Seth Mnookin (who also wrote an excellent book on the Red Sox) has an interview in Wired with Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music.  The interview is a must read.  Its clear that Morris absolutely hates his customers:

Morris goes on to rail against criminal-minded college students and low-life punks who steal the music that his artists work so hard to create. He admits to being fairly ignorant about technology and insists that his job is to nurture the creative side of the business — work that's being threatened by all of this other nonsense.
...
He wants to wring every dollar he can out of anyone who goes anywhere near his catalog. Morris has never accepted the digital world's ruling ethos that it's better to follow the smartest long-term strategy, even if it means near-term losses. As far as he's concerned, do that and someone, somewhere, is taking advantage of you. Morris wants to be paid now, not in some nebulous future. And if there's one thing he knows how to do, it's use the size of his company to get his way.

 and despises Steve Jobs and Apple:

"We were just grateful that someone was selling online. The problem is, he became a gatekeeper. We make a lot of money from him, and suddenly you're wearing golden handcuffs. We would hate to give up that income." 

And Morris is still deluding himself about music subscriptions:

Total Music subscription would come pre-installed on devices like the Zune, the Sony PlayStation, or a mobile phone. Universal is well aware of the difficulty of convincing consumers to pay for music subscriptions, so Morris wants the device makers to pony up the cash themselves, either by shelling out for a six-month introductory offer or by assuming the cost forever. This would be money well spent, Morris argues, because it would help the Microsofts of the world eat into the iPod's market share. He has already hammered out preliminary agreements with Warner and Sony BMG and has met with executives at Microsoft and several wireless carriers. If Morris is able to make Total Music a reality, he will once again have succeeded in bending the industry to his will — in this case, by using the combined catalogs of the major labels to help establish a true competitor to the iPod. After all, why buy an iPod if a Zune will give you songs for free?

Unfortunately, Total Music will almost certainly require some form of DRM, which in the end will perpetuate the interoperability problem. Morris likely doesn't care. He is more committed to Total Music — or any other plan that allows protection — than he is to a future where music can truly be played across any platform, at any time. "Our strategy is to have the people who create great music be paid properly," he says. "We need to protect the music. I know that."

I guess this is why Rick Rubin (Morris' cohead of Columbia Records) has drunk the cool-aid on music subscriptions.  The problem is that people do not want to subscribe to music - they want to own it.

I mean doesn't anybody at Universal get it?  Where are the stockholders?  Is this guy so powerful that he can run his company into the ground? I think Mnookin concludes that yes, Morris is that powerful and implies that if  the "Total Music" initiative fails and/or iTunes climbs the last hurdle:

This year, 22 percent of all music sold in the US will move through iTunes. "If iTunes gets up to 40 or 50 percent, they'll have too much power for anyone else to enter the business," says James McQuivey, who analyzes the digital music industry for Forrester Research.

that he very well may ruin Universal. 

Now, trying to unseat the iPod is not a bad business strategy but I think that everything known about consumers and how they want to purchase music says subscriptions are a dead end.  Every subscription service has failed or is failing.  What that tells me is that the wrong guy is running Universal:

"He wasn't prepared for a business that was going to be so totally disrupted by technology," says a longtime industry insider who has worked with Morris. "He just doesn't have that kind of mind."

Universal needs someone who recognizes that technology has transformed the music business and is willing to embrace this.  Someone who can take the world's largest music label and get it on the path to the future and not down some dead end to protect short term profits.  Someone with a lot of money on hand to take over Universal - say 15 or so billion dollars.  

Until that happens, all I can say is ugh! - Will someone please save the music business from itself?

Charles Starrett at iLounge has written an excellent editorial on the growing "War on iTunes" being initiated by Universal.  I urge everyone to read it.

I've been collecting iPhone Tips and Tricks for some time now.  The list has gotten large enough that I thought I'd publish it.  Some of these are pretty good, some may not be - YMMV. For ease of use, I've also published this list as a standalone web page.  If you have any not listed here, please post them below and I'll add them to the iPhone Tips web page.

So, in no particular order....

• hit the space bar twice, you get a period.
• Remember that the iPhone does not register a key press until you release your finger from the screen.  With that in mind, you can quickly get any punctuation mark by doing the following, all in one motion: Touch the “.?123” key, but don’t lift your finger as the punctuation layout appears then slide your finger a half inch onto the period or comma key, and release.  The ABC layout returns automatically. You’ve typed a period or a comma or any of the punctuation symbols with one finger.  
• To type all in Caps, use the CAPS LOCK feature, make sure it is enabled in the General Settings. To use it, simply double-tap on the shift key. The shift key will turn blue.
• If you are writing something and the iPhone flags a word as misspelled that you know is not misspelled, cancel the correction 3 times and the word will be put into the dictionary.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I need another four days off though.  Here's the iPhone News Roundup for November 26, 2007:

For $6.99, when Office 2008 is released, Microsoft will send you Office 2008 Special Media Edition."

Microsoft already offers the Special Media Edition upgrade. The $100 rebate is new and available for only the one day.

What makes the deal sweet and cheap is its applicability to Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition. According to NPD, the Office student version accounts for most copies of the productivity suite sold at retail. However, there is no upgrade option to other Office versions. For 2008, the Student version's Entourage—the Mac equivalent to Outlook—will not support Exchange Server. The offer creates a cheap upgrade path for Mac users looking at getting Office now and don't want to spend big bucks.

Apple Store Deals

It seems every day there is talk of "the iPhone killer" coming soon.  Today's entry in the iPhone Killer sweepstakes is the Verizon Voyager. The Voyager, made by LG, sells for $299 and has a touch screen and a flip open keyboard and tries to copy the iPhone's UI.  Here's a review (conclusion: not an iPhone Killer), and another (conclusion: best Verizon phone).  There's also talk that the RIM 9000 series, coming next year (pic?), is out to kill the iPhone.  And of course, there was the much rumored Google Phone that then failed to live up to the hype.  The supposed iPhone killer list goes on:  there's a linux contender, handset maker HTC's entry, samsung's entry, Nokia's got one too.  But nobody seems to be asking the right questions - if the iPhone can be "killed" how can it be done? 

It seems strange to me that there even needs to be an "iPhone Killer".  I mean, my guesstimate based on Apple's latest iPhone sales numbers is that there have been about 2 to 2.5 million iPhones sold to date (based on Apple's released numbers and a guess factoring in approximate daily sales and the European release of the iPhone).  That's a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of cell phones sold (38 million in the U.S. last quarter alone) since the iPhone was released.  Even if you only compare the iPhone to other high end "smart" phones, the iPhone has 27% of the smart phone market but its not yet in a dominant position based on sales.  So why would you need to  have an iPhone killer?  two words: mind share.  The iPhone has simply come in and transformed the consumer mind share about what a smart phone should be.

Now, without disclosing details regarding my "day job", I get to spend a lot of time playing with many models of smart phones - including some of the "iPhone Killers" mentioned above, some that are not even available in the U.S., and a few that are not available anywhere yet.  Some are very cool.  But when you compare them to the iPhone in my pocket, they pretty much all suck.  Most are like small bricks - they are heavy, boxy and clunky - nothing with the sleek lines and minimalist feel of the iPhone.  Even if they have a nice design, they are generally running an operating system that just kills the user experience - Linux, Symbian, RIM or Microsoft (Microsoft is the worst of the bunch.  It takes several "clicks" to get even the most basic things done. Don't even get me started about RIM - an OS only a network administrator could love).

That is the first, most basic, reason there will not be an iPhone Killer anytime soon.  The other Mobile OS and UI designs are just not ready to compete.  Apple's OS X base is several light years ahead of everything else and the IPhone "noun" UI is just perfect for the touch interface.  Of course, the iPhone has its flaws too - it desperately needs voice dialing and/or a better way for hands free use on the phone side, the iPod "scrubber" needs a better UI, it needs "disc mode" like all the other iPods have - just to mention a few of my pet peeves.  But here's the thing - all of those things can be fixed with a software update when Apple works them out or by 3rd party developers when they get the SDK in February 2008.   If you have a crappy OS, then no amount of tinkering is going to be able to fix that.

That's the beauty of the OS X base - Apple has its own experience on the desktop side to draw from as well as all of its 3rd party developers.  The iPhone is just an extension of the Mac ecosystem - a reservoir that Symbian or RIM can't tap into.  Microsoft can't, to a large extent, make this claim either, given its specialized - and sometimes incompatible - flavor of windows for smart phones and PDAs.  Linux, well, is Linux - theoretically I suppose its part of the "Linux ecosystem" - if one even exists - but Linux is just not a player yet as there are very few Linux smart phones right now.  Despite my dismissal of Android, Google has the right idea to go after the mobile OS market instead of releasing an actual phone because that's the key advantage the iPhone has.

The other major advantage Apple has is that it is "Apple, the brand" and all that entails.   If Motorola introduced a phone with the exact same feature set as the iPhone a year ago, they would not have gotten the same amount and quality of attention that Apple did.  I don't see how the maker of any "iPhone Killer" can get around that anytime soon.

The final major advantage is the iPod.  There's no doubt that Apple is a monopoly in the digital music business and is not going to be caught there anytime soon.  Apple's video business is also up and coming.  Until someone can kills iTunes, they are probably not going to "kill" the iPhone.  That's why I have to laugh every time a supposed "iPhone killer" comes up with a phone tied to some minor "music store" or to the cell carriers ridiculously expensive "media store".  Please stop (and I am looking at you Verizon) the madness - iTunes has won.

Everything else is just features - screen size, touch screen, wifi, bluetooth, the webkit based safari web browser (and don't underestimate the iPhone's advantage here even though other manufactures can and do use webkit.  The web browsing experience on the iPhone is better that everything, and I mean everything, else right now).  The iPhone killers keep focusing on features and fail to realize that to "kill" the iPhone, features are the least important thing to concentrate on.  To paraphrase James Carville - its the OS stupid.  Until somebody can come up with an OS that rivals OS X, there will not be an iPhone killer anytime soon.

Amazon debuted the kindle on Monday.  Engadget has a good photo gallery of the device.
The kindle will let users read books ($9.99), Magazines ($1.99/month), Newspapers (varies from $5.99-$14.99/month), Blogs ($0.99-$1.99), your own files ($0.10 each), RSS feeds ($1 per feed).  Not withstanding the potential monthly fee nightmare, The Kindle is a tempting little device.  But how tempting can it be at $399?  That's a lot of money for the device and then you have to buy the books, newspapers, blogs. 

Plus, it looks like the Kindle got hit with the ugly stick.  I get the fact that they wanted it to "feel" like a paperback in your hand but, ugh!, the white-beige color scheme is 1980's retro - but in a bad way.

Now, I read a ton of books in a year.  And, in the past, I had eBooks on my Palm Pilot and enjoyed the fact that I could carry several books in my pocket that were available to me whenever I had a spare moment.  But, when I ditched the Palm, I did not feel some great loss because I didn't have my eBooks anymore.  Its not as if you can read and walk at the same time or read and drive like you can with music.  And that's the problem I think the Kindle has got.  There just isn't a longing to have books available on demand.  Not to mention the fact that the paper book is pretty well perfected after about 600 years.

So, although I like the idea, I don't think Amazon has got "it" with the Kindle.  The high cost of the device, the "nickel and dime" monthly costs, the fact that there just isn't a clamor for eBooks and the fact that the alternative is damn near perfect tells me that Kindle is a dud.  I think the best that Amazon can hope for is to start changing the environment for eBooks by getting people to want them.  If they can do that then maybe Kindle version 2 or version 3 will take off.  Until then, I just don't see it.

Its snowing in Princeton, New Jersey so, here's the wintery mix edition iPhone News:

Looks like I was right about Apple's no cash policy for iPhones.  At least Michael Flynn agrees (with more research).

Kindle eBook Reader vs. iPhone.

Is the Kindle the last shot for eBooks?

Kindle vs. iPhone again.

Today must be the eBook/eReader day.  Zinio has released free magazines on the iPhone -Macworld, GQ, Mens Health, Playboy (no pictorials), Popular Mechanics to name a few.  Here's the iPhone Link.

Good review of Twitter iPhone Clients.

What to do if you loose your iPhone.

Is Apple tracking iPhone IMEI Numbers?

If you've been reading this blog with any regularity, you know that I am a major advocate of iTunes movie rentals.  While we'll have to wait for movie rentals, there is an interesting experiment going on in the movie section of the iTunes Store.  Apple has started to go after the short films market and, beginning tomorrow, will offer the first-run full-length feature film, Purple Violets, for download. 

we were talking with several distributors and had an offer from a company that I had worked at before and it was the same model--the platform release, New York, LA, let’s wait for the reviews [and] our per-screen averages that first weekend, and we’ll go to the next eight markets, the next 12 markets and we’ll roll out that way. That has been my career for 12 years, but I would say for the last seven years that hasn’t worked for my films...So myself and my two producers, Aaron Lubin and Pam Murphy, were brainstorming and the idea came up, ‘What about approaching iTunes?’ They had never premiered a film before… We thought this is where it seems to be going, so why not be on the cutting-edge of this technology-- and we can’t do any worse than the last three films of mine have done theatrically, so maybe we can do better.

The strange thing is, at least up until now, Apple does not seem to be hyping this up too much.  There's no prominent mention of the film on the iTunes store yet (although that may change tomorrow), just a buried entry for it in the "coming soon" section of the movie store.  What makes Apple's lack of hype even more puzzling is the fact that Hollywood seems to be looking at how successful Apple, the de facto only game in town, can make Purple Violets: 

"They're obviously the leader, by a long way," says Jamie Chvotkin, president at CD Baby and Film Baby, two services that help musicians and filmmakers offer their work in digital form. "Their share in movies is probably similar to what it is in music, somewhere in the 80% range."

...

"Purple Violets," which stars director Ed Burns, Debra Messing, and Selma Blair and was made on a $4 million budget, will be a crucial test for iTunes, the first movie it'll have before it is available anywhere else.

Properly marketed, "Purple Violets" or another indie exclusive could turn into the kind of breakout hit that could nudge digital downloading into the mainstream -- something that hasn't happened yet.

Privately, studio execs have expressed hope that iTunes won't turn into the single dominant retailer of digital movies -- with all the accompanying negotiating leverage -- that it has become for music. They don't want to be in business with a partner that dictates terms to them, rather than the other way around..."It's not that those studios don't want more distribution, it's that they're not willing to sell movies at a price lower (than the DVD wholesale price) to Apple," says CinemaNow's Marvis. "Someone is going to have to blink."

"Properly marketed, 'Purple Violets' or another indie exclusive could turn into the kind of breakout hit that could nudge digital downloading into the mainstream -- something that hasn't happened yet."

So, keep an eye on iTunes over the next couple of weeks to see how successful Purple Violets is.  You can order the film (I believe for $12.99 today and then I think for $14.99 tomorrow) on iTunes.  Here's the link (which will open in iTunes): 

Slow news weekend, but here's the round up: