| Friday, December 10, 2004 |
09:52 - Everything Your iPod
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000610023097/
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Not only has a whole industry sprung up to sell gadgets for enhancing your iPod's functionality, from FM transmitters to voice recorders to little LED flashlights and laser pointers that plug into the iPod's headphone jack. The other side of the equation is well represented too: geek tools that allow you to customize your iPod's embedded graphics.
Looks like a lot of fun. It's a Windows utility, though, which is interesting—something about this tool and the way it's represented just doesn't feel like something a Mac user would create.
Maybe it's this:
On a side note, Apple and every other music player maker should make this part of the software that comes with their device, we all change the icons, desktops, and everything else on our computers, so it makes sense to be able to brand our music players any way we want.
Am I the only one who's getting reeeeeally tired of people who say things like this? Yeah, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of the marketing meeting where someone brings up this idea: "Hey, Steve? What do you say we produce an Apple-supported utility to allow people to debrand their iPods? Just think—we could sink all kinds of money into development and support, and we'd relinquish control of the user experience. It's win-win!"
Apple is a company like every other. They create and sell the products that their analysis tells them will make more money. They run the iTunes Music Store not to stick it to the record labels or to spread music across the populace or even to make money on direct track sales, but to sell iPods—because that's where the business plan lies. It's where their revenue stream comes from. Very little else in the iPod realm does that. Apple doesn't even make most of the accessories, leaving that to the third-parties; their analysis tells them that their bottom line is best served by selling headphones, remotes, iPod Docks and iPod socks—and that's about it. Other accessories would require too many extra resources from within the company to offset the revenues they'd make from sales. Much as I might like to think Apple's in business as a labor of love, magnanimously sacrificing profits at the altar of the salvation of the computer industry, they're driven by the numbers just like everyone else—and I'd just love to see someone try to make the pitch to management that it's in Apple's interest in any way whatsoever to even officially support low-level customizability of the iPod or Mac OS X, let alone to release a utility that productizes the process. Customizability is fun—but I'm not going to hold Apple accountable for supporting me if I screw things up, any more than I'd call Ford to complain if I managed to bore my engine's cylinders into each other.
But then, of course, some people simply refuse to be satisfied; the iPod can revolutionize the world, and they'll still sneer because they can't officially swap out its Do Not Disconnect icon for a "No RIAA" one to advertise their commitment to not listening to any music with a corporate label on it.
That's not a market Apple can ever win, no matter how many dollars they dump down the black hole. Nor, one might argue, should they.
Still, this is cool. (Via Marcus.)
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Brian Tiemann
