“Apple-bashing seems to be at a fever pitch lately. Non-believers say Mr. Jobs has been making too many ‘this-product-is-going-to-change-the-world’ presentations. They argue the company continues to make over-priced, under-powered computers. They compare Apple devotees to a cult, a herd of self-important wannabes who blindly fawn over everything that comes out of headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.,” Christopher Hutsul reports for The Star.
“As a long-time Apple user, I’ve always been quick to defend the company. My computing experience is divided between the slow, cumbersome PC I use at work, and the crisp, breezy Apple environment I use at home. My G4 tower, nearly five years old, hasn’t crashed in over a year, and still handles tasks briskly. The brand has earned my respect,” Hutsul reports. “But I have to admit that Mr. Jobs’s shtick is wearing thin, and there are some troubling developments in Apple-land. First, the iPod itself, despite its success, presents problems. Today, the company’s success is based not on computer sales, but on MP3 players. Can Apple keep finding new iPod customers? Doesn’t everyone who can afford one already own one?”
“iTunes. The MP3 software used by Apple was once a lean, simple program. The most recent version, equipped to manage podcasts and the iTunes music store, is a dud. In a push to make online music buying more habitual, Apple has removed the option of switching off the music store. The result: there’s so much happening in iTunes, that it resembles an early version of Realplayer — one of the many ungainly PC-based MP3 players that prompted people to seek out the simplicity of iTunes in the first place,” Hutsul writes.
Note: As MacDailyNews reader “Suicidal Gingerbread Man,” notes below: In iTunes’ Preferences, go to the “Parental” section and check the box for “Disable Music Store.”
Hutsul also uses the Motorola iTunes-capable ROKR phone as an example of hardware getting “sloppy,” and blaming Apple for Motorola’s design. Another sign that the company is scrambling is the recent release of the lacklustre Motorola ROKR MP3 phone.
Full article here.
For the fiscal year ending September 24, 2005, Apple’s Computer’s revenue on iPod and iTunes Music Store sales, iPod services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories, accounted for $5.439 billion of Apple’s $13.931 billion in annual net revenue or 39% of Apple’s business. Mac hardware and Mac software sales accounted for the other 61%. And so, Hutsul is inaccurate and misleading when he writes, “Today, the company’s success is based not on computer sales, but on MP3 players.” Apple’s Mac lineup is stronger than ever and about to get even stronger. Next, iTunes is not a dud, the iTunes Music Store is a website; is Hutsul complaining about the ever-changing design of an online store? The store is meant to show the latest releases and maintain a fresh look with each visit. The rest of the iTunes player is comfortingly familiar and has maintained its simplicity very well. So, Hutsul’s wrong on this count, too. Finally, to blame Apple for Motorola’s design is another mistake by Hutsul. By the way, the Motorola ROKR is not a “crummy” phone, as Hutsul writes, its just too limited by song capacity for many people and uses a conventional “candy bar” design based upon a solid, proven phone design. The best thing about the phone is Apple’s contribution: the iTunes software. There are more and better iTunes phones coming from Motorola soon. Hutsul seems to have set out with an idea, and an old idea to boot: “the iPod is distracting Apple from the Mac,” and then conjured up “examples” in an attempt to support his old idea. Sorry, Mr. Hutsul, it didn’t work.
[Update: 10:40am EST: Rewrote portions of the take to clarify that the $13.931 billion figure was Apple’s annual net sales, not quarterly.]
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Related article:
Motorola’s upcoming ROKR E2 Apple iTunes music phone based on PEBL design – December 02, 2005
Motorola to redesign ROKR iTunes phone with new sleek look and 1,000 song capacity in early 2006 – November 16, 2005
Motorola SLVR mobile phone with Apple iTunes – November 09, 2005
Cingular slashes Motorola ROKR iTunes phone price – November 09, 2005
Motorola unveils RAZR V3i Apple iTunes-capable mobile phone – November 08, 2005
Is Apple moving away from its computer roots? – November 04, 2005
“The most recent version, equipped to manage podcasts and the iTunes music store, is a dud. In a push to make online music buying more habitual, Apple has removed the option of switching off the music store.”
Um.. try preferences, Parental, then disable podcasts and music store.
He’s just sore because he doesn’t get carded when buying alcohol anymore.
Bitter man.
Wow, that statistic given by MDN really ripped Mr. Hutusi to pieces.
I think we can expect a big Mac push when the Intels come out. Also if the rumoured mini/media centre comes out with an integrated dock this will help to entice existing ipod users.
Mac daily – I think you called yearly revenues quarterly in your reply. If those were quarterly then yearly would be about 60 billion – some day I hope but not now.
The latest iTunes is not bloated but it is hardly ideal for all video content. I still prefer managing my video library in the Finder, partly because I like using QuickTime 7 for playback. iTunes gives videos the same ID3 tags as music files and this can be confusing. It would be useful to sort videos by director, studio, actors, genre and other film-related information.
Besides, the name does not suit the content any more. Podcasts are not tunes and neither are television episodes.
Why oh WHY has “journalism” sunk to such Windows-level depths these days? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????
It’s maddening. This “reporter” (“columnist”? “media watcher”?) gets roughly 80% of the data points in his article WRONG, and so many sheep will simply read it and believe it without a second thought!
Imagine if people like this were open to lawsuits based simply on the fact that they wrote an article that got so many easily verifiable facts WRONG!!!!!! Not one point, not two, not even three — but MOST of what he wrote!
Unbelievable.
the O, I think MDN stated it as “Quarter ending”, which in my mind means “The year up to..”. I could be wrong, but it’s possible.
Yea, they should call it iMedia or iStuff .. maybe even iTunesandvideoandpodcastsandstuff!
mw:law iFoughtthelawandthelawwon
The iTunes Music Store is flat out cool. I visit every country’s unique iTMS regularly. Not only are the content presentations in the iTMS genres and categories kept appealingly refreshed on a weekly basis, they are furthermore done so in no less than seven languages and with a discerning focus on unique content offerings for each individual country.
Is that not just about the epitome of great marketing? Yes it is. The iTMS. I love that place!
I don’t think anything, computer wise, will be pushed or heavily promoted until after the iNtel switch. If they advertise heavily now to attempt to push computer sales, and they don’t sell because most wait for the iNtel chip, then Apple loses money with stuff sitting in the warehouse unsold unless sale priced.
Waiting makes sense to me.
This guy can bitch all he wants. My stock has tripled. Go, Steve, go…and hand me that second glass of Kool-aid please.
MDN says: ” quarterly net revenue” which is a to my mind an error.
Still, it WILL be nice when annual revenues are at this level..
..2008 should do it..!
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if Apple put tv shows and movies in a “Quicktime Video Store”, and kept it off iTunes.
Um this guy is on crack. Resemble Real Player? iTunes barely looks any different than it did the day it was released. That is a fact.
Ignore the Mac? I suppose that announcing a MAJOR processor shift to Intel is ignoring. I suppose the new iMac came about by being ignored. Front Row, clearly an accidental creation and a result of no one paying attention. They probably wrote the program over lunch one day.
Apple bashing in vogue? Um, no this isn’t 1997. If anything I think there are almost too many overly positive stories about Apple. It makes me think that the reporting about how great the company is, will turn to noise in people’s minds.
Articles like this just go to show that anyone can be a journalist because it obviously doesn’t take any talent or research capability to perform that job.
I said it in a forum yesterday and I repeat it again today.
Here is a little ‘quote’ from a bloke who has been dead for hundreds of years but knew someone like Bill G would come along eventually and offer false ideals.
MANY HAVE MADE A TRADE OF DELUSIONS AND FALSE MIRACLES,
DECEIVING THE STUPID MULTITUDE
BLINDING IGNORANCE DOES BLIND US.
O! WRETCHED MORTALS, OPEN YOUR EYES
The blind masses are pissed because they have been duped and the best form of defence is attack even when they know they are wrong, so the next best way is to discredit and slander.
It makes them feel better for being the fools who bought a PC only to be embarrassed by finding out there is a better product on the market and then feeling even more foolish because they thought they knew evereything about computers before the incredible reviews of the MAc and OSX came along to shimmy their little insular worlds.
The sales are there the switchers are there, the iPods are there, the macs are there, we are there, but they are not!
Get a Mac
Da Vinci
one more reason why there is a .ca at the end of that URLs.
Secondary nations.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> Very ironic for Candadians to criticize American tech companies. Funny how an invisible line keeps a releatively well-off country from “inventing”.
Well, I’d really like to see Apple market its computer products and OS like they do the iPod and iTunes.
Perhaps after the introduction of Macs packin’ Intel Chips they will.
Stay tuned to MDN for all the details.
The reason why people defned Windows over Mac is due to a psychological condition (or disorder, so to speak). It’s all very clearly explained here:
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – SteveJack, MacDailyNews
Send the article to your friends. In my experience, it tends to shock them awake.
First, My Credentials with Apple go back to the Apple ][. I have used the Mac OS from the days of 9″ B&W screens until my current G5 Power Macintosh and have pointed more than a few people over the years to the Mac. So don’t troll about backgrounds.
It’s hard to find traction when arguing about the direction Apple is going as a company these days, given that it is debt-free and growing rapidly, yet something does not seem right. When the general public calls the Apple Retail Store the ‘iPod Store’ , 95% + of the advertising is directed to the MP3 market and a full 1/3rd of the floor space in the stores is dedicated to the iPod and trinkets– something is WRONG, very wrong.
5+ years and 4 paid upgrades into the OS X era, the OS is still in many ways a Beta. Don’t blame Apple’s poor performance on the G5 on the hardware– it’s the OS. Yellow Dog Linux running on the very same hardware whips OS X’s a*s. On the server side the difference is even MORE embarrassing than on the desktop client.
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2520
Apple is eating it’s seed corn pimping iPods at the expense of the OS.
tHE dUDE,
Ironic that Americans can’t even make simple things like computers and iPods and have to go to the third world to get the job done.
You sound like the old USSR claiming to have invented everything. The Brits made the first computer in the 40’s.
iTunes 6 is pretty bad. You can’t click file names in the video section to change them, you can’t change the “Video Type” of some files to Music Videos or to Movies. Videos that would play fine in Quicktime, skip and slow down in iTunes. Party Shuffle should be turned off by default since a newbie could never use it.
Apple needs to make video less of a hack, and perhaps rewrite a significant amount of iTunes to accomodate it. It’s starting to feel like Mac OS 8. But it’s still not Windows Media or Real bad.
David
The Shtick IS Getting Thin:
I think the way you have to look at it is that Apple could have continued fighting JUST its Mac corner, slowly adjusting its market share upwards.
With the iPod, and a massive market share, Apple has seen the opportunity to awaken the whole world to its products. The spin-off will be much greater market share gains for Mac computers…
It’s easy to see the iPod as competition (within Apple) for the Mac business. In reality it will put into the next league.
Dear Mr. Hutsul,
Re: your column “Hutsul: iPod has fallen far from the Apple tree on Dec. 5, 2005. 04:21 AM. While your opinions on your experiences with Apple’s products are definitely yours to keep you should probably attempt to verify your facts before presenting them to the world.
To wit:
1. The ROKR phone is designed and produced by Motorola not Apple.
2.The music store/podcasts can be turned of in iTunes via the Parental section in the preferences.
3.Apple’s growth in the music and video areas is due to its’ virtual creation of the market and its’ current stranglehold on it. New buyers still make up the majority of sales of the iPod (according to sales people at two Apple stores with whom I haver spoken).
4.Apple does not depend on the sales of iPods to keep it’s business afloat. In case you hadn’t heard computers and related products account for about two thirds of their revenue. Maligning a company for continuing to improve a product that has proven to be a runaway hit can hardly be considered irresponsible. The majority of their efforts are still in computers.
5.Apple did not struggle to survive in the 80s and 90s. Only in the 90s did they seriously run into trouble. It seems as though you have fallen victim to the Michael Dell syndrome. Nearly since they first incorporated their have been numerous “countdown clocks” purportedly showing the time left until Apple folds the tent. And Dell proclaimed that he would personally liquidate Apple’s assets and return the money to the shareholders. In light of Dell’s recent problems it seems he should be doing the same thing he advised for Apple. As long as the company continues to make money they are not dying. Period! Should every company that is not number 1 in its’ category close up?
Hell, Apple has innovated it’s way to more profits than 9/10 of the rest of the computer industry combined. I would hate to even look at a Windows PC in the future without Apples influence and innovation. And just because you’re sick of the man that runs the company doesn’t mean that he isn’t right. After all you can’t argue with sales. And when it comes to sales both the iPod and Mac lines are growing. And just wait until the next insanely great advances unleashed upon the world at the next MacWorld Expo January 9-16, 2006. Intel based Macs, new video players, new content, etc… it’ll make you sick. And as an aside, most people believe that you can gauge how successful you are in the public’s eye by the fact that you have been parodied on SNL.
Please, be a lot more careful in checking your facts when you set out to fill a page with your opinions. Your opinions will be held in higher esteem if they are based on actual facts.
Excelsior!
TROLL ARTICLE FOR HIT TRAFFIC
off to the next story
Keep in mind that this person works for the Toronto Star, a newspaper that has been going downhill for the last decade. This “largest” of newspapers in Canada has been reduced to giving away over 80,000 copies a day (via McDonald’s) in order to keep people interested in their irrelevance.
Nothing to see here. Flame Apple and hope for hits.