Me against the music

I have an iPod I rarely use since getting an iPhone. I used to carry two devices with me always, an iPod always playing, a phone I sometimes answered when I felt like it. Now I’m not given a choice - in more ways than one.

Aside from the music stopping if the phone rings, that iPod, all 80 gigs of it, had more music on it than I could ever really hope to listen to. But it also meant not having to make any choices about what I carried with me - not just because of its size but also because I could put music on it from any device. iPhones however don’t have that luxury - they commit you to one computer and one computer only. And in a modern age where access is increasingly key, that seems like a bizarre move to make.

Amazon have understood this notion of access and in a surprise move have beaten both Apple and Google to a music library offering that provides that access wherever you are. Apple have long been rumoured to be working on such a thing, while Google’s music offering hasn’t yet made it to vapor-ware status, but that can’t be far off.

Amazon of course have one final hurdle to jump - plans from mobile carriers that make streaming music constantly from the cloud an affordable reality. They’re unlikely to do that without handsets of their own, the idea of which has the tech press buzzing.

In closing the loop on the consumer journey, Amazon could be making an end-run around Google. “Thanks very much for the technology, but we understand the consumer.” The Seattle-based retail giant has so far failed to make a dent in Apple’s stranglehold on digital music sales. In delivering this service, they’ve finally arrived with a proposition Apple have no clear competitor to.

Not yet anyway.

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My thought process when ordering a Kindle was, if I am to be honest, informed by more than one bottle of the City Wine Shop’s finest. I’d been umming and ahhing for a while about it, and figuring that my future involved more traveling rather than less, and especially having tired of of paying hundreds of dollars to ship books around the world with me, something had to give. There’s no shortage of first impressions and break-downs of Kindles out there, and I’m not particularly interested in writing one of those. I will say the screen is actually extraordinary, you really do have to see it to understand what it loos like. Because it looks like text or an image printed in black ink on some kind of not too unfamiliar surface (f you’re interested in what it actually is and how it works, here’s the Wikipedia page). The curious thing for me is what it decidedly isn’t. Namely, it decidedly, very purposely is not an iPad. People will argue that an iPad competes with the Kindle but nobody will argue that a Kindle competes with the iPad. It is a digital device purpose-built for the display of text. Think about that - in 2011. Not for multiple types of media, for text (it displays images, but that’s not what you would use it for). It actually causes my brain to explode a little. Now there is some limited web-browsing functionality, and, in a move I thought was quite cool, it displays any text & image items from Instapaper with no problems. So the longer-form text pieces I opt to not read on my iPhone are quite capably handled there. Ultimately the thought that is occupying my mind most is “will this impact my consumption of books, newspapers and magazines the way the iPod impacted my consumption of music?”. I bought my first iPod in much the same way, almost as an after-thought, in 2004 or 2005. The funny thing is I still took all my CDs with me everywhere I went, for a while anyway. And I guess that is the crux of the issue. A pile of CDs in someone’s house now looks rather quaint and decidedly not of this era. But a wall full of books can make a room! At least they can now, the way an obviously robust music collection did (for me anyway) half a decade ago. Right now my Kindle resembles nothing more than the world’s smallest empty book shelf, as the book I’m part of the way through just isn’t available on it. And that’s really where the trick is going to lie, because to imagine a world where you need a certain kind of book shelf to hold a certain type of book is just ludicrous. Imagine if the original iPod had only been able to play music from iTunes - it’s hard to imagine it having quite the same impact. I’ve no doubt Amazon have people working around the clock on this, and I hope they get it right. If this has even half the impact that my iPod had, it will amount to nothing short of a revolution in an industry that desperately needs it.
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My thought process when ordering a Kindle was, if I am to be honest, informed by more than one bottle of the City Wine Shop’s finest. I’d been umming and ahhing for a while about it, and figuring that my future involved more traveling rather than less, and especially having tired of of paying hundreds of dollars to ship books around the world with me, something had to give.

There’s no shortage of first impressions and break-downs of Kindles out there, and I’m not particularly interested in writing one of those. I will say the screen is actually extraordinary, you really do have to see it to understand what it loos like. Because it looks like text or an image printed in black ink on some kind of not too unfamiliar surface (f you’re interested in what it actually is and how it works, here’s the Wikipedia page).

The curious thing for me is what it decidedly isn’t. Namely, it decidedly, very purposely is not an iPad. People will argue that an iPad competes with the Kindle but nobody will argue that a Kindle competes with the iPad. It is a digital device purpose-built for the display of text. Think about that - in 2011. Not for multiple types of media, for text (it displays images, but that’s not what you would use it for). It actually causes my brain to explode a little.

Now there is some limited web-browsing functionality, and, in a move I thought was quite cool, it displays any text & image items from Instapaper with no problems. So the longer-form text pieces I opt to not read on my iPhone are quite capably handled there.

Ultimately the thought that is occupying my mind most is “will this impact my consumption of books, newspapers and magazines the way the iPod impacted my consumption of music?”. I bought my first iPod in much the same way, almost as an after-thought, in 2004 or 2005. The funny thing is I still took all my CDs with me everywhere I went, for a while anyway. And I guess that is the crux of the issue.

A pile of CDs in someone’s house now looks rather quaint and decidedly not of this era. But a wall full of books can make a room! At least they can now, the way an obviously robust music collection did (for me anyway) half a decade ago.

Right now my Kindle resembles nothing more than the world’s smallest empty book shelf, as the book I’m part of the way through just isn’t available on it. And that’s really where the trick is going to lie, because to imagine a world where you need a certain kind of book shelf to hold a certain type of book is just ludicrous. Imagine if the original iPod had only been able to play music from iTunes - it’s hard to imagine it having quite the same impact.

I’ve no doubt Amazon have people working around the clock on this, and I hope they get it right. If this has even half the impact that my iPod had, it will amount to nothing short of a revolution in an industry that desperately needs it.

The “AA” Meeting

Well, everything just changed. Again. Amazon announced on their blog today their own Android app store, at least the plans for it. The “AA” Meeting is, of course, Android and Amazon.

Developers can now sign up and begin adding apps to Amazon’s store. Amazon will take care of all payment, removing some of the hardships of selling internationally as pointed out by All Things D:

Amazon will handle all the bill processing, which is complex, especially on a global basis. Google learned this the hard way, and continues to support only paid apps in some countries. 

Because they had to, Google looked at the role iTunes has come to play - a piece of software that this Sunday will be 10 years old - and try to hit that note off the bat. Of course they didn’t - nobody does. I imagine they (probably by design) have avoided something like iTunes being a part of Android given its central role on the Mac OS, but at some point, they are going to need to make a play for that central repository that makes it so easy to manage all of your media and information. Perhaps that will arrive with their Chrome Operating System…perhaps not.

Yesterday, your friend and mine Matt and I were were having lunch. Matt, if you ever meet him, is the illegitimate child of Steve Jobs, at least he must be if his devotion to all things Apple is to be taken even remotely seriously (you’ll struggle, I promise).

Nevertheless, he is lovely and smart in equal measure, and conversation inevitably turned to the following: Apple, developers, the central role of iTunes, how Android can’t match it. My response to everything he said was to add “…right now.” onto the end of every sentence. For example “Google doesn’t get the importance of the app to the device,” “…right now.”

What does it all mean? Well, we know is Amazon’s MP3 offering has failed to make a dent in iTunes’ strangle-hold on the digital music market. We also know is that Amazon is better than even Google at generating money from users, pulling $189 per unique user which is more than 7.5x as much as Google manages to do.

The no-brainer here is for both Google and Amazon to let each other do what they do best: for Amazon, that is online retail, the digital piece they now have a few years of experience on thanks to Kindle and their music store. Google needs to get its developer relations up to scratch, it’s marketing in place, and take the fight to Jobs & co.

Until that happens, Apple’s lead in the market place looks beyond rock solid*.

*right now

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Adobe’s play for Gutenberg’s throne

Wired Magazine have produced a short video in conjunction with Adobe visualising the experience of reading the magazine on Apple’s new iPad. This the same month as Esquire’s myopic Editor in Chief David Granger talks about how nothing will replace the experience of reading magazines in their printed form.

Granger has previously used his editorial space to denounce the threat of climate change, all the while claiming that putting augmented reality or what Boing-Boing termed “a blink tag” is the future of magazines. The cover of Esquire’s 75th anniversary edition featured the declaration “the 21st century begins now”. They were right, but only because they laid so bare a publication, and seemingly an industry wholly incapable of understanding their affinity for paper-products was well on its way to becoming a cultural curiosity, an artifact for historians and not consumers.

Wired, recognizing the opportunity, have opted for a different tack. Their reading experience speaks to the video I linked to last month, but what really strikes me here is Adobe’s involvement, and particularly the use of their Air platform as the underlying software driving the experience.

Air for those that don’t know is a lightweight platform Adobe released a couple years ago that means developers can, in theory, write an application once, and have it run on any computer that Air also supports. TweetDeck for example, the world’s most popular Twitter application, was written to run on Adobe Air; not PC, nor Mac, nor Linux. In theory, if Air supported Google’s Android mobile platform, the same application would instantly work there too.

What the Wired video hints at, and what even David Granger in his deluded state understands, is that the reading experience for magazine customers is the same thing as the user experience for web browsers or mobile applications, and each publication has a vested interest in making sure the digital version of their magazine is as pleasant to consume as the printed one was.

The play for Adobe though is two-fold; on one hand it is a compelling move with a publication read largely by the audience who will line up on day one of the iPad’s availability to buy one, and showing the rest of the publishing world - advertisers with them - why the demise of print is actually a good thing for all involved (save of course David Granger who will ideally be out on his ear by this point).

The other part of this equation for Adobe is that any magazine choosing to publish itself on their platform can guarantee their readers the same user experience (at least as far as the software is concerned) across not just the iPad, but any computer capable of running Adobe Air.

If you agree it is reasonable to assume there won’t be a device in sight - laptop, desktop or otherwise - that does not have some semblance of touchscreen functionality within the next two years, then Adobe are trying to position Air as the platform of choice; instantly compatible with any computer and just a single experience designed for, leaving the magazine free to just focus on content (and hopefully advertisers wanting to sit next to that content).

The adoption of new technologies will forever be lead by the services that make it easiest for us to express ourselves and share our ideas. Adobe’s move is a play for the wallet of an industry desperate enough to try anything.

And I think they might have just found what they were looking for.

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That’s not the shape of my heart

Interesting video the magic that is The David Report turned me onto, looking at and thinking about the future of magazines. I am somewhat of a junkie for the form and don’t doubt it will continue (in some fashion).

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This has me thinking also about devices as a whole, and particularly the arms race that is on in the mobile space.

Everyone is excited to have Google’s skin in the game with Android, and are touting them as the challenger that can actually take on Apple and their much-loved iPhone. The problem facing Google and its partners is not developer support, of which there is plenty, but control over the hardware environment.

See an iPhone developer makes an app once, and releases it. They don’t need to deal with different specifications regarding screensizes, peripherals, keyboards, cameras, what have you. An Android developer has all of that, plus chipsets from Intel, Nvidia and others. The increased overhead in supporting multiple platforms will, I believe, lead us to a place where apps exist on one Android device and not another, leading to negative user-experiences which will directed partially towards the manufacturer, but more so towards Google. Contrast that with the iPhone, which while it has well-documented flaws, is a consistent experience for every person that owns one.

I’m in the camp of people who think Android is the platform that will challenge the iPhone for dominance of the market, Google to need to invest more in the hardware for this to become a race; right now they’re just running warm-up laps. Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Everyone wants to be the man at the top (Commented on “Howard Lindzon”)

The conversation taking place around the web about Digital Strangelove is truly blowing my mind. All I wanted to do was move the conversation forward a little, the fact so many people have taken the time to work through it, comment on it, think about it and share it means the absolute world, and it’s great getting to visit a bunch of new blogs and engage with different audiences I would never have had the chance to find out about.

Below is a response I wrote to one post in particular on Howard Lindzon’s blog to an anonymous comment that had said (and I paraphrase) “The ultimate goal is to give people what they NEED”, to which I responded:

“Name” - appreciate your thoughts. And for saying I was smart, I wish my high school teachers could see! ;]

I would suggest the ultimate goal is not to give people anything, except for an easier way to spread their own message. It is entirely unquantifiable, but I would love to know how many people with no prior experience just had a stab at recording some music because of how easy it was to use Garage Band.

At the end of the day, I don’t think you should aim to give your customer something meaningful, you should create an environment where they can give something meaningful to you. To use the Apple/Microsoft example, MS is launching a campaign for Win7 based around having listened to its users, whereas I believe it is arguable Apple’s platform tries to facilitate being able to listen to each other. A subtle but crucial difference.

Now, off to find a cushy job in a Think Tank!

(Written, for the record, on a PC. With a Mac to my left.)

Originally posted as a comment
by David Gillespie
on Howard Lindzon using DISQUS.

The Think Tank comment was due to a wry observation on the part of the poster than I had taken so many slides to say something they thought was blatantly obvious. Maybe they’re right, though other comments had come in stating how concise it was.

Each to their own.
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