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2004 Digital Media Winners and Losers
An anonymous reader writes "MP3 Newswire has just released Richard Menta's annual digital media winners and losers list. Apple tops the winners list for the second year in a row as does eDonkey and last spring's Grey Album protest. Losers include the term iPod Killers, Winamp, and the WMA format. BitTorrent made both lists. Menta also released a 2005 wishlist. Topping that list is an iPod in-dash unit similar to the old Rio Car. You can see Menta's previous years winners and losers lists."
WMA's ability to load web content is NOT merely flaw. It's a flawed feature.
Think like Microsoft for a second. All it wants to do is dominate without any concern for security. It's trying to get the content industry to use its WMA format. Some lackey speaks up at a meeting:
"I have a great idea. Let's add a feature to WMA so that it'll open up web content. So if EMI wants to distribute an WMA song it'll open an option to buy the whole CD."
Of course all the brainless other lackeys at Microsoft agree that it's a great idea and implements it, completely oblivious to any security concerns.
My question is whether Microsoft will be smart enough to disable this feature in future releases.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I think it points to the fact that as far as the 'masses' are concerned it did something to bring a good product that NORMAL people can use.
Sure a technophile can do all this stuff, but the cost is normally a lack of social skills from all the time it takes to learn new techonology. Sure I've known people who can program their own stuff but that's not your 'normal person'.
Despite all the problems TIVO has due to competition it did brink to the markeplace something that the vast majority of people can use easily.
I think the ratio of 'normal people' to 'tech savy' is a fairly big difference. Just think of all the people that have no clue what SpyWare is, or how to use WindowsUpdate (Normal people don't use *nix. So don't flame me lol).
Just my 2c
are unfortunately the customers
Hey, this is my sig, if you don't like it, STOP READING MY POSTS!
I think what he was saying is that as good as any of those devices might be, none of them sell like the iPod.
To outdo the iPod you need to outdo the concept -- not just make what amounts to an iPod with way-too-small video playback and no iTMS compatibility. There are basically three companies that I believe could not only outdo the iPod in quality but then move the merchandise: Sony (if they get their act together), Microsoft (with their massive R&D potential), and Apple itself (Where do you think the iPod profits and the interest from that $4bn bank account are going? Most likely into research, the lifeblood of any company that depends largely on innovation).
It's my personal theory that the halo effect was just what Apple had in mind when they went full-bore with iPod and iTunes for Windows -- what may be the world's first self-sustaining itself-profitable ad campaign, with the intention of getting an iMac onto every desk and a PowerBook into every briefcase, with far higher margins than the iPod and a greater potential for sale of software.
This is particularly true for the iTunes Music Store, which is run at break-even -- its purpose is to provide iPod filler and introduce people slowly to Apple software. Why do you think the Windows version looks a lot like something out of OS X, when they could have easily made it look more like a regular Windows app? So when people go to the Apple store to get an iPod accessory, they stop to look at the G5 -- who could resist? -- and everything looks "just like iTunes" and they take one home. So it's not just a self-sustaining profitable ad campaign, but a multitiered one -- iTMS draws people to the iPod or vice versa, the iPod draws them into the Apple store or to the rear right corner of CompUSA, and then they buy a Mac.
That's why all the other online music stores are failing -- Napster isn't a hardware company, but they have to compete with Apple, which is running a superior product at just over even for the purposes of selling more hardware. So if anything is more "loser" than a theoretical iPod killer, it's an iTunes killer -- the Music Store business model isn't designed to be necessarily profitable (at least not to the extent of being a company's main business), but rather to transfer a low cost to the consumer to increase the likelihood of purchasing hardware.