Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
Steven Den Beste
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog
Cartago Delenda Est

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money. I think.
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Wednesday, July 26, 2006

19:13 - Reply hazy
http://daringfireball.net/2006/07/magic_8ball_zune

(top)

John Gruber's Magic 8-ball on the Microsoft Zune:

Q: So what they�ve done is leak a November release date and a fantastic feature list � a feature list that the next batch of new iPods, no matter how cool, are unlikely to match � and hope that people will wait for the Zune. And then even when it misses the holiday season and slips into 2007, and won�t include all of the previously-promised features, they�ll say it wasn�t their fault (despite the fact that the whole point of the Zune platform model is that Microsoft controls the entire system) but that it�ll be worth the wait anyway. That sound right?

A: SIGNS POINT TO YES.

See, here's the thing about the iPod:

Apple never put any features or capabilities into any iPod that they didn't think would sell, given the technical reality at the time. The first iPod didn't ship with a color LCD screen, though it could have, and though some hot-on-its-heels competitors did; did that slow iPod sales or benefit the competitors? Noooo. Apple could have put video support in the iPod back in the 5GB days (remember the Archos device with those four big round corner bits that played videos back in 2002?); but they didn't, and hardly to their detriment. Apple to this day does not ship FM tuner functionality built into any iPod model, much though every one of their competitors trumpets their own built-in radios; fat lot of good that does the competitors.

Instead, Apple has called just about every shot with almost uncanny accuracy. They waited until just the right time, when the technological market was just about right and everyone had big enough hard drives and was comfortable enough with TiVo'ing their shows and buying iTMS songs, to roll out color-screen iPods that played videos. You can be sure that they could have done so at any time�that they probably had video-playing iPod prototypes in their labs four years ago. But they didn't ship them until the time was right. And now the video-playing iPod is every bit the icon that the music-playing iPod was in 2003; and they might as well have invented the market for all the penetration anybody else's video-playing devices ever achieved.

Apple similarly decided to ship FM tuner functionality not as a built-in feature, but in the form of a dongle�a Radio Remote that you plug into the Dock connector and place inline with your headphones. Those people who want radio functionality can buy the remote; those people who don't�a pretty sizable majority�can forego it and save themselves $50. The dongle method is the preferred approach for all features Apple has opted not to put into the iPod itself: voice recorders, camera connectors, car adapters, you name it. And that goes for stuff that isn't even out yet, too. Bluetooth functionality, for example, could be hot-spliced into the iPod firmware and supported with a slim little dongle, and Microsoft's wireless-sync advantage would be gone like that. But there's a reason why Apple hasn't put Bluetooth into the iPod yet, and that's because they don't think the average user cares that much about syncing wirelessly or downloading Starbucks-endorsed music from their Starbucks hot-spot. Those users who might care about such a thing might exist in such numbers as to warrant the creation of a dongle; there surely aren't enough of them to justify building Bluetooth into the iPod directly. And the kind of people who would care about wireless syncing are the kind of people who don't mind using a dongle attached to the Dock connector; so Apple can continue to reap the cost benefit of not having to put a feature hardly anybody will use into every unit sold. Microsoft won't be able to claim that.

Maybe Apple is just continuing to be buoyed along by some irrational market force that forgives them all transgressions and rewards their every fortuitous move while spurning success from the hands of all the competitors who, God bless 'em, keep doing everything right that Apple's doing wrong. But that seems to me a tad unlikely. Apple's winning this fight because they keep hitting homeruns, whether in deciding on the opportune time to add photo-viewing or video-playing functionality to the iPod, or deciding which features to support in software for third parties to make dongles for, or sticking with the download-to-own, flat-pricing model despite all the pressure from everyone but their customers to go to a subscription model or variable pricing, or identifying heretofore untapped market segments like the no-screen-no-control one now dominated by the iPod shuffle. I can't help but think they know what they're doing. And if the iPod doesn't have the features the Zune promises, it's not because Apple isn't up to the challenge. It's because Apple has thought about it and decided it's not worth it. And given their track record thus far, I'm going to bet on Apple weathering the Zune storm and coming through dry and shiny.

I mean, geez�how could they not?

UPDATE: Chris M. writes:

Oh, and what happened to, um, sheesh I can't remember it's name. I'm not kidding, I can't. It was a small tablet-like PC. It had some sort of "viral marketing" campaign and now, as far as I can tell, it's gone.

The Origami? I think it folded.

UPDATE: Uh-kay then.