NYT on Apple's Digital Way of Life 81
sinalet writes "The New York Times is running an article on Apple's 'digital way of life'. Most interestingly are some comments about the history of the iPod and its developers. 'Apple says it developed the iPod in just six months, faster than any major product in the company's history. The hand-held device, which contains more computing power than an early Macintosh, was put together starting in 2001 by hardware designers led by Tony Fadell, a young engineer who had worked briefly at RealNetworks, led by Rob Glaser, who has developed the Rhapsody music service.'"
FP (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:5, Insightful)
Designing an intuitive, efficient UI is no easy task.
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:4, Informative)
They bought the software for that UI from Pixo.
Not to say that they didn't do a fast and excellent job.
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:5, Funny)
They bought the software for that UI from Pixo.
Not to say that they didn't do a fast and excellent job.
Ah, but software is only half of the answer, grasshopper.
Now go -
ponder the Thumbwheel,
and the Infinitely Reduced Number of Buttons.
Meditate on the Zen of No Moving Parts.
Dwell on the mystical FireWire Integration.
And do not ignore the Inviting Symmetry of the Thing.
(I leave it to someone else to set up a crack about the battery)
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:2, Informative)
The scroll wheel!
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:3, Informative)
And if you want to get really nit-picky, the lock switch at the top is moving, bringing the total to 6 moving parts.
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:2)
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:2)
Which, unfortunately, has been bought by Sun, so you can pretty much forget about them ever producing anything decent again.
Ahem, cough *Cobalt* cough.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed, but it isn't really an issue of time. Apple does good design, because they have people who are experienced at doing it. You could spend 2 weeks, or 2 years on a bad UI design, and it would still be bad.
I think they were talking about how it was amazing to just put out such a product in 6 months, and I just don't see what is so amazing about it. How long should it take? 9 months? A year? It is just a music player.
Re:Created in 6 months... (Score:2, Interesting)
And the 3rd generation iPods are even better. I can only imagine what's next. Bring it on.
No need to register! Here's the Text! (Score:4, Informative)
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: April 25, 2004
STROLL the corridors and the atriums on Apple Computer's corporate campus these days and you will notice that something is missing. Gone are the posters and graphics accenting the company's sleek personal computers. In their place, in the main lobby, is a striking, three-story-high billboard celebrating Steven P. Jobs's brand-new billion-dollar consumer electronics business - the iPod digital MP3 music player.
In just two and a half years, Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has managed to take a well-designed hand-held gadget, add software connecting it to Macintoshes and Windows-based personal computers and convince the recording industry that he has found an elegant solution for ending its nightmare of digital piracy. In doing so, he has shifted the emphasis of Apple from what made it famous - hip, even lovable computers - to what he hopes will keep it relevant and profitable in the future: products for a digital way of life.
In fact, the wild success that Mr. Jobs has enjoyed with the iPod may have come in the nick of time. For all the acknowledged design and ease-of-use advantages of the Macintosh, Apple's overall PC business is still growing more slowly than that of its Microsoft- and Intel-based competitors.
Moreover, it was obvious at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January that a horde of consumer goods and computing companies is preparing a fresh assault aimed at bringing computerized gadgets into every nook and cranny of the home. In particular, two powerful Apple rivals, Sony and Microsoft, are betting that Mr. Jobs is wrong when he says, "It's about the music!" This year, both companies plan to release more expensive, hand-held combination video and audio players that their executives hope will blow the iPod away.
So will Apple eventually be overwhelmed by its bigger, better-heeled competitors? Throughout the technology world, there seems to be a simple, uniform answer to that question: Never underestimate Steve Jobs.
With roots both in Silicon Valley's digital culture and the 1960's counterculture, Mr. Jobs has long been an arbiter of what is cool in technology, much like a real-world version of a trend-spotting character from "Pattern Recognition," one of the cyberpunk novels by William Gibson.
AND, helped by his growing prominence in Hollywood through his second company, Pixar Animation Studios, Mr. Jobs has attained a level of influence over how life is lived in the digital age that is unmatched by even his most powerful computer industry rivals. "He is the Henry J. Kaiser or Walt Disney of this era," said Kevin Starr, a culture historian and the California state librarian.
Since returning seven years ago to Apple, the computer maker he helped to establish in 1976, Mr. Jobs has created a fusion of fashion, brand, industrial design and computing. He has opened a chain of 78 retail stores to showcase Apple's consumer-oriented designs and to surround the company's computers with an array of digital consumer products. The stores themselves have become another billion-dollar business, a feat all the more impressive considering that one of Apple's chief competitors, Gateway, failed with a similar retail strategy during the same period.
As a result, Apple is acting less like a computer company and more like brand-brandishing, multinational companies such as Nike and Virgin. The iPod's success is also the clearest indication that Mr. Jobs, if he is to successfully revamp Apple, will ultimately win not by taking on PC rivals directly, but by changing the rules of the game.
The Apple that is starting to emerge may be a harbinger. The company's growth may no longer be defined by its PC market share, now a declining sliver of the PC industry, but instead by Mr. Jobs's ability to create consumer markets.
Mr. Jobs, who says he has a 70 percent share of the market for legal music downloads and a 45 percent share of the MP3 market, see
Re:Job's Ego has no bounds (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like he hides who does the work. Everyone knows who the designers are, and many times, the keynote presentations are done by the product designers.
Re:Job's Ego has no bounds (Score:2, Interesting)
A while back, days before they boosted the old G4 line, there was a leak on their web site with the new specs and prices - basically, the wrong image was put up. Rumour has it, he flipped his lid about that one...
Re:Job's Ego has no bounds (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Job's Ego has no bounds (Score:1)
With Microsoft for instance, there are constantly leaks about products or news or something coming out of that building. I assume this is due to the fact that Bill Gates does not have such strict rules about R
He has to have the credit. Just ask Woz. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Just ask Woz, who he lied to and stole money from in the past.
And damn it, this isn 't a troll. These are facts and spending 3 minutes on google will back me up.
Re:He has to have the credit. Just ask Woz. (Score:2)
Re:He has to have the credit. Just ask Woz. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ironically, Wozniak's design was so complex that no one at Atari could figure out how it worked.
Re:He has to have the credit. Just ask Woz. (Score:1)
Re:He has to have the credit. Just ask Woz. (Score:1)
Woz's design was not so complex that no one at Atari could figure out how it worked.
"Bushnell dangled a financial reward. Payment was to be based not upon delivery of the new game, but on how efficiently it could be manufactured."
"Woz needed no excuse to bury himself in a design project - especially ont that put a premium on a solution using the fewest number of chips."
From "APPLE: the inside story of intrigue, egomania, and business blunders"
Ironically,
WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Glad to know John Markoff still can't write his way out of a paper bag. Some of the research in this article is interesting, but... that's assuming that it's the truth.
Re:WTF? (Score:1)
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Really?
http://www.arstechnica.com/etc/mac/index.html
$46million profit, 20% margin on 807,000 iPods, which start at $250 and go up from there.....
If you assume a $300 average price, that already makes the non-iPod business unprofitable. A more reasonable average would probably be somewhere above $300, even accounting for the $250 mini - all the rest are $300-$500.
It sure seems to me that they must be losing money there. If
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
How much money was spent on R&D and Sales for the iPod?
Whatever it was needs to be subtracted out of the "cost" column before you are can determine if they were profitable w/o the iPod.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
I don't think the "margin" works quite the way you're suggesting. Even if you're wrong, though, I guess I don't have evidence that they're making money on their CPUs. I have no idea how to figure that out.
The occasional period might help. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, I never realized that Tony Fadell, who worked briefly at RealNetworks, which is led by Rob Glaser, who of course developed the Rhapsody music service, was the one responsible for leading the iPod design team, whom developed the iPod, which has more computing power than an early mac, in just six months, or that you could have this many commas holding a sentence together, for this long, and not think back to yourself, "Perhaps this sentence is a bit long", or something to that effect, so now you can flame away, if you want.
Re:The occasional period might help. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:The occasional period might help. (Score:1, Funny)
If you're going to be an ass, at least make sure you do it right.
Re:The occasional period might help. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The occasional period might help. (Score:2)
Hmm. Grammar nazi has to type something this sentence for 20 seconds before /. lameness filter allows her to post a comment.
Re:The occasional period might help. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:iPod's nice enough but Apple itself...?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:iPod's nice enough but Apple itself...?? (Score:1, Troll)
Complete fabrication. Believe it if you can't bring yourself to believe Apple would rip anyone off, but it is nonsense. Check out this FAQ. [karelia.com]
Does it sound likely to you?? That a small developer would have an inside track on what Apple were up to that much earlier? That they would have such detailed info as to duplicate the look and feel so thoroughly?? Wake up my friend. This journal [slashdot.org] also put it nicely.
~SO
Re:iPod's nice enough but Apple itself...?? (Score:1)
One could think the name Watson was used becuase Watson was the assistant to Sherlock. In this case, Sherlock would be you, or the user of the Mac, and Watson would be assisting with the searching.
Re:The Sherlock/Watson Timeline (Score:1)
Sorry, I was just being silly :-)
Re:iPod's nice enough but Apple itself...?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true? (Score:2)
Re:iPod's nice enough but Apple itself...?? (Score:2, Funny)
New Airport to facilitate latest Apple device?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:New Airport to facilitate latest Apple device?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Close One (Score:5, Funny)
It's a good thing these people's amazingly successful software business principles didn't carry over to hardware.
Jobs and the Zen Computers Thing (Score:5, Interesting)
The success of the iPod doesn't seem to have significantly changed Apple's market share," said T. Michael Nevens, a director at both Borland Software and Broadvision and the former director of McKinsey & Company's technology consulting practice. And Mr. Nevens said that there was "no support for the theory" that the new digital appliances would bolster computer sales.
T. Michael Nevens is completely missing the point, I think.
I am reminded of an earlier interview with Jobs - I don't have the link, I believe it was maybe a Time article around the launch of the flatpanel iMac - and the interviewer kicked off the story with a description of his arrival. He came into the room that Jobs was in, sitting on the floor yoga-style, with a powerbook, and he was going through fonts. He sat there for 10 minutes looking at these various fonts, not speaking to the reporter. Then he looked up and said something like, 'Aren't these just beautiful? I love the fonts we licensed for OS X.'
This is a funny insight into Steve Jobs. I think he's just really bent on the idea of these seamless computers. When you really think about it, that real plug-and-play sort of mentality has always dominated the Mac experience. I think Jobs, Zen Weirdo that he is, fucking hates the whole Windows scene because to him it is just really really tacky. Too many options that are crap, none of it consistent, none of it forming something totally coherent from top to bottom.
So when T. Michael Nevens, or Random Slashdot Angrybot, says something about iPods not selling more Macs or affecting Mac sales, or not inreasing market share which clearly they have, just not appreciably in Macs, they are missing the context. Jobs' whole Seamless Vision Thing flows down from his input into the designs. The reason that iPods talk to iTunes so well, which talks to iPhoto and iDVD and all the other iCrap is because he just insists that it should work that way.
Then Rob Glasner talks about opening the iPod up to Rhapsody users, of course Jobs balks because he already has made the concession to market forces in selling the iPod for Windows at all. That is his mea culpa for keeping the original Macintosh project clamped down.
If Jobs had his way all of these little projects would make money - but if some of them have to act as bridges, or enabling mechanisms - the physical stores, the iTMS - then they will do so. The fact that all of the software and hardware work perfectly together is just the way Jobs wants it to work.
Re:Jobs and the Zen Computers Thing (Score:1, Redundant)
Ironically, Wozniak's design was so complex that no one at Atari could figure out how it worked.
When returning to apple he had a Toshiba runningNT (Score:1)
Re:When returning to apple he had a Toshiba runnin (Score:2)
Re:When returning to apple he had a Toshiba runnin (Score:1)
Re:When returning to apple he had a Toshiba runnin (Score:2)
He also had an IBM ThinkPad, one of the single-spindle models, also running NeXTstep or OPENSTEP depending on the timeframe --- remember this guy liked Concurrence.app so much he had Apple write Keynote.
William
What if my iLife extends beyond the headset? (Score:4, Insightful)
My point? Where is Apple going with this digital hub thing? They make great software (that they give me) for all these other pieces of equipment, so where the heck is Apple going?
a couple thgoughts:
The PDA/Phone - Jobs said he isn't interested in a PDA and they are way behind on cell phone tech (not to mention, everyone has one or three) but there are few good options for BOTH and if Apple could do for the PDA-Phone what they did for the digital music player, it would really shake up the market. So the chipset is Mororola or whatever, as long as the interface is from Apple they would control the experience.
The Digital A/V Player - I don't know about you but I don't own a DVR yet because I want a device that will manage music, broadcast / captured broadcast video, and prerecorded media (CD/DVD). Another area where Apple could use iPod lessons learned and make something to build into TVs and stereo systems. It is high time HDTV's started coming with Eithernet and Airport Extreme!
Re:What if my iLife extends beyond the headset? (Score:2)
That's where Apple's going. They don't so much care about your non-Apple keyboard, and they want your digital music player to be the iPod -- but just so that it plugs in right with their software.
iTunes sells iPods. iLife sells Macs.
An Apple PDA-Phone (Score:2)
clicky [google.com].
It shows a software that turns your Symbian device into an Apple PDA phone. The automatic google translation makes it sound a little weird, but should be legible.
Consider the Source: John Markoff sucks (Score:1)
On Small Marketshare (Score:1)
They have in the past brought a lot of small things to the consumer desktop that have made life easier for everyone who uses a GUI. You don't have to use a mac, or ever have used one, to benefit from that. I think we'll see Expose-like features on everyone's desktop soon, for instance.
Anyone else get the impression that Jobs is a little unhinged? If
Re:On Small Marketshare (Score:3, Insightful)
Time forever lost (Score:2)