| Home > Technology > Steve Jobs' Perfect Storm - Apple's vision and gasoline prices... |
| Steve Jobs' Perfect Storm - Apple's vision and gasoline prices... | | Date Created: 17 Oct, 2005, 10:19 AM |
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Thanks to Carl Howe and his comments in a previous blog entry who allowed me to see this story.
Carl writes a nice blog which for me is easy reading since there is a confluence of areas of interest and opinions between us.
A recent entry of his on his Blackfriasinc blog - actually a series - looks at the shift in how Apple sees itself, and just as importantly how others are beginning to see it, as much more than a maker of computers and iPods.
The possibility for it to become a vendor of a wide variety of content, already now happening with music, books, podcasts, music videos and now TV is now obvious, and this has been described nicely on the German blog, Management Channel, from which the illustration which heads this entry comes.
You can get each of those media in other places, and in all cases except for the ABC TV shows, they were available before Apple did so.
But, who else brings it all together in a one stop shop, using a one-click purchase and download mechanism making the shopping/sampling/viewing experience oh-so-easy.
No-one but Apple.
Now some dislike the silo experience claiming they are locked into Apple's products and services, or its DRM architecture. The latter of course was by agreement with content providers and without it, the content would remain bootlegged for those who really wanted it NOW or without paying for it.
No one has to stay in the Apple silo. All the content is available, competitively elsewhere - bar the ABC TV stuff, for now - so the silo doors swing both ways. You can enter easily and leave just as easily to enjoy the pleasures of say a Microsoft/Real mashup. You are most welcome to that experience.
But what Apple is doing here is switching on the masses not just to its products but to a philosophy of ownership. Not just pride in ownership of its products, undeniable in my view for a decreasingly small premium, but now also a pride in ownership to a "club" of like-minded individuals who share a view of where Apple is taking them, and a faith (I use the word cautiously) of where Apple is heading, and happy to come for the ride.
The markets Apple is moving in now, allowing home shopping, comes at a time when many are becoming cautious if not stingy with their use of their cars. Petrol prices are on the radar for discussion and already we are seeing changes in car sales happening here, with the Toyota Corolla now outselling traditional local 6-cylinder family-size cards. Changes to industrial relations laws here also mean fiscal belt-tightening.
Which means less driving to the movies and video stores, and a reappraisal of the cost of cable TV. This is the perfect storm confluence from which huge societal changes come, and Steve Jobs - by sticking to a vision - is going to ride that huge wave.
Which also goes to show that those Wall Street analysts who marked Apple shares down 10% after its best quarter ever, only to bring it up by almost the same again a few days later after the San Jose Keynote, should be ignored from here on in... they simply don't understand the company about which they're giving advice to others. Nor do they appear to understand technology and society... a mea culpa is in order. |
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