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Anticipation held the Mac community
captive for a week: Apple was going to release what
it called a "breakthrough digital device", something
that was going to be "not a Mac."
The usual suspects of rumormongering
all hinted towards a musical gizmo (though not a "run-of-the-mill
MP3 player"), but speculation was rampant as usual.
Some even hoped for the return of the Newton, while
others expected a portable movie studio, or something
totally unheard-of.
In the end, the new device (called
the iPod) has turned out to be an MP3 player indeed,
and Apple's stock price fell sharply on the news.
Looks like Wall Street was expecting a literal breakthrough.
One wonders how the Wall Street can be so naive. Haven't
they heard of a thing called "hype"? So iPod is an
MP3 player, though run-of-the-mill it certainly is
not.
First of all, it comes from Apple,
a company that hasn't released a consumer appliance
for a long time. The Apple brand in itself guarantees
some attention from a lot of circles: enthusiasm from
Apple and Mac fans, and curiosity from all sorts of
analysts, who have labeled the company as the bad
boy of the computer industry. Apple is now famous
for failing to behave like a decent tech company should
in these difficult times. Apple refuses to lay off
the expected thousands of employees, and while vicious
price wars are raging throughout the computer industry,
Apple has increased both its gross margins and its
R&D spendings at the same time. And now, mere days
after Intel announced that it was pulling out of the
appliance business, Apple is entering the same market.
Apple's announcement of the iPod on
October 23, 2001, two days before Microsoft launches
its vast media campaign to tout Windows XP, seems
to be a brilliant move.
While people have speculated that it
takes more than an MP3 player to successfully upstage
Windows XP, Apple can use this opportunity to send
a clear message to people harboring huge MP3 collections:
Microsoft may be pulling the plug on MP3 with the
next release of Windows, trying to use its sheer power
to force its own Windows Media format down the throat
of millions of users, but the days of MP3 are far
from numbered. Apple, about the only viable Windows
alternative left on the planet (at least for the immediate
future), is embracing MP3 so much that it actually
releases a hardware device to cater to that music
format. By the way, the iPod absolutely requires a
Mac to work, there's no other way to transfer songs
to it except from a Mac. So Apple wants the iPod to
be another reason to buy a Mac. But does iPod have
enough leverage for that? By itself, hardly. As part
of the digital hub concept, maybe slightly more so.
But of course, converting Windows users
is not the immediate goal for the iPod. The immediate
goal is to make money, and hopefully lots of it in
the holiday season. And here's when Apple can shamelessly
take advantage of the enthusiasm of its installed
base. Apple knows that several Mac owners who haven't
even considered an MP3 player before may now want
one just because it carries an Apple logo. All Apple
needs to do is to come up with an attractive product
that offers some advantages over "run of the mill"
MP3 players, and show it to the Mac crowd. The rest
takes care of itself... Unless the device is a dud.
So how does the iPod stack up?
Small wonder? Wait, I last read that on a Cube
leaflet...
In true Apple fashion, iPod isn't so
much the emergence of something completely new, but
rather an existing product type executed in an elegant
and user-friendly fashion, with a feature set that
does offer more than the basics, including some genuine
innovations and industry firsts, yet isn't nearly
compelling enough to crush all competition. Especially
in light of its price point.
So what is the iPod? If you haven't
spent at least an hour on Apple's site trying to gather
all the specs, here are the most important details,
features and limitations.
The iPod is a small and beautiful $399
MP3 player that fits in the palm of your hand, with
4.6 gigabytes of storage (commonly referred to as
5 gigabytes), a FireWire connection, and an advanced
user interface. It features a backlit LCD display
(complete with a Chicago system font), and a scrolling
wheel that looks pretty intuitive. The iPod's battery
allows for 10 hours of playback, and can be recharged
to 80% of its capacity in an hour (a full recharge
takes three hours). Its power adapter resembles the
new, white square that comes with the iBook and the
PowerBook, it is probably the same product. However,
the iPod also recharges automatically whenever it's
connected to a Mac via its FireWire port.
A great, yet hardly publicized feature
of the iPod is that it can be mounted to the Mac's
desktop as a FireWire hard disk, allowing you to store
and transfer any kinds of files; it can even function
as a startup volume. So for the price of an (expensive)
MP3 player you're also getting an ultra-portable FireWire
hard disk, though its capacity is on the low side.
When you first connect the iPod to
your Mac, it will, by default, think that you want
it to be synced at all times to your iTunes music
library on that particular Mac. This means that iTunes
will copy your entire library, including your playlists,
to the player when you first connect the two, and
whenever you connect them again, it will automatically
make sure that whatever is on your Mac should be reflected
on your iPod. This works one-way only, so if you copied
other songs from other Macs to the iPod, they will
be promptly deleted.
This default setting only makes sense
if you're always using the iPod as a player, and never
as a means of transferring music from one Mac to another.
Should you want to do that, you can fortunately choose
a manual mode, where you can, still in iTunes, drag
and drop playlists and files to and from your iPod.
The speed of the FireWire connection
should be refreshing to those who have endured transferring
megabytes of files through the usual USB connection
available in other MP3 players. Apple claims that
the iPod is the first MP3 player with FireWire —
they should know, as they own and control use of the
FireWire patent. Apple's promise of being able to
copy an entire CD in seconds is perfectly plausible.
Apple's vision of establishing the
Mac as the hub of your digital lifestyle, and thus
relegating connected appliances to a satellite status
comes at a cost. The only way to modify the music
library or the playlists on the iPod is through a
Mac and iTunes. Whether or not you can mount the iPod
on a FireWire-equipped PC with Mac compatibility software
remains to be seen, but recording or copying from
external devices directly to the iPod is out of the
question: it's an output and storage device, with
no recording capabilities of its own. Its only input
means is a FireWire port.
The iPod has a menu system that resembles
that of iTunes, allowing you to browse the music library
in an artist-album-song hierarchy, or just by an alphabetical
listing of all songs. It also lets you choose playlists
and shuffle songs during playback, but you cannot
make any changes to the playlists or to the music
library through the iPod's own interface. That, again,
requires the "hub": a Mac and iTunes.
These are somewhat understandable conceptual
restrictions, even if they can be regarded as drawbacks
in comparison to the identically priced, though bulkier
and less elegant Nomad Jukebox 20GB, which, as its
name suggests, offers four times as much storage as
the iPod.
However, it's much harder to explain
why the iPod doesn't offer any strictly playback-related
advanced features either: even the 6-gigabyte version
of the Nomad Jukebox packs an equalizer, 3D spatialization
effects, Dual Stereo Line Out, and Four Point Surround
capabilities for 150 dollars less, all of which the
iPod lacks. It has taken iTunes eleven months to finally
sprout an equalizer in its (now up-coming) version
2.0, so perhaps we should expect a similar path with
iPod too.
It remains to be seen whether the iPod
is going to be a hit or a miss. Apple's walking on
a thin line here. Seamless integration with the Mac
and iTunes is very impressive, but at least one target
group for the product, namely students, aren't known
to be afraid of a little hackery. We'll see how compelling
they'll find the ease of use that the iPod presents.
The other features of the new Apple
gizmo add up to an impressive combination: its beauty,
elegance, small size and generous capacity are a peerless
mix as far as I know. FireWire connectivity is an
industry first, and the fact that the iPod doubles
as a portable hard disk may well end up as its killer
feature.
I for one certainly hope that the iPod
will be a success. I think it has a great potential,
and I'd hate to see it go away before fulfilling it.
I'm already intrigued by the possibility of an iPod
Version 2... not to mention the inevitable price cuts
that accompany the evolution of any successful digital
product. And I really hope Apple has other digital
gizmos up its sleeve that are at least this good.
Taking our money in smaller chunks
The appearance of small digital devices
from Apple signals a favorable trend. As we know,
Apple's prospective customers are mostly people who
already own and use Apple products. Apple is reluctant
to attempt breaking out of its niche and targeting
bigger markets like business users: that would almost
certainly mean participating in a price war, which
Apple cannot afford. Instead, Apple works on expanding
its 5% user base that consists partly of creative
professionals, and partly of well-to-do consumers
with a sense of style and a need for simplicity. The
Apple Store project, whose goal is to expand Apple's
market share, is also apparently aimed at these target
groups. That process isn't fast enough, though, for
Apple to rely on it for its bottom line, so basically,
the only way Apple can hope to make serious money
today is selling Macs at their well-known premium
prices to the only audience that is willing to buy
them: existing Mac owners.
However, as Macs get better, that group
gets eventually saturated, and Mac owners will have
little reason to replace their existing computers
for some time to come. Add to that the current state
of the economy, and you'll get fewer and fewer people
in Mac-replacing moods. So how can Apple still make
some money?
Easy: by selling accessories that work
with all those nasty, not-about-to-be-replaced-for-a-while
Macs. Do that just in time for Christmas, and Apple
may look at another rosy quarter if the gadget generates
enough Apple-lust. Is the iPod the right product for
that? Only the market will tell.
Stuffit
7 (10-18-02) Dr. Neale Monks. What purpose does file compression have
in this day of 100 GB hard drives? Is version 7 worthy of the upgrade fees?
Fireworks
MX (10-8-02) Dean Browell. Fireworks is more than just a pretty face;
The last app I needed to convert entirely to OS X delivers in upgrades and
features as well...
Dreamweaver
MX (10-8-02) Joel Davies. Not being satisfied with just carbonizing it's
product, Macromedia made sure that Dreamweaver MX was the killer app for web
design.
SliMP3
(9-6-02) Pat St-Arnaud. The SliMP3 is a small, simple and elegant network
devices that connects to any audio component with RCA inputs and lets you
browse, search and play music directly from your computer's MP3 collection.
Voyager
III v.3 (8-16-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Carina's Voyager is the grandfather
of Mac planetarium programs, but does it still have what it takes to keep
up the current generation?
CodeWarrior
8 (8-16-02) Douglas A. Welton. Doug dives into the latest version of this
robust multi-platform programming tool.
STM
Sports Backpack (8-9-02) Pierre Igot. How will this backpack designed
for the "global digerati" stack up when Pierre puts it to the test
with his mobile digital lifestyle?
Scope
Driver (8-2-02) Dr. Neale Monks. An alternative to the 'point and click'
telescope control paradigm: a powerful list-based utility for Autostar and
LX200 telescopes.
Apple
Final Cut Pro 3.0 (7-19-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate reviews the video-editing
powerhouse Final Cut Pro 3 and sizes up its competition. Does Final Cut Pro
3 hold its ground?
Strata
DVpro RME (7-16-02) Matt Frederick. Matt Frederick. Matt takes a comprehensive
look at Strata DVpro, Strata's pro-level non-linear editor for digital video.
Stargazer's
Delight (6-28-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Looking for a viable shareware alternative
to the big commercial astronomy software packages? Neale may have found one.
TheSky
(6-21-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Neale takes a look at the easiest to use planetarium
program for the Mac.
NI
FM7 (6-21-02) Matt Frederick. Matt takes this software replica of Yamaha's
DX7 synthesizer for a test drive.
The
Digital Universe (6-14-02) Neale Monks. Planetarium program, astronomy
encyclopaedia and space flight simulator all rolled into one - could The Digital
Universe be the ClarisWorks of astronomy software? Neale Monks takes a look.
After
Effects 5.5 (5-31-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate reviews the OS X native
version of After Effects and likes what he sees.
InDesign
2.0 for Non-Professional Designers (5-24-02) Pierre Igot. In the second
part of our review of Adobe InDesign 2.0 for Mac OS X, Pierre Igot looks at
InDesign from the point-of-view of the non-professional designer - and finds
plenty to like.
Corel
Graphics Suite, Part 2 (5-24-02) Dean Browell. CorelDraw returns in full
force and Corel R.A.V.E makes its debut.
Corel
Graphics Suite, Part 1 (5-17-02) Dean Browell. CorelDraw is back, and
it's brought some powerful friends that makes this Suite worth the look...
OmniGraffle
2.0 (5-10-02) András Puiz. Analog napkins are so 20th century --
this gem from OmniGroup knows (almost) all about diagramming. András
Puiz wishes all Mac developers developed a similar understanding of Aqua,
and of Mac OS X in general.
Watson
(5-03-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate discovers a 'Swiss Army Knife' for OS X...
it's called Watson.
