Sunday, February 22, 2009

It's the Software, Stupid.

Apple made its name in music on the success of iTunes, not iPod.

I’ve worked in the technology industry for quite a few years.  And I’ve come to a pretty basic conclusion:  most hardware companies just don’t get software, and worse, they don’t GET that they don’t get software.  This posting gives just one example.

It is conventional (but somewhat flawed) wisdom in the computing industry that Apple gained its current momentum in Mac’s on the back of iPod’s success.  The often-told story goes like this:  Apple introduced the iPod into a relatively lazy mp3 market, and the iPod had such a gorgeous design and such great features that it eventually cornered the mp3 market, which served to reintroduce people to Apple products overall.  Hence, Mac’s share growth.

There are a bunch of problems with the above assertion.  But the main one is that the iPod’s design and features are what caused its share growth.  Not in my opinion.   

The simple truth is that iTunes is what caused the dominance of iPods, and iTunes was also one of the top-3 contributors to the share growth of Mac’s (what are the other top Mac growth factors, you ask?  That’s for another post…).  It was iTunes, not iPod.

The fact is, there were several cool-ish mp3’s on the market during the early days of iPod.  I owned one by Creative, and it was quite a good player.  Most of the mp3 offerings at that time (2003-ish) made it pretty simple to select songs by artist, album, song name, etc.  Most had fairly easy-to-understand hardware controls.  Some (but not most) even had decent industrial design.  But none of them had iTunes, which offered an elegant integration of hardware and software, and respected a few basic consumer insights.  (screenshot of iTunes 4 from freedownloadsplace.com).

Sometime around late October 2003 or early November 2003, in the first week after it was introduced to Windows, I downloaded iTunes onto my Windows PC.  Overnight, my music world was transformed.   Previously, I had been alternating between Windows Media Player, Napster, and other applications, and using them with various players.  Suddenly, I had a simpler solution for overall management of my music, an easier way to add to my library (iTunes store), and a great application for music synching and playback. 

Early versions of iTunes got a few really critical consumer insights right.  Making playlists very easy to compile, and then later find and play, was one of the big ones.  Afterall, playlists were one of the early “killer apps” of the digital music era.  Suddenly, I could mix-up my music in new ways.  Playlists were highly prominent in the user interface (see above photo of iTunes 4, the version in place during iTunes/iPod's rise to dominance).  Other applications supported playlists, of course.  Windows Media player has playlists, but in the early days, they just didn’t make playlists as easy, or as prominent in the UI.  Ripping CD’s was more intuitive with iTunes too.  And so was synching the portable device.  Before iTunes, I experienced a variety of synch fails, and had learned to overcome them by geeking my way through.  The iTunes software had a simple elegance that made buying, organizing, and playing music fun and interesting.  That’s the main reason Apple wound up on top in music, in my opinion.

New job, same interests. And check out my new ThinkPad.

I've been away from this blog for a while, busy selling my company Switchbox Labs to Lenovo and starting a new global job at Lenovo, where I'm serving as SVP and CMO.

So far, it has just been a couple of weeks since I joined the company full-time, along with my Switchbox co-founders Bob Dickinson and Blake Ramsdell.  I have been incredibly impressed with both the people and the products.  I have so much to learn, and so many people yet to meet.  

I can't make too many promises, but I hope to continue this blog, and mix my consumer technology observations with some commentary on what's going on in the technology industry itself, from the perspective of someone working at one of the big companies in it.

Yes, they are paying me a salary.  But right now, I think I'd work just for this sweet little number in my lap (I'm talking about the computer, just to be clear).  I'm typing this on my new Thinkpad x301, which is just about the best notebook I have ever laid my hands on.  I can't believe CNET gave this thing an 8.3, which is pretty-much robbery.

It is incredibly thin, and light, has the best keyboard of any small computer I've ever touched (don't let anyone fool you, keyboards REALLY MATTER and they aren't all equal).  Maybe most exciting, I'm gettting (seriously) nearly six hours of active usage out of it, partly because my model is all SSD-based (good-bye, hard drives), and I took out the DVD player and put in the optional extra battery in that slot (in case you weren't aware, dvd drives in computers are pretty much obsolete).

When this form-factor was first introduced with the x300 last year, a little video made its way to the web, which tells the story of this product's innovation pretty well.  Enjoy!