Is Microsoft counting on Steve Jobs’ Obstinance?
Amid much hype and more than a little speculation, the results of the Zune release are in. The general take seems to be that the Zune did fairly well on the first day of release, rocketing all the way up to number two, and has fallen like a meteorite with each ensuing day on the market. That is overly optimistic; those that opined that the Zune’s original day on the market was successful are giving too much credit for the Zune coming in at number 2. The Zune as we will all recall was, massively hyped, artificially hip*, nicely featured and widely anticipated. So when the Zune rolled in at second place it should have been a huge letdown, much like if the season ending episode of Heroes finished behind a rerun of M*A*S*H*. It isn’t that M*A*S*H* wasn’t a good show but, like the iPod, it has been around for long enough that everyone who want to see it has seen the show. In short, the Zune’s introduction was an utter failure.
After initial trepidation at the release of the Zune, the fans of all things Apple can seize this moment to gloat. Covering the Zune with repeated shovelfuls of derision is the de facto response of the most smitten iPod fans while the rest of the digital music market has simply forgotten the seemingly failed experiment.
At this point it would be easy to say that the Zune has entered a digital death spiral, that the whole thing was right up there with Microsoft Bob on the big list of bad Microsoft ideas. That notion gives Microsoft far too little credit. Sure, the company is over managed with a bureaucracy that flattens the smallest nail head but it is also the company that just won’t give up. Microsoft is a lot like a wrestler in an “I quit” match with the outcome in his favor. No matter how many choke holds, arm bars or number of times he is pounded like a tent pole with a chair the guy won’t give up, the book says he must win after all. For a case study of Microsoft’s tenacity recall the fate of Netscape, Microsoft doesn’t quit, they win.
Still, this setback must sting. In fact, the more schadenfreude filled among us are undoubtedly imagining the halls of Microsoft filled with the sounds of wailing at the companies abject failure to capture a significant part of the .mp3 market. Microsoft will keep trying but there is bound to be more than little depression right? Doubtful. Microsoft is not staffed by pie in the sky by dreamers but by realists. The early results of the Zune were no doubt anticipated and prepared for. Microsoft bought name recognition and, subtly, laid the groundwork for a crafty counter attack.
Microsoft’s leaves over the punji stick lined pit of doom? Why the largely derided agreement to pony up a dollar to Universal for every Zune sold of course! The move was (predictably) derided by the most muddle headed minds in the blogosphere . Such trivially obsessed knuckleheads saw the agreement as an affront to decent non-music stealing.mp3 player users everywhere. Microsoft sees the move differently. To Microsoft it wasn’t a supplication before the might of Universal, rather it was a dollar per unit well spent to force the hand of Steve Jobs.
What does Microsoft paying extortion to Universal have to do with Steve Jobs? Recall that Steve Jobs is well known for his stubbornness. Witness the fiasco that was the Apple III, a fiasco that came about in no small part because of Steve Jobs’ obstinate refusal to allow engineers to put a sorely needed fan in the machine. Note the fact that it took over five years after Steve’s return for Apple to release the Mighty Mouse and finally realize that Steve has told music companies to go pound sand on more than one occasion. Steve Jobs decides what is right and then refuses to move. This behavior, this inflexibility will play right into Microsoft’s hands/
The way is clear. When Universal begins renegotiation with Apple in early 2007 Universal will want the Microsoft deal. No really, Universal is going to ask for a little something something for each iPod sold. If it sounds crazy remember that to Universal every song downloaded is a stolen sale, thus every iPod sold where they don’t get a cut will now be, by the companies twisted logic, lost revenue that Universal deserves. Steve will say “f*** off” (Jon Gruber has a pretty spiffy imagining of the events, he goes a long way to reach a joke The Rock could convey in a few phrases but it is very well worth reading). Universal, being the money obsessed, no value added collective group of slimy slugs they are might grow a backbone for a moment, stop suing little Timmy and pull its content from iTunes.
Other publishers will follow suit and, low and behold, soon Microsoft and those that use the suddenly archaic Plays for Sure** will be the only game in town with legal music people want to buy. That scenario will put a dagger in the iTunes part of the iTunes iPod team.
Or maybe not. What Microsoft is forgetting, what the studios seem to be blissfully unaware of, is that iTunes doesn’t sell music or iPods. Apple might tell everyone iTunes sells iPods and consumers might think iTunes sells tracks and TV shows but they are mistaken. iTunes sells convenience. Even if Microsoft’s rosiest dreams came true and the only songs left on iTunes were hits of the eighties by Limozeen the situation won’t improve for the Zune. First Zune has the befuddling pricing scheme and that is coupled with a software experience that seems to be everything iTunes is not. Therefore, it is easy to conclude that without the huge iTunes library Apple might sell a few less iPods but Microsoft won’t sell any extra Zunes. As a corollary Universal won’t sell any extra tracks but one can be sure the use of P2P programs will rise by an amount proportional to the drop in iTunes sales.
If Universal ends up rebuffing Apple’s offer of “nothing” when the contract talks roll around and cite Microsoft as the way things should be done you’ll hear a lot about the end of the iPod and a fiery Zune being reborn from the ashes. Like the Phoenix, it will be just another myth.
Note to Microsoft: “Welcome to teh socia1” is hipper than “Welcome to the social”
Plays for Sure: Now with less than 1 in 4 chances of actually playing!
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Comments
I am all for consumer choice. That is not the difference between me and you.
Then why resist the suggestion of choice at every opportunity or that Apple, the DOMINANT DIGITAL MUSIC STORE BY AN EXCEEDINGLY LARGE MARGIN bears ANY responsibility whatsoever for the status quo in digital music?
If you were ALL for consumer choice, you’d advocate a subscription model in iTunes and HOPE that despite whatever difficulties, that they could find a way even though you yourself aren’t interested. It’s not being ALL for consumer choice to outright dismiss such an idea because Apple won’t make as much money.
The difference between me and you is that you blame apple for the digital music industry’s problems, whereas I think they are endemic and largely brought down upon us by the RIAA.
Believe me, I do not have any intention of deflecting blame from the RIAA.
But you, on the other hand, are only interested in shilling for Apple, for shielding them from any responsibility for the state of the digital music industry that they OWN. Yes, the RIAA made them use DRM, but it does not prevent them in any way from licensing it. Not do they prevent Apple from implementing a subscription service.
You can call me whatever you want, but at the end of the day you are deflecting blame from Apple at the expense of logic or reason, shifting it to MS - an also-ran in digital music - and arguing on behalf of the status quo as if Apple were just another brick and mortar.
To me, discussion is not just about winning arguments.
Of course not. It’s about defending Apple. To that end, there isn’t an argument so much as a foregone conclusion for which you fall distinctly on the side of the giant greedy corporation at the expense of consumers.
Have you read much roughlydrafted.com?
What do you think of it?
I just want to point out that what I’m asking for, that Apple should adopt a DRM attitude that allows other stores to successfully compete with the iTS, is an extremely more pro-consumer stance than yours, which merely says they should offer a subscription based service.
You are asking for the monopoly to condescend to consumers in providing the specific features *you want*, whereas I am asking for an end to the monopoly.
And you on your pedestal pretending to be defending consumer choice, with me being more idealistic about it all along. I can’t believe you convinced me for a while to forget what I’d actually said!
Do you just not understand what I say or are you literally just intent on being aggressive? Is my writing to blame - am I incapable of putting a point across?
<i>I just want to point out that what I’m asking for, that Apple should adopt a DRM attitude that allows other stores to successfully compete with the iTS, is an extremely more pro-consumer stance than yours, which merely says they should offer a subscription based service. </i>
That’s flat out false. I have REPEATEDLY advocated the licensing of Fairplay to both competitor stores and music players alike - to much derision on this site, btw, from the fanboys. In point of fact, I am advocating BOTH stances presented here, while you are advocating just the one. Although to be fair and to avoid the “my dick is bigger than yours” slippery slope, licensing FP to competitors would make the lack of ANY particular feature in iTMS more or less moot.
With that cleared away, and with what I must confess is total agreement between us on that issue, I still strongly disagree that Apple, which dominates the digital music distribution industry in a way that almost no other single company dominates its relative market, bears no responsibility whatever for its current status.
Even if one concedes that Apple adopted DRM at the point of a gun by the RIAA, the RIAA by no means prevents Apple from licensing that DRM to competitors.
And if, as you claim, you fault the lack of interoperability with the systemic problems in digital music, then you MUST fault Apple chiefly, if not entirely. After all, before Microsoft’s horrendous step backward, their DRM was far more flexible and interoperable than FP. Their step backward, IRONICALLY, was to mimic Apple’s model.
Do you just not understand what I say or are you literally just intent on being aggressive? Is my writing to blame - am I incapable of putting a point across?
I think the lack of succinctness was the issue. Instead of defending Apple, you might have simply said that the problem of the lack of choice would be solved by true interoperability between all stores and music players.
At which point I would have agreed (although not to your point abdicating Apple of any responsibility), a bell would have rung, and an angel would have gotten his wings.
“I have REPEATEDLY advocated the licensing of Fairplay to both competitor stores and music players alike”
Then we agree. And:
“I’m simply saying that the consumers should be given that choice so they can decide what they want. You’re defending Apple’s bottom line interests, and I’m defending the consumers.”
...is also, as you say, “flat out false”.
I do apologise if I get a little defensive when someone seems to twist what i’m saying so it seems like the opposite. Actually all the difference was is that I was talking more broadly about what should be the case in digital music whereas you were talking more specifically about what Apple should or shouldn’t do.
OK, new question.
Do you honestly think that Apple’s iPod monopoly is damaging to consumers?
Because it seems to me that the iPod/iTS offers by a huge margin the best consumer experience currently available.
Also, you are completely and utterly misled about the relative merits of microsoft’s alternative PFS drm:
“Janus of All Trades, Master of None
While the options enforced by Janus offered lots of flexibility to media producers, they created confusion, complexity, and excessively strict and inconsistent limitations for users. A selection of media files might each have different sets of restrictions, depending on the whim or greed of the entity offering it for sale.
Further, the rules governing the transactions between media producers and consumers could change anytime at the whim of producers, leaving buyers with media that suddenly stopped working or behaved differently.
No consideration was made for fair use provisions; consumers got whatever producers decided to offer. Microsoft hoped to choke out all competition, making its Janus-based WMA format the only way to obtain commercial digital music.
The resulting Windows Media experience was nothing like an 80’s mix tape; it had more in common with a PC: complex, confusing, inconsistent, and frustrating.”
The problem I think is that, by Microsoft’s admission, poorly integrated music store solutions provide a shit consumer experience compared to tightly integrated ones.
By advocating alternative stores to iTunes, then, in what sense are we suggesting anything that benefits consumers? (This has been preying on my mind for a while.)
(referene for quote)
(i’ve just noticed the background of the header graphic on that linked site is from my home town!)
Actually all the difference was is that I was talking more broadly about what should be the case in digital music whereas you were talking more specifically about what Apple should or shouldn’t do.
Actually, you were shifting any responsibility for the current state of digital music entirely away from Apple and disproportionately upon Microsoft.
In this case, what should “broadly” be done and what Apple should do are almost the same thing. Apple is 75% of the digital download market. Any systemic problems you describe or observe STARTS with them and therefore any solution to the problem must start with them.
The exception would be if the RIAA implements the idea they’ve toyed with of removing any requirements for DRM altogether.
Do you honestly think that Apple’s iPod monopoly is damaging to consumers?
Yes. Don’t you? Otherwise, why would you advocate competition and interoperability if Apple and Apple alone provided every service and feature that a consumer would want under the fairest of terms at a price that’s fair and reasonable with no chance that the monopoly could ever be abused?
By advocating alternative stores to iTunes, then, in what sense are we suggesting anything that benefits consumers?
Besides the fact that I’ve already provided one big example of this, are you seriously completely DEVOID of any ideas of the ways in which alternatives and competition benefit consumers?
Every time I think there’s a glimmer of reason, Ben, you take a step back into the cave.
Thanks.
You show that there is a monopoly situation and this situation is suboptimal because there is no reason for Apple to offer all possible services.
What you fail adequately to justify is that Apple is acting amiss in its behaviour and therefore that it is Apple’s fault that the situation is suboptimal.
We have only one argument to this effect: “Apple’s iPod/iTunes lock-in has unfairly locked out rivals.”
For this to be the case, it must be shown to be impossible for a competing similar system to take much of the market while iPod was still young, or that it now is impossible for a competing similar system to do so.
The fact that Microsoft has decided to enter this market with a “competing similar system” is strong counter-evidence to this idea. Microsoft evidently thinks it can take a large part of the market by following iPod/iTunes’s lead.
Unless you blame Apple for not adopting MS’s erstwhile (and shite) proprietary DRM, Apple had little choice over what to do from a business perspective.
Either way, the prevailing view is that by releasing FairPlay to competitor music stores Apple would give up a portion of its competitive advantage. Accordingly we can’t realistically expect Apple to do so.
Personally I do not believe liscencing FairPlay would in fact give up any competitive advantage and actually might form part of a great strategy in a post-Zune DAP world.
Therefore from my combined perspectives of supporting Apple’s work, anti-MS dominion of Earth, and in the above small way, ‘pro-consumer choice’, I would like to see Apple liscence FairPlay.
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Please note that against the odds I have been very courteous and given you yet another chance to engage in a mature, polite discussion of this topic. You must realise that all it would take is for you to be polite for me to really want to hear what you had to say. You may think I am receding into irrationality but I say it is partly your fault for making me so wary of your blood-stained throne of sublime reason.
If you really believe you are right about these matters then just put your opinion across so I can consider your arguments. I promise to consider them to the best of my honest if you do so.
But when you insult me I instantly jump in to defend myself which is not my original intention and massacres the debate, really.
Ideally we would all use these discussions to inform our own viewpoints. Unfortunately we rarely if ever get to the stage where that can begin, getting waylaid en route by bickering.
The reason I am still posting on this site is because I still hope that one day we can reach that level of actual discussion. And yes, I know it’s 50% my fault.
If you really believe you are right about these matters then just put your opinion across so I can consider your arguments.
I have provided example after example and argument after argument. You have obviously chosen to ignore by hiding behind my incredulousness at your intellectual dishonesty and/or ignorance. Is there any more point in my throwing good or bad words at this lost cause?
Here’s the thing, Ben. You’re asking me to try to convince you that your view --that competition to Apple’s monopoly wouldn’t benefit consumers and that Apple is utterly blameless in the systemic problems of a market that it monopolizes-- is somehow in error.
IMO, that’s like asking me to convince you that all Muslims are NOT terrorists, or that the earth is NOT 6000 years old. Anyone who holds such a view is unlikely to be swayed from that view no matter the argument or evidence.
I take it as much a given that Apple is responsible for the current state of digital downloads as you do that Microsoft is responsible for the current state of operating systems or office software.
Imagine if Wal-mart was the biggest seller of CDs and created a DRM’d music player and CD combo that only worked with each other, meaning that if you bought music from the biggest music retailer, it would not work on any player bought at any other store. Now imagine that Wal-mart, with its 75% marketshare decided it didn’t want to sell certain artists or albums, that it would jack up licensing fees for accessories from 2% to 10%, etc.
Now imagine that the record labels, while requiring the Wal-mart DRM, would allow and have always allowed Wal-mart to share that DRM technology with Best Buy and Circuit City and every other store, but has simply chosen not to.
Would you really need to be convinced that this situation was harmful to consumers?
And just because Wal-mart is expected to look out for its own interests does not make them blameless, nor does it justify what they would be doing.
What you fail adequately to justify is that Apple is acting amiss in its behaviour and therefore that it is Apple’s fault that the situation is suboptimal.
We have only one argument to this effect: “Apple’s iPod/iTunes lock-in has unfairly locked out rivals.”
For this to be the case, it must be shown to be impossible for a competing similar system to take much of the market while iPod was still young, or that it now is impossible for a competing similar system to do so.
The fact that Microsoft has decided to enter this market with a “competing similar system” is strong counter-evidence to this idea. Microsoft evidently thinks it can take a large part of the market by following iPod/iTunes’s lead.
Take this whole ridiculous argument and substitute “Microsoft” in place of “Apple” and “operating systems” in place of “mp3 players”, and you have a complete and rational justification for Microsoft’s monopoly as not only NOT harmful to consumers but not at all unfair to competitors like OS X or Linux.
Please note that against the odds I have been very courteous and given you yet another chance to engage in a mature, polite discussion of this topic.
I believe you called me a “Troll.”
But that matters less to me than the fact that you are defending Apple’s monopoly, arguing that its DRM lock-out of the competition is totally fair and hasn’t hurt anyone, that Apple is completely blameless in the state of digital downloads, and you remain utterly unconvinced that competition to its monopoly would be any benefit to consumers.
I find those positions far more insulting, juvenile, and impolite than whatever name you choose to call me.
Sorry for calling you a troll.
If your faith in my idiocy is that secure then I guess our dialogue has come to an end. I have pleaded, cajoled and begged you into not provoking people but each time you have refused. Of course, the blood rushes to my head and I get caught up and fight back, but if you can find a conversation where I have been the first to act aggressively, and am not in fact reciprocating, it will be one of very, very few.
Or possibly it is all my fault and I have completely failed to put across my opinions.
Either way, I will try not to engage you on contentious matters in future. Our conversations are of no benefit to anyone.