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Someone needs to mod this up!

There are two things Microsoft doesn't have a fucking clue understanding:

  * Marketing - as you succinctly point out
  * UI -- do you read a book in UPPERCASE? So why are ALL the menu items NOW IN UPPERCASE?!?!

Actually I would say the epitome of Microsoft Marketing was them producing the internal what not to do "Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Package" which satires their packaging to a "T".

* Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Package
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

* Microsoft confirming they orginally made the parody
  http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/Microsoft_Confirms_it_Originated_iPod_Box_Parody_Video/
 

Microsoft's internal videos have made it out into the wild before. The iPod box video was eventually confirmed real.

This Scroogled video, on the other hand, feels like a transparent marketing ploy.

Compare Apple with Jobs and Apple with Scully. The engineers and technicians were about the same.

The difference is Jobs has taste. He at least has some clue of what is good, what is not and what is insanely great.

When 800 engineers come up with ideas, who decides which ideas to bet the company's money on? Who decides to tell the engineers "your ideas suck, give me insanely great ideas" AND is often RIGHT when he does it?

Look at Nokia if you want a company that does 800 different ideas.

Apparently[1] this video was made by Microsoft people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0

Assuming that's true, the people who did that video know their stuff and could probably do "Apple style" packaging. So guess why Microsoft packaging still looks the way it does? The people at the top matter a lot.

[1] http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/Microsoft_Confirms_it_Originated_iPod_Box_Parody_Video/

Kinda like http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/throw_your_iphone_in_the_air_measure_it_with_hangtime/ huh?

Here's the claim: http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/Microsoft_Confirms_it_Originated_iPod_Box_Parody_Video/

Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla on Tuesday confirmed with iPod Observer that his company initiated the creation of the iPod packaging parody video that was first reported last month. "It was an internal-only video clip commissioned by our packaging [team] to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging and to educate marketers here about the pitfalls of packaging/branding," he said via e-mail.

I'm afraid you're the revisionist. EMI announced that they will make their catalog available w/o DRM before Job's open letter.

Check(Feb 2007) your facts(April 2007).

I'm pretty sure that like all Apple haters you really believed what you posted, hatred does that to a mind... you need to try and snap out of this mind altering hatred you cannot break free of. No company is worth the mental energy it takes to hate them so much it distorts time.

I'm not going to read your response since I really doubt you can do anything but some Hater inspired display of vitrol, but if you can recover I wish you the best.

My understanding is that video, Microsoft iPod parody, was made by Microsoft employees who were annoyed at the way Microsoft operates.

O RLY?

We present to you the Microsoft iPod: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0

http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/25957

There's a difference somewhere... I just can't put my finger on it ;).

Your first mistake is that you speak of this as if it is only a matter of law. Clearly, this is about more than that. There is a huge population that sees the phone market as something more than an embedded system. And they want products that act as more than embedded systems. So, while this may or may not be settled in Apple's favor in the courts, there can be little doubt that handheld computers with cellular service will be a market force to be reckoned with in the not too distant future. If Apple succeeds in rebuffing people who would push the iPhone closer to that goal, then they are quite simply backpedaling from something the market desires.

Secondly, there is an issue of intentionally breaking the iPhone. So far Apple is just playing as if is an "unfortunate" side-effect. However, if it can be shown that such updates could easily avoid bricking the iPhones, then I think Apple should be sued. Think about it. If you take your Buick into a Buick dealership to get work done, and you sign a release form saying "If there are any non-Buick parts, you agree that we me return your car in non-working condition" that would be completely ridiculous. Even if this is lawful, it should receive a lot of bad publicity. This is simply anti-consumer. Even a failed lawsuit is a loss for Apple in this case. It brings attention to Apple's practice of bricking iPhones.

Finally, please cite where law requires a subscription to AT&T? Seriously. You are not required to activate your iPhone with AT&T. If I wanted to buy an iPhone for an art project, a paperweight, for a prop in a play or movie, or any other weird reason, I seriously doubt I would be contractually obligated to sign up with AT&T. Why would this be any different if instead of hooking it to AT&T, I decided to use T-Mobile? There is no law forbidding this. The only possible problem is distributing the unlock, which may (but probably doesn't) violate the DMCA:

"Individuals or companies that might help them are still prohibited from doing so. Thus, in many ways, the rule-making is an empty promise: giving a legal right to circumvent, without protecting access to the tools necessary to make that right a reality," she wrote.

Another issue is the Terms of Service (TOS) from AT&T. AT&T has a legal argument that the phone may not be operated on another network by the TOS -- assuming the customer has activated their iPhone.

Ms. Granick expressed the hope that this furor will change the future of mobile phones: "Perhaps the iPhone will awaken a consumer revolution, though not necessarily the one envisioned by Apple or AT&T."

So, if you decide not to accept AT&T's TOS by never activating your phone with AT&T, then I don't see how their TOS applies to you. And no contract is signed by buying the iPhone.

Doesn't matter.

If the customer can figure out how to unlock it, great.

But the vendor is under no obligation to document it or otherwise allow it. It's just that if you figure out how to unlock your handset, it is exempted from DMCA provisions. In no way does this mean that being able to unlock is somehow mandatory or required. Just that it's legal, and only if you can figure it out. Other business profiting from it, services that unlock for you for money, and even free applications that unlock all have questionable legal status.

Here's the word from the attorney who architected the DMCA exemption.

I can't believe how much garbage information is in the comments for this article already... :-/

For the record, I will be surprised if Apple actively tries to re-lock already-unlocked phones, but I would not be surprised if they try to prevent unlocking in future firmware updates, considering the current unlock mechanism uses an overflow condition that will likely be, well, fixed in future updates (should Apple not fix a potentially exploitable buffer overflow on the iPhone?). Then, someone will find some other exploitable condition to unlock the iPhone, and the game continues.

Every GSM handset under the sun has been unlocked. The main difference with iPhone is that people are more likely to do regular full firmware updates with the iPhone due to the kind of product it is and the ease of doing so via iTunes, as opposed to other GSM handsets. But I can't see Apple relocking already-unlocked phones.

That said, while an explicit exemption exists that allows end customers to legally unlock GSM handsets in the US, no such requirement exists for a vendor to allow it, document it, or provide such a capability to the customer (see also "DMCA Exemption Attorney Weighs in on iPhone Unlocking".

Further, requirements in various jurisdictions that the carrier provide a means to unlock the handset after the contract term, i.e., after the subsidy is paid, MAY NOT at all apply to the iPhone, since the iPhone is technically unsubsidized. Apple appears to be negotiating backchannel subsidies and unprecedented monthly kickbacks from carriers...but the iPhone itself still isn't subsidized under the traditional subsidy model: you can buy an iPhone, walk out, and NEVER activate it, and the phone is yours to keep. However, this may also mean that no carrier is ever obligated to unlock it for you.

Also, Apple is depending on the expected profits from AT&T kickbacks for AT&T activations...that's how the iPhone price is structured. Now, if you can figure out how to unlock your phone and use it on another carrier, great. But also don't cry if Apple throws roadblocks in the way. You can argue that "it's only good for Apple" if people get to use unlocked iPhones, but that's not your decision to make, unfortunately - it's Apple's. Don't get me wrong: YOU can decide it's good for YOU. But you don't get to decide that it's good for Apple, or anyone else. And with things like seamless activation via iTunes, Visual Voicemail, and all the tight integration that requires enormous amounts of backend cooperation with the carrier partner (think about how iPhone activation works and how it must have been to pull something like that off), is it any surprise Apple wants to keep the iPhone experience with the carrier partner?

And think of all the other ways iPhone is unique: you get to walk out of the store with it sealed in a box, it can be easily bought as a gift, the customer does activation themselves in the comfort of their own homes with a pleasant interface, and so on.

So if people can figure out how to unlock the phone, great. But don't expect Apple to not fix actual bugs like buffer overflows in the phone that are coincidentally used to enable unlocking, and don't assume that ANYONE will ever be "required" to unlock iPhones, unless it is simply flat out illegal to have a SIMlocked phone in a particular jurisdiction, in which case Apple would probably elect to skip that market entirely.

This is a lot like the Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware arguments. People always say it's "better for Apple" or "free advertising for Apple". No. Pirating the OS is not good for Apple. And even if you say "but I'd buy it for $129!" that also doesn't solve it...the $129 price is predicated on the fact that there is Apple hardware that goes along with it. So then you say, "Well, I'd even pay $250 or more! Would that fix it?" No, because part of the Apple experience is the seamless integration and things "just workin

Didn't we read this the other day? China is busy cloning the I-phone? http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/32618/ It seems to me Meizu already makes a darn fine alternative to the ipod. I'd like to see this here.

I'm really for anything that helps wrestle proprietary control settings away from the major carriers.

Yup, you can expect Apple to fairly license proprietary control settings in a reasonable and non discriminate manner and help level the playing field in the cell phone market!

Thanks Apple for giving us more choice!

Interesting article, but the part about "...downloading music..." made me wonder - given that by some estimates, by 2011 some 73 million cars will have iPod interfaces, is this a not so subtle way for Microsoft to fend off the dominance of Apple's iPod?

It's not chicken and egg at all - Apple have stated that they are not and do not intend to be a serious platform for games. They don't help game development at all, and don't intend to.

I think you're working from some very old data. In the late eighties and early nineties, Apple somewhat misguidedly tried to bolster its reputation in the business market by discarding the "toy" image and not encouraging game development. However, once their market share began to seriously tank in the mid/late nineties, Apple "got religion" about games and realized how important they were to keeping their users happy.

After that, Apple hired a series of people as "Games Partnership Managers" to reach out to the game developer community. Apple has recently been rumored to be adding gaming functionality to the iPod. Apple famously reached out to John Carmack with OpenGL to bring iD games to the Mac. Apple devotes a whole section of their retail stores to games. And, of course, they have made gaming a featured section on their website.

So, I think your assertion about Apple discouraging games was once true but is very much outdated.

Whoever came up with that movie is fricken brilliant. That is all.

... It was Microsoft.

"...as the massive drop in iPod sales shows."

For more information on this "massive drop in iPod sales" please read: http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/26405

Highlights from the above story:

  iPod shipments are up 61 percent compared to last year, and the company has now sold over 50 million units.

  The iPod market share is up, too, accounting for 78 percent of the portable music players sold. In December 2005, that number was at 71 percent

  Outside of the United States, the iPod is the top-selling MP3 player in the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and Canada.

Despite strong iPod sales, Apple sees room for major growth in the MP3 player market. Based on sales of other consumer electronic devices, Mr. Oppenheimer noted, "The MP3 player market has a lot of room for growth. According to Forester research, U.S. household MP3 player penetration was less than one quarter that of digital cameras as of the end of 2005."

This guy seems to have a very odd perception of ugly. While I will grant that Plenty of Fish may not be the most attractive page ever, I would have to take issue with many of the other sites listed in the article. Craig's list is most certainly not ugly, and neither is Google (he doesn't outright call Google ugly, but he certainly implies it). And while I do see room for improvement on imdb, I see nothing wrong with their choice (or rather, lack thereof) of font. He seems to associate simplicity and functionality with ugliness, which is many times the opposite of the truth. Unfortunate, because he makes good points about functionality and targetting the right audience and then throws it all away when he calls sites that do these things "ugly".

To borrow a thought from a previous thread here, he probably thinks Microsoft's redesigned iPod package is prettier than the original as well.

After having read the actual article, I am left with the distasteful impression that this article is nothing more than a cleverly disguised ad for an ad supported dating website.

... is that it was made by Microsoft marketing. They know what their problems are, and they essentially admit they haven't a chance in hell of fixing them. That's why they'll never develop an iPod killer, much less an iPod/DS/PSP killer.

http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/23712/

Apple Computer said Tuesday that problems with iPod nano screens breaking, as documented at FlawedMusicPlayer.com are not a design issue, but rather an issue of vendor quality that affected a small number of units. Furthermore, the company is now replacing those units that do have problems through AppleCare.

"This is a real but minor issue involving a vendor quality problem in a small number of units," Apple vice president Phil Schiller said in a statement to Macworld. "In fact, this issue has affected less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the total iPod nano units that we've shipped. It is not a design issue."