Slashdot Mirror
Video iPod Apple's First Bad Move?
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has had a lot of success with the iPod brand the past few years. The NYT has an article up wondering if, just maybe, this week's release of the video iPod was too soon." From the article: "Everyone from Microsoft to Comcast - in other words, the usual suspects - is working on or looking at similar pocket-size recorders. At least two companies, Pace Micro Technology of Britain and Samsung of South Korea, have said they plan to introduce models early next year. There is also TivoToGo, a service that can forward recorded shows to various mobile devices, even Sony PSP handheld gaming units ... [anyway,] the video iPod only has it half right: if it took material from the television as readily as it did from the Internet, it could be a blockbuster. But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free? Unlike its musical forebear, the video iPod may not be ready for prime time. "
Mr. Siklos seems to miss the point, and the details. Apple substantially downplayed the video capability of the iPod, and the audience reaction was understandably lukewarm considering the limited selection and quality of available content.
As for the details: There already is a "bogeyman" of online video: BitTorrent. Hell, it's the bogeyman of online everything, depending on who you ask. It's no centralized Napster, but that's mostly due to the lessons learned from Napster.
There are TV tuners for computers available. How long until it's seamless to drop content from your PVR software into your iTunes Library and onto your iPod? I noticed I can't drag just any video into my iTunes Library, but I haven't played enough to really see about adding my own video.
Trying to wedge PVR functionality into the portable device is overkill. It's a player. Let the computer do the work... that's why it's there.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
"Video iPod Apple's First Bad Move? Unlike its musical forebear, the video iPod may not be ready for prime time. "
First, the ipod was not ready for prime time when it first appeared and yet look at what Apple has accomplished. When the 1st ipod came out in 2001 there was no itunes music store, no cottage industry of ipod accessories, no support for PCs and no cult of ipod. The only way to get music on your ipod was to rip cds yourself or download mp3s and get access to a Mac.
Now it's 2005 and the ipod is firmly entrenched in the American psyche and it is easy to get audio onto an ipod but difficult to get video on it unless you rip dvds or download optimized movie files yourself. The situation is hardly any different.
Second, Apple is not selling a Video-ipod or vpod or anything else that emphasizes video. Apple's selling ipods, some of which have video playback capabilities. These other companies are trying to sell hardware that may have no real market.
http://nyamenation.org/
"But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?"
and why would a person download from iTunes when free P2P networks exist?
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
And why do people pay $1.99 for a ring tone that lasts 30 seconds? As expensive as $2 sounds for a TV episode sounds, you can never underestimate the wastefulness of the consumer. I don't think Apple will find any problems making money off of selling videos, as long as they have reasonable co-operation from networks, and provide enough free content themselves, someone out there will spend the money.
If the download was fast and I'd missed my favorite show, I might pay $1.99 to see it. It's true that the shows are also likely to be on BitTorrent, but that has legal issues, and the download might not be reliable. For people who don't watch much TV, the occasional $1.99 would work out cheaper than buying a TiVO and a subscription.
I assume you'll be able to watch it on a PC or a TV, not just a tiny iPod screen.
But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?
The best reason I can think of is that you don't have to think of it in advance. You don't have to know when it's on; you don't have to remember to program your TiVo/VCR. You can say any time, "Oh, yeah, I think I'd like to watch that" and download it.
Or to put in another way: true cable a la carte, which consumers have been demanding for years and unable to get.
The end of "Oh, was that good? I missed it!" would be a revolution in television.
But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?
Er... those of us without cable television? Who will never have cable television, because we absolutely refuse to pay to view commercials?
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
On the contrary, I think that Apple may be tapping into a potential gold mine. There isn't much of a retail industry around online music video content at the moment. Certainly not in the same way that there is for music. If they can make the online purchase of music videos as ubiquitous as they have done for music, they stand to make a mint.
Then there's "porn in your pocket, anytime, anywhere". Could be just the thing to spice up marital play time after the kids have gone to bed
"But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?"
My response: "But who would pay $.99 to download a song when I could hook up to the radio and download the song for free?"
BECAUSE MY TIME IS WORTH MONEY.
Most people want to highlight why it's bad. With music, as most slashdotters recognise, it's far more portable than video. You can listen to video while driving to work, travelling, standing in line, exercising, jogging, etc. Video requires eyeballs, of course, which are often doing other things. It might work while travelling on a train or plane, standing in line, or exercising, but video is not workable on 40% of the list I mentioned
However:
1) People do want to take video with them. Take a look at the recent portable kid video players. They've mostly been crap, but they are for kids who don't care as much about quality, and for parents who want to occupy their children on long trips and commutes. Also, if you are riding the train to work every day, why not get that extra episode in during the commute?
2) Get into the market now and define the standard everyone has to beat. Those kid players I mentioned were dismissed as toys. The iPod has a mystique as a sexy "entertainment device." The video isn't all that bad, for that size of a screen anyway, and you don't need high quality video for Desperate Housewives, it's a dialog and situationally driven show.
Apple is always on the edge. If they are first to market, a lukewarm response as the front runner is just as good as a strong success in a large field of competitors. Now the competitors have to play catchup while Apple surges forward with new ideas.
3) It's still a 30/60 GB audio iPod. The high end iPods before video could practically be replaced by the shuffle and Nano because those two fill strong niches and are just about perfect for their market segment. The high end iPod needed an update to justify it's existence. In this manner, Apple keeps the high end and justifies distributing new versions. It's similar to the idea of putting a camera in a phone. It won't but hugely useful but it will be cute and people will eventually catch on and want to have it.
Personally, I don't want a Video iPod for any of these reasons and I'm a touch of a videophile so the screen will be way too small for me. Come back to me when someone creates widely available sunglasses that project an image for me that looks like a 30 inch widescreen TV that no one else can see and I'll buy it.
However, in terms of the market, this isn't all that bad as people make it out to be. The NY times smells that, unlike the other products, the video iPod is not a huge smash, and therefore wants to start the FUD right away, just like any other sensationalistic ad-driven media whore of a news paper.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
As Jobs has stated 3 times; video is a BONUS on top of a normal music player. the iPod has been, is, and will be a MUSIC player. Just like the additional funtionality of being able to display photo's from the photo library, or calendars and contacts, it can now display video from the video/movies library. It is NOT A VIDEO iPod. It's a music player that also happane to play some video formats. It is NOT a dedicated handheld video machine. When Apple built calendars and contacts into teh iPod, did ANYONE headline "Apple's PDA iPod a bad move?"
It's the new iPod. It just happens to do video.
From my point of view they announced the 5th gen iPod, which some were waiting for. For the same price as the 4th gen 60GB iPod color you get one with a better screen, *way* more battery life (going from 12 to 20 hrs) and smaller. Yeah, it does video, but that's not what it's really about. If the feature takes off then expect to see something new, but if it doesn't then who cares - it still costs the same.
The new iPod is what I was holding off for - a regular iPod using the latest PortalPlayer chipset to up the battery life, and maybe some new features. I suppose they might have waited for Hitachi's new 80gig perpendicular drive to up the content, but otherwise I'm happy.
And BTW, I ordered white because it's the One True iPod color. Anyone who orders black is a heretic and should be beaten.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
This glass is only half full!
I want it thrown out! Give me one that's half empty!
Come on. The device isn't even out yet.
I see this as a great opportunity for the smaller people out there to provide unique content. Podcast subscriptions should point out that people don't want "popular" all the time. What's in itunes' top 20 podcasts?
There's only 2 podcasts that could be tied to a commercial show. Everything else is talk, news, or NPR!
I see a forbear of people willing to give original content a chance here. It's worked out well for ifilm and atom films, why couldn't it work here?
The paid content will come. It's a revenue stream, and there's nothing to suggest that other studios wouldn't follow. It's easy money and they don't have to produce a physical product unlike a DVD. If NBC gets their act together, they'll get WB up with them and get Friends on there. You want to see sales? Get that or Simpsons on there, and you've filled the ipods of every potential future client. That and some CNN broadcast videos and no one will ever complain.
The only misstep I think they made with the ipod is the current paid content. LOST is a very dark show. It's not easy to distinguish jungle environments on a small screen. They should have started with a lineup of more comedy and less drama. They could put "Whose Line Is It Anyway" on there and it would have been a lot better choice that something from the disney channel.
Nothing like low-res porn on a 2-inch screen to get the wife all hot and bothered.
Dude, that just means you look big in comparison.
This is not a losing situation.
Okay, here's what a lot of people aren't quite getting:
1. It's not a 'Video iPod', it's just an iPod. This iPod is replacing the previous bunch of iPods. It's the same price, with slighty better features. And it's smaller than the old top-of-the-line iPods.
2. Video is an extra bonus feature.
There is no downside here if you don't think of it as a dedicated video player but rather just think of it as a music player that can also view videos. Apple isn't bringing a video player to market too early, they're bringing out a new version of their extremely popular music player which will also give them the opportunity to capture a big chunk of the portable video market if and when it ever actually appears.
My main complaints with a "Video iPod" when the idea was first breached was that I didn't want to have a player that was too bulky to use as a normal music player like I do with my current 4th Gen 20gig iPod. What Apple actually came out with was a player that was less bulky than the old iPod for the exact same price. And while I wouldn't want to watch movies on the iPod screen, I would be up for watching episodes of television shows and video podcasts (e.g., Rocketboom and the like) on it.
Far from being a mistake, Apple has taken the crappy situation of how to market a portable video player where there's no real portable video player market and has reduced it to the problem of how to sell a music player, which they already know the solution to.
Not very many people were buying music online or music players at the time the iPod came out. But that's irrelevant from what I can tell. It seems to me that Apple finds markets where people think there isn't one by taking a good idea and making it accessible to non-geeks. End of story.
There are other analogs out there to this. Remember what the Internet was like prior to the World Wide Web and Netscape and AOL (shudder) making it accessible to normal human beings? The popularity of the Internet utterly exploded when those came about because suddenly non-geeks could use it. Prior to that, I bet lots of people who use the web on a daily basis would have claimed no need for a computer in their life. A market was created by de-geeking it.
Once they've done that and once they do it in a way that makes sense to people who don't live and work 24/7 behind a keyboard, then they've got a hot product on their hands and a market where nobody saw one before. That's why all these "iPod killers" that have come and gone have failed to make a dent in Apple's dominance. It's not the hardware superiority. It's the overall design, the iPod and how easy it is to use with iTunes and the music store and how well designed it is and the interface and blah blah blah.
So anyone who thinks Apple is going to flub the video iPod is failing to learn from history. Now that TV shows can be downloaded and watched without having to use torrents or Usenet or complicated tools to reassemble large files or download codecs that make it playable, it will certainly be a success. And there are loads of people out there more than happy to pay $2 to avoid all that hassle.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
or as the blurb put it: "who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?"
People who missed taping an episode?
The pornpod will be a yanking success. While you will not want to be watching porn in the Mall (according to CNN) you will be subscribing to loads of serial porn. Go porn go! Once again porn drives innovation.
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
Smartest post I've read here. Apple was doing well with the iPod, but they screwed up by releasing the a new iPod, with all the old iPod's features, plus some more, at the same price? Huh?
From the consumer's point of view, the iPod has lost *nothing* with the addition of these features-- except maybe some of the bulk, since these new ones are *thinner*. If the iPod was a good device before, then these features don't make it any more complicated or problematic. It just adds a couple features which you might not use. There's no downside here.
Whether or not selling videos for it becomes successful, it's simply a new and improved iPod, and that alone is enough.
Now, if the video capabilities successfully create a market, Apple wins even more. It doesn't make sense for them to ignore that unproven market, when it's obvious that competitors won't. If the market doesn't materialize, Apple has only lost some relatively minor development costs and a couple of bucks/unit in COG.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
This is typical Apple bashing that we see every quarter. The formula is some pundit picks out the next "threat" to iPod's dominance in the hopes that this will be the quarter that he will be hailed as the person that had the "foresight" to predict's Apple's demise and save his investors lots of money. Before it was the fact that other players that had "more features" which only served to confuse users that wanted something simple. Then it was players that had FM radio.. you know that broadcast medium that plays the same rotation of 20 songs between commercials. Then it was Microsoft's mafia of mediocre media devices, which have yet to get off the ground. Then it was the cell phone. You know, the same cell that can't keep a connection for more than 10 minutes was supposed somehow become the streaming platform that crushed the iPod. Since these pundits have had so much trouble finding another company that can destroy iPod's dominance, they must now look at the only enemy that could possibly defeat it... ITSELF. Problem is, Apple's strategy is perfectly brilliant. First off, they picked television shows instead of movies. I dismissed the video iPod at first because I agree that no one wants to watch movies on a two inch screen. BUT, catching up on a television show you missed is a completely different thing. The primary goal of downloading a television show is to get fill in information before the next episode comes. If that means watching it on a small screen so be it. With the video iPod you get to catch up on your show on the subway or during a lunch break. This is a good thing and a winner that no one else thought of doing. The biggest loser in my opinion is AOL because for years they've been sitting on a huge library of content that they could done the same thing with YEARS AGO. But instead, piracy paralysis kept them from doing anything. Now AOL has egg on its face as it watches Steve Jobs gloat on stage as the *forefather* of video download distribution. AOL could have been giving its client away for free to broadband users and used it as a storefront to download this library. But they failed to sieze the opportunity and they have no one to blame but themselves.
But then who would pay $1.99 to download an episode of 'Lost' from iTunes if the iPod could also hook up to your television and record that same episode free?
The same people who pay $5-10 a month for program guide info so they can use their TiVo and record the show, instead of using a VCR for free?
The same people who spend $20 a season to own it on DVD (note: these same people could rip the DVD and convert to a format/resolution for use on their iPod, without having to purchase it again)?
It's not the content, it's the ease of getting the content.
Hey, here's an idea, let's pretend the iPod can't play video...
Mock Press Snippit:
CUPERTINO- This week, Steve Jobs unvieled an update to Apple Computers popular iPod, currently the world's highest selling digital music player, at a special invitation-only press event. The new models are slightly thinner than the previous generation and have larger color screens. They also boast five hours more estimated battery life, and for the first time are now available in black as well as the original white. Prices are unchanged from the previous models, with the 30GB model priced at $299.95, and 60GB for $399.95.
Yeah, that has failure written all over it.
Honestly, the new iPod seems like a proof of concept more than the destination. It is going to have to support HD, or at least HD output in the near future to be relevant. The two situations are not perfect parallels. There are several other differences, including the ability to rip CDs vs DCMA protected DVDs and the presence of the iTunes store (there at launch for video, not there for iPod). Some consumers really care about HD. Many don't right now. This will be more of an issue in two years, by which time there will be a product to accomodate HD. I wouldn't be surprised if the next rev (in a year?) has a widescreen and HD support.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Apple has made several bad moves, such as the Lisa and Apple III.
Apple survived, mainly because of their culture to innovate.
As others have said better than I can, the Video iPod is probably not a bad move.
It isn't the first pocket video machine, and isn't the best.
And who needs a pocket video machine anyway?
But it is too early to label it a "bad move". The recent history of the iPod makes me think this thing will be wildly successful.