This Is What I'm Talking About

No sooner do I post about all the undeserved crap Apple takes on a daily basis than Joe Jaffe posts "Instant Hype, just add 'i'" on his blog.  This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about - painting Apple fans with a wide brush and implying they're a bunch of mindless sheep who will buy anything Apple puts out. Apple detractors who want to be dismissive of Apple fans in this manner should consider the contributions Apple has made to interface design, usability and reliability in addition to style before they render judgment.  Consider this:

1. It's a fact.  PC's crash a lot.  They also require the occasional "fresh start."  Every year or so, my PC becomes so slow and unstable that it's necessary to back up my data, reformat drives, reinstall everything and start fresh.  Macs don't require this.  They just work.  Can you fault someone for being a fan of that?
2. What MP3 player achieved the intuitiveness and ease of use that the iPod did, without following Apple's design lead?  None.  Every digital music device I've had has been more complicated to operate and less reliable than my iPod.
3. I have yet to find a small form factor PC that can match what my Mac Mini can do.  Many small PCs have the same issues a regular size one does, plus problems with overheating and limited expandability.

You want to paint with a wide brush?  How about all those Wintel addicts who won't leave the mainstream, even when presented with a superior machine that can do everything their PCs do and more.

Stupid Senators...

Why is it okay to have these things?

• An HDTV/DVR cable box with a SATA cable plugin in the back, making it possible for people to save content and view it whenever they want, and offload it digitally to a hard drive
• A radio with an analog or digital audio recorder (CD-R, cassette recorder, digital recorder, etc.) that can record terrestrial radio signals
• Home boxes that allow for time- and place-shifting (like Slingbox) that can allow people to consume content any way they like

But not these things:

• A device that receives satellite radio and allows users to record and play back content.
• A software-based recorder on one's computer that picks up online radio feeds and allows for recording and playback

I think this smacks of legislating to protect outdated business models.

Apple Takes a Lot of Undeserved Crap

Yesterday, I posted to Jaffe Juice when Joseph talked a bit about the iPhone controversy.  His point was that Apple was exceptionally arrogant in not doing their due diligence on the iPhone name.  And he's right. Most of the criticism I've seen about Apple, in the wake of this controversy and others, has to do with people criticizing Apple fans because they seemingly covet and buy every new product that comes out of Cupertino.  Apple fans are often characterized as mindless sheep that happily gobble up new Apple products without thinking about it.  And that's simply not fair.

It's not all about looks, either.  Apple has a lot going for it, and it's not just the looks of their designs.  It's the simplicity.

I had several MP3 players before investing in an iPod.  I had a HanGo Portable Jukebox, a Rio and a few others.  All were great once you read the manual, figure out how the software works and work out any issues concerning file formats, etc.  The truth is that most people don't have time for this crap.  They just want things to work, and they want them to work intuitively, without needing a degree in computer science.  The iPod had this simplicity in spades.

Macs are the same way.  So are all the other products that come out of Apple.  When I got my Mac Mini, I hadn't used MacOS in years, yet picking it back up and getting used to OSX was easy.  There's hardly anything non-intuitive about it.

So we're not just talking about design in terms of looks, here.  We're talking about design from an information architecture and functionality standpoint, making a robust feature set easy to use without complications.

Looks certainly don't hurt.  Neither does a loyal following of the brand.  But at the core (giggle) of Apple's success is the functional design of its products.  They just work.

Even hardcore techies like myself are willing to overlook some of Apple's shortcomings to buy products that work and that are intuitive to use.  As a guy who build's PC's from scratch, I don't like the fact that I can't simply buy an Airport card and install it myself, and instead have to head over to TekServe.  But that's better than having to deal with machines that need to be wiped clean and have their OS reinstalled every year or so.

So quit all the crap about the Cult of Apple.  There are real reasons why Apple has this kind of following.  Dismissing those things out of hand is just silly.

Fisking Mitch Oscar

Here's a link to the original piece.

It's All TV, Isn't It?

No. It's not. You TV zealots have been trying to turn the Internet and other lean-forward media into TV for at least the last decade. It hasn't worked. Stop trying.

I enjoy horizontally watching a slew of my favorite professionally produced TV programs, surfing the electronic program guide, neurotically scanning my personal video recording selections to ascertain future storage capacity, and fast forwarding through advertising messages to see if I can accurately time the activation of “the play button” with the final second of the last commercial position in the pod preceding program content.

Great. You're a couch potato who figured out how to use his DVR. Am I supposed to be impressed?

I admit, I rejoice in the $60 billion spent on TV advertising annually; remain unaffected by naysayers’ pronouncements about TV, the dying medium, and the 30-second commercial, a relic of the Paleolithic media age; and eagerly await the ubiquitous deployment of interactive applications in the televisual realm

Keep waiting. You yourself happily skip commercials, so why shouldn't everybody else?

We're certainly waiting for interactive TV. More than a dozen years of shouting its imminent arrival from the mountaintops and the best it can do is let me order crappy movies on demand or look at listings for homes for sale that I can get 10 times faster on my computer. Let's face it, two-way media don't exist so that media executives who like one-way, passive media can conquer them and remake them in television's image.

Why do the online ad agency professionals insist on calling the video viewing experience in the broadband arena “video streaming?” Why don’t they refer to it as “television?”

For a number of reasons. First, it's not being transmitted via a passive medium. Secondly, because we'd rather avoid the negative connotations that "television" brings along with it. Internet users are online not because they want to be passively entertained, but because they want to interact.

In my opinion, had they utilized the time-worthy appellation, they would more readily gain access to a greater share of the $60 billion in TV ad revenue, make my job and that of other digital transitionists easier, and accelerate bridging the gulf between the two mediums to mutually share in the ability of the fundamental sight, sound and motion attributes of the video experience to engage the consumer.

We're already chipping away at your share of ad revenue. We don't need your help to do it. Mostly because you TV guys keep asking for more money for less exposure every single year and seem to be awfully cocky about doing so.

What the hell is a "digital transitionist?" Is that some sort of fancy way of describing the notion that your audience is disappearing?

And let me remind you that traditional media executives are largely responsible for the "gulf between the two mediums." [sic] The emerging media business requires a skillset that the traditional set was loathe to adopt back in the day, so stop trying to pin it on the emerging media folks. When they were confronted with a choice more than a dozen years ago, most TV people simply didn't want to learn to adapt. Now they're paying the price as they watch ratings decline and their budgets shifting to other media.

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the line of demarcation drawn by the online ad community that, unceremoniously labeled the traditional media community as “offline”–kind of like the tail wagging the dog, albeit a very long, but nonetheless considerably smaller tail. Online generates $15 billion-plus (40% or more in search) in ad revenue. Offline media generate upwards of $245 billion in the U.S. Not a pleasant way to encourage a fellowship between mature and burgeoning advertising sectors, particularly when the mature/traditional community, via the media planner, oftentimes is still the gatekeeper to allocating ad budgets by medium.

Close, but you've got it exactly backward.

It was the traditional media community that started labeling emerging media people as "online." In other words, you're blaming emerging media people for a rift that traditional media people created.

And don't arrogantly pull the spending figures out of your ass, like it's some sort of invitation for emerging media professionals to bend down and kiss the pope's ring. We know what the spending figures look like. Television advertising had a head start of a few decades. I'd be worried if I were in a pure-play TV ad sales role.

I would argue that to the consumer, it is all the same experience. It’s television. And if we, the ad community, both mature and burgeoning, are successfully going to engage the viewer of video, whether it is via traditional television, broadband and/or mobile, we must view it as TV as well,

Really? It's the same experience? Did you see the Saddam Hussein execution on TV or on YouTube? Did you submit comments on the Saddam video via your television or your computer? When was the last time you talked to your TV and it talked back to you?

If people think it's all TV, then why does every media research company release reports about simultaneous media consumption? If it were all TV, we'd all have one idiot box to watch. But it's not, so we have computers, mobile devices, gaming consoles, and a slew of other interactive devices that CARRY video content, but don't limit people to passively watching it.

What you don't get is that people don't want their mobile devices and computers to turn into televisions. Anybody can order a TV tuner card for their PC and has had the ability to do so for at least 10 years. Do you see widespread adoption of TV tuner cards? I didn't think so.

People use television and interactive media for completely different reasons and to fulfill completely different desires. I hope the other "transitionists" understand that.