Saturday, September 29, 2007
Now Own An iBrick Instead of An iPhone?
The good nerds at Slashdot.com
reminded the geek community today of AT&T's "legal policy" regarding service. Those terms include a nebulous provision for damaging the company's "name or reputation".
That's ugly enough for most consumers, but what really hits hard is this basic concept: AT&T and Apple colluded to harm an electronics device they no longer owned by creating software that would render the device inoperable.
Game over. If "do no evil" is
Google's mantra and supposed business guideline, perhaps "stop doing harm" should be the case for Apple and AT&T. Folks, you don't own the device. If you don't want it on your network, that's great. You can't sell someone a car, though, and tell them they can't work on it. Doing so might void the warranty, a risk informed consumers may choose to make. Working on your car, however, doesn't mean that someone comes to your house in the middle of the night and offers you an unmarked bag of sugar as a "fuel additive".
Yes, it's a fuel additive. Don't do it to your car. You will cause massive damage to the vehicle.
And that's what happened here. Had AT&T or Apple bothered to tell consumers, "Your download will disable your device if you have not followed the warranty guidelines," then I would be on their side. Instead, they turned
iPhones into
iBricks, destroying the carefully laid credibility Apple was slowly rebuilding.
At Consumer Help Web, we had made the choice to switch multiple machines from Dells to Macs. Apple's position in this matter has scuttled that idea. Now, we're wondering if
iTunes and
iPods are still in our future. That is what happens to companies who act in an imperious and harmful manner. Good luck, boys and girls. We hope
Pixar works out because your actions this week may have cost you the "nerd
influencer" demographic you needed for survival in the computer market. Good luck as a media company (and set aside a nice reserve for the class action suit)
Labels: Apple, ATT, iPhone, Slashdot
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Apple's Bad Week Continues
Perhaps the public relations damage was inevitable although Apple has risen to exalted status and fallen before. The iPod and its free iTunes software changed that. Apple was suddenly the darling of the tech sector's eye again. Emboldened by their success, the company mashed unlikely partners AT&T and Google into the iPhone.
Apple honcho Steve Jobs narrowly avoided a public relations crisis when he slashed prices only months after releasing the most hyped product of the decade. Quickly and decisively, he marched back to his consumers (none of whom deserved any special treatment) and proferred $100 credits. The move was sheer marketing genius, the kind that has landed Jobs a place in the history of the Information Age now being written. Even Amazon's announcement this week of a new store to compete directly with iTunes didn't seem to shake the customer even though Amazon is big enough and powerful enough to make the market a two company race.
But the whimsical Apple, your buddy with the iPod and the cool talking guy hawking Macs on television, turned vicious today. After a group of tinkerers, led by a recently graduated high school senior hacked into
their iPhones and found they could use it for other applications, they released the know-how to the world. Geeks, especially in the computer sector, are like that. These are the folks who skipped Tivo and DVRs, bought a $400 budget laptop and made their own.
And Apple hosed them today. With the release of a new set of firmware, programs that instruct the iPhone how to operate, Apple not only undid the damage to its AT&T partner, but rendered the consumer's phones unusuable
if they downloaded the firmware.
Writing at Ziff-Davis tonight,
Jason O'Grady says he has no intention of upgrading. He'll skip the new features to keep his choice of carriers alive. Over at
PC World, blogger
Melissa Perenson reminds consumers that Apple warned them this might happen. She is taking a wait-and-see approach, she says, but reports that the team responsible for hacking the iPhone in the past promises a "restoration hack" in the future -- perhaps as early as next week.
All of this begs the question: did Apple, the darling of the tech set, risk its credibility with the move? Will there be an iPod backlash in addition to what might every well be an iPhone firestorm?
And more important is this question: when consumers bought the iPhone they undoubtedly gave away too many rights, but once they owned the equipment, the device should have been free for them to use as they see fit. So besides lost credibility, we would not be surprised to see Apple challenged in court over destroying equipment owned by consumers.
Stop the phone from working at the iTunes music store? Sure
Stop the phone from working on AT&T's network? Absolutely. A no-brainer
Stop the phone from working at all? I'm lost on that one, and so, I think, is Apple for taking consumer choice away.
Labels: Apple, iPhone, iPod
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Amazon Joins Music Download Fray
Only Apple and its ubiquitous iPod have managed to capture enough consumer attention and share of mind to legally sell music online. The service has many competitors, but none are close in size to the technology company. Even The Beatles eventually came around to the little iPod rectangle and its iTunes store.
Today, Amazon is the latest entrant into the music download business, and many analysts believe the leading web retailer is one of the few companies poised to give Apple a run for its money. The new service is called Amazon MP3, and what it lacks in scope (2 major music companies are still holdouts), the service makes up for in marketing muscle, reach and consumer presence.
"Amazon presents consumers with the choice they've waited for," said George Bounacos of Consumer Help Web. "By creating a service that also works on iPod, Amazon has already changed the marketplace by offering similar titles at 89 cents instead of iTunes' minimum of 99 cents." The difference is important, Bounacos said, because Apple's iTunes store has sold several billion songs worldwide. "Consumers might think that a dime isn't important, but several billion dimes is," he said.
Amazon's MP3 service is also getting positive reviews from early adopters. "
A real alternative to iTunes," wrote Michael Arrington of leading technology blog TechCrunch. Armstrong's review of the new service praised the music's quality and mentioned support for multiple systems, including Linux. Arrington also noted that the best-selling albums were priced low: no more than $8.99 each.
"That's what happens in a competitive marketplace," Bounacos said. "Consumers benefit because suddenly the average price isn't 99 cents, but somewhere in between. Competition is always a plus for consumers. The marketplace will now be able to decide the appropriate price, rather than the company with first mover advantage."
Labels: Amazon, Apple, iTunes, MP3, music
