Reactions to the iPod nano release: Whose walls I'd like to be a fly on to watch their faces!

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Reactions to the iPod nano release: Whose walls I'd like to be a fly on to watch their faces!

Date Created: 18 Sep, 2005, 01:52 PM

Look around the web (heck, just scroll down to my blog entry on the "guts and glory" of Apple's dumping the iPod mini for the nano) and you'll see general praise for what Apple has done with the nano.

Essentially, the comments from Wall Street and the online magazines have been positive with respect to Apple's maintaining if not extending its lead in the mp3/digital music download marketplace.

Most of those who stop to think are reminding their readers or investors that it's the iPod experience that counts, not just the machinery. Of course, this applies to the Macintosh as well, but that seems to be a harder sell it seems. Easier to fork out a few hundred dollars together with the free iTunes for either platform to get the iPod experience, as compared to the sunk cost invested in Wintel hardware and software, which could cost thousands to cross-grade. Perhaps less with some help from the Mac mini.

I don't know about you, but I keep going back to the Keynote of Steve Jobs announcing the Motorola/Cingular/Apple deal with the ROKR phone. And fast forwarding to the part where he introduced the nano. It's masterful presenting and shows Jobs at his magician best. Look here, while I do something there - a classic case of misdirection, much like he did with flash mp3 talk a year ago when he introduced the U2 iPod in San Jose.

I wonder if Steve sat down over lunch with my old University colleague, Dr. Kim Silverman, who works for Apple in their Speech Recognition area. Kim looks like Merlin the Magician, and indeed is a master magician in his own right, expert at sleight of hand. I wouldn't be surprised if he entertained the Jobs family and Steve picked up a few lessons in misdirection.

That said, watching the nano's introduction, I would have loved to be a fly in the wall in the offices of certain individuals and their boardrooms (or recording studios) when they got around to watching the Quicktime feed (or in the case of Microsoft, some flunky who converted the feed into a Windows Media 10 file or simply recorded it on VHS or DVD-R so Bill G or Steve B wouldn't have to see Quicktime in action.)

Whose wall would have been an interesting one to sit on and watch the reactions?

1. Creative Technology's Sim Wong Hoo, fresh from efforts to counter the iPod momentum with claims of patenting the interface so effective in the iPod experience.
This is the same CEO who was not exactly impressed with the release of the iPod shuffle in January:

"We’re expecting a good fight but they’re coming out with something that’s five generations older," as quoted in January 13, 2005 edition of the SiliconValley.com site here.

2. Robert Scoble, A-list blogger and one-man Microsoft publicist/apologist/evangelist (take your pick depending on what idiotic thing Steve Balmer said in the last 24 hours). Writing from MSFT's developer conference last week in LA, he said:

"Byron thinks that Microsoft should buy all of its employees an iPod Nano and then have them report back a week later on why they can't make a product like that. Oh, there was one being handed around here at the PDC among a bunch of Microsoft execs and employees. It is damn awesome. My hat is off to Apple. They do nice work. Straight up."

3. Shawn King, ultra-sensitive host of the online Apple-oriented internet discussion show, Your Mac Life, soon to wing his way to Paris to cover the Apple expo there, sans Jobs' Keynote.

Not short of being forward with up-front hyperbole, this is the same Shawn who assured listeners prior to one SFO MacWorld (I think he stopped short of saying "Read my lips", that there would be no new Powerbooks, following which Steve Jobs revealed not one, but two new Powerbooks, the 12" and the 17".

And this is the same Shawn who in email correspondence with me was nonplussed (if not downright disbelieving) about my suggesting Apple ought to release a flash-based iPod, which I blogged about here back in October, 2004.

Here's a mere sample of our correspondence, dated mid-November 2004, which started soon after I blogged the October entry. (You ought ot be able to figure out who's saying what to whom...)

"Reviewing where we were a month ago....

On 15/10/2004, at 2:16 AM, Shawn King wrote:
You may not understand Apple very well - if there's no immediate gain, they
won't do it.

Why would Apple head down into Flash-based territory? Because it can,
it makes financial sense

I don't think it does. Margins on those things are razor thin and there's no
innovation Apple can bring to make them "special".

and it reaches a youth market already
hungry for digital players and yet can't afford even the mini.

Right now, Apple doesn't care about that market. They will in January though
when a new iPod is announced. :-)

--
Shawn King
Host/Executive Producer
Your Mac Life
http://www.yourmaclife.com

And I included the following to flush home my initial point:

From Appleinsider 11/12/2004:

"Flash-based iPod digital music player on tap for early 2005.

To his credit, Thomas Weisel analyst Jason Pflaum had this one nearly down pat.

Apple Computer in December will begin manufacturing a third variant of its flagship iPod music player, which will be based on solid-state flash memory, AppleInsider has confirmed through well placed and extremely reliable sources.

According to contacts in Asia, the computer company will build a stock-pile of approximately 2 million flash iPods before the product begins shipping world-wide in late-January or early February. The new players are slated to be announced at the annual Macworld trade show in San Francisco during the second week of January."

And I concluded with:

....I think you were betting bigger, while I was betting smaller... and reaching down into the youth market to complete the life cycle.
Are you still firm it *won't* happen?

For someone who "understands" Apple, Shawn plays a good first fiddle to co-host Jay who seems to have his finger more firmly on the patient's pulse.

4. Sony CEO Howard Stringer, a European heading up Sony and taking them into a battle to recover the "walkman" golden days of yore, now long lost and perhaps never to return. From a lousy introduction of its music download business (see here) to mp3 players which cute as they maybe, and with astounding battery life, still won't challenge the iPod. Heck, might as well throw in the offices of other Sony higher-ups like Koichiro Tsujino (Sony online music and players) and Phillip Wiser, involved with Sony's Connect music "service", formerly from Liquid Audio.

5. The CEOs of iRiver, the "gone out of the business" Rio, and of course, Rob Glaser, from RealAudio, who no doubt will once again bleat about Apple's not letting his file system play on iPods. Might as well throw in CEOs for mp3 divisions of Philips, Toshiba, Samsung, LG and the sundry other Korean makers, as well as the other players from Taiwan and Singapore. Mind you, around my suburb of Caulfield which houses a tertiary institute well known for its educating students from Asia, the iPod is not well represented. Lesser known makers like JIC are, and they are sweet if not small capacity units.

6. What would a list like this be without mentioning Dell. You do remember what the higher ups at Dell said, don't you? Especially CEO, Kevin Rollins, here:

"It's interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it's only this past year it's become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman – a rage, everyone had to have one. Well you don't hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy."

7. All those nameless journalists reprinting press releases from many of the above touting the next iPod Killer is about to be released, without giving it due thought or any respect for their readers' intelligence. Times have changed, boys and girls, and consumers of both product and words now come better equipped to sort through your FUD and PR-mouthing. Time to start to do some real journalism (look at some of your colleagues in New Orleans who are pushing back against White House FUD), and offer more incisive reporting.

I am still waiting for Snopes.com to offer up a section devoted to the graveyard of iPodKillers.

I await your further suggestions of whose walls you'd like to rest on to see their reactions to the nano...