Real Kato Blog: Apple Watch: Apple's Golden Opportunity

Seems like pay-for-download music services are popping up all over the place these days. What's Apple going to do about it? Is there a grand vision here? Remember, this is Steve Jobs were talking about.

It struck me recently that Apple has a golden opportunity to out-Microsoft Microsoft.

It's sitting on a gold mine with its immensely popular iPod music player. Combined with the iTunes music store, it has a chance to control the future of music distribution and playback. That's a pretty powerful position, as we'll discuss in a minute.

Oh, but wait; there's no iTMS for Windows, and competitors like BuyMusic.com, MusicMatch, and the new "Honestly-We-Didn't-Sell-Out" Napster are poised to muscle Apple out of 95% of the market... just like with everything else Apple has done, right?

Wrong. None of those services will work with the iPod, the gotta-have, imitated-but-not-duplicated, celebrity-associated, super-chic music player of the modern era. All of the current Windows-based music services are beholden to the Windows Media Audio format, which the iPod does not (and should never) support.

And herein lies Apple's opportunity. Keep upgrading the iPod with bigger hard drives, organizer capabilities, built-in cameras, wireless Internet, glow-in-the-dark capabilities, whatever; just keep it on the cutting edge and keep it better than everything else out there. Keep the price reasonable so that the kids can have one. Make sure that it remains the most popular music player on the planet. And then, people will flock to the iTunes music store, the only on-line store that lets you download songs in the iPod-compatible AAC format.

(Oh, and buy out AppleMusic while you're at it, to wipe out that lawsuit while getting access to all that Beatle-y goodness.)

And then we can say good-bye, and good riddance, to CD stores. And with those gone, we can say good-bye and good-riddance to traditional recording companies, and the RIAA along with them, because they will no longer have a lock on music distribution. It's the democratization of music: anyone will be able to be a music producer. And Apple will be sitting at the center of it, knocking music prices down to help sell iPods and Macintoshes, and vice versa.

Think it ends there? What about video? Why do you think Apple is so high on its video production software (iMovie and Final Cut Pro) and DVD-creation software (iDVD and DVD Studio Pro)? Maybe Apple intends to wipe out traditional video distribution too, leveraging QuickTime, perhaps making portable and home video devices, and eventually, an iMovie Video Store?

To be sure, Microsoft is probably thinking along the same lines, in a limited fashion; it's evident from its attempts to line up cable companies and set-top-box manufacturers as partners for Internet-based video distribution.

But just watch: while everyone else flounders about with hard-to-use and unreliable services, Apple will figure out a way to do it right. Click on a movie to download it, burn it to DVD, beam it wirelessly to my television, take it with me on my 8-ounce portable video player, for the low-low-price of $9.99, with no draconian digital-rights-management involved. Only Apple could pull off something like this, with its assured captive audience, its control over both hardware and software, and its undeniable style.

Hey, pundits: still think Apple is beleaguered? Or that they should ditch the PowerPC and try to sell Mac OS X for Intel boxes? Oh, it must hurt to be so short-sighted.

Someday, we'll all look back and marvel at how quietly the iPod allowed Apple to take over the world.

Permalink