Apple fans generally sit on the edge of their seats days before Apple makes announcements regarding new products, new updates, or a new direction. More often than not Apple never fails to wow the crowds in taking the lead with innovation and design, but for some reason a large number of reports are saying that today’s announcements at the “Let’s Rock” event were nothing more than a yawner.
Personally I feel that fans have become accustomed to drastic announcements, or for lack of a better word, world changing technology, but sometimes its the little things that make what we already have just that much better. Here’s a run down of the announcements from today:
- For starters the iTunes application received a nice upgrade. The biggest is the addition of the Apple Genius. No, not the guy at the Apple store, but rather back end programming that serves as a personal DJ for your iPod. Genius uses data loaded on the Apple server and in turn working with the iTunes on your computer to find great matches to your already expanding playlist. Let Genius do the audio matching and see how accurate to your taste it really is.
- Apple has also made up with NBC, and now the two are best friends…for now. NBC is re-releasing their material for now with hits like The Office and 30 Rock available in HD for only $2.99 per episode. Other shows and networks will soon follow, but having HD quality on the iPod is an interesting addition, better get those lines ready for downloading overload!
- The iPod Touch got a much needed update along with a decent price drop. Sleek, new design, similar to the iPhone 3G now makes the iPod Touch more curvy and easier to handle. It’s new thinner design makes it easy to carry and comes with built in Nike+ software for the runner in you. The pricing for the new iPod Touch is as follows, $229 (8GB), $299 (16GB), and $399 (32GB)
- Finally the Nano got a new design. I admit when the Nano went short and squat I did not think I would be a fan of that version, and when I got my wife one I found myself using it more than her. The design grew on me and I became accustomed to it. I’m not sure what happened behind the scenes, but apparently there was enough of an uprising that the Nano has gone back to it’s long narrower design, but kept the same screen real estate. Like it’s larger counterpart, the new Nano comes with it’s own built-in accelerometer. They also come in much more bolder colors which reminds me of a pack of Now or Laters.
According to reports stock fell just over 3% after the announcements were over providing support that investors as a whole were underwhelmed by Apple’s announcements. Sad really, while expecting ground breaking news, Apple delivered some solid additions to iTunes, and price drops and re-designs for other products. I think this holiday season will see an increase in iPod Touch sales, and don’t be surprised when you see those brightly colored Nanos flying around either.
Photo Credit, Apple, Inc.
Apple has pushed the new iPod Touch Firmware 2.0 to iTunes. All iPod Touch users can upgrade to this latest firmware by paying a one-time fee of $9.25.
iPhone users, however, get to upgrade to firmware 2.0 absolutely free of cost. As I find this kind of unfair on part of Apple to charge only iPod Touch users, so I am going to help you upgrade iPod Touch to firmware 2.0 absolutely for free.
If you want to have an updated iPod Touch 2.0 for free, then just follow the steps below:
- Download iTunes 7.7 from Here.
- Hold Shift and click Restore.
- Select iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw
- Enjoy!
The iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw firmware can be downloaded from any of the mirrors below. It is the complete stable and final iPod Touch Firmware 2.0 (5A347) and has been checked and tested.
Rapidshare mirror (Join parts using this software)
http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part1
http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part2
http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part3
Uploaded.to mirror
http://uploaded.to/file/ih0z65/iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw
Freakshare mirror
http://freakshare.net/files/30208/iPod11_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw
Once you download the firmware locally on your PC, follow the steps above to update iPod Touch to Firmware 2.0.
After yesterdays big announcements at MacWorld, Crenk can now be added to your iPhone or iPod Touch Home Page.
If you head to crenk.com in your Safari browser and then bookmark the site, a few options will appear and one is to add Crenk to you Home Page. This will bring up a confirmation page and then it will be amazingly added to your Home Page, with a nice little icon that looks like this:
In the last few days I have been reading some great articles over at RWW on the music industry, where it is headed and how Apple could potentially lose its dominance. These articles have fueled great debates on the RWW site and here is my take on the whole music industry.
Having the Complete Package
Josh wrote a great article at RWW that basically talked about Apple and how they are slowly coming under fire from Amazon and Zune. I think the situation is very straight forward until someone really tries to shake up the market!
Apple currently has 70% of the portable music player market and approx 85% of the music download market. Apple additionally has a very strong brand awareness and loyalty. Apple are very smart at what they do and for companies who only offer part of their package, it will be very difficult for them to compete and actually grab any market presence. Im sure we will see companies like Amazon attempt to attack parts of the music market but if they succeed in any particular area (such as cut pricing of downloads and DRM free downloads), then Apple will just calculate the right times to cover the advances and offer equal services. At the end of the day Apple knows that they have brand loyalty like no other and services such as Amazon Mp3 in the long run will only help them sell more iPods or Macs, because these people who download have to put their music somewhere.
In terms of Zune they have been receiving some good reviews for their new product, however this is Microsoft we are talking about. Microsoft has long been serial monopolists and Zune is not going to change that fact. Apple have of course AAC files that can only be played on iPods and Microsoft have exactly the same with the Zune.
At present no one can challenge Apples dominance and I dont think anyone will challenge them for at least another 5 years. Microsoft with Zune have just launched a product and service exactly the same as Apple did years ago with the iPod and iTunes, there is no difference to me. Amazon however, have launched a service that was need, a service that offers DRM free music not via subscription and via a cut price. Amazon hit a small gap in the market that was needed, but does this mean they will get any where near iTunes? No chance in hell!!
Future of DRM
I predict that 2008 will be the year that all the big 4 (Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI) start selling DRM free music more openly. Amazon has Warner on the books and iTunes has EMI already signed up with Warner to come on board very soon.
In 2007 there have been lots of experiments with the music business model, such as Radiohead and also Amie Street, but have they proved anything? Yes I think they have. The Amie Street business model of offering music low and then prices increase when the track becomes popular has proved so successful that Amazon has bought into the company. Radiohead proved that selling digitally on a website can be just as popular as selling on the huge iTunes.
Conclusions. Overall, I really think customers are willing to pay for good quality music, especially DRM free music that can be transported to any portable music player, but only at the right price! Im still not too sure if we have found the right price yet. This is mainly due to the big 4 wanting to make a good margin on their sales on iTunes, thus prices are currently high. I cant wait to see a service that skips all of the hassels and just offers a simple service that sells good quality mp3s DRM free at a price such as $0.50 per download.
What Needs to Happen to Break the Music Industry
Currently, I am CEO of a company which is entering the music space but focusing on music licensing and distribution. Hypothetically, if I had the resources and money to launch a product in the music industry that would compete with iTunes and Apple, I would do the following.
- Digital music downloads need to have a copyright system in place that actually tracks who the music is sold to and if the music is transported between computers or players it just needs to be unlocked via a password or something similar.
- Offer a DRM free music store in which the music can be transfered to any portable music player
- Offer a reasonable price and optimize the transaction fee the third party takes.
- Then offer other vertical services such as videos, games, ebooks and more.
- Finally, move into horizontal integration, such as a revolutionary portable music player, online and satellite radio stations and many more ideas.
This is the only way I can see someone breaking the Apple dominance and taking at least some share of the music market. If you are a VC and would like to fund my idea, please get in touch with me! haha. I love a challenge!
Napster have announced that they are dumping their desktop client and re-launching with a new web-based version. Napster customers will now be able to listen to their music from any computer anywhere in the world. This will hopefully enable Napster to also develop embeddable widgets that can push their products on possible web enabled devices.
Napster is still going to be based as a subscription model, which most industry experts think is holding back the company, because it makes Napster incompatible with the iPod. Consequently Napster has lagged behind Apple’s end to end iTunes system which reportedly controls 70% of the digital music market.
UMG has announced they are now happy with iTunes and the revenue split, so it is only a matter of time before DRM free becomes standard and Napster will really need to gain some market share before Apple.
If you would like to see a slideshow of the new Napster service, please head over to Crave.
I have just got a new iPod Touch and while upload all my songs i noticed that pretty much none of them have album artwork. This isnt too good when you go into coverflow mode. Does anyone know what the best program to upload album artwork is?? Please help me!
Starbucks said it will be giving away millions of songs via download on iTunes. It is reported that more than 10,000 US Starbucks locations will be participating in the give away, which will be running from October 2 to November 7. Customers can receive “Song of the Day” cards redeemable on Apple’s iTunes store for a complimentary song selected by Starbucks. Starbucks said it will give away 1.5 million downloads per day for a total of more than 50 million free songs. Customers will have until the end of the year to redeem the song on iTunes.
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