Caples says I jinxed cloud music service, Lala...

Well, maybe I did…In my original post, from almost exactly one year ago, and which is basically a visceral reaction to a phone conversation I had w/Caples’ and his stubborn arrogance about the service’s superiority, I make the following points (I’m paraphrasing myself here):

• The idea of the .10c offer w/an upsell opportunity is flawed, a micro micro payment…lame.
• No iPhone app, and why would I pay to stream a collection I already own? Ah…Pandora anyone?
• As my pal Tim Wilson used to say when we were at Boris, this is about the integration story…which Lala didn’t really have.

So I’m sorry to have jixed the service Caples…But wait!

Lest we not forget that Apple acquired Lala…And at the time of the announced shut down, Wired speculated about the reasoning behind it…

While Apple’s hardware has embraced the cloud since .mac (now Mobile Me), its iTunes software lags far behind. Today’s news, while unfortunate for Lala users, represents good news for iTunes users, because it’s a sign that iTunes too could be headed for the cloud, obviating their need to manage music collections manually between multiple devices.

Yah, I guess…I can already manage music collections locally on my network via Home Sharing…And that feature doesn’t make music in the cloud a killer app.

Lala’s interface was pretty bitchin’…And it was clear they understood the consumption model…Particularly with regard to their relating owned songs to songs or artists of potential interest to their users…So perhaps the purchase was just Jobs following up to a fan-boys comment about owning all the engineering talent in the Valley…

In a follow up email, Caples threw out his reasoning for liking the service, again dissin’ the cloud as not that important:

For me, the cloud stuff on Lala wasn’t that important…I liked the cheaper download prices and the higher bitrates, the social media capability (sharing playable album or song widgets on facebook), and the possibility to buy CDs through them if you were so inclined.

Matt Rosoff over at Digital Noise posted his thoughts, making the point that the music industry hates “digital lockers” and that not letting users stream the stuff is bad mojo:

If you persistently refuse to let customers use your product in the way they want to use it, they’ll stop buying it. Ten years of stiff revenue declines in the recorded music business should have made that lesson clear.

Yah, again, I don’t think this is about streaming for Apple…Or for the consumer…How long as Rhapsody been pushing a subscription model from the cloud? Like 12 years? Ah…still not catching on…No, IMHO, this was about the acquisition of talent by Apple, and using that talent to improve their existing products…And perhaps their existing streaming content line…Certainly work to be done…

Anyway…Sorry Caples…While I only embedded one album into one post…I do kinda miss having the option. C’est la Apple.

Blu-ray is good looking (1080p), sounding (THX or Dobly 7.1 surround) and is sometimes chalk-full of extras, sometimes including Internet downloads et al. The format was supposed to be the next long-tail revenue opportunity for the optical consortium, with names like Philips, Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi making up the membership.

Personally I’m watching Netflix on my Wii…And I’m very happy with it…while the image quality isn’t Blu-Ray…it’s surprisingly good and I can watch a whole lot of content…anytime I like, and if I don’t want to sit on the couch…I or my wife can fire up the laptops anywhere. I’m currently racing to catch up on “Lost”…God help me.

Debroah McAdams, over at Television Broadcast is suggesting Google TV will drive Blu-Ray because the manufacturers they partner with will include it:

Neither current cable set-tops nor specialized peripherals like Roku support full access to the Web. An Android-enabled, Intel-powered, Blu-ray playing, HD-recording, CableCard-slotted, sleek-looking set-top box is another matter all together.

- I disagree…see this SAI Chart of the Day from March 4, 2010:

I don’t know anyone buying Blu-ray discs, I don’t see a huge selection at Wal-Mart – they’re still trying to sell the original stockpile of SD-DVDs, and it doesn’t look like that is going too well btw…

Again, I point to the success of digital…yes there will be hounds for strong picture quality…but most folks are still stunned when they see 720p, never mind 1080p…some degree of better than NTSC is enough for 95% of the visual consumer market…and that “enough” is already being delivered…Optical is fragile and is incremental cost…Digital is any time I damn well please…We’ll see about the Android set top box…I’m waiting to the Apple hobbyists to come out of the garage. – J.C.

W/the stock doing as well as it is, it just hit $240, up from $220 only 30 days ago…I wouldn’t want to burn any good will with the Apple community just to show off a dot release, unless it was pretty major…the running of multiple apps simultaneously would be the most sought after feature…

That said, maybe this is more of the dis-information strategy from the team out in Cupertino and knowing 4.0 will be a disappointment to end users and the street…Better to take the hit now while you’re running hot, giving APPL time to recoup from the potential damage…or turn shite into shineola…

I’m sure you’re all following this more closely than I, but depending on which cloak and dagger analyst you’re listening to, target is now $270-$300 for APPL – I’m calling this a HOLD medium term (hee hee, just fun to talk like an analyst) until they ship new a Verizon phone – at which point they very well may hit $300…seems fantastical as I recall the 1996 Wired Magazine cover w/the word “Pray” and a thorny crown around the rainbow Apple logo…moreover I wish I still had the email I sent to friends in 1998 telling them to buy APPL @ $9…*crying* if only I had taken my own advice! My $1,000 sell off from my vested shares of M100 would have been worth like $250K! *Sobbing*…

If for some reason, Verizon doesn’t happen…I would sell @ anything above or equaling $250 short term, …as all bets are off, but APPL will have passed it by then I’m reasonably certain…and if they do the dutch w/Verizon…and continue to drive the surface computing, web standards and mobile markets…who knows where APPL may land…and what is all this talk about APPL challenging GOOG/MSFT on search? I don’t see it…if GOOG were smart, they would stick to their core business…I don’t get a warm feeling when I think of Android OS devices…but truth be told I haven’t used one yet either…

Hum…maybe they’ll announce Verizon today? Would certainly keep the momentum going! Enjoy the show.

1. The Week has a nice time line from 2002 – 2010 covering a good selection of hearsay and third-party conjecture

2. Down in Oz, Garry Barker has some astute thoughts…comes close to discussing analog of music to publishing

and finally:

3. MacWorld’s Jason Snell offering a solid parsing of potential Apple thinking re: digital content delivery on a tablet

Let me offer this to the collective speculation; I believe the splashy color on the Apple event invite is a sort of shot over the Amazon Kindle bow…meant to at the very least poke fun at the device’s limited display. That said, I fear the iTablet may simply be a content consumption device…with a price-point just below Kindle…and a fairly limited hardware/software feature set a la the iPod Touch…could be?

Nah…w/the amount of time and consideration that Apple has put into the device, the content it may serve and the existing market dynamics…I’m going to predict a much more powerful and empowering 10″ monolith. And I wouldn’t be surprised to hear “Thus Spoke Zoroaster” from Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” as SJ has the drape lifted off, both arms tracking horizontally…wait for it…I give you, The “Jesus Tablet”…What? Too much?

Frankly, I haven’t given a lot of thought to the actual hardware and software feature set…I’ve been thinking more about the content…and as I mentioned above, several folks have noted the analog between the music and publishing industries…how engines like Napster and the MP3 removed the optical key, namely the Compact Disc, from “The Man’s” distribution equation…and how the slow the music business has been to realize Pandora has left the box…

And around the same time, 1997 or so, I recall thinking to myself…”Wow, I can read the New York Times for free online? OH and better yet, I can filter the content I want from their stream and have it emailed to myself every day at no additional charge?” Well, why would I bust my chops scouring my collegiate burg to find a copy so I can buy and then read the damn thing? I never liked reading the physical paper anyway…always needing a windless room w/a 6′ round to lay the paper on, never properly folding the rag…and getting filthy with newsprint…I was much happier searching and forwarding articles and links…with an input device like a keyboard…yes, Bouv is a geek…you just noticed?

The now painfully obvious answer to the newspaper industry is that I wouldn’t hunt a copy of the newspaper down to pay for it…and never would again, in fact, I might not even read the free version of the paper handed to me by the concierge…and while yes…there is advertising revenue to be made in the free content model, The Times Companies couldn’t and I guess can’t figure out a way on its own to earn the $300,000,000 + to keep the global news room profitable…so onto the basic lines of the analog for Apple between music and newspapers…which Christopher Breen over at MacWorld has also briefly noted…

The Compact Disc is to the MP3 file as the newspaper is to the free online news website*…yah?

A valuable but ailing commodity (music) is broken into reasonably priced bits (songs or albums)…given a free and reasonably easy to use organizational desktop model and pricing structure (iTunes)…Despite a wide range of competing free piracy solutions available to this day, Apple makes the end user experience more consistent, guilt and persecution free, oh and dare I say fun to integrate with the Apple created ultimate music toy e.g. KEY…We give you the iPod! Cue the music…

Fast forward 8 years…So where does Apple fit in to the newspaper solution? In news, we have a similar revenue from content problem:

A valuable but ailing commodity (books, magazines, news items) can be broken into reasonably priced bits (stories, sections, e-books, e-magazines or a whole paper)…provided it’s given a free and reasonably easy to use organizational desktop model and pricing structure (iTunes – now w/Bookstore)…where Amazon’s Kindle, NYT Online, or any other priced/free solution fall short at providing the complete ecosystem…Apple comes to the rescue by making the end user experience more consistent, easy to organize, and fun to integrate with the Apple created ultimate reading toy e.g. KEY…We give you the iTablet…cue the music…purchased of course from the ITMS…

A stretch? Perhaps…maybe Apple will simply offer us an e-Ink “in color” tablet that only displays books/newspapers and then tries to charge us $999…Barely a mini-woot…More a “ho-hum”. Yah, ah…I don’t think so…SJ isn’t going to come out, waste his (now very valuable) time and throw a color Kindle at us…

The most interesting thing about the potential iTablet to me isn’t the tablet…it’s how content will be culled, created and distributed via the device…to make it a true tool…giving publishers a way to get that content into the stream as fast as any other will be key…

Will it have global wi-fi? Will there be a content development template or SDK for an App store-like bookstore model? What ramifications are there for the iPhone/iPod touch community? Does this device now make all 100,000,000 + owners sigh a collective…”Shit…” when this thing is announced?

I doubt it…more likely, many of the reading tools will hopefully be available for those devices as well…Certainly a nice pitch to content owners/producers eh? “We have a rapidly growing install base of folks with these tools and 100,000,000 live credit card accounts…I think we can help move some of your product…” not to mention potential ad revenues from the Quattro Wireless deal…again, a point made my the good chaps at MacWorld…it’s an interesting time to be a consumer for sure…anyway…looking forward to seeing SJ out there…If the start of 2010 is any indication, my gut tells me he still has at least one more trick up his mock-nerk sleeve… – Bouv.

*Don’t forget the fact that the NYT and the lot, save Murdoch’s WSJ and a few others have been giving the content away for 12+ years…and previous attempts to put Pandora back in her box have failed…anyone remember NY Times Select?

Congratulations, that’s 1000 stolen strategic plans! Their customers may become confused when they accidentally wander into an Apple store looking for support for Microsoft products…oh well…Apple will probably still help them out…

The Apple Invite for today's iPod event.

9 to 5 Mac is reporting that Apple will finally offer The Beatles catalog through the iTunes music store.

The Rock and Roll event scheduled for later this afternoon EST (1PM I think)…may also bring a new set of iPods, modifications to iTunes and AppleTV along with a possible appearance by Steve Jobs…but no confirmations yet…my fav site MacSurfer will have all the places for updates…but for now, the Apple Online store is closed for business…always a good sign new items are about to arrive in inventory…

Enjoy!

Palm sent the folks who signed up to win a Pre an email letting them know they could buy it.

UPDATE: Here is a link to a NY Times story talking about demand…

Ok, I’ve been reading every damn note, article, tweet, and blog post re: PALMs new Pre smartphone. And have come to the conclusion that the Pre will not be an iPhone killer out of the gate. Here are my reasons:

1. The poor battery life will be the deal breaker.
2. People are_not_going to leave Verizon or AT&T for this device.
3. Apple will address the majority of the Pre’s competitive advantages in the iPhone 3.0 release, likely to hit on 6/8/09.
4. The gambit by Palm to sync the Pre with iTunes will only serve to highlight the Pre’s shortcomings.
5. By the time Verizion might offer the phone, sometime in 2010, another manufacturer will deliver a more intersting product…likely APPL.

Sprint’s decision to allow buyers to avoid paying full retail and take advantage of the instant rebate only at Best Buy stores speaks to another major issue for Sprint/Palm; namely the size and ability of their channel to sell this item through.

I’ll bet the sales of this device will peak in the next 72 hours never to see the same spike in demand over time…they’re simply not enough people who will seek the phone out…or trust the slickster hawkers at mall kiosks to drop their existing plans to sign up w/Sprint for a smartphone they need to come some $300+ out of pocket for…and then only to find 20 apps and less than a days useful life in the battery…it’s going to take interest over the long tail for this device to catch on…if it catches on at all.

Anyway, as a former Palm loyalist and gadget hound, I’m interested to see this device…if I find myself at the mall and Palm has done its job supplying the aformentioned channel, then maybe I will see it. I’ll be sure to post an update w/my thoughts on the device itself if I do.

Ok, the NYT is saying the indicators are that Blu-ray is on the upswing…personally, I don’t buy it…I don’t know anyone w/a Blu-ray player that didn’t come as a by-product in a game console and I don’t know anyone buying any discs? Do you?

Disc sales may be up…now that there’s only one format…that makes sense…and the need for a physical disc…that’s pucky…tell it to the music business…optical media in my opinion is a dying creature…and as soon as the FCC get’s its head out of its arse and mandates that cable companies allow consumers to purchase content a la carte, you’ll see just how dead it is.

MobileCrunch has a very good post re: today’s iPhone 3.0 software update, including a citation of definite cut and paste from Mr. Kevin Rose himself on a recent SXSW Diggnation episode:

Certainly cut and paste will be the big news…there is also some talk about a possible tablet.

Props to MobileCrunch for the printable scorecard! I can only hope that the software is available immediately. I must have been really busy to miss this announcement on the wires…