The day after Apple events are always rife with questions: why did Apple announce this? What happened to feature x? What kind of kicks was Steve Jobs sporting? Well, as a service to the Mac community at large, I thought I’d take a hand at answering some of the queries that are bouncing around this morning.
The Guardian’s Charles Arthur asks “Is Apple’s Genius a music subscription service in disguise?”
…might Genius be the missing music subscription service that people have been expecting from Apple? After all, the former is a system where you pay a continuous stream of money so that you can choose from a wide range of music. The advantage to the provider (Apple, as it would be) is that they get a continuous stream of revenue.
With Genius, Apple is trying to set up something which… gives it a continual stream of revenue. Nice twist for the user: you have the songs if you stop.
I know, I know. It seems tempting to say “No, Charles, it’s not a subscription service because it’s not a subscription service.” Honestly, Genius is just a smarter way to do the kind of recommendations that iTunes has been doing for ages, with the ill-conceived Mini-Store and the in-store recommendations.
But Charles’s suggestion that Genius was “rapidly encouraging [people] to empty their pockets and stuff what they found into Apple’s pockets” is a little silly. I mean, it’s a recommendation system. It only encourages people to buy things if they’re already thinking about buying them, it doesn’t make you buy anything. Plus, you can always turn off the sidebar.
Hey, that felt pretty good. Let’s answer a few more, shall we?
Michael at Apple Gazette puts forth this poser: “Apple’s HD TV Shows - Are they worth the extra buck?”
Here, though, there is almost no distinction in the picture quality. The SD picture looks GREAT. Much better than my Season 1 and Season 2 episodes of “The Office”, which were also purchased in iTunes. The HD looks equally as good - but remember it costs $1.00 more and takes up twice as much hard drive space.
HD downloads probably aren’t going to be everyone’s cup-of-tea, but there will be those who will happily pay the extra dollar. Personally, I’m not one of them because a) I don’t buy a lot of TV and b) my TV still shoots its electrons out of a gun and can only really be called low definition.
But the question is kind of irrelevant: because other services like Hulu are offering shows in HD, Apple needs to as well. And buying the HD version, you get the SD version as a bonus, so unless you’re short on disk space, you’re potentially getting more for your money. We know HD is the future, so it makes sense for Apple to offer shows in HD, and it keeps the networks happy too.
Stephen Winters at my very favoritest Internet tech pub, IT Wire, wants to know: “NBC Universal back on iTunes Store: who caved?”.
New NBC Universal TV shows are back in the iTunes Store after a one year absence. The question is did NBC Universal give in to Apple’s one price fits all policy or did it get the pricing flexibility it wanted?
Stephen thinks that NBC came out on top, as it appears to have gotten the variable pricing that it wanted when it left the iTunes Store in a huff.
Maybe, but consider that NBC hasn’t been doing great in the ratings, and it certainly wants its piece of the digital pie (mmm, pie). While NBC did go ahead and put out for a variety of other video sites pretty quickly after departing iTunes, I wonder if they didn’t get the same returns that they were seeing when their content was tops on iTunes.
So, did one of them cave? I suspect they’ve been in talks ever since NBC left and that they’ve come to a mutual understanding.
Over at Condé Nast’s Portfolio, Tech Observer’s Kevin Maney wonders “Has Apple Hit the Wall in Music Innovation?”
The iPod and iTunes made their debut in 2001. They both have evolved, certainly. But other than adding a video-capable screen, the changes have mostly been in iPod’s form factor, capacity and price. On the iTunes side, the major change has been the addition of video products. Arguably, the iPhone — with its built-in Wi-Fi, which negates the need to connect to a computer to buy songs — is the most innovative change Apple has come up with in music in seven years.
True, the iPod and iTunes Store have mostly benefited from incremental evolutionary changes over the years, but that doesn’t mean that Apple’s not innovating any more. Plus, it seems hard to argue that Apple’s not experimenting with bigger changes somewhere deep in the labyrinths of Cupertino. Certainly, more innovation would be welcome, but it would also be a bigger risk for Apple to take.
And finally, CrunchGear’s Peter Ha asks the question that’s on everybody’s mind: “What do you think about the new visualizer in iTunes 8?”
Ooh. Shiny.
I *love* Batman: The Animated Series, but i digress.
While NBC has gotten variable pricing, I don't think it's the pricing it truly desired. Bear in mind that in NBCs mind, variable pricing includes RAISING the price for new shows, something that Apple was, and is, resolutely against. All that has happened here is that Apple has lowered the price for archive material, something that they've done for music for quite some time, and something that, for NBC, is hardly worth quitting the store for.
I think Apple's Genius Sidebar is, well, genius! Maybe I'm the guy they were targeting though, but maybe there are more of me out there. In less than 3 hours, I threw $8 at Apple via iTunes, and was very tempted to send more (until I realized what I was doing - evil Genius!)
All joking aside, I found the service to be interesting and curiously on-target. It's recommendations were right on the mark w/ things I'd used to listen to, and was therefore compelled to purchase.
If the Genius Sidebar was intended to get me to buy from the iTunes Store, it failed miserably. It pointed out an album by an artist that I didn't have -- so I scooted over to Amazon.com and found the physical CD at a lower price than Apple's download.