Apple Pushes e-Book Price Hike

First marketplace impact of the iPad, apparently, is to raise the cost of e-books for consumers. Curiously, the deal Apple struck with publishers also costs the publishers money. The losers are Amazon, which had been selling e-books at a loss to boost acceptance of its Kindle Reader, and consumers, who will see price increases of 30-50%. The New York Times explains:

Amazon Accepts Macmillan’s Demand for Higher E-Book Prices - NYTimes.com

Apple Pushes e-Book Price Hike

First marketplace impact of the iPad, apparently, is to raise the cost of e-books for consumers. Curiously, the deal Apple struck with publishers also costs the publishers money. The losers are Amazon, which had been selling e-books at a loss to boost acceptance of its Kindle Reader, and consumers, who will see price increases of 30-50%. The New York Times explains:

Amazon Accepts Macmillan’s Demand for Higher E-Book Prices - NYTimes.com

The Apple iPad: First Impressions - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com

Notwitstanding that David Pogue of The New York Times is famously an Apple enthusiast (and writes books about Apple products), his early reaction to the iPad captures the key point: it will live or die based on whether there is compelling content for it... The same way the iTunes Music Store made the iPod more than "just another music player" and the App Store made the iPhone more than "just another smartphone."

The Apple iPad: First Impressions - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com

Featured Speakers

Two of the cooler iPod speaker systems now on the market couldn’t be any more different in size or price, but they have one thing in common: they aim at a specific target and hit it.

At one extreme is B&W’s awesome $600 Zeppelin audio system. At the other, SkullCandy’s “Pipe” portable speakers, which cost one-tenth as much.

Can you compare them? By no means. You need to look at each in the context of the specific purpose for which they are designed.

Bowers & Wilkins (B&W), the British maker of some of the world’s highest end speakers and a leading choice of recording engineers, clearly set out to create the ultimate iPod speaker dock. And they did it.



B&W is famous for the elegance of its sound. Crisp and clear, but never harsh. The ambience is of a warm concert hall or intimate club. Lots of detail and broad frequency response. The B&W sound is instrumental or vocal, not electronic.

Capturing that in a single-piece iPod dock took some doing. The 25-inch wide spheroid holds five drivers -- two tweeters (high notes), two mid-range (what it says), and one bass (lows). B&W used high-tech composites in the construction to control vibrations. A chrome arm extends from the device to hold the iPod dock, and the system integrates with the iPod’s controls so that you adjust tone and other speaker settings through your iPod.

The look is perhaps controversial (I thought it was highly stylish but my wife hated it), but there is nothing to dispute about the sound. Sheer excellence.

If there is a nit to pick, it’s that the matching spheroid remote control has only minimal functions and cannot navigate through the iPod’s menus, as the remotes of many more modest devices (include the Pipe) can. A B&W spokesperson says reason was to maintain a simplicity to the design. But with a unit this big, you are probably going to put it someplace a little out of the way. So a multi-function remote would be a good idea.

Now, why would you want to spend $600 for an iPod dock? You probably wouldn’t if that was you only intent. B&W effectively has admitted as much by introducing a $400 Zeppelin Mini, a more conventionally designed system that is priced closer to competing audiophile docks. The real value in the Zeppelin is that if you combine it with an iPod Classic loaded with music in lossless format, you wind up with a valid competitor to a traditional component audio system that would cost much more.

Think of it as a home stereo system redefined for the digital age.

If B&W is all about British elegance, SkullCandy is about skateboards, surf, rollerblades, and a slightly punk attitude. Its primary product line is headphones and earphones aimed at a young, active audience.

The Pipe is an 8-inch tube (essentially a smaller version of the cardboard roll inside a roll of paper towels) with speakers firing out of each end and an iPod docking port in the middle. The company’s skull logos are on the speaker grills, making it a dock with Attitude. I doubt that the audiophile market figured at all in the designers’ calculations.

Nevertheless for those who regularly take iPods and iPhone on the road, the Pipe has hit the sweet spot between size and sound that makes it one of the best “packable” iPod speaker systems I’ve used. Sound is good on a wide range of music -- it handles classical and jazz just as well as it does rock. It can crank up high volume and can also provide pleasing sound at lower don’t-antagonize-the-people-in-the-hotel-room-next-door levels.

The Pipe is available in black or chrome -- depending on what kind of style statement you want to make. It slips easily into a briefcase, backpack, or suitcase. A full-function remote is included as is an AC adapter. (Batteries are NOT included; four AAA cells are required.) There’s even an extra rubber leg included that attaches to the latch of the battery compartment to provide extra stability.

In their own ways, the Pipe and the Zeppelin prove that sometimes one size doesn’t fit all.

Google Ups the Stakes in Computer-Phones

Verizon’s new Motorola Droid computer-phone is one of the best challengers yet to Apple’s iPhone. Which probably misses the point.

Mind you, Verizon, Motorola, and Google, which makes the Android operating system for the new device, have invested a lot in the comparison. An “iDon’t” ad campaign in print and online make the case that the Droid has capabilities that the iPhone lacks. There’s even a militant TV spot in which stealth warplanes bomb bystanders with Droid cellphones.

However, the really big aspect of Droid and Google’s 2.0 version of Android is that it gives birth to a new ecosystem for computer-phones.

(I use the term “computer-phone” to describe the class of devices that are small handheld computers married to cellphones. As David Pogue of The New York Times has noted, the old term “smartphone” isn’t really adequate to describe the latest technology.)

Android phones are married to Google’s online services. One of the first things you must do when you set one up, in fact, is either sign into an existing gmail account or create one. The phone links up its contacts and calendars to Google Contact and Google Calendars. While you can add support for other forms of email and corporate users can plug into Microsoft Exchange servers, Google is the only way for “civilians” to sync contacts and calendars. (One annoyance: calendar sync is limited to only the first Gmail account you set up, so if you have more than one account and calendar you are out of luck on syncing the rest.)

Uniquely among computer-phones, the Droid does not ship with desktop data transfer software. There’s no equivalent of iTunes, BlackBerry Desktop, Windows ActiveSync, or the like. To get photos and music on or off the Droid, you plug it into your computer with a USB cable, pull down a menu on the Droid’s touchscreen and “mount” the device on your computer. The Droid -- actually, its MicroSD memory card -- then shows up as a drive on your computer and you transfer files the same way you would with, say, a USB memory stick.

I recommend a free download of doubleTwist (doubletwist.com), available for both Mac and Windows to manage photos, music, and videos. It will simplify the transfer process and make it easier to create playlists.

But the essence of the Android concept is that your data lives on the “cloud” of Google’s services.

Google owes its explosive growth in part to its recognition that in the digital age data is more important than devices. It has expanded from its search and advertising core functions to attract more and more information into its servers. Contacts. Calendars. Documents. Photos. Video. And the list keeps growing. In return for hosting this information Google does two basic things for you: It gives you services for free that other companies charge large fees for. And it lets you access your data seamlessly on any platform you choose -- your own computer, the computer at an Internet cafe, or the Droid. Your data is available to you where you want it, when you want it. (Provided, of course, you have an Internet connection.)

As I wrote previously, I have reservations about “cloud computing” -- keeping data on the Internet. You entrust a great deal of personal data to Google. While I believe Google’s founders are sincere in their “don’t be evil” philosophy, it defies human nature to believe that the massive databases in Google’s possession will never be misused. That doesn’t mean you should avoid their services -- I use them. But you should think a little bit about how much privacy you are willing to give away.

Those caveats duly noted, my experience was that the Google ecosystem generally works well. Data synced promptly and efficiently between the Droid and Google. Someone who uses Google services as his or her principal data repository will be well satisfied. However, those of us who use desktop apps such as Microsoft Outlook on a PC or Microsoft Entourage on a Mac (or the built-in Mac and Windows equivalents) will find that the tools now available to sync that data with Google are somewhat clunky. You sync the desktop data to Google, which then syncs to the Droid. I doubt that will improve in the future as neither Microsoft nor Apple are highly motivated to enhance Google as a competitor.

On the all-important “is it as good as an iPhone?” question, the answer is: “of course, not.” The iPhone is smaller, lighter, and more sophisticated. It has extensive touch screen capabilities that the Droid lacks. For example, while the iPhone has its celebrated pinch-or-spread your fingers ability to blow up or shrink the data on display, Doid users have to use a system of tapping a zoom function. The iPhone is a better media player, a better game platform, and can host more apps.

The Doid, however, does have some advantages of its own. It’s very fast, thanks to its powerful processor. It has a more sensitive camera. It mutlitasks. It has voice dialing, voice searching, and voice-guided navigation. With its MicroSD card, it has expandable memory. And -- most important -- it has a swappable battery. The only thing that’s truly off is the slide-out keyboard, which hard to type on accurately yet lacks the auto-correction feature of the Droid’s onscreen virtual keyboard. Still, all-in-all it’s a nice device.

But let’s be frank here. None of this is going to be the key factor in whether someone buys a Droid or an iPhone. The real issue is Verizon vs. AT&T.

As Verizon’s “there a map for that” attack ads note, it offers high-speed “3G” access more widely than AT&T, which has the U.S. exclusive for the iPhone. In my experience, Verizon also has many fewer phone call drop outs than AT&T does. Joking about dropped calls is one of the rites of iPhone ownership. There’s also the issue of tethering -- using your phone as a modem for your laptop. A spokeswoman for Verizon promises that tethering will be available on the Droid early next year. But even though the iPhone has had tethering capability since a July software update, AT&T has neither turned on the feature nor set a timetable for doing so. On the other hand, Verizon is notoriously the most expensive cellular provider so you pay for that network coverage.

The choice in a nutshell is whether to go with slickest computer-phone or the slickest network. If Droid can make customers at least debate the question, it will be a success for Verizon.

Lost and Found for iPhones

You’re having “one of those days” in which you are rushing from one thing to another and barely have time to think. At some point in the day, you reach for your cell phone and it’s not there!

Panic ensues. Did you in your haste to get out the door in the morning simply leave the phone at home? Is it sitting in your car attached to the charger? Did you put it down at one of your stops and forget to take it? Did you drop it somewhere? Most important is it simply lost or has someone walked away with it?

Apple just created a solution as part of its recent iPhone 3.0 software update: “Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe.”

It does just what the name says: it will locate your iPhone and if necessary wipe all your private data from it. It also allows you to send a message to your iPhone that will cause the unit to sound an alert and flash the message (typically you would use it to provide information on how to return it to you).

The service works via Apple’s MobileMe Internet network and uses the iPhone’s built-in GPS capabilities. Aside from its practical values, it also has great show-off capabilities because the process is highly entertaining.

Users log into their MobileMe website, navigate to account settings (as an extra security measure, they will be required to supply their passwords a second time), and then click on the Find My iPhone button. That brings up a Google map in which a circle shows the phone’s location. Apple refines the GPS data so the experience is that one usually sees the circle centered somewhere in the general vicinity of where the phone might be; then the circle nudges itself into a more exact position.

When I tested this from my home, which is near the Charles River, the first data placed the phone on the other side of the river. Then the refined information slowly moves the location across the river, then moved through some adjacent property, and finally although not pinpointing my exact apartment does center on the building’s front door – which is close enough for me. In fact, any closer and I would start to worry about Apple taking the microtargeting concept to grave extremes.

Curiously Find My iPhone was little publicized in reviews of the 3.0 software update and latest generation of iPhones. Perhaps this is because the MobileMe service cost $99 per year and had major glitches when it was launched a year ago. But many of the new features that got more attention, such as cut-and-paste text capabilities or video cameras on the new iPhone 3GS aren’t especially innovative. BlackBerries and other smartphones have had those features for years.

Find my iPhone is an important innovation, one that will become even more important as people and companies fully appreciate how much sensitive data we actually carry around with us on today’s cell phones. I expect this to be a trend setter and the odds are high that other cellphone makers and cellular service provides aren’t even now as we speak kicking themselves for having failed to think of it first.

Expect MobileMe to be challenged quickly by Me, Too.

Trouble in medialand

A major media organization is struggling with dismal financial results, expecting new rounds of layoffs, and it’s future is highly uncertain:

Yahoo!

Oh, did you think I was referring to The Boston Globe? Well, them, too.

Obviously, the newspaper business is going through hard times, which I take personally. One of my prior employers, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver just folded. My sense of regret there being compounded by my view that its owner, E.W. Scripps, has left a trail of dead newspapers in its wake for years – starting long before the Internet ever became a threat to traditional media.

The fact of the matter is that it is tough to make a buck selling content. Intellectual property is ephemeral and as a result companies tend to focus on some kind of tangible deliverable as their “product.” So it is the physical newspaper that newspaper companies sell rather than the words on the paper. Along comes the Internet and suddenly customers can get the words without buying the paper. Similarly, Yahoo! peddled its visible web presence rather than its mix of search results, portal (home page) content, and advertising. Along came Google, which blended those components more effectively and kept adding new products into the mix, and Yahoo! became an also-ran.

Different products. Same result.

We are so accustomed these days to think about how technology drives social and economic changes that we forget that the reverse is even more important: social and economic changes create a niche that new products and services will fill.

To stick with newspapers, my career dates back to 1969 when I started an evening shift general assignment reporter with The Patriot Ledger. While the Internet has been one factor in what has happened to the Ledger since then, it isn’t the only factor or even necessarily the most important one.

In 1969, the Quincy shipyards were still open (albeit troubled) and Massachusetts was still a manufacturing center. There were local department stores and local food stores. Auto dealers had one or two stores, not mammoth chains. The Ledger was an evening newspaper the delivery of which was based on the traditional sequence of delivery boys and girls getting out of school just in time to get the papers to the homes of workers, from the shipyards and elsewhere, who were coming off the day shift. Local merchants were the core of the paper’s advertising base. The story was much the same for The Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence and for thousands of other newspapers.

Then the world changed faster than the papers could keep up.

The traditional manufacturing industries went into decline while local businesses were bought up or failed. An increasingly white-collar audience preferred morning delivery to evening. Suburban papers had to fight more intensely with metropolitan papers for ad dollars. People’s lifestyles became fast-paced and they found it hard to make time for such things as long newspaper articles.

Technology for a time was actually the newspaper business’s friend as computerization eliminated many skilled jobs and generally cut costs. It also enhanced the product. The Eagle-Tribune, for example, led the region in the introduction of color printing for the daily paper – doing so long before USA Today was even created.

Now technology is seen as the enemy: a way to get newspaper content without paying for it. But, in truth, all the Internet really has done is make obsolete a business model that dates back to the 19th century: a product printed on paper that is financed primarily by advertising, with some share paid by the subscribers. Nothing says that this mix has to be immutable. Perhaps subscribers should pay more. Or advertisers should. Maybe cost structures should be based on using electrons instead of dead trees. Or maybe even a formula based on the special characteristics of the new medium.

In my last column I wrote about the tradeoffs between privacy and using the Internet as a data repository. Walter Bender, the former head of the MIT Media Lab, has theorized that tradeoff could itself be the basis of a new business model for the news industry. People pay more for content if they want anonymity. Or they can pay less but share personal information so that advertisers can more profitably target their ads.

Therein may lie MSM’s (“mainstream media”) last, best hope. Google has pretty much locked up the invade-your-privacy-so-we-can-target-advertising-at-you market. “Pay to play” (subscription only) has been a failure. The tradeoff approach is one that has yet to be tested.

And it’s not as if the newspaper business has any better idea to try.