Apple and Steve Jobs Ping!
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Posted on 06/03/2010 9:56:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
As the visionary of our generation it isn't very often that Steve Jobs gets it wrong but he sure was missing on a few key points during the All Things Digital interview.
It might be argued that he was purposefully ambiguous with his statements in order to illustrate the structural weaknesses of the cable television industry but I'm going to take him at his word and refute the following claims:
No. 1. Jobs said that cable operators "give everybody a set-top box for free, or for $10 a month. That pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation because nobody's willing to buy a set-top box."
Not true. Steve used Tivo has an example but he failed to mention that Tivo's technology became irrelevant the moment cable operators included DVR's to their service. The better example of a set-top box would be a gaming console like XBox or Playstation. Or even a DVD/Blu-ray player. Those boxes have different user interfaces and remote controls, and users even have to switch the input on the television to view the screen.
Consumers certainly haven't shunned these products. In fact, we pay hundreds of dollars for each console and then we pay $10 to $40 per game/DVD/Blu-ray. Steve's statement was wrong. Consumers will pay and there is room for innovation with a set-top box.
Steve would have been right had he had told us that the problems with Apple TV are speed and content. Downloading a movie via iTunes to view on Apple TV is a painfully slow process. The streaming technology employed by Netflix is far superior.
As far as content is concerned, everyone is waiting to use mobile apps on the big screen television just like we do on the iPhone and iPad.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Author says Steven Jobs is wrong in the following additional points :
No. 2. Jobs said that it’s difficult to partner with a cable company because “you run into another problem. Which is: there isn’t a cable operator that’s national...every single country has different standards, different government approvals, it’s very...Tower of Babelish.”
No. 3. When discussing the obstacles of the cable TV industry, Jobs remarked, “I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV is a hobby, that’s why we use that phrase.”
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR HIS REASONS
I thought Saint Steve was infallible? Oh my.
Maybe STeve-o should be looking more for a decline in Foxconn suicides.
All I want is Flash on my iPhone.
Jobs is sort of correct about the CATV/IPTV industry. I do that for a living too. Apple can make STBs, but the IPTV operators that might be market are all over the place in their various technologies and quality of service. Its a few 100s of millions of people, and a good profit center, but no cable operator will shell out the money for an Apple branded STB unless the deal is REALLY sweet and it gives them some intrusive capability to manage their STBs and thereby the customers privacy. Government regulations will not allow that for the most part. If he wants to get into STBs in the future, he can just work on the AppleTV and spring it when the market is ready, but until then, its not worth talking about, as MSOs have dozens of other low-cost STB providers they can buy from for dirt cheap. Apple has nothing to offer to this market at the moment.
It isn't ANYBODY's walled garden. That's the issue. In some cities, you have a monopoly where Comcast or other cable provider 'owns' the entire city, provides content they deem fit to sell, at a price that they determine. Without competition, they can (and often do) charge whatever they feel they can get by with. Bottom line - we ALL lose.
Now, if you don't like Apple - bully for you. Don't buy Apple, you'll be happier and so will everyone else. But, that doesn't make Job's observation any less astitute.
Apple has been using the 'hobby' method to crack into the home theater, home media center market since about 1985. The Mac-mini (albeit lacking an HDMI port) would be a pretty decent set top box. A USB digital antenna, a $15/yr subscription to TV Guide and a wireless network would allow it to function as a DVR (yes, it has an IR remote), as well as a decent tv tuner. You can stream your movies through your wireless network, as well as run Netflix, Hulu and hordes of other content providers.
This is all aimed at doing what Apple does best. Apple is, and has always been a technology disruptor. They set the PC world on it's ear with the Mac, the MP3 players market on it's butt with the iPod, they knocked the heads off the cell phone manufacturers with the iPhone and now the iPad has sold over 2 million units in the past 60 days (projected 7.4 Million units in 2010). Not too shabby, eh?
ping
Yes, you can point to specific examples where Steve is wrong in his assessment of the cable industry. But those examples are localized and he is essentially correct with respect to the industry as a whole.
You want an example of the lack of set top box innovation? Look no further than the browser market. There used to be a time when you PAID for a browser(netscape) or got one for “free” with a subscription(AOL). As a paid product in an emerging market, innovation was fast and furious. But then what happened? Microsoft(cable company) gave it away for free. No one bought browsers after than, and other companies had to find alternative ways to get income from releasing a free browser.
Simple innovations, like tab browsing, took opensource communities to develop and offer with a browser for free. It took IE years to adopt this innovation in it’s product.
That is an example of software with a volunteer workforce. If you take that up to the hardware level, we are no longer talking about a volunteer workforce. Like most businesses, the cable companies give their customers the absolute minimum product that costs the least amount of money. The only reason we have DVRs from the cable companies was because a company like TIVO was doing it better and people were switching.
He points to Playstation and xbox, but they are are not in competition with cable STBs. They are in competition with computers because of the type of content they provide. The only difference is that their displays are TVs and not computer monitors. People pay for computers, and they pay for gaming STBs. Comparing gaming STBs to cable STBs is like comparing Apples and Oranges.
Here's why that is a really BAD idea. Right now, you use 'hardware acceleration' to view video, and HTML materials. This means you use custom made chips that exist for the sole purpose of running a specific file type - but use scant amounts of power to do so. So, you sacrifice using Flash to get battery life. I take it that you like not having to charge your phone more than once a day?
Flash uses an alternative approach called 'software emulation'. This means that your processor has to do some extensive number crunching, moving 1's and 0's though memory, calculating and doing tons of work in order to play Farmville. Think of this as consuming between 100 - 1,000x (not percentage - I mean 'times') the power. This is why some Flash enabled phones need to be plugged in before noon when the user goes to Flash-heavy websites. Flash kills your battery.<.p>So, who are you angry at if your phone is dead by noon? Are you mad at Apple for making a crummy phone with a poor battery, or are you mad at Adobe?
The elephant in the room that I didn’t see mentioned ONCE in the article is DRM. DRM is killing innovation because any possible way to have copyrighted material in an unencrypted digital format would mean the legal department of whatever company producing a production to collectively commit hara-kiri.
To not include DRM in these discussion only proves the author is interested in a hit piece versus discussing the true motivations for NOT getting into the cable STB market.
We have NetFlix with a Roko box and love it.
We also can get online NteFlix through our Wii.
Good selection of movies and they start within 20sec.
Does this apply?
Precisely. There are several small companies making Core2 Duo motherboards, either porting Unix, Ubuntu or some other OS that are just 'good' enough to decode video to their HDMI port, with the media coming from a Home network. At present, these are all pretty much cottage companies - DRM is preventing any of them from getting a good hold of an industry that is just begging to emerge and dominate the home media industry.
No, he's looking at the juicy monthy revenue streams that Cable companies take in each month, and is sad that he can't get them all for himself and his iUniverse.
If you want to spend northwards of $600 for a crippled netbook without a keyboard, bully for you and the other 1,999,999 people. I don't have a beef with Steve making a product that people are willing to buy. And as Steve has proved over and over again, if you make a product that is as much status symbol as it is a functional tool, you'll sell to a small but very loyal market.
However, Steve is very big into his walled gardens. Look at the iTunes updates that did nothing but break the ability of non-iPods from syncing with iTunes. What was the purpose? To cripple any non-Steve innovation.
Look at the EULA for the Apple OS prohibiting it from being run on non-Apple hardware. What is the purpose? to cripple any non-Steve innovation.
And this is all Steve is complaining about. His inability to build a shiny box with the Apple logo that he can sell at a premium, and will force people to come to him for all television content.
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So, in your world, Apple has to pick up the technical support of their competition? Does this mean that HP has to fix my Dell laptop? Ford has to fix my Toyota? Nope.
Apple created the iTunes application so service THEIR iPod. Creative used Rhapsody, and other compeitors used their proprietary software to get songs into their units. Having purchased the iRiver and Creative Nomad (which were junk), and having fought buggy software, non-functional MP3 burning capabilities - I glady threw my old mp3 players in the trash and ponied up to the iPod.
So, why do you think Apple (ie "Stevie") owes it to the world to support his competition? Or, is your angst (which sounds an awful lot like sour grapes) directed soley at Apple for doing a job too well? You have obviously never touched, seen or played with the very products you lambast; your ignorance is showing. Here's a clue: 1 GHz processors in 2 machines. 1 machine sports an OS that is 6.8 GB big, utilizes a minimum of 1 Gig of DRAM and requires another 1 Gig minimum of Page File; the other machine has an OS that consumes 308 MB. Which device do you suppose is 'fast' and 'spunky'?
Part B. One device has a custom designed hardware acceleration device that ONLY plays a few selections of video. These video selections were chosen to encompass most internet content; however Flash is not supported. This device gives documented battery life of 10-12 hrs of actual use; in a package that weighs 1.5 lbs. The other device runs Win7, loaded with Flash and weighs 3.5-6 lbs and has a battery life of 2-6hrs (depending upon Flash usage). Which device fits the LEISURE market?
I know, crazy, ain't it?
Good discussion on this thread.
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