Slashdot Mirror
Is iPod the Razor or the Blade?
Kelly McNeill writes "Robert Cringely has another update to his 'I, Cringely' series. In this piece, Cringely analyzes the business model of the iPod and how it compares it to the age old, marketing 101 'give away the razor and make money on the blades' business model. In his editorial, he demonstrates that Apple one-upped Gillette by making money on both blades and razors. The article is structured in a back and forth dialog with one of his readers who provides a very interesting analysis of the direction that Apple will be going with its rumored movie download store and how it relates to the Mac mini. On the same note, osViews has an editorial about Apple's direction in the movie download business as well, which suggests that there is evidence to suggest that Apple will use satellite networks for its Movie download store."
If Slashdot (aka michael) is going to post everything Cringely writes, could you at least make him his own section so I can exclude it? If I wanted to read his "insightful commentary on technology" I'd visit his site.
Personally I think IPod is the stubble.
Take it from someone who's attempted to shave with their IPod. It is neither razor or blade.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Did Jobs patent that one yet?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Or he just spends all day posting about this stuff?
- sigs are for wimps.
It's really practical, even as a guy, to have a bag strapped over the shoulder- Unfortunately, guys never used to do that, because it's what used to be called a Man Purse which was considered pretty weird and goofy.
Then, out of nowhere, people started calling them messenger bags to link them with the cool, stylish image of a messenger courier- For no good reason, this now has enabled any guy to carry a shoulder bag while remaining "cool".
In the same way, it used to be a bit dorky to run around with a mp3-playing computer doodad in public even though it's fun and more practical than a CD player.
Apple leveraged their "coolness" to rebrand the uber-geeky mp3-computer into a fashion item, so that people can use a practical tool without feeling weird and goofy.
Apple's Mac mini, product of marketing genius? Just recently Apple launched the Mac mini, an iPod on steroids to some, a feature rich yet compact Mac to others. But is it? Read on to find out why it is much, much more than that. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/17 76/
Could it be that the iPod is neither the razor nor the blade, and that the razor/blade business model doesn't apply?
So if Apple are one upping Gillette, it means ... err ... wait, do I care? It is a bloody computer, if sites like Slashdot covered every new HP, Dell, Fujitsu, Asus, Shuttle PC we'd be snowed under.
That's why Apple succeeds, they're like something completely different, they're not a PC maker, they're a maker of goods that work.
Well, except the old PowerMac keyboards in the 90s, dayum, you had to have fingers like superman to use them. Yuk.
Apple is a company like any other company. They've got to make a profit (and they do!). They've obviously decided that Mac OS X and supporting applications is good enough to target computers are the mass market.
Hell, you can buy a MicroATX PegasosII system from Freescale for $650, including RAM, case, processor, board, etc. PowerPC costs seem to have gone down a lot in the past year.
Sell the iPods at a loss and make up for it with iTunes. Sell iTunes at a loss and make up for it with iPods. Then make up for both with volume!
I must have missed the memo. I thought we were still fawning over Google.
Everyone talks about the iTunes/iPod bundling as being esential, but I'm sure there's lots of people like me who love the iPod, but could care less about iTunes
sorry 'bout the mess...
do not shave your private parts with the iPod Shuffle..... or any iPods :x
Take this advice wisely from somebody who's "in spandex" for a reason.
Regarding the iPod Mini and the Mac Mini, it's clear that Apple is leading the charge in the latest trend... Mini is the new X!
You probably shouldn't click this.
Why only make money on the razors or the blades when you can charge full price for both?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I'm considering getting an iPod, but the only iTMS songs I'd get would be "free Mt Dew cap" songs. I do not plan on using iTMS. I already checked their meagre listings and could not find most of the music I was looking for.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Am I the only one here who's tired of reading nonsensical marketspeak from long-irrelevant industry blowhards? Can't this guy get real work as a consultant or something?
If by Jewish you mean half arab....
Steve's father was an Egyptian Arab whose name is unkown, check out a bio at wikipedia
Monstar L
Sorry, properly html formatted now:
7 76/
Apple's Mac mini, product of marketing genius?
Just recently Apple launched the Mac mini, an iPod on steroids to some, a feature rich yet compact Mac to others. But is it? Read on to find out why it is much, much more than that.
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1
The Blade.. Why? Because it lead me into so many other apple products.. Like the mac mini.. Apple is a household name now... Before it wasnt.
My Blog
This is one of my biggest complaints with MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft. They charge the usual $55 for the game but then add on a monthly fee. I am surprised (and dismayed) that this business model has apparently been accepted so readily by the fans. It makes my personal boycotting efforts much less effective :)
Say what you will, but this came to mind before anything else...
of course, my razors never had faulty batteries.
So basically, Apple has two products (iTunesMS and iPod) and is making money on both of them? Are we supposed to be shocked and appalled or something?
I never even got that far: the shaving creme shorted out the iPod so I could never turn it on. It is hard to get a good shaze these days. I tried to shave with this razor, and all I received were massive facial bruises.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Because every time Apple does something, it's always the first time in history that it's ever been done. Or if it's not the first time, somehow they did it better.
It's like the razor-and-blade thing, except the blades are useful on with any razor, and none of the razors actually need blades, and neither of them are being sold at a loss, and the replacement cycle of the blades is almost the same as the replacement cycle of the razors, and .. they aren't razors or blades.
Okay, thanks!
In case you missed the WSJ today, P&G is giving them 58 billion in stock and promising to lay off 6000 after the merger.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
With the cost of blades being crazy expensive, and the actual handle being a tiny little piece of plastic, does anyone really think gilette is still losing money on the razors?
Why,hello there blatant self-advertisement. What a coincidence that your username on here happens to exactly match the author of your little article
Enough of this razor/blade analogy bullshit. Apple is a company that's always been willing to screw the customer for another dollar. Most of the /. crowd think Apple's are stylish? What the fuck is wrong with you people. These are gimmicks.
In the early 80s the bastards changed their distribution model from having 3rd party distributors for software to only selling through licensed dealers. I had an Apple IIe at the time and basically I couldn't buy software from that point on, without making a day trip of it. Ever since then I haven't spent a cent on this greedy stupid company that openly bends you over and fucks you up the arse.
Apple's strategy is very simple:
All inclusive high end computing.
Unlike most PC manufacturers, Apple did pretty much everything. Computer, Keyboard, Mouse, Printer, PDA, etc. etc.
Apple's advantage is their stuff works very well together (those legendary plug-and-play sinareo's). Not to mention it's easy to use, well designed, and very good looking.
Apple's plan with the iPod is just that: A simple to integrate, well supported music player on the Mac. Since most other mp3 players before the iPod didn't support the Mac.
Apple expanded to the PC industry simply because of the success and market.
Why sell music? Simply because it had the platform and opportunity to again, provide a way to easily and gracefully get good quality music onto your Apple product (see the simplicity theme?).
Apple had Quicktime, and you can bet DRM was in the works well before iTunes. DRM was the talk of the day around that time. Apple knew it needed a music player to rival winamp, and windows media player. Hence iTunes was born.
Digital photography became big. Unlike past trends, they used USB, and had a FAT32 filesystem, so the Mac was unoffically support on just about all. So what did they do? Created iPhoto, just to make life easy.
Apple's business plan is simple: be the high end quality product. All inclusive, all included.
Yes, I think Unkown Jaabez was a rug merchant in Cairo.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
They also do things worse, or do things that don't matter. The only infuence the iMac ended up having was to cause Wal-Mart to sell cheap transparent-color-plastic staplers. Oh, and there were iMac like George Foreman grills. Other "innovations" like the single-button mouse and the "jam paperclip in pinhole to eject media" were wrong turns that influenced no-one.
The thing is, the whole razor/blade analogy just doesn't fit at all no matter how you look at it.
Fundamentially, what you have is a set of products. Each makes some money (varying levels of margins), each helps to sell the others. This includes the whole realm of Mac products, as iPods help sell computers help sell computers help sell iPods. And the whole set of items in turns helps sell branches of accessories.
So really to say that one product helps sell the other is seeing only half the picture, it's ignoring that each product is built to support an interconnect with as many other products as possible. That's the recipie for Apple's sucess, just try to make products that fit into easy use with as many other Apple products as possible. Thus the combination flashdrive/music player nature of the Shuffle. And it even makes the iPod photo make more sense (from the Apple point of view) since it integrates with various parts of the iLife package that the older iPods did not. I was actually rather surprised the iPod photo did not also display slideshows from Keynote which would have made a lot of sense.
I'm not really sure what kind of analogy you can draw from this as I can think of few other examples with such a wide variety of products that do such a good job of supporting each other. Where any one product (even just the ITMS) is such an avenue to being sucked into the world of other supporting products. Perhaps other people can think of good examples from the past.
All I can say at the moment is that Apple is most like itself!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Microsoft's investments into cable over the past few years will keep the cable companies from distributing DV content in an open standard (MPEG4) but restrict the cable companies to Microsoft's Windows Media format."
I posted a couple of months ago, in a story about MS DRM getting bundled into DVD players, how MS would exert control over movie watching as it moves from a SW monopoly to a media giant. Now it's becoming clear how MS is tightening the media noose in network distribution, the real future of all media. MS apologists, please rephrase your complaints.
--
make install -not war
Why is it that every Cringely article gets posted to the front page of slashdot? Perhaps someone should submit a story that suggests people who like his writing should turn on the appropriate slashbox.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
How long before we see OSX on pocket PC type computers? A newton on steroids? For me that would be cool. I would love to have a multimedia computer that would fit in the palm of your hand and that you could hook USB and Firewire devices to. Pocket guitar and video editing studio ;)
I love Windows and Linux, but OSX seems to be geared to Multimedia, so why has it not happened yet?
There is no surprise why Apple does not need to use Gillette's strategy. The difference has to do with intrinsic and perceived value. First, whereas a Gillette razor handle is useless without a Gillette razor blade, an iPod is immediately useful with ripped CDs, MP3s, etc. iPod preceded iTunes download service and people where willing to buy iPods without the download service. iPod and iTune do complement each other, but not in the same obligatory way of razor handles and razor blades. Second, Gillette had a problem of lowering the hurdle of adoption -- people refused to buy the razor handle at full price not knowing if the new shaving system would work for them. In contrast, Apple's reputation for "stuff that just works" meant that they had no such hurdle. Apple fanatics would buy iPods sight unseen, tell the world, and drive adoption without Apple needing to discount the initial price of the player.
If anything, Apple's strategy is the reverse (TFA points this out) -- making little or no money on music and enjoying handsome margins on the hardware.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Ack.
I guess that he's right that the Apple is making money of both the razors (iPods) and blades (music), but it really is the inverse of the Gillette principle, in that they are only making money off of the razors (iPods) and making of a nickel off of the blades (music).
That a problem for you Mr Anonymous Coward? At least I'm not hiding in anonymity. It is called entertaining different trains of thought, hence getting input from different people with a different perspective. How else are you going to form a well informed opinion?
I mean, Apple (and the drinkers of its Kool Aid) are probably more guilty of it than anybody else, but I see it all over the place.
I like toys as much as anybody, but that's all they are to me: toys. It's been said over and over again to the point that it's now becoming trite, but these days, you're defined by what you buy. I never really got it until I noticed the market for knitted iPod cozies and lameass journalists who do nothing more than feed the marketing machine.
We live in an age where most of the popular music sucks, the art is derivative, the churches are shills for either the GOP or NAMBLA, and people don't care what kind of horseshit the politicians shove down their throats, so long as they can buy it at Chipotle while dowloading ringtones.
If I ever start waxing obsessive about my Zaurus, please punch me in the face.
Maybe I'm getting old. Or maybe I'm just bitter that I'm currently too broke to afford most of these pleasant diversions. Whatever.
hang brain.
The early iPod batteries didn't last long and cost a fortune to replace- $99 (at Apple Store).
I'm an apple nut as much as anyone but this is too much, its story after story about apple! Jesus.
Now if the power mac is compared to gillette foaming shave gel...
that is fine... I only rip from CDs.... the only itms songs that I have are ones that my wife likes (she does not buy whole albums unless she likes the artist, and then it is a CD) and songs for the kids (my kids , 3 and 7, think it is the coolest thing to buy their favorite song from shrek or some other movie they like and make a CD with it on there.)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The whole razor/blade thing doesn't make much sense anyway. The blade IS the product; you make a better razor by improving the blade. The handle is just a cheap piece of plastic that holds the blade.
You can use it with MacOS, you can use it with Windows, you can use it with Linux and you can use it with *BSD.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
My Mach 3 razor is really just a piece of plastic that holds a blade.
I am very skeptical that they loose any money on those razors, let alone that his has become an addage in marketing.
But I could be wrong.
For saving me the trouble of pointing that out!
Apple's iPod and ITunes is just more vendor lock-in, and it's time for the consumers to stop "consuming" until they can use the hardware of their choice to play the music of their choice.
Please clarify if I missed your point.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
How about a razor blade in your Apple?
I swear I wrote my whole response before I read yours... at least we covered different aspects of the same idea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You are an ignorant fuckwit...
Steve Jobs' mother is Jewish which means according to Jewish law he's Jewish.
What do you think the point of the "Hitler's mother was a jew" hoax is?
you leave Chipotle out of this.
Like Barbie ... between the dolls, the outfits, the houses, cars, and pets, Mattel has a gold mine!
Yes, I can really see the point of this article/post. Apple's Ipod marketing strategy is just like the razor/blade model, except for the fact that it has nothing to do with the razor/blade model in any way. Definitely a relevant and revealing article.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Consumer: iMac, iBook, iPod
Professional: PowerMac, PowerBook
Server: Xserve, Xgrid, Xsan
Small: iPod mini, Mac mini
Not in the US you can't, hell you can't even get the motherboard and processor for less then $775.00.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Where is the best place to invest and make a fortune off of this?
The obvious answer of Apple may not be the best answer. There are other places to go long or short as well.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
To carry the analogy further, I don't see a substantial increase in Apple's razor business so long as there's no explicit law banning the P2P and free(dark)net systems that would allow listeners to download freebie content. I think Apple's only chance of substantially increasing its media business is by resorting to some DRM system. Lock 'em up in an audio format that can only be played in iPod or iTunes. Then make iPod and iTunes play only those formats.
Then again mp3s are perhaps already too ubiquitous to ignore. So I suspect Microsoft has the upper hand here, as their WMA format is at least playing catch up with mp3. If Microsoft released a media player merely as decent as the XBox or Windows XP, I see Apple biting the dust.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
We all Cringe and don't care what the hack has to say. ENOUGH!
In this article, the columnist gets into a discussion of the Mac mini as "the Netflix killer," writing, "Apple has eliminated the most costly part of the NetFlix model while maintaining all of the good pieces."
l y_DVD_mailings to be competitive, but that's not all. They have to be cheap or fast or cool enough to ALSO justify the purchase of a new computer and/or the hassle of hooking a digital video stream up to a consumer television.
First of all, this is factually wrong. I just pulled up the Netflix 8-K annual report, which clearly shows annual DVD costs of either $103 million or $80 million (depending on whether amortized) and annual "fulfillment" (postage and packing) cost of $56 million.
Second, while I agree the mini Mac is a promising digital video dellivery device, it is not a NetFlix killer. The smartest thing about NetFlix is not the great delivery and rental model, but the way it exploits copyright law. Once Netflix has purchased a DVD, assuming it does so at full price outside of a special contract it enters, it is allowed to rent/loan that DVD out an infinite number of times. That battle was fought and won on its behalf by the VHS rental industry long ago.
What this means is that Netflix is happy for you to cycle through loads of different DVD titles every month, so long as postage doesn't eat too deeply into its profit margin. Essentially, its product is postage bound, not copyright bound, which is a fantastic position to be in.
Any digitally streamed movie product from Apple, however, will almost certainly be copyright bound. Unlike Netflix, Apple will need special agreements to cover every movie it delivers. The easiest sell to movie studios is an a-la-carte movie purchase system like the music on iTunes. They then need to keep the cost per movie underneath Average_Netflix_Monthly_Fee/Average_Netflix_Month
The other model for Apple is a monthly subscription with all-you-can-watch streams, possibly combined with the a-la-carte model to attract the greatest number of users. But this will be, in my estimation, a very tough sell to the studios, and even if you get it up and running, it would need to be first price compeitive with Netflix and second sufficiently cooler to justify the cost and headache of connecting the TV to a computer and possibly buying a new computer.
First hit is free?
Introductory crack?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
(OT) Are you related to Saskia Sassen?
Many of Apple's critics seem to feel that Apple only sells products because the are "hip and Cool".
Why not open the mind to the reality that Apple makes some damn fine products that really do make some things people like to do easier? It's a chicken and egg situation, how did Apple manage to sell any iPods before they became "hip and cool"? Perhaps the reality is part cool but a large part is also devoted to usability. Swatches were "cool" too, but how many swatches do you see now? The iPod has been successful long enough that I think you can rule out mere fad for the reasons behind its success.
Take that guy in the story with the iPod asking if anyone else owned one. For people that like listening to music, the iPod and iTunes combo is an excellent tool to get you music you like when and where you want it. When people think it's odd you do not have an iPod, it's the same way that people might think you odd for not having a car - not because it's hip or cool to own a car, but because the car (and the iPod) are useful tools to help you do more than you'd be able to otherwise.
If the Mac mini sells really well (and I think it will) it's not just because it is cool, but because it's a very practical computer for all sorts of uses and just happens to have gotten a lot of things right. Yes mini-ITx was there first. But Apple put it in a package a lot more people (beyond just the PC elite) could take advantage of. In a way the great thing about the Mac mini is not how cool it looks on the outside - it's that it's small and quiest enough to be HIDDEN from sight and blend into the background. Which is where computing wants to go in the first place and flys in the place of a "cool" device, which must be "on display" to show how cool you are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple's actually doing something pretty amazing -- solving the Chicken Vs. Egg paradox by providing *both* elements at the same time.
-Why buy an iPod/MacMini if I can do the same thing with X?
-Why buy music/movies through iTunes/iFlix if I have nothing to use it with?
What they are doing is providing you with mutually inclusive needs, and tieing them both together with the one thing most other products lack: style.
You need an iPod -- why? To play the songs you downloaded on iTunes. But *also* to be cool!
You'll need a MiniMac -- why? To play the movies you downloaded from iFlix. But *also* to be cool!
Face it, it's not an accident. These things were designed to work independently, but they're too complimentary not to require having both.
Now Apple sells:
- music consumption tools (AirTunes, iPod)
- music creation tools (Mac, iLife, Logic)
- a music distribution service (iTunes)
Apple doesn't seem to be making much money with their distribution service. Most of the money goes to the traditional labels because they have the content people will pay for.But if iTunes can be established as a music distribution service, Apple is in a very nice position to create a "Do-It-Yourself" label service whereby dedicated hobbyists can put their works into a real distribution channel. Apple takes less money than the traditional big labels but they get more money than being dealers of the big labels copyrights.
Of course, the big labels will abandon iTunes if they get a hint that Apple is becoming a content provider. But in two years time, who knows, iTunes may be a service that a big company couldn't back out from.
There might be hints of Apple doing the same thing with other content. They already have a wonderful set of video creation and consumption tools; once badnwidth grows they might compete with the video/movie distribution channels. And then move in toward being a content distributor/provider in the same manner as they might do with the music market.
As a fellow who remembers what a Steve Jobs Apple can do with absurd pricing models (e.g. late eighties mac and laser printer markets), I do still find it very exciting about the creative possibilities this could open up in music and video. I really hope Apple kind of succeeds in their challenge. What would be even better would be for a Libertarian/Open Source/Linux company to come in and do something similar.
click here
The razor-blade analogy is not really applicable to iPod-iTunes.
Blades are *essential* to use the razor. And blades get consumed and have to replaced. And Razor by itself has no purpose. Its the blade which provides the value/service
iTunes is not essential to use the iPod. iPod by itself provides the value/service to the owner. That explains the high margins on iPod.
iTunes is not consumable in the sense that the songs you download dont become unusable (Though their entertainment value or may go down)
In my view razor-blade analogy does not apply to iPod-iTunes at all.
I post, therefore I am
I bought my music! I support the artists!
It may not be true. And given the average of 5 songs/iPod purchased so far (although that number may be questionable since it assumes all iPods bought are still in use -- which we know, due to battery problems, isn't true) probably isn't likely in nearly every case.
Regardless of that however, I could be actually paying for my music now that I have an iPod, and no one else can gainsay me on it. No other player says that clearly.
That's coolness!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You know, you can resize iTunes and it does it really well. You can make it about the size of Winamp and it's still well laid out, incredibly usable. I don't own an ipod, but I like iTunes a lot. Took a little getting used to - previously I'd used winamp too, then XMMS on linux - but I got to the point that when I use XMMS, it seems awkward.
I will say that if you're trying to get itunes to deal with your music as a collection of files rather than music that it deals with as it will, you'll frustrate yourself. I understabd your USB hard drive desires; might be able to re-specify where Itunes keeps its library to keep it on the hard drive, and do that on all the machines you use? If you do, they should all be able to coexist and be happy. Haven't tried it, but I know you can change the default music directory.
You might want to try iTunes again, I bet there's a way for it to do exactly what you want. Other than that, I think some people have gotten XMMS working for Mac, but that's probably not an option unless you're pretty unix-y.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Although it seems silly I think you are probably rather close.
To "take back the geekiness" a bit though, perhaps I would instead suggest the model of Star Wars toys, where you could buy figures that would fit within other vehicles you could buy, and buying one stormtrooper was sure to lead you to the conclusion you really needed a whole squadron... Indeed the CommTech chips of yesteryear were an even more analogous manifestation of the same pattern.
So perhaps the toy industry in general is the analogy I was missing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
as the format for the movie industry. Instead of film in a can, movies would be transmitted by satellite to theaters. Looks like it will be to the home to the Mac Mini.
photosMy Photostream
Apple's business plan is simple: be the high end quality product. All inclusive, all included.
So where's the iCamera?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If Apple is to Gillette, does that mean that Proctor and Gamble will eventually buy Apple?
For Gillette, you can only buy your "Super Mach3 Turbo EX XL Extra Elite" blades from them (for now).
With the iPod, you can make your own MP3's, download them from other sites, whatever. Other audio formats play on the device, so their iTunes store isn't your only source of content for the device. Thus they need to profit off it.
That's an age-old advertising mantra: Young people aspire to be old. Old people aspire to be young. No surprises in the article.
But... Microsoft one-upped Apple by selling only the blades!
Or, Gillette invented one business model which has done it extremely well over a relatively very long period, while Apple is using the old "make money on everything" model, and is also doing really well with it.
Non-competing companies only "one-up" each other with finance-related percentages (and this is the only way all companies are competitors, competeting for investors).
Stick your head out of your eclectic little shell once and a while, there's plenty of music on iTunes you could enjoy.
There is indeed a fine line between a tool, and a toy.
For me, the iPod is a tool - because it lets me do things I would not practically be able to do otherwise and frees me from some efforts on my part.
In particular what I really use my iPod for is to listen to music in my car. So for me it has replaced the need to constanly move CD's around, and the damage involved to them (I had a cd player in one car that if a CD was ever so slighlty thicker than standard, would leave a huge gogue straight across the surface).
To me not listening to music in the car is not really an option. And since radio stations pretty much have poorer selections than a single CD, the iPod makes an excellent tool to replace both radio and CD in one fell swoop and give me more time for other things.
So I would say, if there's something you do all the time anyway, and a device makes that thing in some way better - then it is a tool, not a toy.
You can also reverse the process for other things. Take a table saw. Tool, right? Possibly, but a lot of people buy them just because they are big and cool and then hardly ever use it. So, I would submit that it is a toy and not a tool for many people. People are even quite happy to admit this because it is "cool" to own large power tools.
So, it should not be so surprising that some things that might seem like toys are really tools to some people, which is why they get offended when you claim that it is in fact a toy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...trying to guess what Apple is doing. It's a company prepare to step outside the mould, sometimes it works some times it dont, but things change because they try.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Cringely is an annoying, diseased gadfly, and everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt.
If it does not have Amarok, it's not worth it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The exceitment over an Apple Movie store comes not from them being the first to do so, it's that they have a track record of opening media stores that people actually use.
How many sales do you think MovieLink gets per month? How many do you think an Apple version of the store might get?
Now the technical reason behind the potential for an Apple store succeding comes not from any hardware, but from Apple's ability to talk media companies down off the ledge of DRM. Somehow, they talked big companies into releasing music you could actually share (in a limited way but with limuts that did not impede the way most people use music), tranfer to portable devices, and even burn to CDs! Becauses all online stores now support these abilities it does not seem like a big deal but consider what any other mainstream online music store at the time was allowing you do to. It was a shambles of arbitrary DRM restrictions.
So the possibility here is that an Apple movie store would let you actually buy a movie online, instead of what Movielink lets you do. That means you could burn it to DVD, or transfer it to your laptop for a flight. Can you use Movielink movies detached from the network? I doubt it very much, as I am almost sure it needs to talk to a licence server from time to time.
It seems really unlikley that any studio is going to let you burn a DVD from a downloaded $5 movie, doesn't it? Hard to imagine really. Yet Apple pulled something similar before and people are hoping they can do it again.
Personally I have no idea if they are even planning such a store, and not sure how interested in it I would be. But I do know if it's just a download rental restricted scenario, I'll stay with Netflix thanks. And I don't think the store would be much of a success in that case, no matter who is behind it (just like Movielink).
However I really can't see that Apple would be interested in opening up a store that was just like the others around, there would be no reason to use that store instead of any other. And Apple if nothing else likes to announce products with a twist, so you know if there's going to be a movie store there is some twist they feel is enough to make it compelling in ways online movie stores right now are not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First off, I'm a long time Mac user and software developer, so by rights I should feels some kind of satisifaction from seeing Apple "transcendant" again. That said, for all you people talking about iPods as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and how the Mac mini can usher in a new age of media convergence...
SHUT UP!
I'm getting sick of this... the Mini was the "iCheap" that people wanted just to be, well, cheap. It's not a flying car or a Mr. Fusion; it's just a computer. And the iPod is just about music, not science or medicine. The fawning idolitry I'm seeing here lately towards Apple is making me sick, even if it is making easier for me to get a paycheck nowadays. I can't believe the excessive rumors and pie-in-sky conjecture around Macs that I've seen over the last few months...
</RANT>
Those who complain about affect & effect on
coming on the heels of the "long tail" article (which said that more than half the money to be made in digital media is on the stuff nobody buys), bittorrent falls on its face as a distribution medium. if you only have 2 other people who want to watch "vampire sluts from outer-space", bittorrent is going to suck serious ass.
once again, cringely misunderstands a technology, while expounding it to the heavens.
I recently completed downloading a Redhat Fedora DVD image via bittorrent. This DVD image is smaller than most current SD DVD movies, let alone movies in some future HD format. It took nearly 24 hours to complete over my DSL connection. Given that, and that torrents are suppose to be efficient, isn't it completely ludicrous to suggest that a viable movie download service, especially an HD one (!!), could exist with current technology?
--- What?
No wonder Free iPods and Free Razors scams are so popular...
I had a friend who worked in a Free Razor scam, he would send them the razors for free and then charge blades every month on their credit cards for a price well above retail.
Maybe when someone taught his boss the "razor and blade" business plan he took it too literally, deciding to sell actual razors and blades...
Dumb people screwing up even dumber people... That's what scam is all about.
Look at the back of your iPod.
/. eds these days ;)
It's quite definitely the shaving *mirror*.
Honestly.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
I agree that there is a component of hype, that cannot be ignored or really even questioned.
But I don't think I agree with this part of your staement:
If we would compare devices on usability and features alone products like Apple's iPod and the Mac mini would not be able to compete with a lot of other products from manufacturers that aren't able to excel in marketing and hyping a product like Apple does.
Yes there are other music players. But if you consider the whole environement the player lives in, no other player has as compelling a usability case as the iPod/iTunes/ITMS. So even if you take away the hype (which can't really be done) then the iPod offers a compelling enough reason to own that it enjoys a significant level of base sales - and it is the significant base of reality behind the hype that keeps driving sales and also keeps the hype fed.
If you compare the Mac mini to other mini-ITx style solutions, again you have to consider the environment as a whole. I was looking at mini-iTx boxes before and was going to get one soon... but althoguh technically the Mac mini is just on par with many of these devices it also offers things like the ability to share songs purchased from ITMS, or view iPhoto libraries shared from other computers in the house. In short it leverages other networked assests in ways no other miniTX can match.
Of course if you've stayed away from that world then those reasons mean nothing to you - but even then you have the very compact size (smaller than other boxes I was looking at) and quiet nature as well that I think make it a compelling purchase on its own merits, even without the network effect from other uses it might have that other boxes cannot match. So again there is a level of sales that is based on fundamentials and not just hype (thoguh I agree that since a lot of the inital sales are sight unseen the element of hype is more at play to start with than for other products). Ovewr time if the Mac mini does not deliver, hype alone will not sustain sales and you will see it fall. I think the Cube had a lot of hype as well but that ended up falling flat, in ways I think the Mac mini does not.
Just to show I'm not a total Apple tool, I'd like to close with the consideration that I do not think the iPod photo will be that big of a seller - there's a lot of marketing and hype behind that, but fundamentially it's just a thicker color iPod with good battery life and the photo bit is a part I don't think a lot of people will end up using much. So I think sales of that device will be flat, mostly driven by people that like the extra storage.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
More people can afford to buy Gillete blades than an iPod, even if an iPod would turn out to be cheaper in the long run. Maybe if Apple offered a "free" iPod -- after the "free" PC business model -- you'd have the equivalent of a man buying a Gillete blade every couple of days. But there's not much innovation you can do for the disposable blade. After the three blades-in-one, what? A four-bladed Mach-4? I see the next advance in chin hygiene as the invention of nanocutters that you can spread and wash off for an instant shave. This would give a whole new meaning to the word "shaving" cream.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
It sounds like you are being sarcastic. You may be surprised to know that I also hold the same view toward cable. I in fact do not have cable because I do not believe that I should have to pay for an _advertised supported service_.
Besides, the new TV can be used to watch regular TV, as well as to play console games on. I can't play WoW on non-blizzard servers, can I?
I think in the end, laws will be passed and DRM as we fear it will come to be the norm.
The only solution I see is the end-run. That is, someone comes up with a virtual "network" that broadcasts videos as open stream and makes money off subscriptions, where the subscriber gets custom software that they use use to view the feeds.
Of course the ability for this to succeed depends on how compelling the content of this "network" is. But if it does succeed using a more open model, where people can do what they like with the video after purchase (including sharing with friends) then it could potentially attract users through the abilities to do things you could not with more DRM oriented networks.
The only way you can defeat DRM is to display that a media company going without DRM can beat one (or more) other media companies using it heavily. It may take a while, but when bean-counters realize the DRM they are paying for does nothing but hurt sales, it will be gone before you know it. Media companies are not pushing DRM because they are evil (OK, perhaps some are...) they are doing it because they honestly think that without DRM they will loose sales. They cannot imagine anything else being the case even if you use reason and logic.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unfortunately, man boobs will never be fashionable, even if they do look super model quality :-) All those women would start to get really jealous and angry once you start to;
* not wear bras
* have feelathon moments at the bar
* be topless on hot days or at the pool
* perving at guys is acceptable
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
They did make a range of early digital cameras under the QuickTake name. This was in 93-94 iirc. Anyway they also have a webcam now called the iSight which is a pretty good firewire web cam.
If you read some forums like xlr8your mac (or whatever it is) people are expirmenting with ways to play back HD video on 1.25GHz powerbooks (roughly the same as the Mini), and have got it working for at least 720p. The Elgato software simply does not use the video card for acceleration at the moment which is why the requirements are off the chart.
Even true 720p support from movies is a step up from the 480p current non-upscaling players provide. An online movie store does not have to be 1080i, a lot of people would think 720p was pretty good.
However I agree with you that I do not think Cringley has a very good pulse on what Apple is doing. I don't even think Apple released the Mac mini with any thought to it being an HTPC as it stands right now, and tend to agree an online mvoie store would be targeted at least at a next generation Mac mini.
I just happen to think that it's capable of the task right now with a bit of persuation and there are so many people that want that to happen, that it will (not the Apple store part but the Mac mini as HTPC part).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Netflix doesn't buy the DVDs. It pays for them by using a revenue sharing agreement with the studios. From their site
"Imagine a Mac Minicluster running Apple's xGrid software. Start with a 16-port fast Ethernet switch and stack 16 Mac Minis on top"
That leads to a new saying:
"Never underestimate the computing power of a closet full of Mac Minis"
But they don't loose money either, which is the core of the whole razor/blade thing. They are at least operating at breakeven instead of "giving away the razor".
Actually the artists do better than I thought they would, I remember reading something like $.10 a song (though it would be less than a penny).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The iPod is the razor, the battery is the blade.
The iPod is the blade, while the iPod battery is the razor. :p
Apple didn't invent the idea of high prices for both razors and blades. Those damn Mach whatever blades cost big bucks, and so do the blades. But they're the only ones that work for me without shredding flesh, so I pay the money gladly.
Apple has also said that it's prepared to take a bath on the music store to expand the business. It has repeatedly warned financial analysts not to expect iTunes to be a profit center.
At which point Cringely's case falls down around his ears, and we go back to square one.
They're giving away a razor in a world where, on every street corner there's a sketchy guy calling out "hey, free gillete quality razors!"
SPAM
He was not going to have other users act as bittorrent nodes, instead all of the Akamai nodes (which are all over the place geographcially) would act as seeds to insure people get connections from the phsically closest node possible (and thus the cheapest to send).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OT I know, but...
Have you ever compared let's say a bag of ten schick slim twins or Bic plus to the ten pack of blade refills?
It has never made any sense to me... Shouldn't the ten refills be less than a bag of razors? Seriously look closely and you may just save a few bucks...
If the argument is "I already have the handle..." So what. Throw it away. It's not any less disposable than what's in the bag.
Since I'm off topic anyway, what the $&#@ do you need three or four blades for? Maybe it's just me and my coarse facial hair, but they don't seem to do any better job than a disposable with two blades, which is, get clogged up with hair.
On the other hand, I see the double edged razor blades for a steal, but can never seem to find the razor for them...
I've been using electric lately and living with the stubble.
Here in Australia we can't buy music from the iTunes music store at all, we can browse through it but can't make purchases. Despite this fact iPods are absolutely everywhere. It was the 'big item' last christmas and every second person seems to have one. (I bought one a year ago and I think it's great)
This seems to lend weight to the argument that the razor/blades model is irrelevant in this case as people buy the iPods even though they can't use the iTunes music store.
The iPod exemplifies the core differentiating values of Apple: high design, high functionality, human-centered engineering, (at the time) forward-thinking tech. The iPod gives users a relatively low-cost "sample" of the "Apple Experience" with the aim being that iPod users get hooked enough that they're going to switch their computing platform. The razor/razor-blade analogy doesn't apply at all.
Well, this is the first digital camera I ever saw.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
And that's exactly what I said in the original article. I just used different words to say it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When I want a new song, I rip it off the CD. I get to keep the full quality CD (backup) copy, AND have an-unfettered mp3 that sounds great!
How many other folks like the iPod hardware, but, like me, have no plans to use the iTunes service?
Oh, yeah, in case anyone was wondering, when the battery needs changing I will be doing that myself too - I do NOT want to pay Apple $100 to do a $39 job, and not even get my unit back!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
> when I buy music, I buy the actual album, supporting my local
> independant record store.
Do what I do:
When you buy that album, but it *USED* from your indie record store. That way you not only support your local record store (moreso... they usually have a higher profit margin on their used merch than on new); but you save yourself a few bucks; and you deny the likes of the RIAA/Metallica the bucks that you DO spend.
This way I get to have my cake, and eat it too. And there's a local record shop within walking distance of my work; so it's no problem to drop in every so often and see what's in the used bin. And I'm more than willing to wait until a used copy shows up, if that'll deny a little bit of money to hillary and lars.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
This is offtopic but interesting. If you want to use a real razor with a replaceable blade, its hard to find them. I found a site that sells them. Cool stuff, I have always shaved with an old Gillette. http://www.leesrazors.com/
"brxref
You need an iPod -- why? To have easy access to the 300 CDs you've bought in the past 20 years.
You need a mini Mac -- why? To use the computer!
GPL Deconstructed
The analogy is even worse if you try to say why selling Razors are like selling iPods. The razor people are making a killing on blades, taking something that is essentially free to them and selling it at an enormous markup using a forced lock-in to try and milk every last drop. Few people buy an iPod because they're locked into apple music.
The iPod is neither free, nor is it being given away as free. The songs are neither free nor are they being given away as free. You can't really say that the razor blades are like the songs, or that the handle is like the iPod. The analogy falls down, and therefore the reverse analogy falls down.
If you're looking for reasons for Apple's success... How about they invested a lot in elegance and simplicity of design, created something truly usable, and sold it for a little more than other devices? People are willing to pay for well-designed things, especially when it comes to consumer entertainment devices. Why is this such a hard concept?
The ______ Agenda
Apple was selling digicams years and years ago, my boss has one or two lying around somewhere (he's a mac nerd). I'm not really sure why they don't bring it back now that they're popular and affordable.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I also heard an analysis of messenger bags (and SUV's) for professionals
Speaking as a Bike Messenger with his very own, 'authentic' 7 year old messenger bag (which, because I happen to be a Mac head, has a large old school Apple logo sewn onto it's flap), -- used for delivering packages way more than for looking cool, or carrying my electronics and business papers -- I am quite offended to hear messenger bags compared to SUVs.
SUVs happen to be to messengers what Microsoft has been to Apple -- large lumbering beasts too concerned with themselves to care what damage they have been inflicting on the little guy.
All the same, it's sad how things are misappropriated in that way.
In the same vein, the old school SUV's were made for scientists and soldiers. Range Rover, Humvee come to mind, but they're probably not the first. Then soccer moms realized that they looked cooler than minivans and the gas guzzling began.
I would never buy an SUV, I think they're a black mark on our society. My '98 Honda Accord will last me until the prices on hybrids come down (mmm... hybrid Accord).
I held out against the messenger bag fad as long as I could, but it's just more practical for my 17" laptop than a regular backpack (sorry, actual messengers who do more work than me).
I was powerless to resist the iPod and all associated iGadgets...
Sassen,
Interesting article, especially your shock that people do not always buy products for merely their function. It's good that you're thinking about this, but I think it's important that you don't dismiss out-of-hand this behavior as merely herd mentality and slavish devotion to fashion.
On the other hand, I'm not going to preach to you about the ease-of-use, the user experience of Apple products, blah blah blah. I'm not in fanboi mode at the moment.
What I am suggesting is that you look deeper, far deeper, at the phenomenon. Don't ask "What makes one object of desire better than another object of desire with equivalent functionality?" Instead ask, "What purpose does any object of desire serve, beyond its functionality?"
You're obviously capable of making such a leap. And I would suggest to you that understanding this question and its possible implications are far more important than the first question.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Humvees old school?!?!?
JEEPS are OLD SCHOOL!
We actually use our 95 Jeep Cherokee the way it was meant to be used: climbing 3 ft high rocks and dropping down 60-degree slopes into muddy ravines.
The only thing a Humvee is good for is towing practice for Jeeps!
Sorry for going a leeetle off-topic, but I HAD to defend the good old Jeep!
Life is short: void the warranty.
Basically, your entire article says nothing. It may say that you are not fooled by marketing campaigns. But that would mean that the article is about you..oh, that is what the anon cow meant by self-promotion. Simply stating the obvious is hardly giving input from a different perspective.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
The iPod increases Apple computer sales, and Apple computer sales increase iPod usage. iPod usage increases digital audio purchasing and digital audio purchasing increases the need for audio gadgets like the iPod. It's all like a blade that requires a mini-blade that actually requires another blade which is in fact the first blade. meh
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
It's currently in litigation, hasn't gone to trial, and we haven't heard a peep in quite some time.
No one is exactly sure of what Apple is contractually allowed to do and prohibited from doing because the agreement is secret.
The mills of the law grind exceedingly fine, but damn, they sure take a while!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Thank you for providing evidence for my theory that the razors and blades analogy holds true except when it doesn't, no matter how hard you twist.
See also my "Analogies are like metaphors except they're not" theory.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The ipod nor the music/movie store are the razors, they are *both* the blades. The razor is itunes *the software*.
That is NOT a Humvee. That is an H2. But it is fun to make fun of them. :)
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
If you take it literally I would agree, but I think you have to admit that the concept it expresses is better the way it's worded now. After all, what would Apple miss if Microsoft were gone? They would just finish porting OpenOffice, make it 100x more friendly, and call it a day.
Plus it's a last line of defense in case I get accused of Apple worship; I can just point to the quote and to Voltaires quote and create the illusion of reasonable doubt.
Even though I had not thought of it before when the quote came to me, I kind of like the duality of the quote with the other meaning behind it...
Thanks for pointing that out, it's a really interesting point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am not really an expert by any means, but I have done enough reading and playing around with video to hopefully answer your question.
First off, I will say that you seem to have a more solid understanding of "normal" video than I do, as is evidenced by your NTSC question - I knew it was 29.97 (or thereabouts) but I couldn't really answer why at the moment (though I'm sure I knew at one point). I really only got into video starting with DV camcorders and have had little exposure to the vagaries of analog video (though I know a lot more about component video than I thought I would from setting up a lot of different things).
You are right that normally the delivery method has been NTSC or PAL based, but for computers - if you think about it the typical computer screen is refreshing at around 70Hz, so you can actually have a variable FPS setting for any given movie, either higher or lower than standard TV. The computer doesn't care as the refresh rate of the screen is different anyway, though of course if you display things faster than the computer screen refreshes it really doesn't matter much since you won't be able to tell.
You probably read it but at one point Roger Ebert was very excited about a new movie technology that shot on standard film, but increased the framerate to something like 60 or 70 FPS, and he said the result was amazing. I have to say that during pans sometimes I can really see the limitations of 24 FPS projections, as you can detect stuff jumping too much... with computer output you could in theory achieve these higher framerates! Of course in reality there are two things that limit you - one is that most video is only going to be captured using standard cameras, so even higher-end cameras are only going to be 24P still.
The second aspect is when you start hooking up PC's to real video displays, I think the reason why they say that some displays are not really compatible with PC's even though they have DVI connectors is that they can only be driven so fast, and the PC's can only go so slow (as in not slow enough for the display). That's one reason I got a projector instead of a standard HDTV, as the ability to solidly reproduce computer displays was important to me.
Now finally to wander back to your question, you can definitely have computer video come across at the "real" framerate of 24p to save bandwidth. For example, I have a program called "SnapsProX" that lets you take movies of any region on the computer screen, and when you are done you have the option of saving it in a whole range of framerates, even 29.97 and 24 FPS. So we know that a wide range of framerates are possible for most computer video formats, even faster if it's possibly to do so (rendered video could do this).
Now as for the mastering at 24P instead of PAL or NTSC rates, if you think about it the process of digitizing a film is one of frame-by-frame scanning, which means by definition the capture is 24 FPS because there are 24 frames for every second of film. So for every DVD someone somewhere has a master DV copy of each film at 24P (not interlaced because we know each scan is a full frame of film). Now of course if the master is some kind of NTSC or PAL tape, that's a difefrent matter (doubt many real movies have that problem).
It also makes a lot of sense as they can do the cleanup on the master 24P video, then transcode the clean copy into different framerates and formats (I believe the process is way more difficult than I make it sound just to get the colors to come out well, which I think you would know more about than I). The computer has to do something like this as well when it is playing a video at a different display rate than the screen itself, basically the act of drawing the current frame to the screen is removed from the buffer that is refreshed for display.
So Cringley may well be full of shit about the movie store, but in terms of technical content I think he's pretty accurate. After all, that's always the easiest part to get write in journalism!
I hope this answers the question, and I did not wander to far afield - for some reason the other parts seemed pertinent in terms of background, even the Ebert thing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comparing the iPod and Mac to the classic Gillette razor and blade paradigm isn't really accurate. Gillette sells those products in the mass-market, to the mass-market, at prices the mass-market can afford, whereas Apple sells their products only somewhat in the mass-market (mostly just their iPods; everything else is still niche), to a niche market, at prices that the mass-market doesn't want to afford when comparing Apple's products to their Wintel counterparts (and possibly cannot afford, in some practical (not political) Lintel cases).
Moreover, unlike Gillette, Apple doesn't really cater to the masses, they cater to a more upscale market (or at least that's the way their market sees themselves, and they spend accordingly).
It's an interesting, but inaccurate comparison, IMO. I'm sure there's a better analogy for Apple's marketing, but none come to mind...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
I think Bob needs a little lesson in GFLOPS and mini Macs. I'd love him to explain how he was able to get 720 gigFLOPs from 16 mini Macs. I want one too Bob! Show me the voodoo math!
Is in regards to inkjet printers and cartridges. Companies are selling printers now for ridiculously low prices, probably at a loss, and then selling cartridges for huge prices. One could argue of the alternative ways to refill ink (ways to reuse them by manually refilling ink, buying no-name cartridges, etc), but in reality, the masses will buy replacements for their printer from the brandname. Printers are the razor, cartridges are the blade. And apparently it's working, since so many decent inkjet printers are readily available new for $99 or less, and have been so for a few years already. iPod and iTMS? For reasons already stated by other posters, I don't think it applies so much.
I guess it depends on the AAC quality - does it come in different bitrates from iTunes?
i don't think apple is looking it in terms of the razor or blade... it seems it's more of a gateway to try and boast the features and advantages of an apple powered life (ipod, macmini, ibook) the fact thta they're making loads of money on tunes and pods it just a byproduct...
Get your torrents...