Return of the Old Apple? Not Yet.
TUAW’s Mike Schramm made an interesting post the other day entitled “Return of the Apple we know and love?” Responding to a Macworld article, he says that despite the recent bad press and bad decisions by Apple, we are now seeing signs that Apple is returning to its former glory. I want Apple to succeed and to “win our hearts” as much as anyone, and I don’t think they’re doing a terrible job in general. They’ve just been making a string of bad decisions lately, and maybe bitten off more than they can chew. However, I disagree with almost all of the reasons Mike gives as evidence that change is happening for the better.
First he says:
“Apple brought DRM free music back down to normal prices, which is exactly what Jobs wanted to do when he wrote that open letter.”
Where do I begin? People have been giving Steve Jobs way too much credit over the non-DRM music issue. When he wrote his “open letter” on February 6, 2007, people were blown away that he would have such a forward-thinking attitude toward music. Obviously Steve started the whole thing rolling, right? Surely none of the record labels would have even considered selling non-DRM music if Steve Jobs hadn’t forced them into it with his open letter, right? Not exactly. You see, EMI, the first label to sell non-DRM music on iTunes, had already been selling non-DRM tracks as early as December 7, 2006. That’s two months before Jobs’ open letter, for those who are counting.
I do give credit to Jobs for seeing which way the wind was blowing and jumping on board. He certainly deserves some credit for implementing it well in iTunes and for making deals with the record labels to make it happen. But to give him credit for the whole thing is just ludicrous.
Now, Mike mentions that selling iTunes Plus tracks at normal prices is “exactly what Jobs wanted to do when he wrote that open letter.” If that was his intention, he forgot to mention it in his letter. Go back and read it. Nowhere did he state that these tracks would be the same price on iTunes. Whether he intended to or not, the iTunes Plus tracks were released with a higher price tag than regular tracks, and only now have they gone down to the $.99 price. It would be great to believe that Steve Jobs and Apple did this out of the kindness of their hearts, but they only did this because of the competition by Amazon’s mp3 store. At Amazon’s store, many of the tracks are $.89, and albums can be as low as $4.99. Not only that, but all tracks sold in their store are non-DRM mp3 files that are compatible with just about any media player you can buy. You can’t say the same for AAC files, whether they are DRMed or not. Apple was pressured by the competition to lower their prices, and that’s exactly how it should be.
Next, Mike says:
“Apple has unlocked the iPhone—albeit in France, and only because they had to.”
Okay, so at least he admits that Apple was forced into this by that pesky little thing known as “law.” But if they were forced into it, how exactly is this evidence of Apple returning to its former self? Let’s not kid ourselves here. Apple had numerous meetings with numerous lawyers about ways to skirt around this issue, and when they could come up with no way to fight this other than to not release the iPhone in France, they caved in. Period.
And lastly, the announcement of the iPhone SDK in February. I admit that this looks like a good thing. Of course, we don’t know if it will actually happen by February; but if it does, I give them points for it. The problem with this is that the iPhone already has third-party applications, and good ones. It’s just that Apple smashed them with an iron fist by locking them out with an update, then punished anyone bold enough to defy them by installing them in the first place. So really, this one is at best a wash. Even when we have third-party apps, will we be able to make our own? Will they all be expensive? We don’t know, and it’s likely to take some time before we even see quality apps released. So in February we’ll be in worse shape with iPhone apps than we were two months ago.
As I said, I would love to see Apple start making things right and shed this bad press and ill will that surrounds them right now. More importantly, I think they will do it. But to present these points as evidence that the change is coming is just plain silly. None of these points represent anything more than a company looking out for itself, which I would expect of any company, including Apple. When I see real evidence of Apple turning things around, I’ll be the first to praise them for it, but for now, I’m still waiting.
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Comments
I think the products are great, there are two iMacs and three iPods in this household.
But Apple is a business, and I love it for one and only one reason: The AAPL shares I bought at $37 are now sitting at $186.
Anyone who professes adulation towards any for-profit company for any other reason is setting him/herself up for disillusion and disappointment.
I suggest you all stop bambifying the company.
Steven… Eyes Open Please!
“People have been giving Steve Jobs way too much credit over the non-DRM music issue.”
You’re blithely ignoring Steve’s boldness, clarity, power-in-the-industry, and the power of the DRM note itself.
You’ve definitely got your knife sharpened on this one AND your reputation for clear thinking is the one you knifed.
Microsoft’s (i.e. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer) unethical behavior is a prime example, but Steve Jobs also exhibits some of these traits as well, which fortunately seem to have been somewhat tempered by time and experience. The same cannot be said for M$.
I think that is a rather wise comment.
People have been giving Steve Jobs way too much credit over the non-DRM music issue.
People him way too much credit period.
Remember how people blame the labels and the labels alone for DRM and high prices at the iTunes store? Oh, if only Jobs had his way, they’d be open and cheap.
Well two labels have left the iTunes store and guess what? Their songs are cheaper and more open than they were at the iTunes Store. Indie labels have thus far been DRMed DESPITE their wishes otherwise. This is changing for the better finally but this has been Apple’s change to make.
Likewise, Apple fans have blamed at&t for the closed iPhone and bricked phones. But the iPhone is the ONLY at&t phone that cannot be unlocked after 90 days. If this were an at&t policy, why would that be the case?
Jobs likes control. That shouldn’t be surprising given his position but neither should anyone be deluded into thinking he’s anything other than what he is.
For example: “but Steve Jobs also exhibits some of these traits as well, which fortunately seem to have been somewhat tempered by time and experience.”
Utter fantasy. If anything, Jobs has gotten far more maniacal in the control of his products than ever before. There’s certainly no evidence that he’s gotten LESS so.
I’m flattered! Since that trait puts me in the company of Steve Jobs, and I know how much you revere Steve Jobs, I can’t help but conclude you must worship me as a demi-god, MacGlee. :D
Jobs has gotten far more maniacal in the control of his products than ever before.
This would have been an appropriate comment before news of the iPhone SDK came out. I will take it as read that it does not apply to OS X which is legendary in its support for standards and positively begs us to develop for it with its free SDKs.
It is completely unsubstantiated and frankly ludicrous to suggest that Apple is the party keeping any labels from dropping DRM on the iTunes store.
It is well known that certain record companies fear the power of iTunes for the precise reason that Apple has refused (more importantly, *can* refuse) to allow them to charge variable prices—and any if anyone has any illusion that that doesn’t mean higher prices for the stuff people actually *want*, stop reading here for your head is in urgent need of a date with Mr Flushy. These same companies, or rather the idiots now holding their reins, either hope only to decrease iTunes’s power by artificially undermining by creating value elsewhere, or view these other ventures as lower risk experiments to conservatively probe the arcane wisdom the friggin’ entire world has been shouting about for the past year.
Either way we all seem to be getting what we’ve been hankering for anyway—less DRM. Only Beeblebrox could present the opening of a DRM-free rival as evidence of iTunes’s monoplistic, DRM-toting hegemony.
Your point about the iPhone is valid until we consider that Apple is providing and will provide all iPhone users with continuous software updates. This will be an altogether revolutionary paradigm for providing value through mobile phone hardware sales.
No other company in the history of telephony has ever done this before, and it would have been unreasonable to expect them to given that they only make one-off profits from the devices they sell.
In other words the only possible way Apple can ensure revenue stream that makes this *fucking fantastic* platform viable is by selling these on subscription. You would ask them to make these software updates available to people using their iPhones in a way that excuses them from the revenue stream used to fund those updates? Would you demand that of any other manufacturer? Have you ever demanded it before?
You see, the real outrage should be along the lines of, why on earth can Motorola get away with selling me this beautiful-but-near-unusable pile of junk, for which I hugely overpay T-Mobile, while somehow Motorola and T-Mobile get away with next-to-no accountability for the poor quality of the user experience!
My respect for your ability to be objective has pretty much reached its nadir, but I honestly never thought I’d see the day you’d publicly display the level bias to make excuses for the record labels to blame apple for… what? You seriously suggest Apple is secretly trying to coerce labels into using DRM while publicly pretending to support the DRM-free movement?
As if we wouldn’t have heard?
Christ. As conspiracy theories go…
The sad thing is there are valid grievances to be voiced, for instance I am very upset that we cannot use legally-obtained music as custom ringtones on iPhone, but your stereotype-slinging flamebait only detracts from these being properly discussed.
My respect for your ability to be objective has pretty much reached its nadir,
That’s rich coming from the Apple apologist of all Apple apologists (Okay, to be fair, Macglee does have you beat, but he works for Apple so he actually has an excuse).
It is completely unsubstantiated and frankly ludicrous to suggest that Apple is the party keeping any labels from dropping DRM on the iTunes store.
No, Apple is not THE party perpetuating DRM. They are A party to perpetuating DRM. And that’s a fact.
It is well known that certain record companies fear the power of iTunes for the precise reason that Apple has refused (more importantly, *can* refuse) to allow them to charge variable prices
And on the other hand, we have REALITY. Two labels thus far have gone elsewhere to sell their songs and those songs are CHEAPER, MORE FLEXIBLE, and non-DRM.
Why, if your God Almighty Steve Jobs is the only thing stopping the mean ol’ labels from higher prices and DRM is it not the case that the Amazon music store sells variable priced music laden with encryption?
You’d think that reality smacking you in the face would actually mean something. Guess not.
I know that in your deranged fantasy world Apple is utterly blameless for ANYYTHING, but the reality is that Apple is a large company like any other large company. They like their control of the market and they will do what it takes to make sure they maintain it.
You would ask them to make these software updates available to people using their iPhones in a way that excuses them from the revenue stream used to fund those updates? Would you demand that of any other manufacturer? Have you ever demanded it before?
Yup. But unlike you, I don’t demand it of every company EXCEPT Apple. When I buy software, I expect updates for free. When I buy a Mac, I get updates for free. When I buy an iPod, I get updates for free. When I buy Photoshop, updates for free. And none of those require ongoing subscriptions to maintain a “revenue stream.” They charge me for the product, I pay for the product, and implicit in that exchange is a certain amount of maintenance.
Apple makes plenty of money on the hardware. That they have somehow convinced at&t to fork over a piece of the action for the service as well as the phone itself is at&t’s problem, not mine.
Neither is this in any way an excuse for the most locked down phone on the market. Again, no other at&t phone has this restriction. To blame at&t (an evil empire, granted) is flat out wrong. That’s all Apple. And your excuse making is pathetic. If this were true, then Apple could at least have offered an unlocked phone at a higher price to cover the cost of updates. Or an unlocked phone with fewer updates.
But that’s impossible, right? And they sure didn’t just announce such a plan for France, did they.
You see, the real outrage should be along the lines of, why on earth can Motorola get away with selling me this beautiful-but-near-unusable pile of junk
Believe me, I have no love of our cell phone system in America. It suuuuucks. It’s one of the reasons I’m so disappointed in Apple’s not only playing ball, but in many ways making the situation worse.
I think if any company is going to truly shake up the industry, it’s going to have to be Google. Maybe that’s hoping beyond hope, but at least Google TRIES.
The sad thing is there are valid grievances to be voiced, for instance I am very upset that we cannot use legally-obtained music as custom ringtones on iPhone but your stereotype-slinging flamebait only detracts from these being properly discussed.
Yes, here I am holding a gun to your Apple fanboy head forcing you to vomit out pathetic excuses for Apple’s locked down crap. So sorry.
The ring tones is not only a symptom of their closed-device mentality but also of Job’s more unadulterated money-grubbing side, like jacking up the license fees for iPod accessories or changing up the video/audio colors for their video-out cables. It’s solely a money grab.
lol.
Indeed, not yet. A recent posting on another Mac site - Filemaker is not compatible with Leopard OS 10.5. Filemaker, a subsidiary of Apple? “Sorry, but your new iPod isn’t compatible with the new iTunes, we’re working on it.” “But, gee, isn’t the interface keen?”
Something is seriously wrong in Appleland. Maybe the old Apple common sense has fallen into the Sea of Holes. That or the company has lost its way in the Sea of Green.
“H is for help….”