Why do I get so emotional at holiday time? How embarrassing would it be if I went all wispy on you when I was supposed to be calculating and critical? I think it’s best if I simply wish you a happy holiday and propose that we meet back here on January 4th. I promise, before then I will post only in the event of an emergency!
Have fun, all.
Ken
Having already upended two industries beyond computers (music and smartphones), Apple is now preparing to do battle with a classic bad guy: the cable industry.
Just yesterday the WSJ reported that Apple was in discussions with CBS and Disney. The story started rippling around the web, accompanied by images of Apple’s famous “hobby,” the Apple TV device. That’s a knee-jerk reflex to the words Apple and TV, but one that misses the point. The giant, industry-altering story here is not Apple TV — it’s simply iTunes TV.
Apple will follow its classic playbook. They’ll swoop into a new market and do a dramatically better job of making people happy. In this case, they will combine customization and accessibility to create something that makes way too much sense not to work.
Remember when you had to buy a whole album to get the two songs you really wanted? The iTunes Store fundamentally changed things — to the point where musicians had to rethink the way they make albums.
Apple will do the same thing for broadcast. Think of all the crappy shows you pay for, but never watch. Imagine subscribing only to the shows or networks that interest you, with some innovative ways to explore and sample new content — all while paying less than you currently do.
That would be tremendously cool in your living room (yes, using Apple TV). But the idea of an iTunes TV is a hundred times bigger. Because when you subscribe to TV via iTunes, you can access your favorite shows from anywhere — by computer, iPhone or the speculatively spectacular iTablet. You will be freed from the shackles of your cable box.
Look for iTunes TV to start with just a couple of names (like Disney and CBS), then branch out from there. Just as it did with the movie studios. And look for the cable companies to start looking extremely nervous.
Vultures on standby. A new report shows that Yahoo, once the darling of Internet search, has hit a record-low market share of 17.5%. Google, of course, keeps piling it on.
But wait, you say. Help is on its way. The new Microsoft/Yahoo partnership will activate in 2010. True, but this hole is getting deeper with every passing week. The purpose of the new deal was to boost the companies’ combined market share to over 30% from their current 28%. These new numbers are going down, not up.
The only bit of bright news is for Microsoft, not Yahoo. Bing’s market share is now up over 10%, picking up some of Yahoo’s losses. Yahoo’s swan dive into the darkness continued with a 10th consecutive month of losing market share.
It’s hard not to get a nervous feeling around Yahoo. Granted, I run with a dubious crowd — but I see about as much enthusiasm in this world for Yahoo as I do for Zune. It’s not likely that a new marketing campaign will turn things around (especially the one they’re running). These days, when we think of search and innovation, we simply think of Google. In the absence of any world-changing ideas, Yahoo feels like yesterday’s news.
It’s a bit early to file Yahoo away with WordPerfect, Earthlink, Compaq and those other technology stars that once burnt brightly. But, if you’re the type who gets emotional over such things… you might want to get a head start dealing with the trauma.
Hey, give Intel credit for being innovative. I don’t recall Apple ever firing their employees out of cannons just to deliver another brand impression. Though I did once see Phil Schiller leap 20 feet into a pile of pillows while demoing Apple’s first wireless laptop.
This is the bold, hell-with-the-lawyers kind of action I like to see from a technology company.
(And no, I don’t think it’s real!)
You don't want to get in the way of this one
Help. I’ve lost track of what’s converging where. Where’s all this cool stuff going again? My computer? My game machine? My cable box? My smartphone? My imaginary iTablet?
As it turns out, where it’s going isn’t nearly as important as where it’s coming from. Remember, he who controls the spice controls the universe.
The iTunes Store is by far the most prolific provider of the digital goodies we humans love to consume: music, movies, radio, podcasts, apps and more. And it’s about to get bigger:
Cloud music. No more syncing? Apple just bought Lala.com. So soon you should be able to keep your music on the web and play it anywhere, from any device. (Since they physically keep the music, Lala only charges a dime per song. We’ll see how Apple handles that.)
Magazines reborn. The coming iTablet will fuel a rebirth of magazines that are as sexy as anything in this digital world, igniting a new media-rich boom in “print.” It’ll be exciting, and our forests will thank us.
Reading redefined. It’s that darn iTablet again. Thousands of books at your fingertips, but more beautifully presented than anyone imagines. (Good idea, Kindle. We’ll take it from here.)
Revenge of broadcast. Remember TV? It’s back. Watch your favorite shows in your living room, coffee shop or pleasure craft. On your own schedule, on the device of your choosing. Yes, the iTunes Store will now start making the cable companies panic.
App Store for big-boy apps. Think beyond iPhone. Soon you’ll buy all your apps this way. Not just Mac apps, PC apps too. Physical discs are so 20th century.
While its competitors are busily building music stores and app stores, Apple has a vision that is far grander — with an infrastructure that’s already in place. How far can the iTunes Store go? I’d say the sky’s the limit. But that’s just where it’s starting…
Not likely to be found in the Apple reading room
I read an interesting blog post the other day about how Apple succeeds despite its failure to do the things considered necessary in this age of social media. I quote:
Apple doesn’t blog; it doesn’t Tweet; it does little on Facebook; it doesn’t engage with its customer base. It doesn’t ask the “community” for feedback or rapidly iterate based on any such feedback or even respond to criticism.
Curse that Apple. Why can’t it just follow the rules? Well, two reasons, really.
First, it doesn’t have to. A few million Apple followers are doing a fine job with the tweeting and blogging, thank you — sharing, analyzing and generally fanning the flames night and day. Social media is abuzz over what Apple is doing or might do, generating countless dollars’ worth of free PR. Without lifting a finger, Apple is crushingly more effective in social media than companies who pay teams of digital experts to ignite the chatter.
Second, as most creative thinkers will tell you with little provocation, screw the damn rules. Intelligence and common sense are far more valuable than the ability to leap from one trend to another.
As clients and agencies try to dream up new ways to match Apple’s success, they often forget one thing: this stuff doesn’t happen overnight. Apple’s success isn’t the result of tricky marketing schemes. It’s what happens when you dazzle the world for more than ten years running, with one amazing product after another — and rarely crack open your book of rules.
You just might find your ideal laptop at Dell
Just when I was ready to give Dell a rest, comes another irresistible press release. Hey, I’m only human.
This week Dell announced the new, “ultra-portable” Vostro V13 laptop. It will fit well alongside the ultra-portable Adamo, the ultra-portable Latitude Z, the ultra-portable XPS M1330 and a few other ultras that no doubt lurk below the surface at Dell.com.
Again, nothing wrong with choice. There’s something terribly wrong with a product lineup so confusing that customers spend their time pondering instead of buying.
Is this more of an industry thing than a Dell thing? Nope. See how many models pop up on the first results page when you Google “[brand] thin laptop”: Dell 5, HP 2, Acer and Apple 1 each. (Note that HP and Acer both outsell Dell.)
Imagine if you’re a customer going to Dell.com with money burning a hole in your pocket. Enter “thin computer” into the home page search field. You get 26 models spread over six pages of results. Including two models from Wyse, whoever that is.
For personal attention, I started a live chat with a Dell rep. I said I wanted a thin laptop but was a little confused by the models. “Let me solve your confusion,” the rep confidently replied. With very little info about my needs, he recommended Inspiron. When I asked about Latitude, he explained, “Latitude is for business, Inspiron is for home.” Hmm, I’d use it for both. So what’s XPS, I asked. “That’s for higher performance.” Oh. I wanted that too. Somehow, the final recommendation was Adamo. If they can’t create a coherent product line, you’d hope they could at least create a coherent story.
Okay, I’m finished now. Until Dell taunts me with another of their provocative news releases.
[Sorry, the commercial referenced here has disappeared from YouTube]
Droid vs. iPhone. Verizon vs. AT&T. To the spectators’ delight, we have a war on two fronts. And now we have AT&T lobbing a new grenade over the fence.
But first, a recap:
Apple planted the seed for this fight when they chose AT&T as iPhone’s exclusive carrier in the US. That put the nation’s most loved phone on the nation’s least loved network. It also gave Verizon an opening, assuming they might one day find another hot phone to hawk — which they did in Droid.
Then the fun started. Verizon slapped AT&T with its “there’s a map for that” stuff. They got silly with misfit toys. AT&T threw half a punch back with some lame Luke Wilson spots. Apple tried to speak rationally about the differences between networks while Droid burst in chainsawing bananas.
After whining to the courts and getting nowhere (Judge Droid?), AT&T is back at it with this new Luke Wilson spot. Creatively, it’s fairly harmless. But it’s all part of the chess game, and that’s what makes it fun to watch. (War, boxing, chess — have I exceeded the metaphor limit yet?)
To their credit, AT&T is presenting a simple argument: we’ve got a faster network. (It’s actually more clear than Apple’s attempted Verizon-bashing.) Verizon has their simple argument: we’ve got a bigger network. That would be a tough choice for most people.
So who wins the big fight? Nobody. And who wins the customer? AT&T. Because when the heavyweight match ends in a draw, all you can do is go with the best phone. And you know what that is.
[Sorry, the commercial referenced here has disappeared from YouTube]
Enough of the teasers. The first real ad in the Droid assault is now among us. And assault turns out to be a pretty good descriptor — because everything about this spot is amped to extremes, from strategy and script to images and editing.
What this effort probably needed most, however, was some adult supervision.
Every agency wants to start with the most unexpected, out-there ideas. Nothing’s taboo. The theory is that you can always pull creative back, but you can’t amplify something that isn’t there. But then you start developing. And when you’re about to enter the world’s hottest category, battling the much-loved iPhone, risking market share and millions of dollars, you’d think that some responsible person might have politely raised a hand and said: “are you nuts?”
It’s as if the agency, followed by Verizon, Google and Motorola, developed this ad in an alternate reality — where design doesn’t matter, women want to be men and writers are paid by the adjective. What we get is a whole fleet of runaway trains.
It’s a male-only strategy in a category that’s 50% female. It’s a spot that attacks iPhone for the very reason it’s succeeded — great design. It’s a script that is so desperately cool, it’s juvenile. Worst of all, it’s a launch that presents a smartphone without any smart — offering no benefit other than speed. In that sense, it’s actually less of an ad than the teaser was.
I’m all for chipping away at iPhone’s armor. But allowing your inner pubescent to attack iPhone as “a tiara-wearing, digitally clueless beauty queen” or “a precious porcelain figurine of a phone” reveals a disturbing cluelessness.
It’s hard to imagine any woman outside of the WWE who’d appreciate this ultra-male tone. At the DroidDoes.com website, the slide continues: we get mechanical design presented by a flesh-and-blood android so smarmy, you want to slap him. (Extra points for integration!)
The good news for Droid is, misguided marketing isn’t always fatal. Maybe the device will sell well by its own merits and the superiority of the Verizon network. Who knows, maybe Droid will ultimately cut through iPhone’s lead “like a circular saw through a ripe banana.”
Make this a Christmas to remember
Millions of years after humans learned to walk upright, desktop computers did the same. PCs in the “pancake” shape, with monstrous CRT displays perched atop, disappeared. They were replaced by towers, mini-computers or all-in-ones. Or so we thought.
I just received a Buy.com email offering up this HP DC5100 SFF (automatic entry into our “best name” category), and of course my jaw dropped. How cool would this thing look next to my rotary phone and Rolodex?
Naturally, this offer piqued my interest. Could any of the major PC companies really be in the antique business? Turns out, the answer is no. Not even HP, whose fingerprints are at this crime scene, engages in such behavior anymore. Buy.com’s dinosaur is actually a refurbished dinosaur, appropriately configured with a full gigabyte of memory and a 40GB hard drive. It can be had for a mere $149.
So I’m disappointed. But there still might be a PC Hunters commercial hiding in here somewhere…
Addendum 12.4.09 5:38pm: Looks like HP is still has an appetite for pancakes. See comments on this one.