April 13, 2007
I extend a hearty congratulations to my friend and editor Ryan Block on passing the 5,000-post mark and, perhaps more incredibly, the million-word mark blogging for Engadget. Jeremy Toeman totally shows me I’m not his BFF by letting Dave Zatz but not me contribute to what may be the closest thing to This Is Your Life in a blog post honoring the achievement, noting that he’s only written about 290 in the same amount of time. Cheer up, Jeremy. They go a lot slower when they’re multimedia extravaganzas.
Peter Rojas brought me to Engadget in its first year and Ryan has been one of the key reasons writing for the site has been such a delight. He is a “writer’s editor” who always provides the highest levels of support and stands for the highest standards of professionalism and one of the finest people with whom I’ve ever had the pleasure of working. Anyone I meet who knows Ryan loves him, even his robot clone from the future that’s been sent back in time to kill him. Oooh, sorry Ryan, guess I should have told you about that earlier. My bad.
In preparing this week’s Switched On column on Soda Club, I had a blast collaborating with him on the text in the lead graphic, which parodies the nearly subliminal warning on the Fight Club DVD. Thanks, Ryan.
Speaking of Switched On, I should note the column will be moving to Monday starting next week.
April 10, 2007
I received a fair amount of feedback on my Apple TV vs. TiVo column from a few weeks ago, but none on the headline. Come on, people! Doesn’t anyone remember the famous New York Post headline? Anyway, some readers have suggested that Apple TV is really more competition for cable itself than simply TiVo. For that argument, I will consider cable as coming without DVR service, since cable DVRs are unavailable without cable, and we’ve already considered Apple TV vs. TiVo, which is one of the best retail options for those who would want DVR service without cable or satellite.
TiVo’s business model was initially designed to make it an attractive partner for cable, but such is not the case with Apple TV. Apple TV dips its toe into what some regulators have been asking for in “cable a la carte” but goes even further. Whereas cable a la carte advocates would like cable providers to offer only the channels they want, iTunes sells content by the series or even the episode.
Apple claims that it now offers 70 percent of the primetime offerings of major broadcast and popular cable networks such as Bravo. Of course, cable and satellite providers offer over 1,000 hours per week of programmed entertainment, even though we’ve all heard the complaints about there being “500 channels and nothing on.” When asked in an Engadget Mobile interview about broadcasting TV to cell phones a la MediaFLO, Helio CEO Sky Dayton responds rhetorically, “When was the last time you watched linear programming?”
Nonetheless, there’s still a lot on broadcast and cable that isn’t on iTunes, or isn’t on iTunes until the followiong season. As was the case for TiVo, if your tastes don’t wander outside iTunes’ selection (which will certainly grow), buying your content from iTunes may make sense, but for now Apple TV can’t compete with the breadth of cable or satellite television that most consumers value.
April 6, 2007
This week’s Switched On, which should be posted later today, discusses HP’s discontinuation of its Digital Entertainment Center living room form factor PCs and Microsoft’s struggles to advance PC form factors. As far as I know, CEPro broke the story. Those who follow the convergence or PC retail space should read Julie Jacobson’s excellent series of articles about HP’s experience with the DEC in the custom installer channel. Part II looks at HP’s experience with the custom install channel earlier in the article, but the third part of the article, which I believe was posted today, delves deeper into why HP is leaning toward its MediaSmart TVs.
I akso had to chuckle as Julie found this way to sidestep an “off the record” comment:
Although HP spokesperson Pat Kinley did not want me to quote her as saying that the HP product and interface is simpler to use than the MCE solution, PC World did quote her: “We have other products on the market now and future products that I can’t talk about that perform essentially the same function in a way that’s easier for the consumer [to use].”
The article concludes with HP trying to position more as competition for AppleTV vs. Media Center Extenders, but you can’t compete with one without competing against the other, as Microsoft has been driving home with its comparisons between the Xbox 360 and AppleTV. In any case, building well-implemented DMR capabilities into the TV is a good differentiator for now, and most consumers would likely prefer no external box to even a small one like AppleTV, but with Pioneer, Sharp and surely others to follow, how long will it be before this falls too far below the consumer purchase criteria list to matter?
March 22, 2007
AppleTV adopts something I’ve been calling for for a long time in the digital media adapter market — a “sync and store” architecture. Yet, it also supports streaming, which is particularly good for ad hoc content sharing. When I wrote about Brookstone’s SongCube for Engadget last September, the same month in which AppleTV (then iTV) was announced, I noted “The inclusion of networking capability so that the SongCube could be loaded and ideally synchronized over a home network would greatly benefit the product.” (Even though the column was posted after the Apple event, it was written before it and certainly before I knew that AppleTV would have a hard drive.) I also was relativley lenient on the product’s user interface — advanced for a stereo but primitive compared to most modern portable digital audio players.
AppleTV, which costs the same as the SongCube but lacks speakers, addresses both of these issues. However, there’s another catch — you need a screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. So, I’m thinking there’s room in the market for one of those companies that did the add-on flip-up LCD screens for the GameCube and Xbox like Pelican Accessories (or perhaps a Mac peripherals maker like Griffin?) to do a similar product for the AppleTV. Add a pair of powered multimedia speakers and — voila — you have the slickest shelf system ever.
Years ago, I tried matching up Apple’s PowerCD with Apple’s old gray powered speakers for a different-looking bedroom CD player, but could never get it to work for some reason.
February 22, 2007
This week’s Switched On takes Nintendo to task for the “Wii supply” of its popular game console, particularly given that the company has commended itself on the launch. I suspect that some will counter that Nintendo executed perfectly well and the “problem” that no company could anticipate is overwhelming demand. (This is in contrast to Sony, which encountered blue diode manufacturing issues. I also recall that Microsoft encountered some manufacturing issues at the launch of the Xbox 360, perhaps around heat dissipation, but that Peter Moore announced at CES 2006 that it had brought on a third manufacturing partner to finally resolve supply constraints. Now that’s transparency.) Either way, supply and demand are just two sides of the same shortage problem. Certainly the impact to the consumer is the same.
A close friend once asked me whether I thought that companies “manufacture” manufacturing shortages for PR hype. I don’t think so for a few reasons. First, shortage PR is, at best, two-sided. Second, it would be outweighed by the positive word-of-mouth from actual customers (assuming a product is genuinely good). Third, the value of such PR would be outweighed by PR resulting from higher adoption numbers. And finally, it’s hard to conceive of any PR outweighing the top-line value of incremental sales. This advantage is magnified when the product is in an extremely competitive segment and especially so when that segment is a new platform vying for developer support.
One could argue that Microsoft and Sony have some interest in selling consoles later in the cycle when they can reduce costs and subsidization, but Nintendo makes money on its hardware.
February 16, 2007
Back when I wrote a twice-weekly column for Ziff Davis in 2003, the name of the game was to try and get Slashdotted. Nowadays, though, the king of traffic referral (outside of Google, of course) is Digg. By that measure, Radar Love (runner-up title “Love is in The Air”), this week’s Switched On column, was my most popular ever with over 470 diggs, and the second to reach Digg’s front page.
One of the complimentary e-mails I received from a reader called Radar Love the second-best thing he’d ever read on the site after The Maven. Well, Radar Love didn’t take nearly as long to write, but frankly I was less sure I could pull it off whereas I’d written many long verse pieces and parodies before.
Things became easier when I grouped multiple songs in a row and they really came together just a few hours before completion when I stumbled upon the gem title “Chewbacca’s on my Underwear.” Then it was a relatively simple matter of building the story about an “ex” who was lost to sci-fi infatuation and filling in the path to that punch line.
One thing I’m a bit surprised that nobody called me on is that i actually wrote almost nothing original for the piece. It’s all, in a sense, plagiarized, but I’m grateful for the kudos on what is essentially an ordered playlist. Oh, and for the record, I didn’t know about all those songs before writing the column. The iTunes store search box was my research tool.
January 18, 2007
For years, Apple resisted adding video features to the iPod, noting that the device was primarily about the music. Even when it introduced a video-capable iPod, it did so in the context of a better music device, offering higher capacity, greater battery life and a larger screen “for free.” With its recent rush to complete its three-screen strategy, though, it seems like music has become a bit lost in the Shuffle, so to speak.
Take AppleTV, for example. As I note in this week’s Switched On, its business model is practically the reverse of the iPod’s as digital video purchases from the iTunes store drives digital media adapter sales. If Apple were more focused on extending its music franchise, it would follow to release an audio-only device more along the lines of Slim Devices’ Squeezebox, now owned by Logitech. Of course, the Squeezebox is but one of the several remote audio devices that can interoperate with the iPod or unprotected tracks in iTunes.
AppleTV’s user interface looks good and polished as one might expect, but also a bit stark when compared to Windows Media Center’s, and who wants to turn on their television just to listen to some music?
It could be that Apple now feels that its lead is so far ahead in the digital music space that it can devote more attention to video.
November 18, 2006
Mark Spoonauer, editor-in-chief at LAPTOP where I write the Portable Pundit column, gave me a heads-up today on a fun little RAZR spoof they’ve put on their site. My favorite is the “Electrick (sic) RAZR” because, after all, what guy couldn’t use a little touch-up just about the time free evening calling begins?
I had my own, less graphically interesting, fun with the pioneering sleek handset back in early 2005
November 15, 2006
My weekly Switched On column at Engadget discusses whether Microsoft sought elegance in developing its answer to the iPod. One point I take Microsoft to task on is continuing to push the subscription model. Sure, Zune Marketplace offers a la carte downloads as well, but so do practically every other subscription site. The downloads are there to placate would be iTunes store downloaders, but the companies really want consumers to sign up. Regardless of their value, and there is some, I think that even mentioning music subscriptions is a big turnoff for a lot of consumers.
On the other hand, perhaps Microsoft is building its own service suite. Zune Marketplace and Xbox Live for $25/month could appeal to a younger digital entertainment addict.
