Piracy is not the reason for the downfall of the music business. It is a scapegoat, in much the same way as the VCR was blamed for problems in the  movie industry. The real problem with the music business has more to do with the fact that music labels have, for the most part, stopped developing artists. The labels have fallen into a trap of pushing easily marketable crap, by throw away artists, and then wondering why they aren’t having long term success. What has to make this even more frustrating for the labels is that they were able to stall the effects of this for a decade or more as a result of the format shifts in the late ’80s and early ’90s. While the 8-track never really took off, the move from vinyl to cassette to cd caused many consumers to buy the albums of the last round of “developed artists” more than once. As an example, I think I’ve owned six or seven copies of Metallica’s debut album Kill Em All. I had it on cassette, one or two versions of vinyl re-releases, two different visions on CD, and an original pressing on vinyl. Many of the albums that I owned in the 90s were purchased on vinyl and cassette, and then CD and cassette until I was able to put a cd player into my car.
The transition from CD to digital copies is where these sins started to come home to roost for the cord companies. When we, as consumers, were able to easily shift formats ourselves, by using iTunes to rip our CDs for use on iPods, the labels felt left out. Even though it is completely legal for users to format shift their CDs, if you ask the labels, they still consider them to be two separate products

Being a long time Apple fan(boy,) I’ve owned and or used most Apple products going back to the original (unenhanced) Apple ][e. That list also included a number of Newton messagePads. My fear for the iPad is that it will suffer the same problem that plagued the Newtons, which is that users will expect it to completely replace their laptops, while in fact it is not quite powerful enough to do so.

A lot of people are upset with the pricing of the newly announced iPhone 3G S. While I don’t necessarily think that this is Apple’s problem (the subsidized pricing is set by AT&T not Apple,) I am willing to be that most people will point the finger at Apple. This issue got me thinking about the ways that Apple has treated its customers over the years. As a long time (well over 20 years) fan and user of Apple computers, I have seen my fair share of Apple hubris:

• Apple // -> Macintosh “Transition” — I have fond memories of my grade school’s Apple IIe computer. I remember hearing one of the mothers at school talk about the “new” computer that Apple was going to release, and how much sturdier the disks would be. I can only imagine that she was talking about the as yet unreleased Macintosh. In my experience with Apple, the Apple II to Macintosh transition was the first example of their brazen hubris. Apple assumed that all of their customers would follow the path that they had laid out, and leave their Apple IIs behind for the (in their minds,) superior Macintosh. After the Apple II community saw the handwriting on the wall (i.e. Apple was not going to live up to the Apple II Forever! slogan,) I know a lot of users that felt slighted, and betrayed, and took the chance to switch to the IBM PC.
• Resting on the laurels of the original Macintosh — When the original Macintosh shipped in 1984, it was a decade, if not more, ahead of the IBM PC and MS DOS. Small refinements were made to the system, but at its heart, the system remained largely unchanged until the transition to OS X just a few years ago. Had Apple continued to innovate, today’s computers could look much different. The problem is that Apple knew they were so far ahead of the the competition, that they took it easy, and 10 years later, their competitors caught up with them.
• (Original) iPhone pricing — When the original iPhone was announced, the price for the 8 GB model was $599. Which is a lot of money for a cell phone. A large number of people, like myself, convinced themselves that the iPhone was worth the price, and they ponied up the cash to join the iPhone party, only be to shocked less than two months later when Apple dropped the price of the 8GB model to $399. I have long said that Apple’s problem in this case was that when they announced the iPhone at Macworld Expo 2007, they (collectively/corporately) considered it as having shipped in January 2007, even though it did not ship until June 2007. That is the only way that I can justify a $200 price drop. A price drop after 8 months is, in my opinion acceptable. To make matters worse, I think that Apple had that price drop planned all along. They had a sales threshold under which they planned to drop the price to increase sales. This may have come sooner than they expected, but I would say that the “meet them half way” solution (i.e. give every iPhone owner who paid $599 a credit for $100,) was discussed, if not completely planned before the June 30 launch.
• iPhone 3G S pricing — I don’t really think that this one is Apple’s problem, even though a number of vocal iPhone 3G owners do. It looks to me like Apple is keeping the unsubsidized pricing of the iPhone pretty consistent. The problem is that AT&T chooses the subsidized pricing, and they are also being pretty firm on the terms of their contract. Every iPhone 3G owner who is on AT&T signed a two year agreement. The difference between the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G is the subsidy, plain and simple. iPhone owners were able to upgrade a year later, without penalty, because they did not pay a subsidy the first time around. Here we are a year later, and these same users what subsidy pricing after only a year (if that much.) I think, for the most part, we are going to see AT&T holding their ground, and users will either pay the extra $200 for an early upgrade (although it would be cheaper to cancel your current iPhone, pay the $175 early termination fee, and start with a new contract,) or they’ll just wait until they are eligible.

I for one, will be waiting until December of 2010 (I just upgraded in April when my iPhone was dropped, and the screen cracked,) to upgrade. The bright side of this plan is that by that time, whatever is going to replace the iPhone 3G S should be announced and available.

The intro to the most recent episode of the Totally Rad Show made me think about competing technology. Growing up, I had an uncle that fancied himself a home theater enthusiast. He always had the newest TV/entertainment related gadgets. My dad trusted him, almost implicitly, when it came to technology. He had a Betamax VCR, and therefore so did we. My parents are very much collectors, so they owned a large number of Beta tapes. In fact they actively watched those tapes up until their Betamax VCR broke down a few years ago. My dad also got suckered into the RCA video disc player, At some point, I need to get my hands on the Video Disc copy of Star Wars from their collection. I still remember when your local (i.e. non chain) video store carried most movies in both formats. We even had a local store that carried the Video Discs. My favorite memory was mom renting something, only to find out that the disc had been swapped for Death Race 2000, which remains, to this day, one of my favorite movies.
I am embarrassed to say that I have carried on the baton of picking the wrong format. I purchased an HD-DVD drive for the 360 just over a month before CES 2008, where the format was officially put to rest. I don’t think there is any way to avoid making the wrong choice, if you make a choice. Suffice to say, if there are two competing formats, and you don’t want to choose the wrong one, you have to wait for the war to end, even if you think you know which one is going to win before hand. The reason I purchased the HD-DVD drive was that I was convinced that it was the better format, and had the best chance of winning.