will revisit its pricing strategy for the iPad. This is what all businesses do with all products, all the time. Apple is always revising its prices; MacBooks, iMacs, iPods and iPhones get at least one price change on an annual basis. Itâs not a big deal that they will do the same for the iPad, and it certainly doesnât point to any lack of confidence in the product itself. Let's not forget the infamous iPhone price-cut of â07; after launching the iPhone with a hefty $599 asking price, Apple reduced it by a whopping $200 just a few months later. The only difference between then and now is Appleâs transparency (yeah, I canât believe I said that either). During his keynote presentation late last month, Steve Jobs said of the iPad; âWe want to get this into the hands of as many people as possible.â That is, after all, the overriding reason for the agreeably-low price of the entry-level iPad. Here Come the Trolls Sadly, the predictable fan-baiting didnât take long, with the likes of Should-Know-Better-Than-That Windows evangelist Paul Thurrott writing, in a blog post provocatively entitled âDo Not, Under Any Circumstances, Buy an iPadâ; Following news that I was right about Apple's decision to not allow iPad pre-orders would cause many potential buyers to reassess things, comes this unbelievable bit of news directly from Apple itself: The company said that it would aggressively lower prices on the iPad if/when it doesn't take off in the marketplace. Aside from the clumsy jumble of clauses and inventive use of the adjective âaggressivelyâ, (as far as I can see, neither Shope nor Phillips ever used that word) I really want to point out, one last time, and for the record — this is not âunbelievableâ news. Far from it. It is, in fact, the most ordinary, run-of-the-mill, standard business practice, entirely believable news one could expect from a consumer electronics company. (Quite what Appleâs flexible pricing strategy has to do with Thurrottâs theory about the inability to pre-order an iPad is beyond me; can anyone say âstraw man?â) It comes down to this; the wider tech press are, inexplicably, falling over themselves to write-off the iPad as a failure before itâs even out of the starting gate. (Donât forget, the iPod was panned by critics and tech âexpertsâ when it first launched. The iPhone was subject to its own fair share of harsh criticism, too.) No one can say exactly how successful the iPad will be, and while thereâs no harm in speculating (after all, much Apple coverage is precisely that) itâs sad to see how some corners of the tech community choose to interpret every little thing Apple does (or says it might do) as âevidenceâ of failure. I think Iâm being rational and level-headed. You might think Iâm a shameless fanboy. Either way, let me know exactly what you think in the comments below. Related GigaOM Pro Research: Web Tablet Survey: Appleâs iPad Hits Right Notes 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
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The Complete iMac History -- Bondi to Aluminum
It was perhaps the greatest gamble of Steve Jobsâ career. Barely 18 months into his second tour of duty with the company he founded, Appleâs interim CEO gathered a cadre of reporters at Cupertinoâs Flynt Auditorium on May 6, 1998, to showcase the newest member Mac family: a funny-looking, rebellious sibling with a flashy attitude and a remarkable sense of style. Dressed in blue plastic and built to harness the power of the Internet, the iMac was the first PC that actually felt personal. And it would forever change Apple, the industry, and virtually everyone who came into contact with it.    iMac G3Legend has it that Steve didnât warm to the iMac name until after it rolled off the assembly line, but itâs hard to imagine it being called anything else. With no less than five meanings attached to its little prefix--internet, individual, instruct, inform, inspire--the original Bondi Blue iMac was the personification of Appleâs think different campaign, an ingenious, incomparable, inimitable all-in-one machine designed to combine "the excitement of the Internet with the simplicity of Macintosh."While not quite the screamer it was billed to be, the first iMac was no slouch: $1,299 bought you a 233MHz G3 processor, 512MB L2 cache, 32MB RAM, ATI Rage IIc graphics, 4GB hard drive, tray-loading CD-ROM drive, 2 USB ports, stereo speakers, a funky mouse, garish keyboard and, of course, a 15-inch CRT display all built around a semi-translucent blue shell. Consumers immediately responded by ditching the boring, beige alternative, and soon iMacs were brightening desktops everywhere.But Bondi Blue didnât appeal to everyone, and in 1999 (following a minor graphics refresh to accommodate OS 8.5), Steve took the iMac to "a whole new level." Determined to let users "express themselves in a new way," the iMac picked up five fruit-inspired colors (Strawberry, Blueberry, Lime, Grape and Tangerine ) for its first major revision. To sweeten the deal, Apple added 33 extra megahertz and trimmed $100 off the price tag--and in April, a 333MHz processor sped things up even more--but it was the array of colors that consistently stole the show. (If youâre feeling nostalgic--or just looking for a unique aquarium--they can be had today for as cheap as a bag of fruit.)Steve didnât let the iMac rest on its palette, however. In October, the iMac DV brought the machineâs first FireWire ports, wireless support, slot-loading DVD-ROM drive and 400MHz processor, and added a RAM-stuffed, high-capacity special edition in the same Graphite color as its big brother Power Mac. At Macworld New York in July 2000, four new models made their appearance in an array of new colors, running up to 500MHz and ranging from $799 to $1,499: iMac (Indigo), iMac DV (Indigo, Ruby), iMac DV+ (Indigo, Ruby, Sage) and iMac DV SE (Graphite and Snow). A quiet update most notable for finally ditching the puck mouse, the sixth version of the iMac unofficially kicked off an 18-month waiting game for the next big thing, as the bubble-butt design began to show its age underneath the semi-annual paint job. But first, the iMac had to earn its spots.In February 2001, the iMac sunk to new depths with a gimmick that kicked the Reality Distortion Field into overdrive. Sensing the color wheel had run its course, Steve somehow convinced consumers that trippy, abstract patterns were the most logical way launch the "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign. The Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power iMacs marked the beginning of the end of the original iMacâs cachet, and the CRT Wunderkind would see just one more update during the remainder of its reign, bumping the three surviving colors--Indigo, Graphite and Snow--to a top speed of 700MHz at Macworld New York 2001. (These days, $75 will get you one of the final models to roll off the assembly line, which still runs OS X, all the way up to Tiger.)A $799 600MHz Snow model would remain on shelves until March 2003, when its hipper cousin, the flat-panel, white-and-chrome eMac G4, picked up the CRT mantle.   iMac G4Time magazine might have stolen a bit of the thunder from Steveâs Macworld San Francisco 2003 keynote, but even a leaked cover story with pics could hardly prepare anyone for what emerged from beneath the Moscone Center stage that morning. A floating, flat screen attached to a chrome neck and a gleaming white base, the iMac G4 had personality to spare and looked more at home in an art museum than on a desktop. Or, to hear Time describe it, a patch of grass:As (Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive) walked through the 1,000-square-meter vegetable garden and apricot grove of Jobs' wife Laurene, Jobs sketched out the Platonic ideal for the new machine. "Each element has to be true to itself," Jobs told Ive. "Why have a flat display if you're going to glom all this stuff on its back? Why stand a computer on its side when it really wants to be horizontal and on the ground? Let each element be what it is, be true to itself." Instead of looking like the old iMac, the thing should look more like the flowers in the garden. Jobs said, "It should look like a sunflower."A testament to Steveâs relentless pursuit of perfection, the iMac G4 brought more to the table than a distinctive design and 800 MHz G4 processor. Sporting an optional SuperDrive, a plethora of professional ports and a brilliant, widescreen display that âusher(ed) in the age of flat-screen computing for everyone,â the iMac G4 didnât need a candy coating to turn heads and hardly felt like a consumer machine. With three identical models ranging from $1,299 (CD-RW, 700MHz G4, 128MB RAM, 40GB hard drive) to $1,799 (SuperDrive, 800MHz G4, 256MB RAM, 60GB hard drive), the iMac G4 began to blur the line between consumer and professional, and represented one of the greatest advancements in Appleâs history.Naturally, it was a sensation. More than 150,000 units were ordered in the first three weeks and not even a $100 price bump to offset "significant increases in component costs for memory and LCD flat-panel displays" could slow down the sunflower juggernaut.To keep the line fresh, the iMac G4 followed a unique upgrade path. At Macworld New York in July, a 17-inch flagship model topped off the popular trio of 15-inchers, which kept the same specs and pricing. The following February, the line was whittled down to just two models: a 1GHz 17-inch model (SuperDrive, 256MB RAM, 80GB hard drive) with internal Airport and Bluetooth support, and the same 800MHz 15-inch model (Combo drive), which saw its price drop back to the original $1,299. (Head over to eBay and pick one up--new and in the box--for just a tenth of its MSRP.) Six months later, both models were fitted with faster processors and graphics, DDR memory and USB 2.0, and wireless networking became standard.The final update came in the form of a "huge, gorgeous" 20-inch model (identical spec-wise to the 17-inch it supplanted) that joined the line in November for $2,199 (and still sells for more than $500 today), leaving three distinct models for the remainder of its reign.   iMac G5Unlike the iMac G3, which stuck around long after its successor arrived, Apple forced the iMac G4 into early retirement in July 2004 while it ironed out some last-minute issues with the upcoming model. Eventually introduced by Phil Schiller at the Paris Apple Expo on the final day of August, the iMac G5 was met with flurry of anticipation as Apple all but confirmed a dramatic overhaul for its next-generation iMac.The first Mac truly inspired by the halo effect, the iMac G5 was brought to us by "the makers of the iPod" and it looked every bit the part. Abandoning the each-element-should-remain-true-to-itself philosophy, the iMac G5 was dressed in glossy, white plastic with a brushed aluminum foot and gray Apple logo. Sporting a 2-inch-thick housing built around a 17- or 20-inch screen, powerful 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz processor, and "completely redesigned system architecture," the iMac G5 brought the clean simplicity of Appleâs popular music player to its desktop computers in a timeless marriage of form and function.The iMac G5âs upgrade path was anything but ordinary. The first, which didnât land until May 2005, kept the same lineup--but trimmed $100 from the top-shelf model--and brought the requisite 2.0GHz processors, faster SuperDrives, higher-capacity hard drives and built-in Airport and Bluetooth, but also added a new ambient light sensor that lessened the intensity of the pulsing sleep light in a dark room. But it was the second--and final--revision that really shook things up. Arriving just five months later at Appleâs "One More Thing" event, the iMac Rev. C was noticeably light on the speed boost, bringing just 100 extra megahertz to the table. The Combo drive model was squeezed out in favor of a robust, SuperDrive-equipped 17-inch unit priced at $1,299; and another $100 was shaved off the top model, bringing it down to $1,699 for a 20-inch screen, 2.1GHz processor, 512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 8x SuperDrive and 250GB 7200 RPM hard drive.Even more notable were the superficial changes to the all-in-one desktop machine. Designed to push the iMac closer to the living room, Apple pre-loaded all new iMac G5s with its "amazing Front Row experience" that included an infrared port and mini remote control that neatly attached to the right side. USB and FireWire ports were rightfully turned on their side and the case was trimmed by a half-inch, ushering in the first of the convex enclosures that would make their way into the MacBook Air and iPhone. An iSight camera was added to the top bezel for "out-of-the-box video conferencing," and Apple tossed a Mighty Mouse into the box, just for good measure. (If youâre still looking for one, scrape together $450 or so and head over to eBay.)A subtle, stunning update, the design that Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal dubbed "the gold standard of desktop PCs" would need very little tweaking to stay fresh through the years, up to and including the latest 27-inch behemoth. NEXT: The Intel Changeover    Intel iMac (Polycarbonate)On the heels of the surprising redesign of the iMac G5, Apple kicked off its Intel transition at Macworld San Francisco 2006 by adding Core Duo processors to its iMac lineup, "delivering performance that is up to twice that of its predecessor." Leaving the design, pricing and other features unchanged from its PowerPC counterpart, Apple was sending a clear message that the chip changeover would be clean, seamless and virtually unrecognizable to the untrained eye.Following the introduction of an $899 17-inch education configuration that brought back the CD-burning Combo drive, Apple upgraded the line in September with across-the-board Core 2 Duo processors ranging from 1.83GHz to 2.16GHz, and popped 802.11n Airport cards into the top three models. Once again, Apple made room in the lineup for a large-screen flagship model, this time in the form of an HD-ready 24-incher that sold for $1,999--and still sells for around $700. Heck, even the box can fetch $40 on eBay.   Intel iMac (Aluminum)The first iMac that wasnât wrapped in plastic was largely an incremental update--if not for its gorgeous aluminum-and-glass dressing. (Glass, of course, meant glossy, the first iMac to ditch the matte screen.) As if the new enclosures werenât attractive enough, Apple dumped the 17-inch model in August 2007 and trimmed 20 percent from the price of the 2.0GHz 20-inch, bringing the price down to $1,199, the cheapest entry-level iMac since the G3. A 2.8GHz option, healthy RAM boost and faster graphics all around finished off the update, which would remain largely unchanged for two years. The next two upgrades--in April 2008 and March 2009--were two of the quietest in the iMacâs illustrious reign. The first, a minor refresh that pushed the line above the psychological 3GHz barrier for the first time, upped the chip cache and frontside bus, and featured a custom, low-watt Intel processor that gave the metallic iMac a hefty push into the professional arena, what with its 24-inch screen, 500GB hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics BTO option. The early 2009 bump, essentially a lineup shuffle and price cut, was most notable for jettisoning the FireWire 400 port (a fourth USB 2.0 port made up the difference) and doubling the storage and memory; $1,499 now bought you a 24-inch model with a 640GB hard drive.  iMac Intel (Backlit)Which brings us to the current lineup, the culmination of more than a decade of research and development. Hailed as "jaw-dropping," "stunning" and "screenormous," the new incarnation of the iMac presents an LED-backlit 27-inch screen flagship model in true 16:9 widescreen (previous models had a 16:10 aspect ratio) and a resolution that rivals Appleâs premium Cinema HD Display. Sporting a lineup that starts at 3.06GHz and tops off at Mac Pro-worthy Core i5 and i7 quad-core processors, the new iMac is distinguishable from its predecessor by a new âedge-to-edge glass design and seamless all aluminum enclosureâ and represents the first mac to come bundled with the brand-new Multi-Touch Magic Mouse. An attention-grabbing force that raises the bar yet again, todayâs iMac shows virtually no resemblance to its candy-colored, bubble-butt ancestor that set the ball rolling so many years ago. But while every other Apple computer has undergone a post-Intel transition name change, the iMac, while certainly outgrowing its role as an Internet machine, has never strayed from its individual mission of instructing, informing and inspiring--and has never been shy about looking good while doing it. Â
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RunKeeper's new low price: free
Filed under: Software, Freeware, iPhone, App StoreIn early September, TUAW published an article about iPhone exercise-tracking apps that use the built-in GPS of the iPhone 3G to track walks, hikes, runs, and bike rides. One of the apps, RunKeeper, provided instantaneous feedback of speed through a bar chart display and had a $9.99 price point. Jason Jacobs of Fitness Keeper, the developers of RunKeeper, announced yesterday that the company is going to make the application available for free in the App Store (click opens iTunes). As noted in Jason's email, "Although we have been featured recently in TechCrunch and NY Times (and TUAW, of course!), and we have several thousand paying customers and a vibrant community, we are making a bold move and making the app free. We are doing so in order to forgo short-term revenues with the hope that our community will get to massive scale."Fitness Keeper definitely listens to user feedback -- our September post mentioned that RunKeeper didn't track total rise or elevation vs. speed, and now both of these items are available on the tracking Web site. Please note that Apple must approve Fitness Keeper's price change request before the new pricing goes into effect.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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â Notes and Observations Regarding Yesterdayâs âLetâs Rockâ Apple Special Event
Overall Scope The overall takeaway from yesterday’s news is that Apple’s music and iPod business is right on track. There was nothing exceptional or particularly surprising, but the incremental improvements and changes were significant. A solid year’s worth of progress. One thing that wasn’t mentioned, though, and which has figured prominently in past music-related special events, was growth. In past events, the overview of iPod sales has included charts showing tremendous year-over-year sales growth. Not yesterday. Instead, the charts emphasized only market share and total unit sales since 2001. The news there is good — Apple has sold a grand total of 160 million iPods since 2001 and today commands 73.4 percent of the U.S. retail market (followed by Sandisk at 8.6 percent and Microsoft at 2.6) — but the lack of any braggadocio regarding growth indicates that the market is saturated. That’s not to say unit sales are decreasing, only that they’re no longer accelerating. Of course, one reason iPod sales growth has slowed is that iPhones aren’t included in the tally. (There was no mention during the event of how many iPhone 3Gs Apple has sold so far, however.) Growth can only come where there’s room to grow, which is why even Mac sales are growing faster than iPod sales. Speaking of Macs, contrary to speculation, there were no announcements regarding new Mac notebooks. Such speculation was misguided; Apple has held an iPod/music special event in September or October every year since 2001, and, to my knowledge, has never once used such events to announce new Mac hardware. Those of you holding out for a new lineup of MacBooks will have to wait until October 14, according to sources who, as they say, are familiar with Apple’s hardware plans. iTunes 8 The high-level new features in iTunes 8.0 are the new “Genius” recommendation engine, a revamped iPhoto-like grid view, a new visualizer, and improved accessibility on both Mac OS X and Windows.1 The Genius feature is exposed in two ways. First, you can create a new on-the-fly “genius playlists” by selecting any one song and clicking the Genius button at the bottom of the window. This creates a 25â100 song playlist based on songs in your library that the genius algorithm determines goes well with the song you started with. (The button is disabled if you select multiple songs, so you can’t start with, say, two songs and ask for a genius playlist of tracks that go well with both.) Second, there’s a new Genius Sidebar on the right side of the iTunes window. After opting in to the Genius system, the sidebar contains recommendations from the iTunes Store based on the first song in the current selection. (If you have more than one song selected, the Genius Sidebar only shows recommendations based on the first song in the selection.) The recommendation engine seems pretty damn smart. The genius playlists are a clever idea, like the shuffle feature but with a hint. After a few hours, I like the results better than either my own manual playlists or purely random shuffles. The store recommendations in the sidebar seem equally good, but imperfect, in that it sometimes recommends songs which I already have in my library, ripped from CDs. At first I thought the problem might be with the Genius engine not recognizing songs that weren’t purchased from the iTunes Store, but that’s not quite it, since it does correctly recognize most of the ripped-from-CD tracks in my library. For example, the Genius Sidebar’s recommendations based on The Beastie Boys’s “Sabotage” included “Intergalactic”, a song I already had in my library. The problem seems to be with track metadata; if, say, the album name on the track in your library doesn’t exactly match with the album name in iTunes, it doesn’t recognize it as the same song. If I select “Sabotage” and click the Genius playlist button, I get this error: Invoking the “Update Genius” command in the Store menu, as prescribed in the dialog, had no effect. The album name on my version of the track, ripped from CD and filled in by iTunes using the CDDB database, is “The Sounds of Science (Disc 2)”. The version from the iTunes Store has the album name “Beastie Boys Anthology - The Sounds of Science (Box Set)”. Changing my copy’s album name to match the iTunes Store’s made no difference either — iTunes still claims “Genius is unavailable for the song ‘Sabotage’.” The new visualizer is stunning. The old one remains available (View â Visualizer â iTunes Classic Visualizer) but it’s hard to see how anyone wouldn’t prefer the new one. In the details, iTunes 8 introduces a few noteworthy changes. The Preferences dialog has been simplified. Podcast settings are finally adjustable on a per-podcast level. Visually, in the new grid view, Apple has introduced yet another new scrollbar flavor — black ProKit-esque buttons with a dark gray background. But the scrollbar thumb itself is the same as iTunes’s regular slate-blue scrollbar thumbs (which don’t look like system-standard thumbs) — except when the window is not frontmost, at which point the scrollbar thumb changes to dark gray, rather than light gray. New grid-mode scrollbar, active. New scrollbar, inactive. And speaking of background windows, the main iTunes window now supports click-through for a small number of elements, including everything in the toolbar (e.g. the playback controls) and scrollbars. iTunes 7.7 did not support click-through for these elements. NBC and HD TV Shows NBC withdrew its TV programming from the iTunes Store last year. As of yesterday, it’s back. It’s hard to see that NBC gained much of anything in the form of concessions from Apple. NBC executives stated publicly that they wanted Apple “to take concrete steps to protect content from piracy, since it is estimated that the typical iPod contains a significant amount of illegally downloaded material.” I.e. they wanted Apple to somehow magically prevent iPods and iTunes from playing NBC content obtained from sources other than the iTunes Store. That didn’t happen. NBC also wanted variable pricing for its shows. They sort of got that, in that library content — old shows like “The A-Team” — are available for just $1 per episode. But NBC also wanted to raise prices for episodes of popular new shows, and that did not happen. Standard-def episodes of all new shows on iTunes remain at $2. High-def shows are $3, but that’s not variable pricing — it’s the same for all HD shows, not just NBC’s, and as far as I can see all HD TV shows in the iTunes Store are also available in SD. There are no shows which are only available in HD. It’s a win for everyone — Apple, NBC, and customers — that NBC shows are back, but there’s nothing NBC has today that they wouldn’t have had if they’d never pulled their shows from iTunes a year ago — except for millions of dollars in lost revenue. New iPods The hard-drive-based iPod Classic continues to fade toward irrelevance. Last year it was available in two capacities, 80 and 160 GB. The bad news is that it’s now down to a single capacity, 120 GB. The good news is that it’s in the same slimmer form factor as last year’s 80 GB model, and at the same $249 price. To my recollection, this is the first time that the size of the highest-capacity iPod has gone down year over year. Jobs stated during the event that the 80 GB model out-sold the 160 GB model, but for those people who value maximum storage capacity above all else, a 40 GB drop is significant. The design effort regarding traditional click-wheel iPods all went toward the new Nanos. On the outside, they’ve returned to the long-and-narrow form factor, abandoning last year’s “fat Nano” design. And they’re now available in a full spectrum of vibrant colors: all six colors of the original Apple logo, plus pink, silver, and black. In a change from previous years, all colors are available in both capacities — 8 GB for $149; 16 GB for $199. On the inside, Apple added an accelerometer, which allows the display to rotate when you rotate the iPod. Video plays horizontally, and when you rotate the iPod to horizontal while playing music, it switches to Cover Flow mode, just like with the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can create “genius” playlists directly on the Nano. It even has a voice recorder, which works if you connect a microphone. Even the iPhone doesn’t ship with a voice recorder app.2 The iPod Classic gets none of these new features other than genius playlists. The new iPod Touch gets closer to being a thinner iPhone sans phone. The original iPod Touch lacked hardware volume controls and an external speaker; the new Touch has both. Significant price reductions bring the prices closer to the selling prices of the subsidized iPhones: 8 GB for $229, 16 GB for $299, and 32 GB for $399. (I strongly suspect these new prices for the Touch are the margin-reducing “product transition” Apple alluded to in its quarterly finance call in July.) The portable gaming angle was promoted heavily during the event, and is the crux of the “Funnest iPod ever” slogan. Apple is clearly positioning the iPod Touch as a competitor to handheld gaming devices from Nintendo and Sony. Discussing the 2.1 release of the iPhone OS (available as an update for iPod Touches now; slated for release for iPhones this Friday), Jobs was brutal regarding the quality of the 2.0 release, saying: “2.1 software update is a big update. It fixes lots of bugs. You’ll get fewer call drops. You will get significantly improved battery life, for most customers. We have fixed a lot of bugs where if you have a lot of apps on the phone, you’re not going to get some of the crashes and other things that we’ve seen. Backing up to iTunes is dramatically faster. And so just a lot of bugs have been fixed.” His tone wasn’t so much apologetic as it was scornful.3 One gets the feeling Steve Jobs was about as happy with the problems in the 2.0 iPhone OS as the rest of us. Even if you’re not hearing or vision impaired, you may well benefit from these accessibility improvements. Better support for Mac OS X’s Accessibility APIs directly correlates to improved UI scriptability of the app itself. These two tweets from Nicholas Riley show one example — using AppleScript to determine whether iTunes is talking to AirPort Express. That wasn’t possible until iTunes 8.0. ↩ There are numerous voice recorder apps available in the App Store, of course. ↩ In the video stream from the event, this bit starts around the 48:35 mark. ↩
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Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?
Daniel Eran Dilger Today's broad array of smartphone operating system contenders are offering lots of potential answers to a problem that only requires one. It appears the market has two options ahead: either pool generic hardware makers behind a single operating system and deliver a smartphone marketplace that resembles the Windows PC market, or watch them fall to a dominant leader and have a smartphone market that resembles Apple's iPod ecosystem. This decision isn't going to be made by a class of intellectual elite, or by government mandate. it's going to be made by the market itself. Here are the factors that will influence the outcome, either marginalizing Apple's iPhone into a niche as the company has twice experienced previously at the hands of DOS in 1981 and Windows in 1991, or positioning it as the dominant leader as Apple has achieved for itself with the iPod since 2001. The third segment in this series looks at Google's Android and the Open Handset Alliance as a possible âDOS-attackâ against Apple's iPhone. Subsequent segments will look at Nokia's newly opened Symbian and other mobile contenders challenging the iPhone. Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS? Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Appleâs iPhone? Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Will Symbian Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Google Acquires Android. In 2005, Google purchased a startup named Android, which had been in business for nearly two years. The secretive startup was known only to be working on software for mobile phones. It was being run by a who's who of mobile industry veterans, including Andy Rubin, the founder of Danger. Rubin had earlier worked at WebTV along with Chris White and Andy McFadden, both of whom had also joined Android. Richard Miner of Orange and Nick Sears of Tmobile also brought their mobile provider experience to Android. At the time of the acquisition, Google didn't announce any plans for Android and instead only told BusinessWeek, âWe acquired Android because of the talented engineers and great technology. We're thrilled to have them here.â It appeared that Google was only going to be expanding its search services for mobile phone users, along the lines of the Google SMS answer system it had recently released. Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal - BusinessWeek Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV: The Fall of WebTV The GPhone Myth. As reports began to leak out about talks between Google and hardware makers throughout 2007, rumors began to fly about âthe GPhone,â a competitive offering that was supposed to take on the iPhone. Some phone enthusiasts hoped Google would jump in to rescue the struggling OpenMoko project and turn it into a viable project that could attack Apple's new smartphone. In October 2007, I printed the Great Google GPhone Myth, taking apart the idea that Google would be directly competing against the iPhone, and describing that Google was really working on a free alternative to Windows Mobile as a conduit for getting its search and related services on a broader variety of mobiles. Google's services were already on the iPhone. In November, Google played its hand: it had organized a consortium of companies called the Open Handset Alliance to develop open standards for mobiles. The first product from the group would be Android, a mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel. Google wasn't getting into the phone handset business at all; it was only making sure that its mobile search products would not risk being marginalized by the threat of Windows Mobile on phones in the same way Microsoft had been working to leverage its PC monopoly to push Google search off the Windows desktop. The Great Google gPhone Myth Introducing Android: Leader of Linux. Two weeks later, Google released an early version of the Android software. On top of a Linux kernel, Android uses a specialized version of a Java Virtual Machine that takes Java language code and turns it into what Google calls âDalvik bytecodeâ rather than Java bytecode as a standard JVM would. This allows Google to leverage existing and familiar Java language tools without paying Sun for a Java license. Like Mac OS X and its fraternal iPhone OS, Android includes a variety of open source libraries, including SQLite and WebKit. On top of that, Google developed a series of frameworks that handle the tasks Cocoa Touch does on the iPhone. Android also bundles a set of applications. While Apple adapted its existing Mac OS X to work in a mobile environment to create the iPhone OS, Android is more like a customized Java environment running on a specialized mobile Linux variant: elements of maturity in an otherwise experimental new platform. What is Android? -Google Android was by no means the first mobile OS using Linux. Both Palm and its amputated ACCESS software arm have Linux-based mobile platforms. Nokia has Maemo, which it uses in its Internet Tablets, and also recently acquired Trolltech and its Qtopia mobile Linux platform. Motorola has teamed up with MontaVista Software to use its Mobilinux. Intel created the Moblin project for mobile Linux, aimed at Internet devices. Google's OHA also isn't the first consortium to attempt to standardize a mobile Linux platform. The OSDL started the Mobile Linux Initiative to define requirements for hardware; the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) then worked to define various phone profiles aimed at the Japanese market; the Linux Phone Standard (LiPS) Forum tried to do the same thing in Europe. In 2007, LiPS was folded into the new LiMo Foundation, along with the OSDL. All of these committees have had some overlap and some complementary features. Several of Google's OHA partners are also LiMo members, including NTT DoCoMo, Wind River, and Motorola. So why didn't Google just join LiMo? âLiMo, very candidly, wasn't moving fast enough,â OHA board member John Bruggeman told CNET. Google hopes to herd the Linux cats into a progressive, structured platform that can battle against Symbian and Windows Mobile to succeed as the new DOS of smartphones. Will Google fracture or unify mobile Linux? The Presumption of the Necessity of DOS. The previous segment examining Windows Mobile pointed out how the PC industry as a whole assumed that Microsoft's desktop Windows monopoly would easily take over dominance in the MP3 player market, pushing Apple into a niche position. This was expected because DOS had pushed Apple's early computers into a reduced role starting in 1981, and Microsoft had repeated this again in 1991 when the DOS world migrated to Windows, effectively pruning Apple's Macintosh into a Bonsai platform. The inability of one company to dominate any product category has been frequently repeated by PC industry pundits as a given, despite the fact that history is full of examples of this happening. Sony dominated personal music players for two decades under the Walkman brand even while equally large competitors tried to push it from this position; Nintendo has similarly owned handheld gaming despite ill-fated efforts to grab a piece of its pie by products running a generic platform such as Microsoft's WinCE (Gizmondo), Linux (GP32), and Symbian (N-Gage). In fact, outside of the Windows/DOS PC, there are actually few examples of a generic platform taking over an industry. Nearly every other consumer-facing product uses proprietary platforms: car makers, stereo equipment, appliances and so on typically all use designs custom to their maker. The paradox of the Windows PC market has been that Microsoft's broadly licensed software supposedly saves hardware makers from investing in software development while ensuring compatibility, when in reality it adds significant costs to PC makers while limiting their ability to differentiate themselves. That explains why PC makers have been perpetually merging together and going out of business while Microosft has rolled in money over the last two decades. Parallel efforts to copy Microsoft in broadly licensing an operating system have regularly failed: IBM's OS/2, Apple's Mac OS, Palm's PDA OS, even Microsoft's own efforts to duplicate Windows dominance in other markets, from copy machines to PDAs to smartphones to SPOT watches to music players. The closest copy may be Symbian, but its customers are partners, not simply consumers of a generic third party's operating system as Windows licensees are. That indicates it is not necessary to duplicate the dominance exercised by Microsoft over the PC industry in the smartphone market. Google's Android and Symbian exist more as technology sharing pacts among manufacturers, but both aspire to take Microsoft's DOS role among smartphones. However, the idea that Apple's iPhone must be dethroned by a modern-day DOS, whether Windows Mobile, Android, or Symbian, is not just debatable, but does not sync with the reality of more recent events. Apple's recent history of the iPod further refutes the idea that a software analog to Microsoft is needed. The iPod Emergence: Apple & Pixo vs IBM & Microsoft. Apple's iPod in 2001 made no effort to clone the DOS business model; it actually did the opposite. When Apple entered the market, there were a number of existing MP3 devices using custom software, hardware designs, and DRM codecs. The iPod used off the shelf components to deliver a custom MP3 player using third party software, but Apple also added its own technologies: easy to use sync with iTunes, a fast Firewire interface that made uploading music far faster than the prevailing USB 1.0, and an attractive industrial design. With the iPod, Apple played the role of IBM in 1981, using Pixo's embedded operating system to enter the market quickly, just as IBM had used DOS. The difference was that Apple didn't direct any market attention toward Pixo and added a lot of value on top of that core embedded OS. A modern day Compaq couldn't simply clone the hardware and license Pixo to run on it in order to compete against the iPod, because the iPod was much more than just generic hardware running Pixo software. As the iPod developed, Pixo's role diminished and was eventually displaced. Just like IBM, Apple jumped into a new market just as demand was beginning to explode. Apple made MP3 players far more attractive to a general audience by delivering greater playback capacity than most entry level devices offered, along with an ease of use that encouraged buyers to jump in at the higher end of the market. That left Apple with not only the lion's share of the market, but also by far the most profitable segments of the market. Two decades prior, IBM badly fumbled its play with the early PC and ended up irrelevant in the PC world by the late 80s, sideswiped by Microsoft's DOS and the cloners who were licensing it in parallel, notably Compaq and later HP and Dell. Steve Jobs had witnessed that happen, and was determined to not let it happen again to Apple. Rather than being manipulated by a software middleware vendor as IBM had, Apple worked to incrementally develop the iPod market itself. After consuming the hard drive-based player market, Apple took on the Flash RAM-based market with a tiny hard drive system used in the iPod Mini, and followed up with Flash-based devices of its own in the Nano and Shuffle. This allowed Apple to progressively serve an increasingly wider market, incrementally growing upon an established foundation. With the iPod, Apple became, in effect, an IBM with its own internal Microsoft. Microsoft's Failure Despite Features. In contrast, Microsoft entered the music player market by promoting music player hardware reference designs around WinCE. However, it was unable to ship a finished design until the iPod had become firmly established around 2005. Later branded as PlaysForSure, the devices were sold by various hardware makers and all purported to support the same DRM and the same music subscription services while also offering a broader array of hardware that presented video before the iPod did, supported wireless before the iPod, and so on. Despite these unique features, all of those PFS designs still failed. Microsoft blamed the failure of PFS upon its music store and hardware partners and decided to take Apple on itself in 2006. It relaunched a Toshiba PFS player as its own device under the Zune brand, adding WiFi music sharing features and a larger display than the current Pods had. It failed dramatically as well. Did Microsoft's attempts to float a new DOS among music players fail because of Apple's success, or due to Microsoft's own problems? The failure of the Zune, which followed the iPod model rather than the DOS model, seems to suggest that Microsoft itself was to blame. Consider too that Microsoft's Windows Mobile phones, which use the same underlying operating system as its failed PlaysForSure music players and the Zune, had similarly flopped even before Apple could release a charismatic phone equivalent to the iPod. Of course, when the iPhone was released, it hit Windows Mobile hardest. The iPhone made Windows Mobile Smartphones look ridiculous and underpowered, and made Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones look clumsy and awkward, despite the fact that they both supported a variety of features the iPhone didn't, including the ability to edit documents, capture video, send MMS, and so on. Simply adding on features did not enable Microsoft to compete against Apple. The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that competing against Apple requires more than just having a feature arsenal. Microsoft's failures in themselves do not necessarily mean that Google's Android will fail in its attempts to float its own smartphone platform. Why Microsoftâs Zune is Still Failing Microsoftâs Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone Will Google Succeed where Microsoft Failed? Microsoft's demonstrated inability to successfully enter consumer markets for MP3 players and smartphones has given observers little faith that the company will somehow turn things around in late 2009 when its next generation of devices are expected to be released. However, prior to that the first fruits of Google's efforts to build its own smartphone operating environment will arrive. Will Google's Android take over Microsoft's crown as the âDOS vendorâ among smartphones? Supporters of Google's Android project point to some parallels between Android for smartphones and Windows on the PC: Android will allow hardware makers to differentiate in ways that can offer features Apple can't (or doesn't want to); it should allow software developers to offer features Apple does not allow on the iPhone; it embraces open, hobbyist experimentation in ways that Apple currently isn't; and it opens the potential for content providers that Apple is not interested in allowing. Openness is Android's key competitive feature. Will all this openness allow Google to unseat the iPhone to become the primary platform developers want to participate in, and subsequently soak up the market for third party hardware makers that Windows Mobile serves? While Google currently has no market share due to the fact that no Android phones have yet shipped, it does have broad vocal support from a variety of the same kinds of hardware manufacturers that supported DOS and Windows and helped to make those platforms successful in the desktop PC market. HTC and Android. The first Android phone is expected to be the HTC Dream; Taiwan's HTC (High Tech Computer) also manufactures Palm's Treo Pro phone as well as many of the most visible Windows Mobile devices. In addition to models produced under its own name, HTC also sells Windows Mobile devices under the Dopod brand, as well as no-name phones branded by providers, such as AT&T, Orange, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and others. HTC will also be building the XPERIA X1 Windows Mobile phone for Sony Ericsson. HTC was quick to throw its support behind Android despite its long term alliance with Windows Mobile. Why would it so enthusiastically support an unproven platform from a company that has no experience in consumer hardware platforms? One can only assume that HTC is not happy with the current state of Windows Mobile, and desperately wants another âDOSâ to succeed where Microsoft's has so spectacularly failed. As an Original Design Manufacturer for Palm, HTC watched as Palm adopted Windows Mobile in place of the Palm OS and subsequently fell even deeper into crisis. Palm's only successful phone since has been its Palm OS-based Centro. HTC undoubtedly sees Android as its ticket to becoming the next Dell, but without a similar dependance upon Microsoft. Android for mobile phones is essentially playing the role of Linux for PCs, except that it has the backing of a major company behind it. Can Android Take on the iPhone with Openness as its Feature? As great as this sounds, it's important to consider that Linux on the desktop has made no significant progress in eating into Windows dominance after a decade of trying. Being open, free, flexible, and decentralized hasn't been enough of an advantage to get consumers to migrate from Windows to Linux in any fraction of significance. Similarly, in the music business, Linux-based MP3 players have had no impact on the iPod, despite offering more features, flexibility, support for additional codecs, and so on. In the mobile phone area, Linux enjoys a sizable portion of the smartphone market, but this is almost entirely due to phones sold by Motorola in China, where the advantages of Linux' openness are void. Motorola's Linux phones offer nothing to users in terms of openness or flexibility, and are really no different in terms of features than other appliance 'feature phones' based upon closed operating systems. And again, a key problem with assaulting Apple in a feature war is that neither the iPod nor the iPhone became popular by being âhighly featured.â They both delivered perhaps 80% of the functionality found in all other devices in the market. Rather than trying to match every feature and cater to every niche as Microsoft had with Windows Mobile, Apple's devices did a few things very well at launch, and incrementally developed into full featured devices that still lack some of the more unique features of their competitors. Further, in terms of openness, the demographic that embraces Linux' characteristic freedoms is not the same as the demographic that buys smartphones in quantity and then pays for data service. This is a critical fact to consider because a big part of the iPhone's success stems from the fact that it is being pushed by mobile providers who want to capture the cream of the market willing to pay a premium for data services. The Frankenphone. Combining the fractured aesthetic of HTC's Windows Mobile phone hardware with Android's software, based upon Linux' perpetually unfinished DIY openness and Google's Java-like development platform, will not result in a product similar to the iPhone. Instead, it will look a lot like phones that have already failed in the market. Apple's advantage comes from slick hardware designs with a close attention to detail, combined with software that purposely does less so that it can do what it does better. Even Apple's own conservative attempts to broaden its software capabilities with iPhone 2.0 have resulted in instability problems that can be blamed upon both Apple's early releases of its phone operating system and software from inexperienced third party developers new to the platform. Would the current frustrations with iPhone 2.0 be somehow mitigated by additional openness that also embraced all kinds of variables from different hardware makers with less quality control than Apple, a loose committee of additional cooks working to serve up operating system features targeted at every possible conceived need, and a wider third party software group with fewer constraints on illegal behaviors? The Failure of Open. While it is politically unpopular to criticize the well meaning efforts of open source contributors, the failure of Linux on the desktop, the failure of the vaporware Indrema game console, and the failure of the OpenMoko project to deliver a workable phone within a year of its deadline all underline the serious problems open development faces in the world of consumer oriented devices. Open has simply failed to deliver on its promises in the world of consumer hardware. OpenMoko was supposed to release its first mobile phone to consumers for $250 several months in advance of the iPhone. When the iPhone shipped, the group then announced new plans to get its phone out by the end of 2007. Instead, this spring the group announced new plans to move to an entirely different development platform, and ship its phone mid year for $400 with limited functionality and incomplete software outside of basic GSM phone features. Linux's notable successes, from Motorola's Linux phones to the Tivo DVR to Linksys Routers, have often come without any associated openness or freedom, and were instead delivered simply to provide their manufacturer with a free kernel to build upon. This indicates that while Linux may find its way into an increasing number of smartphones, it will likely not be accompanied by the glorious freedom of an open development environment Google has said it would offer with Android. Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone Can Google Succeed Where Open Has Previously Failed? Despite âopennessâ being Android's strongest competitive feature compared to Apple's iPhone, Google recently revealed that its wide-open development model is intentionally gravitating towards a closed association of top tier partners due to practical considerations. In July, Google accidentally sent out a notice that revealed that it had been seeding private SDK updates to only a subset of its contributors, angering those who believed that Android would be as open as Linux on the desktop or the OpenMoko project. Further, Google has restricted initial development to higher level APIs just as Apple did, further indicating that Google itself realizes that being wildly open to impress a minority of hobbyists will not result in the commercial success of its new platform. That serves to neuter Android's primary advantage over the iPhone. Without delivering on the premise of being wide open, Android is really just a less mature set of Java libraries used to create a specialized binary that runs on a Linux foundation. Unlike Apple's iPhone, Android phones won't have a slick user interface developed by professional artists, nor the iPhone's legacy of mature software development frameworks crafted over the last thirty years, nor the iPhone's tightly integrated hardware with award winning industrial design, nor its marketing power tied into the iPod and Apple's retail stores. Android won't be an open iPhone, it will only be a Windows Mobile phone with a better kernel that runs specialized Java software instead of Win32 or .NET code. Don't expect consumers to be impressed by that. The Biggest Missing Feature. There is one remaining factor that strangles to death any last remaining hope that Android might assassinate the iPhone and assume the crown of the âDOS of smartphones.â That is: Android delivers zero price advantage to consumers. In 1981 and 1991, consumers who wanted Apple computers faced the sticker shock of a somewhat arrogant price tag. Apple sold its computers, as it still does, at the higher end of the market, but there was simply far more range in prices available. In 1981, that meant the Apple II was $2600 and the new Apple III was $3500, even before you added a monitor. On the low end, Commodore sold its far less powerful, but âstill a computerâ Vic-20 for $300, while IBM entered the market with the IBM PC at $3000. Over the next few years, Apple focused on delivering additional sophistication at the same price, releasing the $10,000 Lisa and then the $2,500 Macintosh. IBM continued selling PCs in the same $3,000 to $10,000 range, but other DOS PC vendors began selling machines at prices that ranged as low as $1500. That left Apple with a roughly $1000 price premium over low end PCs. The products weren't really comparable, but consumers only saw the huge price difference. In 1991, Apple was still selling moderate to high-end Macintoshes for $3,800 to $10,000; the crippled Mac LC was $2500, and obsolete-at-birth Mac Classic ranged from $999 to $1500. Windows allowed PC makers to ship a functional $1500 PC and claim a rough approximation to Apple's $2500 entry level system, maintaining that apparent $1000 price premium. Today, pundits are lucky to find a Dell or HP system that is even a couple hundred dollars less than a comparable Mac. However, in the smartphone business, the iPhone 3G is now the same price, if not less, than generic competing phones on the market. Even more significant is the fact that the price of the phone hardware is nearly nothing compared to the cost of the service plan. This fact simply eases any price premium that could cause buyers to flock to a smartphone running a generic operating system over buying the iPhone 3G, regardless of whether it runs Windows Mobile or Android. 1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds Android Partners Have Already Failed. That same pricing principle similarly prevented buyers from considering many of the alternatives to the iPod. While Apple's original iPod models were more expensive than many of the first MP3 players on the market, they were price competitive with models offering similar features. By 2004, it was Apple who was undercutting MP3 competitors on price. Microsoft offered zero price advantage when it began selling the Zune, a major factor in its failure, but Microsoft simply couldn't out-price the iPod; it was already losing money offering the Zune at the same price as the iPod. Apple now has tremendous market power in buying RAM and other components that will prevent any competitors from being able to offer a huge discount over the iPhone's $199 price tag. Even if competitors were to give their phones away, they would only offer a $200 discount to users who would then still need to pay the same mobile fees to use the phone. Android's other partners, including Samsung and LG, have already failed to capture any significant market share in the music player market. Are they going to maintain their position as smartphone makers now that they face similar competition from Apple, its iPod ecosystem, its iTunes Music and Apps Store, Apple's retail store experience, and other factors that are pushing the iPhone? If they can, it is not obvious how partnering with Android will help. Other Problems for Android. Android was announced in early November 2007 and was followed with an early preview SDK within a couple weeks, a month ahead of Apple's initial announcement of the iPhone 2.0 SDK. However, between March and July 2008, Apple delivered nine progressive releases of its SDK, opened its App Store, and sold 60 million apps, raising $30 million to support iPhone software development in just the first month. It has since released three more SDK updates to developers related to iPhone 2.1, which is expected next month. Android just published its first open SDK beta update earlier this week, warning developers that âapplications developed with it may not quite be compatible with devices running the final Android 1.0.â Additionally, Android still has no phones available. By the time the HTC Dream is expected to launch, Apple will have an installed base of around ten million iPhone (and iPod touch) users supporting software development through iTunes. The business model for selling Android apps is no better than that for selling jailbreak iPhone apps: there is no iTunes Apps Store to promote them, so users will have to track them down on their own. Android developers also have no real freedom that jailbreak iPhone developers lack. The only difference is that there are ten million iPhones to sell jailbreak apps to, and currently zero Android phones. If selling a jailbreak iPhone app sounds like more trouble than its worth, imagine trying to sell Android apps to a non-existant audience. Now add the official iPhone App Store into the mix, where publicity, promotion and profits are booming. What platform is going to have the most applications? How many users will flock to a smartphone platform with no apps? The wisdom of releasing a desirable phone and achieving a significant installed base before releasing an SDK makes a lot more sense in retrospect. Additionally, while Apple has a decade of experience in shipping regular updates to Mac OS X and its Xcode developer tools, Google has only shipped a random assortment of web-oriented SDKs (a number of which have been abandoned) as a tangent to its core business of selling advertisements. When the Android SDK 1.0 is finished later this year, developers will not only lack an installed base to sell their apps to, but will also have no high profile market for selling their apps in, and subsequently no financial incentive to develop applications that add value to the Android platform, just like Linux on the PC desktop. Around the same time, possibly within the next month, Apple will be shipping its second major OS release: iPhone 2.1. Apple will also be upgrading its entire user base to the new software so that developers will have a cohesive platform to target. This mirrors the efforts Apple has taken to upgrade its Mac OS X users to the same reference release. Mobile developers will be seeing money pouring in via iTunes while crickets chirp in the Android section of various mobile online stores. Appleâs iPhone Vs. Other Mobile Hardware Makers: 5 Revenue Engines Same Same, But Different: DOS Model Problems. Android developers will also have a series of other problems to manage. Like Windows Mobile, Android is intended to support everything, from BlackBerry-style keypad phones with a small touchscreen to the simple Windows Mobile Smartphone form factor lacking a touch screen to iPhone-like full size touch screens. Also like Windows Mobile, Android phone makers will have the option to leave off Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS location services, graphics hardware acceleration, and so on. Each Android phone will also have unique camera hardware, support for different video and audio codecs, and varied support for other differentiating proprietary services demanded by mobile operators. This will force developers to to make complex decisions regarding the lowest common denominator they choose to support. So while the iPhone will have a cohesive feature set, a managed software environment, and a functional market, Android will be a loose federation of hardware makers selling the same random features found on Windows Mobile today, with a chaotic development environment that lacks any central market for users or developers. And it will be run as an experiment by a company with no experience in consumer hardware or platform development. The Missing Tap. One specific example of the âDOS model problemâ is that Android currently does not support multitouch. It's not touched on in the API, and Google quietly tap dances around its omission. Why no multitouch? Because multitouch screens are expensive, and most OHA hardware members are more interested in making a profit in a competitive phone market rather than impressing consumers as Apple did with the iPhone. Most existing smartphones, even those trying to directly rival the iPhone, use a stylus driven, pressure sensitive tap screen or a simpler, cheaper touch technology that lacks support for sensing multitouch. The iPhone's screen can actually sense up to five fingers at once, but the primary feature multitouch offers on the iPhone is the two fingered tapping and the pinching effects everyone associates with it. Android could certainly support multitouch if there were a demand for it, but that's the point: Google knows that its hardware partners are cheap and unlikely to put out hardware that actually competes with the iPhone. Instead of using expensive technologies that deliver clever yet largely invisible functionality, OHA members, just like PC makers, are far more likely to add flashy, impractical gadgety fluff that's cheap to tack on, such as slide out keyboards, neon tubes, and scratch and sniff stickers. That's how you impress gullible nerds on the cheap. Google itself is blowing smoke and erecting mirrors to distract from the reality that it being a âDOS vendorâ means supporting bargain basement hardware from penny pinching duplicators. Android has been demonstrating some âwowâ features such as a Street Maps app that pans around based on an internal compass in the demonstration phone. The problem is that that kind of thing only makes for a fun demo. Nobody needs to twirl around their phone in the air to see a view of the other side of the street, but everyone who has used an iPhone will wonder why they can't pinch to zoom out. Even worse, most Android phones aren't going to have a compass built into them, so Google is demonstrating features most Android users won't be able to use. That Sounds Like Microsoft… Google's design decisions are beginning to look a lot like Windows Vista; rather than actually working to make laptops boot faster, Microsoft came up with the idea of adding a small screen to the back of Vista laptops so users could check their email without having to wake the system up. But this was a stupid idea for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that most users just want a laptop that boots up quickly. Few laptops got the mini screen, but every user who tries Vista on their laptop will wonder why it doesn't boot up as fast as Mac OS X Leopard. In the same way, Google is advertising features for Android that most users won't ever see in their actual phones while ignoring things people will expect based on their exposure to the iPhone. Android is simply selecting the wrong features. Android will offer the advantages of supporting MMS, recording video, and the list of other features Windows Mobile already supplies. Those features didn't stop Apple from firing past Microsoft in the smartphone arena however, just as the Zune's highly touted WiFi and screen didn't phase iPod buyers. Incidentally, just months after the Zune, Apple had not only demonstrated a larger display but a higher definition multitouch screen, and not only WiFi, but functional WiFi that could be used to browse the web or check email. This suggests that Apple, with its faster release schedule, won't stay behind any of the leading features potentially offered by Android for very long. Android partners, however, will find it as difficult to catch up with Apple's unique features, just as Microsoft has been stymied to keep up with Mac OS X, the iPod, and the iPhone. The underlying reason: both Google and Microosft are tasked with maintaing support for a huge variety of hardware options demanded by all their partners. Apple has the unique circumstances to do only what it needs to do itself. Android in Windows Mobile's Shoes. Like Windows Mobile, Android faces a difficult market. In the US, it competes against the popular BlackBerry in corporate markets and the iPhone among consumers. Worldwide, it competes against entrenched market leader Nokia. The difference is that Google, unlike Microsoft, has no in. Windows Mobile was adopted by Windows-bound IT shops despite its weaknesses. Nobody has any preexisting reason to try an Android phone apart from hobbyists and open software enthusiasts, a demographic that has done little to move Linux on the PC desktop. Google also lacks Microsoft's installed base; it's starting from zero. The smartphone industry initially doubted Apple's chances of making much progress with the iPhone, despite the company having the Mac platform, the iPod, retail stores, platform development experience, marketing savvy, industrial design prowess, and so on. Google doesn't have any of those things. Mobile Providers vs Android. Apple also started with an exclusive partnership with AT&T, a three legged race that demanded effort from both. Google is hoping that hardware makers handle the hardware details and that mobile providers will be excited to sell its Android phones. While hardware makers such as HTC clearly appreciate having found a free alternative to Windows Mobile, it's not obvious why providers would be excited about Android, as it promises an openness that most mobile providers strongly oppose. AT&T took a big risk in getting behind the iPhone, as the phone encouraged users to use email rather than fee-based SMS and MMS, it supported WiFi for data access, and it bypassed AT&T's MEdia Net services to plug into iTunes instead. Verizon refused to parter with Apple and grant it those kinds of concessions. Is AT&T going to take a similar risk to partner with a phone that is not exclusive to it, and is Verizon now going to open its arms to support phones that do not exclusively support BREW, VCast and its other proprietary services? While Android may well eat into Microsoft's Windows Mobile business by stealing away its hardware makers, it seems unlikely that Android will ever serve as more than free alternative to Windows Mobile in a market where Windows Mobile is increasingly irrelevant. Android may have the dubious distinction of swallowing Microsoft's mobile business the same way Microsoft ate up the Palm OS, but even if it accomplishes that goal, Google will likely find itself unsustainably hungry immediately afterward. It will also find itself swimming in a shark tank of hungry rivals, including Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. Symbian is the final generic platform vying for the opportunity to play DOS in the smartphone market. The next article will examine Nokia's chances in its bid to match Microsoft's PC dominance in the mobile market while setting out in a new venture to copy Android's open software model. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
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â WWDC 2008 Miscellany
A few observations regarding last week’s WWDC and related news: In my piece this week regarding the potential interest among existing iPhone users in upgrading to the new iPhone 3G, I neglected to mention what might be the single biggest factor: AT&T’s 3G wireless coverage. Things look good if you live in or near a major metropolitan area; if you don’t, well, I hope you like EDGE. For those who do upgrade from an original iPhone to a new iPhone 3G, no one seems to know yet what you’ll be able to do with an old iPhone no longer associated with an active AT&T account. I presume you’ll be able to sign up for a new account with AT&T, but also that you’ll have to pay the new, more expensive, monthly rates — even though the original iPhone doesn’t support 3G networking. (Sort of like how you’ll have to pay the higher rate even if you live in an area without 3G coverage.) Interest in the jailbreak APIs was non-existent. Clearly, none of Apple’s actual conference sessions or labs would have covered unofficial APIs. What I’m saying is that it didn’t seem like any attendees were talking about them or showing off jailbreak apps in the hallways, either. Could be I just didn’t happen to run into them, or that the sort of people who remain interested in writing jailbreak iPhone apps are not the sort of people who went to WWDC. Developers, by and large, are very happy with Apple’s Cocoa Touch APIs and developer tools — a far cry from last year’s “sweet” shit sandwich. Regarding prices for the iPhone App Store, it seemed pretty obvious from the prices mentioned during the keynote that “free” and “$9.99” are going to be common price points. Gene Munster sampled a very small number of developers at the conference (20) and concluded that 71 percent of the apps they plan to offer will be free. I think there will be plenty of free and ad-supported iPhone apps, but I think Apple will balance the ratio of free to paid apps carefully. Apple wants to encourage impulse buys, not merely impulse downloads. There were a lot of new attendees. New-to-WWDC, new-to-Cocoa, new-to-Mac-OS-X. This is not a surprise, given that WWDC had never previously sold out. But it was easy to pick up in the conversations in the hallways. And two engineers from Apple told me that it wasn’t just for the iPhone — that they were seeing plenty of new-to-Cocoa developers in the Mac-specific sessions and labs, too. A ton of the stuff that impressed me the most was in the WebKit related sessions. Unlike much of the other technical information provided at WWDC, much of the WebKit-related news is publicly available. What struck me watching these demos is that you could build a really slick web app UI using stuff like the canvas tag, SVG, and advanced CSS. Yes, none of this stuff works in IE, and IE still has massive market share — but not among the sort of people who adopt hip new web apps. The combined market share for, say, Firefox 3 and Safari 3 is larger than the overall market share for Mac OS X. Plenty of developers write desktop software that only works on the Mac — why aren’t more people writing apps web apps that only work in truly modern web browsers? The first one to do it is going to be a sensation. The Carbon news was no news. Nada. Contrary to some pre-WWDC reports, there was no news about Carbon going away. But there also wasn’t any news about Carbon going forward. (Unless I missed it, there wasn’t a single session title with “Carbon” in the title.) Lastly, there’s a lot of curiosity regarding the iPod Touch. Higher-cost monthly service plans notwithstanding, the $199 starting price for the iPhone makes the $299 price for the 8 GB Touch seem high. Last year, after the original iPhone shipped, it seemed obvious to me that Apple would release an iPod that was more or less the iPhone without the phone. This year, it doesn’t seem clear at all how the iPhone 3G suggests any new hardware features for the iPod Touch. 3G networking is a phone feature, and I don’t think the iPod Touch is going to get GPS. My guess is that for the next few months, the iPod Touch pricing remains the same. If sales drop because potential iPod Touch buyers opt for a $199 iPhone 3G instead, don’t expect many tears from Apple executives. Then, in September, at Apple’s annual music and iPod shindig, I think we’ll see an iPod Touch price cut (or a shift, where the 8 GB model is dropped and $299 gets you the 16 GB model), and, rather than any signficant hardware changes, a bunch of new software features. One thing that’s conspicuously absent from the immiment 2.0 release of OS X iPhone are new applications from Apple. I’m thinking maybe the strategy is to ship the OS first, now, and then spend the summer finishing a few new apps.
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James Surowiecki on the Psychology of Product Pricing
James Surowiecki, a few weeks ago in The New Yorker: In an experiment in the early nineteen-nineties, people were first asked whether they preferred a $110 microwave oven made by Emerson or a $180 oven made by Panasonic. Only forty-three per cent chose the Panasonic. But when a higher-priced Panasonic model, costing $200, was introduced into the mix, peopleâs choices changed in a curious way: suddenly, sixty per cent wanted the $180 oven. Just adding a more expensive model made the medium-priced version look more attractive and boosted Panasonicâs total sales. Change what surrounds a product, in other words, and you can change what people think of it. Exercise for the reader: Consider how Apple takes full advantage of this phenomenon with products like the iPod Nano (and, before, the iPod Mini) and, now, the MacBook Air. Next, consider a hypothetical $249 iPhone Nano. â
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â Yet Another in the Ongoing Series Wherein I Examine a Piece of Supposedly Serious Apple Analysis From a Major Media Outlet and Dissect Its Inaccuracies, Fabrications, and Exaggerations Point-by-Point, Despite the Fact That No Matter How Egregious the Inaccuracies / Fabrications / Exaggerations, Such Pieces Inevitably Lead to Accusations That Iâm Some Sort of Knee-Jerk Shill Who Rails Against Anything âAnti-Appleâ Simply for the Sake of Defending Apple, and if I Love Apple So Much Why Donât I Just Marry Them?
From Adam L. Penenberg’s December cover story for Fast Company, “All Eyes on Apple: Will the gray light of January cool the world’s hottest company?”: Yet this is also a dangerous moment for Apple. In a way the company has never seen, the barbarians are massing at the gates. “Never” is a long time ago, but I’m sure that’s exactly the case and isn’t in the least bit an exaggeration just to frame the entire piece in epic terms. From hardware to software to services, major competitors with serious R&D and marketing budgets are laying siege to the House of Jobs. Calling Apple the “House of Jobs”, or some such, is like using verbs other than “said” when writing dialog. Just use “said”, and just call Apple “Apple”. A good rule of thumb, by the way, is that the more a writer attributes the actions of Apple, an enormous corporation with thousands of talented employees, to Steve Jobs, who is just one man and neither an engineer nor a designer, the more likely the writer is an idiot, a hack, or both. As Apple moves into new markets, it has made powerful new enemies, some working in concert. Nokia, for example, is banding with telecom companies to offer its own touch-screen hardware in an effort to sway subscribers from the iPhone and Apple’s exclusive partner, AT&T. (a) AT&T is only Apple’s iPhone partner in the U.S.; and (b) Nokia has been “banding with telecom companies” forever, because, uh, Nokia’s core business is “banding with telecom companies to sell new phones”, right? MP3 players from the likes of iRiver, Microsoft, SanDisk, and Toshiba are getting slicker all the time, targeting the iPod at a fraction of the cost. iRiver?; Microsoft’s Zune players costs exactly the same as corresponding iPods; SanDisk’s second-place success is not new and doesn’t seem to be hurting the iPod at all, but rather seems to be coming at the expense of all the various “other” player manufacturers; and, as for Toshiba, their top-selling MP3 player clocks in at #97 — ninety-fucking-seven — on Amazon’s current bestseller list. (Even Sony has better-selling players than Toshiba.) Empirical evidence indicates that Apple’s iPod franchise is doing better than ever. iPod sales growth can’t continue unabated — eventually, at this rate, they’ll run out of people who don’t already have one. That seems to me the biggest threat to the iPod — or at least to the iPod’s effect on Apple’s stock value — on the horizon: that Apple will saturate the entire potential market for handheld media players and growth will slow, even if profits remain strong. That’s a problem Apple is willing to accept, I’d say. It’s weeks before Christmas, and all through the house, there’s an iPhone, a touch screen, and no need for a mouse. But Jobs, the “brilliant,” “visionary” “genius” with a knack for creating “insanely great” consumer products, may well be wondering whether next year will be different. Merry Christmas, Steve. Enjoy it while it lasts. Those unattributed quotes lead me to suspect Penenberg is an “untalented” “hack” and that Fast Company’s “copy editing” amounts to little more than right-clicking the green squiggly grammar-checker underlines in Microsoft Word. Seriously, what’s up with the quotes? But none of that will stop a growing number of adversaries from doing all they can to pare Apple down. Nor does it dimÂinish the fact that at $185 a share, its stock is far more vulnerable to a stall or even a fall than it was when it was $50 cheaper. That Apple’s stock price goes through seemingly irrational swings, both up and down, and is outside the control of the company’s executives, and is just how the market works. It’s also a far cry from this article’s premise, which seems to be that Apple’s products are set to suffer in 2008. It’s entirely possible that 2008 could be a better year for Apple’s sales and profits than 2007 and but that its stock price could fall; say, if the growth isn’t as fantastic as some investors anticipated, or if the entire economy goes into recession and investors panic. Jobs declined to speak with us for this story, but on the eve of the iPhone’s debut, he deployed a simple metaphor to chart Apple’s future: “We’ve got two strong legs on our chair today,” he told USA Today. “We have the Mac business, which is a $10 billion business, and music — our iPod and iTunes business — which is $10 billion. We hope the iPhone is the third leg on our chair, and maybe one day, Apple TV will be the fourth leg.” In essence, Jobs was describing a hermetically sealed system, the central premise of Apple’s business model: If a customer buys one Apple device, she’ll buy two, three, even four more — at a premium price — rather than dilute the experience with other brands. This isn’t what Jobs described at all. It doesn’t follow from the plain meaning of the words attributed to Jobs in the quote, and doesn’t make any economic sense. The entire key to the iPod’s success is that Apple has sold them by the boatload to Windows users who don’t own any other Apple products. And, for those customers who do purchase multiple Apple products — say, an iPhone, an Apple TV, and a Mac — it’s probably more because they work well together than “brand dilution”. In an age increasingly defined by interoperability and technical collaboration, Jobs still refuses to license Apple’s operating system. Because there are so many companies making so much money “licensing their operating system”, other than Microsoft. Worked out great for Apple the last time they tried it a decade ago, and it’s worked out great for Palm now, right? (Note also that all these decisions are, again, solely attributed to Jobs’s personal whim, rather than to Apple as a company.) He won’t allow music and videos downloaded from iTunes to be played on other MP3 players. Except for all those iTunes Plus tracks that have no DRM, and which Jobs has stated explicitly, in a widely-publicized open letter, he’d like to see the entire iTunes Store switch to, if the music labels would allow it. He won’t permit music downloaded from competing stores to play on the iPod. Except for all the music from any store that sells DRM-free music, like Amazon’s or eMusic’s. Otherwise what’s being argued here is that Apple should support Microsoft’s DRM platform, formerly known as PlaysForSure, recently renamed to “Certified for Windows Vista”, which Microsoft itself doesn’t support in its own Zune players. There’s a lot of stupid packed into the above 13-word sentence. And in enforcing his exclusive deal with AT&T for the iPhone, he went so far as to disable or “brick” the device of anyone who dared “jailbreak” it for use with another carrier, or who downloaded third-party applications for features Apple hadn’t built in. (a) Again with the “Jobs did it”; (b) only iPhones that were SIM-unlocked wound up bricked by the 1.1.1 update, not iPhones that were “jailbroken” to run third-party apps; and (c) there’s no proof that Apple deliberately bricked unlocked iPhones. Apple has thus far ridden this exclusionary strategy to riches, power, and glory. But what does Steve Jobs know that Albert Einstein didn’t? Einstein posited that a closed system would become stagnant over time. Well, if Einstein predicted Apple’s business is doomed, it must be so, because we can all agree Einstein was one smart dude. (Perhaps Nostradamus foresaw this as well?) As McCourt, the Morgan Keegan analyst, points out, “Each SanDisk generation of MP3 players is getting closer to iPods; the handset manufacturers are arguably making more impressive music-enabled handsets than the iPhone; and try out a new HP laptop with imbedded Altec Lansing speakers — it’s half the price of a MacBook, with a far better audio experience.” Wow, better speakers in an HP notebook? No wonder MacBook sales are tanking. Sell your Apple shares now. Samsung already sells a touch-screen phone. So does Motorola. Chevy already sells a sedan with a V8 engine. So does Ford. Sprint has a touch-screen phone that runs “thousands” of third-party applications And they’re all great. And the king of search [Google] has banded together with Apple foes such as Dell, HP, Microsoft, and Samsung to form the White Space Coalition to push the Federal Communications Commission to open up part of the broadcast spectrum. If successful, Americans would be able to use any Wi-Fi-enabled device to access the Web anytime, anywhere, and at zippy speeds — a direct threat to AT&T and Apple, which have a five-year exclusive contract. Because Apple doesn’t sell any other portable devices than the iPhone. There’s nothing like, say, an iPod that’s just like the iPhone but without the phone, and which would be a perfectly positioned product for some sort of ubiquitous wireless networking that comes from a provider other than the existing phone carriers. Apple is at a moment of choice: If it can stay hot and produce breakout couture hardware indefinitely, it can hold onto its closed model, elite pricing, and huge margins. In many ways, the world would be a prettier place if it did. But in an age of convergence and simplification, customers are ever more insistent that computers, phones, TV, and music systems work together. So (a) customers are “ever more insistent that computers, phones, TV, and music systems work together”, and (b) Apple’s entire product strategy in a nutshell is to produce computers, phones, TV, and music players that work really well together, and the conclusion Penenberg draws from this is that Apple is in trouble. Jiminy. Jobs may have to accept that Apple’s next wave of growth — or energy, as Einstein might have put it — depends on syncing up his products and platforms with those of his competitors. Sure would be swell if iTunes ran on Windows, and if iPods and iPhones could work with PCs, and if Macs could dual-boot into other PC operating systems now that they’re using Intel processors. Again, though, perhaps I’m overlooking something, given that Penenberg’s argument is backed up by a reference to Einstein. Yet there are risks, too, in tearing down this wall. If the company’s success has flowed from the trendy, gleaming exclusivity of its machines, then diluting that quality could erode the very foundation of the franchise. Unless, instead, Apple’s success has flowed from the fact that its products are simply better designed, easier to understand, and provide better experiences — i.e. that Apple products are popular because they’re good, rather than popular because they’re “trendy” — in which case the only serious problem the company faces is that it needs to keep making new products that people want to buy, and their success isn’t really precarious at all. Or, as Albert Einstein actually did put it, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”