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MovieMaker and iMovie
Wasted potential?
By: David K. Every
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2002-11-20 03:40:29
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 icrosoft has released and is starting to promote their iMovie clone called MovieMaker (version 2). http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/comparison.asp. These products can teach us a lot about the history of the industry.
One thing we can learn, is that Microsoft seldom innovates, but they often copy. I can't remember a single product that they've ever created a category for. The sad thing is that doesn't really matter. In a few years, all the PC users will probably know of, and use, MovieMaker; or whatever Microsoft calls it by then. Microsoft has dedication and follow-thru; something Apple often lacks, and thus Microsoft often turns failures into commercial successes, and sometimes Apple does the opposite by bailing to soon and not learning from their mistakes. In the end, PC users will think MovieMaker is great, or that Microsoft created something; but only because they are completely ignorant of everything outside their little world.
Another important thing that this teaches us is that usability doesn't matter as much marketability. Look, I'm a UI guy, and I really value good interface and know it when I see it. I wish it mattered more. But the facts are that users usually don't know better; and the difference between salesmanship and deceit and fraud can be a very thin line. To most buyers it won't matter which works better; what matters is which looks like it works better or looks like the better value.
Software policies don't usually allow people to just take many products home and try them out, and return the ones they don't like. And if they did, most people are too lazy to do that anyways. They read the box, look at the feature count, and spend 45 seconds making their purchasing decision, and then the next 10 years ruing it. Microsoft adds long lists of features, and saves time by not spending it making sure the features are good or usable. By the time users find that out, they will already be customers. That's too late for the competition, and customers don't want to admit they made a bad purchase, so they'll suffer, and wait for the next upgrade to fix things. Then they'll pay for that upgrade, and find out it doesn't work as well as they would like, and so on. So quality doesn't matter much, when you have uneducated consumers; and most computer buyers are too lazy or intimidated to educate themselves. This not only hurts them, but the market.
Lest you think that I believe that this is all Microsoft's fault, read on. These events also reflect on Apple.
Apple came out with a great product in iMovie, better and easier than anything else at the time. They did a mediocre job of marketing it and selling it to customers. Mac people know of it; most PC users do not. We can make all sorts of excuses for Apple, but the end result is that they failed at convincing PC people of the tremendous value in this product.
Apple could have had a PC version of their product ready to go; and sold it for dirt to the Windows people; that would have given them name recognition and the product more general attention. The Mac version and Mac computer still working better or being more full featured might have gotten a few converts. Instead, Apple chose short term thinking, over the long term thinking; and chose to pirate more software sales and success, in the hopes that would lead to more hardware sales. I understand the reasoning, and am not 100% against it, it is their money and market - but these are just facts with tradeoffs. They sold iMovies short to try to use that to push hardware sales. In the end, I believe they failed at making a real difference with both. A lot of that is just because movie making is still somewhat a niche, and unlikely to impact the general market; but even within that niche, I donít think it made the impact it could have.
I think Apple's hubris and inflexibility was the biggest millstone around iMovie's neck. The Macs had analog image and video support long before PC's, and it tended to work better. This is an inexpensive addition; especially for something that you are trying to make easier to connect to other devices. Because of purity of design, and purity of ego, Apple chose to pull analog support out and go pure digital. Guess what? Most customers didn't have pure digital, and weren't going to throw out their hardware just because Apple wanted them to. That meant that iMovie or iMacs were less useful to more people than it could be. And now Microsoft is going to wisely leverage that to their advantage.
I know that digital is better; and that I like it. I get the digital hub marketing concept; but the facts are facts. Digital hub means the computer is digital, not every device needs to have a digital connection, or at least it shouldn't. I understand that for not too much money you can add something to do analog to digital conversion, and so on. But facts are facts. It is years after iMovie was released, and still the market hasn't gone all digital, and we have a few years left in the transition. Long-term all digital will be the norm; but we aren't there yet, and we certainly weren't there when Apple tried to force it on its customers. If Apple would help bring people towards the future with a smooth migration, I think they would do better than what they currently do; which is leap 5 years ahead and wait around for the market to catch up to them. Sometimes you can be too ahead of the market.
Apple also decided that they should make all their legacy (OS 9) customers pay for a product that they give away to OS X customers. Basically saying, \"If you've been with us a really long time, or we haven't yet offered a compelling reason for you to switch up, then we value you less and will punish you\". And at the time, this was most of their customers. The result was Apple got less market adoption and more animosity than they would have otherwise.
Another example of Apple screwing up; compare titles, effects and transitions. Apple was years ahead, but they pissed away that advantage. Why? The answer is easy; Apple didn't want iMovie to compete with Final Cut or DVD Studio Pro products, and they wanted to not compete with 3rd party or their own possible "for sale" plug-in packs. This is what happens when marketing has too much control in an organization; they make common sense business and marketing decisions, and cripple (limit) products to target segments and keep from pirating each others sales. And the competition, which is under no such restrictions, comes in and starts eating your lunch; first on the lower end, and eventually everywhere, as they are under no such restrictions.
What you need to do, is let each product fight for it's own niche. If the iMovie people can add these transitions in quickly and cheaply (or borrow them), and offer a more common sense way of accessing them, then let them. The high end product can learn from that, and can be driven to deliver more as well. Apple could buy or license such plug-ins, and keep making the product better. Apple could even allow common plug ins between products to make migration easier, and just make the interface the selling point.
What is really scary is when Microsoft starts doing better in interface. While I agree that many of their wizards are lame, and am not particularly impressed with the implementation of the technology, they do work and make it easier to train people how to use things. Apple had this really powerful and versatile help system that could be used as a power-version of a wizard (had they ever worked the kinks out); but they threw that away, and now have a more limited HTML based help system. So in a few ways the on-line and free tutorials and training of MovieMaker may surpass that of iMovie.
Now quality isn't quantity; Apple could have made up a little for the lack of a good help system, with brute quantity of help, training and tutorials. But they failed there too. Microsoft is far more aggressive. And users use what they can easily learn. iMovie may be easier to learn and use; but users will look at the box or feature count, and if it looks like there's more help to MovieMaker, they'll likely go with MovieMaker.
       
Apple did a lot with iMovie, and there's no doubt they did it better than they have with many other products, so there is hope and a slightly better trend. And Apple isn't stupid; they will quickly respond if they notice the threat. But I'm not sure if that is good enough -- and responding after the threat is getting entrenched is never as good as being so compelling and good that they can never catch up or never want to go into your market in the first place. I feel like Apple should have done more; not that they didn't try, but another compelling Mac advantage will probably soon be neutralized in the minds of the few who even knew about it.
Don't get me wrong; I donít think iMovie is dead, or even the lesser product. I just think that as a marketing opportunity or killer-app to help users convert platforms or understand the elegance of Apple/Mac, it will be mostly nullified.
Mac users and iMovie users will have an advantage in that they've been doing for the last 3-5 (or more) years what the Windows users will just start to catch on to; editing movies on their home machines in an easy way. But Windows users will jump on MovieMaker and most won't know of or ever hear about iMovie. They will once again credit Microsoft for the great contributions to the industry, without ever realizing where they borrowed their ideas and motivation from.
There will be a small victory in the clichÈ that many of them will hear and repeat that Macs are good for video and media, without ever knowing why or where it came from. But in the end, I will be left thinking that while iMovie is better in many areas, that it will have never really reached its full potential or get the recognition it deserves. Blame for that belongs equally to Microsoft, lazy users, and Apple.
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