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NYT on Apple's Digital Way of Life
sinalet writes "The New York Times is running an article on Apple's 'digital way of life'. Most interestingly are some comments about the history of the iPod and its developers. 'Apple says it developed the iPod in just six months, faster than any major product in the company's history. The hand-held device, which contains more computing power than an early Macintosh, was put together starting in 2001 by hardware designers led by Tony Fadell, a young engineer who had worked briefly at RealNetworks, led by Rob Glaser, who has developed the Rhapsody music service.'"
Oh, Yeah, He Also Sells Computers
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: April 25, 2004
STROLL the corridors and the atriums on Apple Computer's corporate campus these days and you will notice that something is missing. Gone are the posters and graphics accenting the company's sleek personal computers. In their place, in the main lobby, is a striking, three-story-high billboard celebrating Steven P. Jobs's brand-new billion-dollar consumer electronics business - the iPod digital MP3 music player.
In just two and a half years, Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has managed to take a well-designed hand-held gadget, add software connecting it to Macintoshes and Windows-based personal computers and convince the recording industry that he has found an elegant solution for ending its nightmare of digital piracy. In doing so, he has shifted the emphasis of Apple from what made it famous - hip, even lovable computers - to what he hopes will keep it relevant and profitable in the future: products for a digital way of life.
In fact, the wild success that Mr. Jobs has enjoyed with the iPod may have come in the nick of time. For all the acknowledged design and ease-of-use advantages of the Macintosh, Apple's overall PC business is still growing more slowly than that of its Microsoft- and Intel-based competitors.
Moreover, it was obvious at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January that a horde of consumer goods and computing companies is preparing a fresh assault aimed at bringing computerized gadgets into every nook and cranny of the home. In particular, two powerful Apple rivals, Sony and Microsoft, are betting that Mr. Jobs is wrong when he says, "It's about the music!" This year, both companies plan to release more expensive, hand-held combination video and audio players that their executives hope will blow the iPod away.
So will Apple eventually be overwhelmed by its bigger, better-heeled competitors? Throughout the technology world, there seems to be a simple, uniform answer to that question: Never underestimate Steve Jobs.
With roots both in Silicon Valley's digital culture and the 1960's counterculture, Mr. Jobs has long been an arbiter of what is cool in technology, much like a real-world version of a trend-spotting character from "Pattern Recognition," one of the cyberpunk novels by William Gibson.
AND, helped by his growing prominence in Hollywood through his second company, Pixar Animation Studios, Mr. Jobs has attained a level of influence over how life is lived in the digital age that is unmatched by even his most powerful computer industry rivals. "He is the Henry J. Kaiser or Walt Disney of this era," said Kevin Starr, a culture historian and the California state librarian.
Since returning seven years ago to Apple, the computer maker he helped to establish in 1976, Mr. Jobs has created a fusion of fashion, brand, industrial design and computing. He has opened a chain of 78 retail stores to showcase Apple's consumer-oriented designs and to surround the company's computers with an array of digital consumer products. The stores themselves have become another billion-dollar business, a feat all the more impressive considering that one of Apple's chief competitors, Gateway, failed with a similar retail strategy during the same period.
As a result, Apple is acting less like a computer company and more like brand-brandishing, multinational companies such as Nike and Virgin. The iPod's success is also the clearest indication that Mr. Jobs, if he is to successfully revamp Apple, will ultimately win not by taking on PC rivals directly, but by changing the rules of the game.
The Apple that is starting to emerge may be a harbinger. The company's growth may no longer be defined by its PC market share, now a declining sliver of the PC industry, but instead by Mr. Jobs's ability to create consumer markets.
Mr. Jobs, who says he has a 70 percent share of the market for legal music downloads and a 45 percent share of the MP3 market, see
Possibly, or it may be that he doesn't want the chance of something slipping out. If you do a press item on Apple, and can only talk to 3 people, those 3 people are accountable for everything. By contrast if you can talk to anyone, then anyone can be accountable, and you can't plug leaks.
It's not like he hides who does the work. Everyone knows who the designers are, and many times, the keynote presentations are done by the product designers.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Designing an intuitive, efficient UI is no easy task.
They bought the software for that UI from Pixo.
Not to say that they didn't do a fast and excellent job.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You neglected a couple of little things called R&D and Cost of Sales.
How much money was spent on R&D and Sales for the iPod?
Whatever it was needs to be subtracted out of the "cost" column before you are can determine if they were profitable w/o the iPod.
The first gen DID have moving parts. Well, "part".
The scroll wheel!
They bought the software for that UI from Pixo.
Nope. The UI is Apple's. Pixo sells an OS for embedded devices.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Always glad to hear when I'm full of crap.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The four buttons (menu, play/pause, forward, back) were also moving parts.
And if you want to get really nit-picky, the lock switch at the top is moving, bringing the total to 6 moving parts.