Building Buzz
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Apple has it. Google has it. Microsoft fails at it. Yahoo! sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t. What I am talking about is buzz and coolness. It seems every time Apple or Google introduces a new product, the buzz is high. For example, Apple recently introduced a $350 speaker and, while the reaction was more tepid than it has been for other Apple products, no one seem to point that the emperor was looking very very naked. Yet, Microsoft keeps throwing out new products and few people seem to be very interested (no matter how Scoble tries to browbeat us into thinking of Microsoft as cool). Similarly, today, Google introduced a finance section that mimicked much of what yahoo! finance has been doing for years. It has a couple of nice AJAX-based features but, all and all, it’s not enough of an improvement to be considered like something that could potentially dominate the tech news cycle. And yet, every major tech pub or mainstream publication has covered the release. why? Trying to divine the source of coolness What Google and Apple seem to have understood is that there are ways to make oneself look cool. I’m going to try to lay…
The Mac Mini platform
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So it took me some time to figure out what the Mac mini is about. Not so much what it is but what it’s impact in the long run may be and why and how it matters. Size matters My first thought, when I read the specs, was about the size of the device. My Shuttle computer, is 6 inches high by 8 inches wide and 12 inches long (yes, I had to pull out the ruler on that one). By comparison, the Mac mini comes in at 6.5 inches square and 2 inches high. Something tells me that there is more to the dimensions that pure aesthetic design. For comparison’s sake, I decided to take a quick look at my entertainment center: 2 inches happens to be about the height of my VCR (yes, I still have one) and my DVD player is taller than that. I then decided to look around the web. Tivo 2 boxes come in at over 3 inches in height; The smallest Windows Media Center edition machine (from Hush Technology) comes in at 3.9 inches in height. In fact, I could find very few items that would come in at the same size. Somehow,…
Modular by Design — Digital Music Downloads
Yesterday, I looked into how the modular by design approach impacted the music business. Today, I’m examining how music stores are selling tracks. Much has been made recently of the battle between Apple and Real Networks. After their attempt to partner up with Apple were rebuffed, Real Networks introduced a new product called Harmony, which allowed songs bought in the RealPlayer music store to be played on an iPod. Of course, Apple was shocked and threatened lawsuit. In a way, the reaction by Apple was to be expected as they were trying to create a new bundle around the online music business. Their model is not one of album sales but one of an integrated media package that includes both a device (the iPod) and a service (the iTunes music store). This contention is encapsulated in the way they present their offering on the Apple site. The tab at the top of their pages clearly states “iPod + iTunes” and the company sees them as part of the same offering. By introducing a different way to buy and manage music on the iPod, Real Networks attacked the heart of Apple music strategy, unbundling the device from the service. While Apple…
MacWorld 2004: What was NOT said
Every year, mac users await announcement of exciting new software and hardware product. Last year, Steve Jobs impressed the computing industry by unveiling a couple of new laptops (the 12 and 17 inch PowerBooks) and offering a truckload of new software packages. This year’s keynote, however, was more significant for what was not said that what was. Much will be made about the pricing of the mini iPod, with people debating whether it is too expensive or priced well enough so I’m not going to go over that ground here. My view is that anyone who thinks they can get the 15Gb iPod for only 50 dollars more that the mini-iPod has made the kind of mental leap that Apple expects consumers to make. The decision to introduce a 4 Gb iPod was an interesting one only in the fact that there were no similar announcements about a 2Gb and/or 1Gb device. The question here is why did Apple decide not to introduce products of this kind in the marketplace. I suspect that the reasoning here is that 4Gb is rare enough (In my searches, I could only find one competing device, which has since been discontinued) that it makes…
Apple: Cross Platform DRM
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Apple could dominate media in the future.