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Gates v. Jobs, continued...
FJCsar writes "The New York Times has an interesting story about the continuing battle between Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Apple's iTunes from the perspectives of both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs."
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There was, of course, the commercial that introduced the Macintosh. It was broadcast exactly once, during the 1984 Super Bowl
Ummm, it's not exactly true. Super Bowl commercials are often broadcast the year before in obscure local stations to be eligible for the same year awards. The "1984" commercial was aired on 1 AM in Twin Falls, Idaho on December 15, 1983. Of course the question is - can you actually BROADcast anything in Idaho...
What a difference the two companies (Apple and Microsoft) have in terms of public perception. Microsoft is seen as a necessary evil. Apple has always been seen as "pretty" and "innovative". The one fact that really drives that (and a few other things) home though in this article was this beautiful quote:
Speaking just after the event, Bono, U2's lead singer, said the band was not charging Apple a penny to be in the ad. (The band says it had turned down as much as $23 million to use its music in other commercials.) In its three-year life, the iPod has achieved such "iconic value," Bono said, that U2 gets as much value as Apple does from the commercial, by promoting its music and the new Red and Black U2 edition of the iPod, for which the band gets royalties.
It's just another example of how Jobs has his pulse on the entertainment industry (ie, Pixar, iTunes being THE music service to break through, etc). Microsoft on the other hand is relying on OS marketshare dominance to try to get into the game.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
The Microsoft vs. Apple battle in music players is bigger than the two computer software giants.
The last half of the 1990s demonstrated two things:
1. People want to listen to music in a digital format
2. The Internet is a viable digital music distribution "medium".
Until the online purchase/subscription model battle is won, the battle over music players isn't going to be over anytime soon.
Although I think the subscription model might win out in the end, there's something to be said about owning the music you purchase.
Personally, I don't want another monthly bill. I have enough of those, plus student loans. I want to buy a song online like I buy a CD in a store and be done with it and not be worried about subscription fees.
Whether or not you use Windows Media's DRM or FairPlay, it's clear that you'll eventually need to upgrade (purchase) newer versions of the OS to continue to play your music, whether if it's subscribed (borrowed) or owned outright (iTMS).
Maybe I'll just stick with transcoding everything to MP3s that play just fine everywhere, including my iPod.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
"Over time, proprietary standards always lose because industry standards always win because you get more for less," said Michael A. George, the general manager of Dell's consumer business. Dell has just introduced a 5-gigabyte music player, using the Windows standard...
I wonder if any of the general public will realise what contradictory behaviour this is?
"Proprietary standards always lose, so that's why our media player uses a proprietary standard (WMA) and the iPod uses an open format (AAC)".
(Mp3 has delibarately been left out of the above sarcastic statement, due to its obvious ubiquity).
Just the very nature of the programs are the technological embodiment of Jobs and Gates.
iTunes: Steve Jobs is overall a very straightforward guy who values simplicity over all else. Things should just work without a lot of hassle. We can argue all day if iTunes is the best jukebox or not but at least it represents what Jobs wants out of software. Something that does the job well without a whole lot of fuss.
Windows Media Player: Gates has always played catch-up to Steve Jobs. You know deep down he is envious of Jobs. Gates seems like that kid at school who didn't fit in but tried really, really hard by trying to impress everybody with his gadgets and his knowledge. But overall nobody cares.
Gates wants to desperately wave his hand and say "This IS the media player you are looking for! Why, you ask. One, because I said so! Two, because it does everything you could ever want on a computer. It plays music, movies, it slices, it dices, it makes mounds of juliene potatoes. And three, because I said so bitch! (apologies to Rick James)"
It just always comes across that Gates introduces stuff to try impress people by throwing a lot of stuff into products. Unfortunately, more is not necessarily better. Keep trying Bill.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Get it in granular form and the make your own foil. Tin foil bought ready made isn't effective, since "they" can insert micro-transceivers into it that let the mind-control rays pass through.
"I think apple will again lose out because it is being a damn fool trying to lock everyone into its file type and hardware."
well, maybe i don't want to be locked into Microsoft's format either.
"And slowly I can see them losing out as more people want to save that 50 dollars when there are no quality differences."
Take a walk around nyc or any city for that matter. you can't throw a stick without hitting an ipod owner. i don't think it's a style-statement either, people are just sick of dealing with buggy virus-laden software and bad design. it doesn't help that MS are everything bad about big business in this country as well.
"apple is the real innovator, but you know what, I don't care when they try and charge me out the ass. I buy the cheapest product that does the job, and so do a lot of people."
and this is the attitude that is creating a third-world economy in the US and shaping much of our foreign policy; "I don't care if something is made well, i just want it cheap and in bulk so i can stuff more crap into my life."
Micrsoft bought $150M of shares as part of a settlement years ago and later sold them later at a massive profit. Microsoft do not 'own' part of Apple. Please get your fact straight.
Neither FM transmitters nor cassette adapters are a good solution - both greatly reduce the quality of the signal provided to the stereo.
I have an MP3 player in my car, and was using a cassette adapter to interface to it until I could get the head-end adapter (that fooled the stereo into thinking it had a CD jukebox attached) for the car. The difference between the two was not merely night and day - it was night and nova. The cassette adapter had no bass, no treble, and poor stereo seperation.
FM transmitters are just as bad - the maximum frequency is limited to 15 kHz, and the stereo seperation is poor due to the multiplexing of the L-R signal onto the 38kHz pilot tone.
If his stereo has a CDR MP3 player function, it likely has support for a CD jukebox - go to Precision Interface Electronics and order the appropriate adapter, it will be much better.
www.eFax.com are spammers
As much as u may deny the Jobs mind-warp marketing slogans, he is dead on the money when he says (compared to the rest of the market) they make "insanely great" products. And what makes them great is not just the hardware design, but software design.
For years and years, years back, I enjoyed the x86 cuz of the way the Mac hid everything. If you wanted to upgrade, well, good luck with the OS and the parts were an arm and a leg. But that was then. Now, it's all about portability for me and that only means one thing: a laptop. For the past 4 years the laptop has been king with me and thusly, since I usually get them maxed out, there is no upgrades. Coupled with an OS that, while not perfect and sometimes a bit more sluggish than Linux, I have a machine that just runs. I do my development exclusively on that and it goes with me everywhere. My 1st gen iPod still works great too (when does 1st gen anything work anymore???). True, many people have had probs with the battery, but I still have the stock everything on it and it's still very useful. Much more so than my previous MD players. As for Apple'ss DRM, it's easily circumvented and Apple's service of 'get out of my face and gimmie my song' does just that. Period.
In a world where it seems the only way for corps to go is to try to own everything (which is not sustainable in the long run, but of course, corps are never really concerned with the long run), Apple was marginalized (somewhat) and forced to do things differently than the Dells and M$s of the world - of which there are only a few now.
Look back at the last 5 or so years and you'll see the PC industry's knee-jerk reaction to quite a bit of Apple 'innovations' (I think that term is pretty silly and over used, but whatever):
- 17" laptops
- Wi-fi for the home/soho (and recently, AirTunes)
- Lcd desktop displays
- dvd-burners on desktop as well as laptop
- iMac colored cases (yes, pc manufacturers tried to jump on this)
- iPod
- iTunes
- Encrypted home dir on the fly (heh!)
- Rendezvous
- Firewire
- Gigabit ethernet in laptops
- backlit laptop kbds & screens that adjust to room brightness automatically
Now when has any of the above come out of M$ or Dell or Hp/Compaq?
Like so many other aspects of life, I feel that the diluted, lesser quality - not in terms of design or manufacturing, but in terms also of idea conception - cannot be sustained at critical mass levels. So you get a Dell plastic laptop that is 'good enough' but feels like, well, the cheap plastic it is. Or you get a M$ XP OS riddled with security holes throught the core of the OS, but has the widest appeal and ubiquity.
Big organizations are a slow moving giant. They like to put on a pretty face to attract cutting-edge talent, but in the end, they pound that talent into the ground and the result is sorta like the Apple 1984 commerical. Sure, there are definitely smart and creative people at big companies, but I have to say most of the creative people I've met and worked with don't survive long in the corporate environment. And most of the time the creative folks take a back seat to the suits. I say this cuz when you look at the Queen Latifa & Billy G pic, you can just see that moment where she rattles off somethin, throws in a little slang, and then Billy pops in afterword with some canned Windows-media-can-do-everything-u-want-and-more-in -your-cab-and-home remark (chuckle from the audience). The suit. Jobs, on the other hand, while I don't think he's some perfect guy, has much more 'entertainment finesse' than Bill or Ballmer. When you have these fundamental elements of getting it at the highest levels of an org, then it makes it much easier to those lower creative types on the pole to gel with those above. Why? Cuz like minds think alike.
So, when you take all of Apple's successes over the past we can say they've been possible because some creative and smart people had some wiggle room to take c
Gates predicts his company will dominate music as his company dominates in the operating system arena.
But this is an entirely new battlefield, and he is making predictions based on what he has done in a separate area, one that he, as the computer wars begun, could not have foreseen at all, and can only preach of in retrospect.
Microsoft is not in full control of what he sells--the music. Nor does Jobs. However, Apple sells music in a manner that both music companies feel exhibits some level of control to minimize easy copying and tracking of sold music as well as getting them a cut. (Having a large marketshare in selling music players that access said music store is good for business, too.) People feel more in control of what they buy in the iTunes music store.
Microsoft and other companies have a more draconian DRM than Apple's that greatly restricts how to receive music and where it can be placed. There's also the matter of several, different, and confusing music stores that all use different music players and, as a result, lead to a confusing buying purchase. Place Windows at the center of this morass of players and stores and you have Too Many Cooks Looking for Profit, Inc.
Gates, like Jobs, knows what has happened in the past. But Jobs learns from his lessons and has shown a certain business shrewness of late that Gates and others have yet to truly match today. It's this fact, and not old computer history, that will determine which is the stronger businessman of tomorrow. Want some prediction? Look at Apple's stock price over the last 3 years and compare it to the same earning trend to Microsoft. Or Dell. Or HP. Or Adobe. Or Oracle. Or IBM.
I feel that Gates in the past was in the right place, pulling the right strings at the right time. Jobs, historically, has been in the right place at the right time while creating ideas or greatly tweaking old ones to generate a new product at a time when no one else was thinking of such things.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Oh please. How the Astroturfers and sycophants wax lyrical about Chairman's Bill's never ending kind-heartedness.
Have you all already forgotten about Bill's trip to India, where he gave $100m to fight HIV, $421m to fight Linux?
Now, I ask you as to where this man's priotities lie.
Stick Men