Tim Wilson
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[Mark Suszko] “I have to chuckle at Apple Prognosticators because they remind me of the “Kremlinologists” at State, NSA, CIA, etc. who’s job was to use whatever ouija boards and other data sources they could find, to interpret what was on Moscow’s mind from moment to moment.”
We’re all the equivalent of Kremlinologists re Apple, no? Applogolists? Certainly in this forum.
One of the fun things about watching this is that Apple has a habit of making EVERYONE wrong, no matter what they guessed about what was coming. I’m okay with that. It’s kind of comforting to find myself so wrong about so much, so often. All is right with the world.
I mean, seriously, what would happen if I was right any meaningful percentage of the time? What would my kids say? What would my wife say? The wheels would fall off my entire world.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Chris Kenny] “Apple offered to take a substantially smaller cut than Amazon was taking and let publishers set their own prices. Did publishers turn around and say “Great! Now that we’re getting 70% instead of 30-40%, we can lower prices”? They did not. They raised prices. “
And we have Apple to thank for it. They very explicitly conspired with publishers to raise prices. This isn’t some shadow theory. I’ve read the emails and with a quick Google search, you can too. Raising prices was Steve’s explicit goal from the beginning. Again, not a shadow theory. He said so. That part is public even outside the DoJ’s filing. Look it up.
The fact is that they had a number of paths to choose, and chose one based on collusion between competitors to fix prices that were higher than previous market standards, with punishment for those who deviated from the plan.
Sure, Apple didn’t have the upper hand for once, and tried to play a different game than the market leader was playing. Why not? It has worked for them before. Not this time.
The irony is that once this ridiculous arrangement is undone, I think Apple’s book fortunes are potentially limitless. If I was Amazon, I’d be praying that Apple tries to stay the course.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Chris Kenny] “He was sort of right about books:”
The problem isn’t eBooks. It’s that Apple decided to do the exact opposite of what they did for iTunes. Instead of a huge library of cheap stuff, they have a tiny library of expensive stuff.
I’m frankly amazed that they’ve sold even ONE book. I can buy from a dramatically wider universe through Amazon, almost always for less, and sometimes a LOT less, and read them on my iDevices and computer desktop with the Kindle app just fine thanks.
In fact, I now use my Kindle more than my iPad because it’s so much easier to buy — and BORROW, and SHARE — books. And as a result, my book buying has skyrocketed.
Let’s tally. You create an amazing store that makes me want to buy a device. The device and the store are so compelling, and it’s one click to have it INSTANTLY, and the prices are so close to impulse buys, and it’s so easy to discover exciting new stuff that I buy more from the store than you ever imagined I would. I love this device! I love this store!
Dang! Wouldn’t it be great if somebody could figure out how to do that with music?
Morons.
Apple is never going to get a penny of it because they’re doing it WRONG. Which is idiotic. They’re running their book business like they never heard of iTunes.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
And for the record, since I was making sh^t up, I figured I might as well go for mb rather than MB…since as Jeremy points out, MB is perilously close to NOT making sh^t up.
[Note to Grant: Let me know if my “correction” – heh heh heh – needs more work. And again, sorry for letting the cat out of the bag.]
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Chris Harlan] “[Tim Wilson] “The plan is the plan until the plan changes.”
And when it changes, it was always the plan.”
Ha! Exactly.
Another quote from the 2003 interview: “We didn’t think we’d do well in the cell phone business…We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.”
So yeah, in 2003 they didn’t think they’d do well in the phone business. In 2007, they started doing pretty well. Maybe in 2003 they thought they’d do really, really well in the phone business in a few years and were already working on it.
It took until 2010 to get all the way there with iPad, but what came to pass in 7 years is pretty much the EXACT opposite of what Steve said in 2003.
Not that they’re lying today (or then), but none of these guys are obligated to tell the whole truth. No disrespect intended but it’s more like they’re obligated NOT to tell the whole truth. “We’re not planning today” ain’t worth much in the long haul, and I’m okay with that.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
“There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, People couldn’t type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this. And so, people know how to type now. And if you do email of any volume, you gotta have a keyboard.”
and
“We look at the tablet and we think it’s going to fail. And people accuse US of niche markets! Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already.”
and
“I’m not convinced people want to watch movies on a tiny little screen.”
Steve Jobs in 2003, when asked directly by Walt Mossberg of The Wall St. Journal, are you working on a tablet and do you have plans for movies on iPods.
The plan is the plan until the plan changes. Unless they’re outright, uhm, prevaricating, and would just as soon not let you know what the plan actually is.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
I’ve been reading this thread with interest, but just read the subject line more carefully. DUDE! You did NOT say off-topic?!?! I’ve seen maybe 6 threads in the past year that I’d classify as off-topic, and this is definitely not one of them.
Thanks for the thought though. 🙂
Carry on,
TimTim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Chris Conlee] “But THAT is also for another thread (and site, I imagine…)”
Yes to another site. 🙂
I came to this a little late, but for everyone on the thread….and the COW…please veer away from explicitly political stuff, regardless of its place on the spectrum. Between all of us at the COW, we cover it all, from one extreme to the other. I assure you that we are equal-opportunity take it elsewhere-ers.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Shawn Miller] “”I’m not sure why they would not do it under an NDA and in front of all your competitors.”
Good question, I’m inclined to agree with DRW here. I think it’s partially about differentiation, and partly about keeping people engaged in what Adobe is doing. Personally, I think the tech demos are great… I wish all the big media creation software companies had something like Adobe Labs.”
You’re actually seeing more of that these days. Avid did a compelling demo of their collaborative cloud toolset a couple of years ago, and it just came to fruition this year.
QTube actually shipped last year, and there were a number of others shown AND shipping this year, including A Frame, which Walter Biscardi mentions in his show round-up, posted later today. There are a bunch of others whose names escape me now…but in that sense, I think it was critical for Adobe to show they’re in this angle of the game. CS6 has way too much momentum for people to even think holding back waiting for a collaboration solution.
It’s worth nothing that Adobe was way, way out in front on this with Acrobat. There’s an article in the COW library talking about the uses of this for video (marking up frames, adding notes and the like) something like 6 years ago.
And also worth noting that a number of people I spoke to were going to NAB looking specifically for these kinds of solutions. I joked a while back that this is like HD. In 2001, people were saying, “WTF? I don’t work in HD.” By 2003, it was “WTF? You don’t have HD?” It’s going to be that with the cloud. After a bunch of hype and false starts, it’s for real and already shipping from a number of vendors. And if you need it now, you may well need it NOW.
Hey, before we called it collaboration in the cloud, we used to call it just “online,” right? It’s pretty cool though, as the wheel of hype spins once again into reality.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Herb Sevush] “I am saying calling the rollout a “success” needs a redefinition of the word.”
Not for Apple it doesn’t. They accomplished what they set out to do…at least part of which was to make crystal clear that the past is the past, and that their priorities going forward might have little to do with what mattered to you for FCP’s first dozen years.
Mission accomplished?
What I’ve been talking about has absolutely no reference to FCP’s 2011 customers. For them/you, a different story of course. So what looks to Apple like a glass very nearly full may look very nearly empty to you….assuming that you agree that there’s a glass at all. And indeed, many here do not. 🙂
(With apologies to those for whom X is exciting, whether in its current state or its future potential. I get that. For those who don’t agree, I think in fairness that Apple has a pretty good track record of putting things together in new ways after blowing them up. Like Mac vis a vis everything that Apple had done before that.)
So I don’t think that you and I disagree at all, Herb. You’re looking at it from a customer’s point of view — which YOU SHOULD. As an exercise in “WTF?” on my part, the release of FCPX makes sense to me if I look at it from Apple’s point of view, without any reference to its effect on current customers.
Which is what I’m saying Apple did. I’m saying that Apple placed their priorities AS APPLE, TO APPLE, ahead of their priorities as the people who set you on this path in the first place.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou