Home
About
Apple
Career
Experiences
General
Graphics
Hardware
History
Humor
Interface
Networking
OS
Opinion
Politics
Programming
Quotes
Reviews
Security
Software
Sound
Thought
Web
Cheap International
Airfare Online
Wachovia online banking
Get Free Coupons Online
Finding the perfect
discount hot tub
Payday Loans
Stock Trading Online
Stuffed Animals
Smart Investing Online
|
|
iTunes and iPod
Denting the Universe?
By: David K. Every
|
Kind:
Created:
Size: |
Article
January 10,2004
30 KB |
|
|
 |
 've played with iTunes and recently ripped my CD collection (about 400 discs) to MP3's for easy iPod accessibility. And I was thinking my experience of using iTunes and my iPod was really another metaphor for the entire state of Apple right now, or at least in my mind.
The summary is that things are both really cool, and really frustrating because they are close to greatness, but seem to just miss it. Now popularity is not greatness to me, I'm talking about creating something that is so exceptionally good that it will "dent the universe" or change the way we think. I can forgive Microsoft when they don't do anything earth shattering, because they never have. But Apple once "got it", so it hurts more when they lost it. With the iPod, Apple is once again close; but will they build on the momentum they started, or just piss it away?
     
The iPod is a sexy piece of hardware that is getting a ton of press play. But again, popularity isn't a good product, that's just part of decent business. And popularity is fickle, so having a couple years of success is a drop in time, I care more about trends and whether they can own the genre (long term). I'm not yet convinced the iPod is going to do that, though I can hope. I think it is pretty good, and prefer it to the other MP3 players out there. Now you can end there, or look deeper. I'm one of those people that isn't satisfied with good, and usually demand better, and still enough of a nerd that I want things not only superficially good but fundamentally good.
When I got my iPod, it worked and it was cool interface and design. Then it died and was less cool. It wouldn't charge, so I sent it back, got a new one (or it fixed) and then it died again. I'd charge it, and it wouldn't charge or hold one. I sent it back again. Each time getting a little more flustered, and getting no information from Apple - just my iPod back after a week or two of mail-in ping-pong. This was less than satisfactory. I'd do all the diagnostic stuff that Apple told me to on their website (or in person), and nothing would happen. I stumbled on the problem, no thanks to Apple. It turns out the FireWire cable they'd sent me with my iPod was bad; it would send data, but not charge reliably or sometimes drain it to the point where it was really pissed. The symptom of not charging was exactly like the all too common "dead iPod" symptom, but the patches hadn't fixed it. Not a major problem, but Apple failed to communicate to me what the problem might be, nor did a very good job with telling me what happened each time I sent it in. Score one (negative) for the lack of communications.
I was also scared because the warranty ran out and was all too short to begin with. Is it the shortest in the industry, or just my imagination? After it had failed the third time and was out of warranty, I was ready to chuck the thing away because it was worthless (too expensive to fix) when I discovered the real problem. I was reading about many others complaining about things like not having a battery replacement policy, when Apple finally wised up, a little. Lets hope that was the beginning of a trend back to quality, instead of just begrudgingly avoiding a consumer revolt or class action lawsuit. I didn't always mind when Apple used to charge a premium for their products, if they delivered premium service and support; but that hasn't felt like Apple of late. Service and a good support policy are all part of a good "long term" success plan and the perceptions of quality. Apple used to have that, but lost it years ago. I want it back. So my opinions of the first generation iPod was that despite having a sexy looking product, and decent design, I didn't have a good experience overall.
Apple upgraded the iPod to the second and third generation iPods (and arguably fourth generation if you count the mini). Maybe they would be better. It seems that they may have a repair policy in place, so at least that's better. But I found the hardware "improvements" a bit questionable. Where's a significantly better battery life? Lower cost? More built in features? Things that matter to me?
While more storage (music space) is good, Apple didn't really take the opportunity to move down into the lower end. 5G iPods for under $200 would have been cool a year or two ago. But Apple traditionally tries to hold their price point and increase features, even when the rest of the market moves down. The results are usually a decay in market share. (They start strong and end weak).
My bigger problem with the new iPods was that Apple went from a standard connector (FireWire) to a proprietary one (some pseudo dock thing); which for me is a step backwards. I don't mind having the physical dock and think that can be very convenient, and I only wish Apple would remember that on their PowerBook and iBook lines, but having a dock connector and a standard FireWire and USB port are not mutually exclusive. We're talking $.50 in electronics and connectors and not that much space. The results of a proprietary connector are that while the new iPod is a little smaller I not only have to carry around an iPod but I also have to carry around a lame proprietary cable to charge and transfer stuff - and that cable is good for nothing else. Before I could just count on there being a standard FireWire cable anywhere that was important; and even when I carry around my own cable it was useful for other things, and didn't have a flail at the end of it. I understand Apple's manufacturing reasons for doing what they did, but I do not care; I care about usefulness to me. Apple made the product worse for me, in order to increase their margins. It is a little thing, but little things are what differentiates good from great.
The flail was just the start of little downgrades. Apple went to a solid-state wheel. This lowers repairs and slightly increases reliability, most of all it lowers costs. Good for them. The savings didn't appear to make it to consumers in any significant way. The reliability and breakability were minor wins, but what consumers also got was a lack of tactile feedback like the old mechanical wheel. So that's a tradeoff or a win for Apple - but not a big win for me.
I like that Apple added some support for doing voice recording or other things; that would come in handy; especially at trade shows, large lectures, or dictating. That would seem to be a way to really extend the value of the iPod with very little electronics cost, and in the spirit of what it does well. But the downside is that Apple didn't really build it in; they just left the ability to add something on to allow it to happen; which shows they were thinking about it, but not hard enough. Instead of Apple putting in $.50 for a mic (or mic jack) into a $500 digital walkman, I get to pay $50 more for a tumorous third party appendage to an iPod in order take dictation or voice notes. This is less than elegant. Now I'd probably still get one, if I had a third generation iPod; but Apple gets about a "C" in good implementation. And then the software side is also at issue. The Mac used to lead in voice recognition software. Now it does not. If I want to use the iPod for dictation, which would be really cool and a way to make an iPod and an iMac a far more useful pair, I have to buy third party programs and add-ons and it might even work. That's not a solution from Apple, but one I might be able to create myself from off-the-shelf parts. That seems like a missed opportunity to me. The same with adding an FM tuner, GPS, IR or RF support, and so on.
And speaking of upgrades in features and design, there's no upgrade path other than eBay; which seems to be the new trend in Apple design, don't design for the future, make the machines more disposable. Now I realize that is good for the bottom line, and many other companies don't have trade-in or trade-up programs, but some do. Why not think about the consumer and how to get them "in the model that's right for them"? If Apple keeps not thinking of my needs, then they are making a more adversarial relationship between their customers and themselves. That's not a good thing.
As a consumer I when Apple "updates" something, I have to say, "what's in it for me". The hardware hasn't radically changed in price, though it has gotten more storage. The overall the design seems to have taken a few steps sideways. The first real change comes with the iPod mini and the new form factor and price.
However, as a stock holder, developer, and long time Apple follower, I was under whelmed with the mini rollout. Here Apple has a sexy new iPod and they learned little from the prior version. They gave me another lame proprietary connector, a beautiful case and form factor, not quite enough space for me (yet), no upgrade or sidegrade path, and a cost per gigabyte that is much worse than what I had before. Apple dropped features like the ability to do voice recording or add a tuner and so on. I'm not sure colors is a major innovation; let's face it, if it was so significant then why didn't Apple keep it up on their computers? Anodized G5's and PowerBooks? It seems like putting colors on decorator covers is a better idea for iPods; so it is more marketing hype than engineering meat.
Now size often costs money, or at least shirking something down does, so I expected some of the cost per megabyte increase. And I understand that the makers don't have enough density yet; but they'll get there. And I've heard the people saying, "that's just the intro price". But I think people are missing the point. If Apple released something that was below the $199 psychological barrier, a lot of people would be getting excited. Companies that think ahead often do loss leaders for the first short run to get people wowed on the future and know they'll make it back later as price drops and capacity increases. Hell many whole electronic categories are sold at a loss (Game Boxes, Cell Phones, etc.) because they make it back on software or services. Seems that Apple could do some interesting tying between iTMS and subsidizing the price of iPods or other things to own the market, instead they appear to be thinking short term and little picture. While waiting for something forward thinking and earth shattering (or market shaking), I got Steve Jobs and Apple giving me this smoke and mirror snow job.
Why a snow job you ask? Because, Apple shows these RIO MP3 players and talks about the $199 price point for enough space. People just aren't that stupid. I looked around and the prices were as low $150 (some deals, close-outs or remanufactured ones, and so on). Don't try to bluff consumers, some of them are cheap and know what stuff costs. Apple keeps thinking they are only competing with the highest end name brands, and consumers keep comparing them to the entire product spectrum. This has bit them repeatedly with Macs, and now looks to be an emerging pattern with iPods. Apple, you are competing with the entire competition, not just the competition you want to look at. And that $150 price point is today, by the time Apple ships the iPod mini's in another few months, I think their $249 price will be double what they were comparing themselves to.
Again, I like the Mini. It is still better in storage space than the competition, and I agree that 4 gigabytes is a lot more useful than the 256-512 megabytes. But by the time the mini comes out, there's going to be a few clones using other mechanisms in the 2 to 4 gig range, and probably a lower price point. So Apple and Steve Jobs gave good demo, but the reality distortion only lasts until the consumers see the sticker price of the competition.
Look, I'm not saying the iPod mini is a bad device, or isn't a decent value; in fact I'm drooling over one as soon as they get the space up to my minimum (about 8-12Gig) and they get the price point down. But I see the release as more of Apple's short term thinking that keeps biting them in the ass. Apple's supporters think "cool" at any price, or see the elegance of the device - you don't need to impress them. Then there's the other 90% of customers who see Apple as over-priced, closed, and a sometimes misleading with their "reality distortion field". Apple played right into their hands. They charge more than the product they were comparing themselves to, they promised to deliver in a few months, they delivered it with proprietary connector, they tried to bullshit, and so on. Dropping the price later won't change the bad will or initial perception; you've got to slap them silly out of the gate and make the market see this as the product they must have, NOW! And give it to them NOW, and not in 3 months time. Pre-announcing by a couple weeks is one thing, by a couple months is flim-flam and because they are scared that the competition is going to get to the market first, so they FUDdy up the waters with futures.
Apple's biggest flaw (or one of them) is always thinking in bad-business terms, as in quarterly report and not the long term. They think how to gouge the initial customers for as much as they could while they waited for the manufacturing ramp-up or they think about how much better they are than the competition, then from that egocentric point of view think how much more they should over-value their products. Their arrogance means they don't even start from a "directly competing" point of view; but how much of a premium they should demand. The results are they keep missing great opportunity to be seen as having devices that are the best value around. Whether they are the best or not isn't the point, it is how they are perceived that matters. Apple delivers good design and usability overall, but are often feature shy and high priced, and only going after the top of the market segment. $250 is not an entry level product.
I know the marketing jargon, "if we price it too low, demand will exceed supply and we'll miss some opportunity costs". Blah, blah, blah. That's the voice of people getting the little picture and missing the big one. So what if iPods are in so much demand that there are lines and people fighting over them? You can't afford to buy the kind of publicity that would generate. Most companies want to have the products that generate that kind of hype. You want every reporter to say, "these are a screaming bargain" on release, instead of, "OK product, but over priced". The day after proves the point that Apple missed an opportunity to kill the entire segment.
If you look at it from an economic sense, making $50 more on the first 10,000 customers is a pittance; that's $5M to the bottom line of a $5B+/year company? That's .1% of their bottom line for the year, and well below the level of mattering at all. That's probably less than their advertising budget for that same amount of time. On the other hand, if they had something that was $199 and an absolute must have and everyone wanted one, it might have made a slight difference in people's perceptions of Apple. And if Apple gained say a 1% greater capture on Mac sales because of it, with the computers larger values and higher margins, it could have made a far bigger impact to the bottom line. If the lower price had changed the market reaction to the new iPods, then that would have been a much bigger impact over the entire run of the product. So the goal should be in improving the brand perception of the entire corporation or the entire product run, and not just the quarterly report of one small product model of one small division. Vision people.
Along those lines, why hasn't Apple used iPods as a loss leader for other things? I've never understood why Apple didn't start doing some tying; buy a new Mac, get an iPod for free! Or a lotto, for every tenth AppleStore computer purchase customer you get an iPod? There's a window of opportunity to leverage iPod's success, and Apple may be missing it. Opportunity costs quickly being pissed away.
And what about a reasonable product spread? Apple could license the iPod name or product to a few other products that they outsource or partner with. You don't want to dilute the brand too much; but you should have the vision to cover people's music desires. Why not have a solid state credit card sized "low end" version? Apple's volumes should mean they could kill that market too, and have the same interface. Or license iPod technology (and interface) into an uber PDA/hand-held or cell phone. There's many places where the little hard drives and storage stuff could spread. But I fear that Apple will be greedy, try to control it all, which slows down their growth, and they will be so selective that another more open company (one that "plays well with others") will come along and take away the franchise; just like they did with Mac. Did we learn nothing from the past?
And the hardware side of iPod is only half the story, the rest of it is the software.
   
Now the whole iTunes thing just chaps my hide. This software is the perfect example of Microsoft-thinking - make something that is superficially cool and technically annoying. And I won't even get into the whole, wait a couple years before releasing it to the majority of the market (PC/Windows) thing. Usually the competition uses the year or two lead to eat their lunch, but they got lucky this time.
Now don't get me wrong; if you are a basic user, whose willing to only do superficial things, and use the iTunes software exactly how it was given to you, then it isn't that bad. It works and the interface isn't that bad. Sure drag and drop (direct manipulation) doesn't work worth a crap, and there are tons of features that any interface guy with a double digit IQ would know how to improve, but most users are unaware. It works fairly well, as long as you don't challenge it, or are willing to work the ways it wants to. But that's not good software, that's tolerable software.
I'm a guy that loves good engineering, including Human Factors engineering. And there's more to a product than just the surface; when users start using things and they don't work "great", the users are less than impressed and remember the feelings (like frustration). Good software makes them love using it, because it just does what they want; and then they "love" it. Since NeXT took over Apple, I get almost none of that. Let's look at what I mean.
What do I want in a playlist? I want a little radio station, right? My DJ alter ego to guess what songs I'm in the mood for, and play them. So if you had a clue about good software design and interface, how would you do that? Here's how I would do it. Mark stories for either "high rotation", "low rotation" and "no rotation". The latter are in the genre or theme, but I really only use it for categorization or looking it up to demo to friends. I'd have a little slide ratio (which little wheels are good for setting) to weight how many high rotation songs versus low rotation songs to play, and let the DJ randomize from each according to that weight. Just like a radio station. That's it, no rocket science, just some reasonable human factors engineering.
The same for mixing music types; it isn't hard. Sometimes I want to hear a particular classification (alternative music, classic rock, hard rock, electronic, etc.) most of the time I want to mix them in some ratio. So make a "DJ" or "MixMaster" type that lets you rank how much of each category is in the mix. Viola. It would work how I want it to, which isn't how it currently works.
The people that designed the playlist in iTunes seem to think the objective is "how long can you go until you hear the same song". But that's not a users goal, that's a coders misperception of what they think a user might want. They don't even have an automatic reshuffle rate or anything. Everyone I know wants to hear songs of a certain type, and they want to hear some songs more than others, but still have some variety. ITunes playlist has failed to do the basic job it is designed for, which is let me hear music how I'd like to hear it. It will pick a song that I like, play it once, and then make sure it is a month of listening before I ever get to hear it again; it is an anti-assistant, a little gremlin hiding my music from me.
I know this is a little detail, but it is these little details that make the difference between a script-kiddies hacking a program that runs, and a software engineer and human factors person putting together a solution that people just love to use because of the engineering elegance, even if they're not exactly sure why. You'd think by the third or fourth major revision you'd get around to making a mixer that could actually mix music worth a damn.
Of course, a mediocre interface is just a little annoying. I'm a geek that cares more about architecture or that it just works how I want it to (to make me more productive). Good software anticipates my needs and usage patterns, cheap hacks make me adapt to their way of working. The upside is the New Apple almost always has hits in choosing which Apps they should be doing and what market to go after. But then almost all of Apple's new software (post NeXT acquisition) expects me to adapt to their way of thinking, which is by my definition, not good software. So close, and yet so far.
Itunes is a perfect example of this. Apple hit this solution at the right time and followed through. Then they did it mediocre. I had some music I'd ripped long before iTunes existed, and I had a directory structure I'd put it in. So I pointed iTunes to it, and go. I said "GO". Instead of working with what I had, the program starts copying things and moving them where it wanted them to be (and didn't tell me it was doing that). Instead of what I wanted, iTunes put its music where it wanted. When I added more music to the directory structure, they didn't show up. Why not? That's what it is, a database of music kept in a directory structure. But I have to tell it to import instead of it figuring out the obvious. It is brain-dead obvious that is how it should work. I mean a watch folder isn't hard to do. It took me a few minutes to figure out it wasn't trying to help me (and watch), and a while longer to figure out that directory wasn't the real one any more and that it had moved everything and filled my hard drive with crap. Talk about anticipating the logical and then doing something else.
Then when it imports, or actually I have to tell it to import, it isn't smart enough to figure out that folders represent group and album to me, just like it does for it. So I get to enter and reclassify and do more things for it that it should know, or at least know how to ask me. More work for me. Thanks.
Now there is a secret option to tell iTunes NOT to screw up your filing hierarchy and throw copies of my music hither and yon (and fill up my hard drive in the process). And it will let you move music around, to a point, but it doesn't understand the relationships; so if you move it into a grouping folder, or from one category to another, it doesn't understand and reflect that in iTunes. So now your directory structure and your iTunes database are out of phase and you get to fix it twice. The same if you move it in iTunes, it doesn't reflect it in your directory structure. Hello? Is anyone in there? And if you move something out and then back in (across drives or network), guess what? It forgets all the information about that song; your ranking or just about all information except filename.
It seems obvious to users that there should be tight coupling between that directory (my hierarchy) and iTunes ability to list and play things in my directory, and then remember the information that I add. That's all it is for goodness sake, it is a little assistant to work with my database (filing system) of songs, and help me categorize and play them back. But instead of it becoming my assistant and working with what I had, it expected me to become its assistant and help it do what it wanted. All you need to do is put the bloody metadata (information that I added about a file) into each file, so they stay with the bloody file, and then all these problems go away. It is a few dozen bytes in a multi-megabyte file, what kind of lame programmer couldn't figure that out?
I'm not sure I really blame the programmers. Chances are it was the project manager that dictated the speed of features. And if you push too far, too fast, you get cheesy crap. Sometimes even they, or marketing will mandate how something works. And there seems to be an anti-sanity campaign on good design. Think of software like UNIX people do, hack it fast, and don't think like a user or for the future. It is easy to make a separate database to try to manage your file system database, but you'll never get the tight coupling you want, you'll always have the sync'ing issues, and you'll never get good software. But it made life easier for Apple, and that's far more important than a good user experience, right?
To top it all off, while I was doing all this, I kept getting weird things. Sometimes when I'd run iTunes would look different than other times. What's up with that? Well, actually I knew (I'd learned the hard way). Apple's upgrader, which heckles me mercilessly about the newest updates, had told me there was a new version of iTunes. Now this should mean that it knew that I had a iTunes installed on my machine, and only asks me to upgrade if I cared (based on my file structure). Sadly, the truth is this is just a broadcast that heckles you about every new release, whether you want it or not. I get it on file and web servers, and every machine, unless you know the secret option to tell it to shut up. Still, it is a manual process to tell it to stop heckling, instead of an automatic one where it anticipates my needs based on my configuration, but I digress.
The true annoyance was that after it asked me to upgrade, and I said yes, it sent me a copy. Not an upgrade (which is what it said it was going to do), but it stuffed another copy on my machine, confusing me and confusing the machine itself. Now good software would look at where the program is on my drive, and install the new program next to the old one, and then once completed (and verified), delete the old one. (This order is so if it dies while being downloaded, you still have the old fully working copy). Instead of doing that, the downloaded just blasted a copy where it thought I should have one, and annoyed us both.
Some will argue that I asked for it. After all, I'd had the gall to arrange things the way that made sense to me. I'd moved all my media players (iTunes, QuickTime, Real Player, Windows media player, and so on) into a subfolder in Applications called "Media Players". Kinda logical to me to not have one big uncategorized list of Apps, but to Apple I'd done a faux pas; it only knew where it thought my software should be, not where it actually was. This is the mark of crappy software. So for the first 9 major versions of the Mac OS (and dozens of minor ones), the Mac knew how to adapt to me; but since NeXT took over, the Mac expects me to adapt to it. Which made me wonder, have they ever read a book on good human factors? I'd recommend Don Norman, but there are many good books that would all try to teach them some of the "how to's" or "how not to's", and this software behavior would fall into the latter category. And it isn't like it is new, OS X has been doing this for many years, and for many years people have been complaining about it. Apple keeps releasing sexy new marketing hype about some features, and keeps failing to fix the fundamental ones that would make the machine better to use. Marketing over engineering is not a way to endear yourself to engineers or users.
There are many complaints with iTunes; unintelligible symbols and icons, inefficient layout, it doesn't download the cover art from one of the databases (or same database that it gets the song title's from), limited searching, and mediocre playback, lousy coupling between files and data. It sort of does all sorts of things I don't want; like being a cool drug-tripping kaleidoscope, or a store where I don't want one. And the one thing I really want it to do, like help me keep my music organized the way I want, it does sort of mediocre, at best. And the music management features that might make more sense to add, like recording or simple editing, it doesn't have. But hey, if I'm willing to work the way it wants, then it isn't that bad.
      
Contrary to the tone of this article, I don't think iTunes or the iPod are the worst examples of sanity on the planet. I don't even think they are the worst examples of stupidity I've seen today. Sadly, I think they are the best examples of what they do and are tops in their categories; but that is pathetic statement about American engineering, and especially Apple's engineering. That Human Factors or quality has fallen so far, and so fast, brings tears to my eyes. They aren't bad products, and I recommend both compared to the competition. But that's only because the competition is so pathetic.
Businesses wise, the problem is those holes in reason (and weak engineering) are opportunities for the competition to do better and knock Apple off their throne. And in the end, both are reasonable products with equal grains of brilliance, ego and oversight mixed in. But both are also what happen when you put marketing people (or bad engineering people) in charge of engineering projects; you get things that are superficially cool, and fundamentally flawed. Most of the costs of these bad decisions are hidden; things like support costs, user frustration, lower quality, customers leaving out of frustration, they don't show up on the bottom line (or at least not why), so they get ignored. But customers and users should care, and should complain about, if we ever want things to change.
If Apple were not close to greatness, this would not be a big deal. Yeah, yeah, so Dell came out with another cheap product. Who cares? Dell is a one-trick company, "good operations, slap other people's components together and do it cheap". They don't engineer, they only integrate what others engineer, so no one expects greatness from them. But Apple once did great things. They used to engineer neat stuff, and help people, and make products that I loved and didn't curse at. Apple used to charge a premium, but they delivered premium quality and service, now I just get the former. Apple's Human Factors engineers used to think about all the little details, so that I didn't have to. People loved Macs so much that they anthropomorphized their computers and tools and became raving advocates about the brand and products. Now instead of people thinking of Apple or their products as a friend and ally that works for them, it is more an annoying boss that keeps trying to tell them how it wants us to do what it doesn't understand, and just ends up being a necessary pest that is better than the alternatives. I now feel like Apple and their products are a family member with an anger control or substance abuse problem; you kinda love them and hate them at the same time. Lovable but fundamentally flawed is fine for humans, but I want more out of my hardware and software. 
 Format for Printing  Mail
|
|
|
|
