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Cringley on Apple's HD and iTunes strategy

post #1 of 3
5/6/05 at 12:58pm
Thread Starter 
Scroll past the DayJet stuff to the last half...

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050505.html

His hypothesis begins with:

"Ultimately, what Apple wants to do is make its money through iTunes, where the profit margins are better in the long term and the system is easily scalable."

Interesting angle. Some of it I agree with ("As Apple's profit drops on each iPod it makes, eventually the per-CPU figure will approach what Apple might receive from licensees. At that moment it makes more sense for Apple to license clones than it does to make more iPods.") Other parts (support for Ogg Vorbis and WMA) are doubtful to me.
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post #2 of 3
5/6/05 at 1:44pm
His rationale for Ogg Vorbis and WMA support is shaky. They were in iTunes 4.7 before Tiger. Windows iTunes already imports/converts WMA. While Ogg Vorbis is a maybe, WMA support would be in such a way to NOT put any of Apple's eggs in Microsoft's basket.

Cringley seriously underestimates the importance of the iPod appeal as a physical thing in its success. I have a hard time imagining Apple giving up control of products where they can be as ugly and bling-bling as, well, almost everything else in the market now, which is what you would get if you left it up to third parties alone. Having said that, licensing in some form seems likely, but it will be with strings attached: iTMS access/control, which means iTunes, as a start. iTunes is the golden egg in reality, but the iPod is the thing everyone thinks of and identifies with. Still, I have to wonder how Apple will reconcile giving up control of the hardware to a fair extent. I can't help but think that Apple's weakness is here, that it will push to have control over what gets the iTunes licensing more closely, something a lot of potential licensees would balk at.

I can still see an iTunes Movie Store coming, but Apple's biggest concern is that the MPAA sees what is going on with itunes gaining more clout over the RIAA and hesistating to mix it up nicely with Apple and any sort of fair DRM scheme.
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post #3 of 3
5/6/05 at 1:55pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by BuonRotto
His rationale for Ogg Vorbis and WMA support is shaky. They were in iTunes 4.7 before Tiger. Windows iTunes already imports/converts WMA. While Ogg Vorbis is a maybe, WMA support would be in such a way to NOT put any of Apple's eggs in Microsoft's basket.

Cringley seriously underestimates the importance of the iPod appeal as a physical thing in its success. I have a hard time imagining Apple giving up control of products where they can be as ugly and bling-bling as, well, almost everything else in the market now, which is what you would get if you left it up to third parties alone. Having said that, licensing in some form seems likely, but it will be with strings attached: iTMS access/control, which means iTunes, as a start. iTunes is the golden egg in reality, but the iPod is the thing everyone thinks of and identifies with. Still, I have to wonder how Apple will reconcile giving up control of the hardware to a fair extent. I can't help but think that Apple's weakness is here, that it will push to have control over what gets the iTunes licensing more closely, something a lot of potential licensees would balk at.

I can still see an iTunes Movie Store coming, but Apple's biggest concern is that the MPAA sees what is going on with itunes gaining more clout over the RIAA and hesistating to mix it up nicely with Apple and any sort of fair DRM scheme.

I agree with most of what you say.

Ogg? Maybe. More or less like MP3...but seemingly pointless at this point. Seems like only the open source geeks" care about this. WMA? That's a political move and would likely be a bad one on Apple's part anyway.

I don't seem Apple giving up selling iPods completely. But licensing other vendors to sell iTMS-compatible players I can see happening. Apple iPods exist for those of that just love Apple iPods. All the others can get one from Creative or Dell or whoever and it still works fine with iTMS. And some $ in Apple's pocket to boot.

I think Apple has some plans for video (and HD video in particular)...but me-thinks bandwidth is still an issue for a "video download" service. I suppose if they begin with movie trailers (as they are doing), music videos (buy one for $2.99?) and episodic TV shows (but how does that become HD?)...maybe.
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