The Catch
From the NYTimes (With Apple Tablet, Print Media Hope for a Payday) today:
By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.
This opportunity, however, comes with a sizable catch: Steven P. Jobs.
Yeah, he sucks. It goes on:
Apple sold lots of music, but the music labels claimed that iTunes had destroyed the concept of the album and damaged their already deteriorating bottom lines.
The “concept of the album” is that a musician produces one song you kind of like, but if you want a copy of it you need to buy 9 songs you don’t. Let’s suppose you do: of the $10 you pay the music label, typically somewhere between $0.00 and $F.A. goes to the musician. That’s a truly wonderful model. Steve is a total bastard for messing with it.
At least there was some kind of “catch” for the music industry — it was making money with its existing model, and clearly Apple hastened some trends (music labels becoming irrelevant) in the course of actually allowing honest customers to pay for content rather than be forced to steal it or go without. In the case of the media companies (particularly newspapers and broadcast TV), the business model is already clearly broken, so Apple is really just offering a way forward.
The catch is that it might actually work.
As for the Prediction game:
It will run all the applications of the iPhone and iPod Touch, have a persistent wireless connection over 3G cellphone networks and Wi-Fi, and will be built with a 10-inch color display, allowing newspapers, magazines and book publishers to deliver their products with an eye to the design that had grabbed readers in print.
Assuming that the NYTimes has multiple verified sources (according to its sometimes enforced editorial standards) that means I’m wrong on the first point.
But perhaps smarting from their experiences with Apple, many of the old-line media companies — NBC Universal, Viacom and Discovery among them — shrugged at (or totally dismissed) Apple’s plans for a TV subscription package, according to executives briefed on the talks. A person briefed on Apple’s plans confirmed that such a subscription video option was not part of any immediate offering.
Yup. NBC has done so much better with Hulu and Amazon. Dorks.
Meanwhile, remember this gem from the Onion?