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#1 2005-07-25 12:52 pm
The iDay After Tomorrow: the iPod iDoom scenario
just read the Fast Company article about how the iPod is doomed. of course, i just had lunch and noticed that CNN had a bit about how America has become "iPod Nation". their words ... not mine. but what do they know?
soooo...... iPod is doomed, huh? wow. that's good to know. no seriously.
for real.
if you go to the web site for The Idiot Who Wrote That Stupid Article, you'll notice something REALLY funny on the homepage.
are you ready for this?
are ya?
there's a link to his "company's" Podcast on the home page.
HEeeyah .... haaa .... hee haaaaa .... haaaaa .... heee ......
throats getting sore.
so .... maybe Fast Company should slow down and start testing for the presence of controlled substances in their contributors blood/urine stream? soooo.... Dell has fostered an atmosphere of innovation? and everyone is copying the iPod? .... ahem .... so my question to Fast Company and John What'sHisFace is....
ARE YOU FREAKIN' BLIND???!@!@!!!!
the sad thing is there just aren't enough hours in the day to sufficiently ridicule the writer of this article or the organization that thought they should waste precious space on their server by allowing this nonsense to be posted on their site.
analogy: these folks remind me of the kids in high school who didn't get invited to the "cool party", showed up late (and uninvited), and when no one talked to them started raising a stink about how much the party sucks. then they went to one of their houses and proceeded to evangelize how much everyone at the part sucked. and through their vast underground of similarly uncool people .... they hatch a slur campaign to avenge their not getting invited to the "Cool Party". but the joke is .... since no one likes these kids (because all they do is bitch and moan), they go largely ignored. or completely ignored. its been a long time since high school. and i'm not sure that was technically an analogy either. that may have been an example. but ...
my point is .... WTF!!!!????!!?!??!??!
toodle-loo,
b
"The Fates lead he who will; he who won't, they drag." - Seneca
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#2 2005-07-25 9:53 pm
- RipRagged
- Member
- From: Richland, WA
- Registered: 2003-03-14
- Posts: 121
Re: The iDay After Tomorrow: the iPod iDoom scenario
I just read the article.
I only have this to say:
Apple wasn't first to the party. Apple didn't invent the mp3 player, or the format. They did, however, create the market. Apple also created the standard against which all other digital music services and players will be measured. Therefore, the whole digital music market is Apple's to lose.
There has been for a long time a one-word brand name that means "plain paper photocopying." Many other companies make copiers; some may be cheaper, more feature rich for the money, or maybe just flat out better, but the other companies cannot build Xerox machines.
There is also a one-word brand name that means, "facial tissue."
The one-work brand name that means "digital music player" is iPod. In American business, the specter of fighting to keep your brand name from becoming a generic term is a fight almost any company would welcome for as long as they keep winning. Monopoly used to be a registered trademark of Parker Brothers before it legally became a generic term. Well, Apple isn't far from having that wonderful problem.
While all the other companies are out there struggling to get a share of Apple's market, I'm sure they'll use plenty of Kleenex.
Trizzle trazzle trozzle trone
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#3 2005-07-26 12:03 am
- RipRagged
- Member
- From: Richland, WA
- Registered: 2003-03-14
- Posts: 121
Re: The iDay After Tomorrow: the iPod iDoom scenario
I had the wrong article. 
Fast Company doesn't much care for Apple it seems. Too bad.
I have now read the article in Fast Company called "In Praise of Ecosystems" by John J. Sviokla.
His main theme is that because a lot of companies are trying to copy Apple's iPod, and trying to find ways to dig into Apple's iTunes music store market share, the iPod is doomed. He doesn't cite any successes, but that doesn't change his assertion that this spells certain doom for the iPod.
As an example of a competing product, he gives Yahoo's $60/year Music Unlimited. The iTunes music store, it seems, cannot approximate a "give me like artists" feature. Weird. Does "like artists" sound like "genre" to anyone else? I remember a "genre" feature somewhere in iTunes.
Then he says "An ecosystem beats a product because its collective of competitors can explore and invest in many more ideas than any single company can muster." That fails to explain why the "collective of competitors" in digital music is currently "investing more ideas than any single company can muster" trying to catch up to the single company that is kicking their collective asses on innovation (as measured in US Dollars).
Then again he does make a valid point that the collectives share a lot of standards. USB, Firewire and other innovations that Apple developed and shared with the "collective" would seem to be great examples of shared standards, yet he sees Apple as living in a vacuum.
Another quote that I like is:
"Why don't more companies launch ecosystems? Because doing so requires faith that the market is a better judge of innovation than any one company..."
Or, might I add, any one pundit. The market, as a judge of innovation, is currently presenting the blue ribbon, the silver "loving cup," and a rousing round of applause to Apple.
At the end of it all, Mr. Sviokla misses the key point. iPods are cool. Listening to music is supposed to be cool. If cool is the goal, all the other features don't make a difference. The iPod isn't doomed. iPod is already a generic term for "digital music player," and still hasn't celebrated its fifth birthday.
Perception: Cool means iPod, and every other mp3 player is a knock-off, second rate, not quite the real deal. In the marketplace, perception is reality. That perception/reality will take a long time to overcome.
By then, the "collective" will busy trying to catch up to some other Apple innovation.
Last edited by RipRagged (2005-07-26 12:10 am)
Trizzle trazzle trozzle trone
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#4 2005-07-26 1:40 am
- Jyri Erik
- Member
- From: Greenbelt, MD
- Registered: 2001-04-21
- Posts: 2395
Re: The iDay After Tomorrow: the iPod iDoom scenario
RipRagged wrote:
...USB, Firewire and other innovations that Apple developed and shared with the "collective" would seem to be great examples of shared standards, yet he sees Apple as living in a vacuum...
In fairness, Apple didn't create USB. It was around for about 3 years (without much success) until Apple decided to use it in its brand new iMac and the the B&W G3. Of course it might have been that Apple was better able to create a standard using their product than the rinky-dink company that created USB, Intel. Oops! Guess that means Apple is't really living in that vacuum after all. If somet technology is good, they'll use it.
Jyri
Last edited by Jyri Erik (2005-07-26 1:40 am)
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#5 2005-07-26 3:24 am
Re: The iDay After Tomorrow: the iPod iDoom scenario
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