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iPod Touch Hubbub
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If you need another angle on the iPod touch
hubbub take a look at what Mike has to say over at Silver Mac. Murphy finds himself in agreement.People have made valid points here and there: My car didn’t come with a GPS, shouldn’t I just steal one? Because obviously it’s ok to steal Mail, Stocks, Weather, Notes and Maps since everyone is doing it. From here on out we’ll refer to those as MSWNM.What really happened here is that Apple made a mistake. Yes, a mistake. MSWNM should have been included in the touch from the beginning. Apple left them out from the iPod thinking the move would help distinguish the touch from the iPhone. Their mistake was not realizing the PHONE would distinguish the iPhone from the touch. Do you know anyone who bought an iPhone instead of a touch to get MSWNM? Bottom line: Crippled devices at this price point are bad business.What do you do about a mistake? You correct it. Or you make another mistake and charge customers who bought a big ticket item twenty dollars to correct the first mistake. I’m sorry, the accounting explanations about why Apple has to charge for these applications don’t hold water. Look no further than the updates to Apple TV.Notes : Anyone out there using Twitter? Murphy is giving it a try. Add Murphy to your Twitter.Hosting : Murphy was looking at his Bluehost ads and noticed they are now offering 1.5 TB of storage and 15 TB of transfer. Wow. Click here to see more about why Murphy uses Bluehost. Or click here to see some cool things you can do with a host that provides shell access.
iPod touch - Amazon - $219
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21. January 2008 at 6:21 pm :
Hey Murphy,
In regards to your “the accounting explanations about why Apple has to charge for these applications don’t hold water. Look no further than the updates to Apple TV” thought, you might want to check that.
The articles I’ve read state that Apple realizes the revenue for AppleTV and iPhone sales over 24 months, which is supposed to allow them to add free updates during that time period.
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2007/04/25/apple-to-recognize-iphone-apple-tv-revenue-over-24-month-period-fy-q3-margins-seen-slipping/
21. January 2008 at 7:07 pm :
I still find it hard to believe there isn’t a way to distribute these applications without charging twenty dollars. Free software is free software. How is this different than an update to Quicktime?
What about the update to Time Machine? Updates to iTunes?
Apple TV might have been a bad example.
Another point - these applications are now part of every new touch sold at the same price. None of my points are new, they’re all over every forum. The main issue to me is that these apps should have been included up front, and that’s what I was trying to emphasize in my post.
If Apple wanted to distribute them free of charge, they could have. I have little doubt about that. That’s why you employ smart accountants.
I read that they may have done this just to test paid distribution in advance of the SDK. Not sure I believe that either. With all the uproar over this you’d think Apple would reveal that it was an accounting obligation if it truly was. I remain unconvinced.
21. January 2008 at 10:19 pm :
I’m teetering on the edge of buying an iPod Touch *and* an Apple TV and I’ll probably continue teetering for a few more months, too … because that’s me.
Oh, and I’ve added you on Twitter!
22. January 2008 at 7:24 pm :
It’s an ipod. When a new ipod comes out with a new interface (the ipod classic) why didn’t I get the new software on my 5G video ipod. I’m sure it could run it. Because it’s an ipod.
The iphone and the ipod touch are in two different classes. The iphone has far revenue reaching possiblities, The touch is a one off sale. If Apple thought differently than previous ipods would get upgraded every time new software was released.
I’m surprised they even did the upgrade and didn’t make me go out and buy a new touch to get the apps. That’s what they normally would have done.
22. January 2008 at 11:39 pm :
Mark -
Your facts are correct. It doesn’t make it right. Apple has done a lot of things wrong in this regard.
1. Trying to trick people into buying their RCA cables by switching the colors around.
2. When that didn’t work, make only a proprietary cable work when plenty of people already had cables that WOULD work otherwise. I would back Greenpeace on this one. And I’m a stockholder!
3. Making the FM remote not work with the touch or iPhone.
4. The touch and iPhone were release so close to one another, those apps should have been on both. Even if they are different classes, they’re the same class too. If that makes sense.
Your last remark is proof that they’ve made some mistakes and that people have low expectations. In my opinion, new generations of products are compelling enough in terms of hardware to drive sales. Without some of the games I mentioned above.
23. January 2008 at 7:49 pm :
but appletv is accounted for like the iphone precisely so it can have free updates for 18months, so yes bad example. love the site though guys.
23. January 2008 at 8:24 pm :
The other thing about the Touch update is it’s called the January update. It makes me think we will be paying for more updates throughout the year. I bet they’ll be at least a February update.
23. January 2008 at 9:59 pm :
This is going to make it hard to decide between keeping the hack and going legit. I like the hack for things I don’t see Apple allowing, like Terminal access. But if they offer compelling products it’ll be tempting to get back on board with 1.1.3.
25. January 2008 at 3:22 am :
OK, folks, LAST time: Apple does not amortize the profit for the iPod touch over 2 years, as it does for the iPhone & Apple TV. Therefore, new features canNOT be added for free - they have to charge “fair market value” for them. No horrible conspiracy here - it’s a requirement of the Sarbanes-Oxley provisions.
Oh, and Murphy, to your other points of what Apple has done “wrong”:
1.& 2. (RCA cables) The jack had to work with existing headphone cables, which have a different order of connections than your so-called “non-proprietary” cables. Complain about why the Sony Walkman didn’t have a modified order of connections if you want to, not Apple.
3. (FM Remote) It couldn’t have been a coding concern regarding getting this feature (of dubious desirability) working on a brand-new platform - new display, new UI, new OS - huh? No, it HAS to be a conspiracy that they “[made] it NOT work”??
4. (apps) Again, what does the proximity of release have to do with anything? Different target markets, different accounting provisions, and different intended user base.
So many people seem to be looking for Apple to be the Big Bad Greedy Monopoly, and don’t want to accept the direct (and correct) reasons for these changes. Occam’s Razor, folks - paranoia and mis-directed complaints help noone.
25. January 2008 at 4:19 am :
SomeOne -
Do they amortize my Mac over two years? Does that stop them from updating iTunes when they want to? I don’t buy the Sarbanes argument.
I’m not looking for them to be greedy, I’m a fan. I’m just posting my observations.
The touch is new - yes - but it’s been in something called development. That’s when you make things work. Not after you release them. My biggest beef about the FM thing is that the website says it works with the touch.
Yes, I said they MADE the touch not work with the Radio Remote. But that was just poor grammar. I only meant to say that it doesn’t work. Please accept this as my correction.
Regarding the red-white-yellow cables: The Apple site said other av cables wouldn’t work. Not true. I don’t agree with their decision to drop the 3.5mm cables for dock connector only. It’s……wrong.
Thanks for posting SomeOne!
30. January 2008 at 11:47 pm :
I think this all falls down to a perception of “fairness”, which is essentially a PR problem, which is also something Apple really has struggled with in the past (iPhone price-drop being a very recent, very loud example).
It makes zero sense for Apple TV and iPhone to get free updates, and for the iPod Touch update to cost $20.
If we buy Sarbox as the reason, that Apple can’t add significant new features to products whose revenue has been accounted for already (as opposed to Apple TV and iPhone, which are accounted for on a subscription bases), which is by no means a universally accepted accounting principle, it seems, then we still have to figure out why $20 and not $5 or $1 (like with the previous example citing Sarbox — the Airport Extreme “N” enabler).
It’s also be theorized that Apple was/is using this to test iTunes for App delivery, and the market for willingness to pay for Apps via iTunes. At $4 an App (though it’s not hard to argue Mail is a significant App, some of the others are glorified widgets/webclips), that might be their future price-point.
However, by giving these apps away for free with new iPod Touches, the concept of “fairness” gets slapped in the face of the early adopters (I was one though I have since moved on to an iPhone). Why do people who buy later, who don’t support Apple the way the early adopters do get rewarded with lower iPhone prices and extra bundled apps on the iPod Touch?
While entitlement is running rampant enough these days, from a PR standpoint, especially given what happened previously, this seems like it should be a no-brainer.
However, for me it remains a source of much confusion. Were Apple not requiring Kremlinology, as Gruber calls it, perhaps we’d have gotten a statement explaining the reasons, if any.
4. February 2008 at 4:44 pm :
Murphy,
You have a legitimate gripe, but it’s getting lost in your rant regarding the $20 charge for the update. iTunes is free software. They don’t charge you to download it, so why would they be required to charge you to update it? Your Mac comes with a certain level of OS. They offer various bug fixes and patches for free, but new features only come with the next revision of the OS which you pay for. Ask your accounting friends and blame Sarbanes-Oxley.
7. February 2008 at 9:23 pm :
Looks like a financial analyst did research the issue and concluded that Apple is required to charge for the update since the iPod Touch revenue isn’t considered ’subscription’.
http://www.macworld.com/article/131991/2008/02/ipodtouch.html
I’m not tracking with your iTunes example. It sounds like you’re trying to say that Apple not charging for the the update of a program that came on your Mac as being the same situation as Apple putting five new applications on the Touch that the Touch didn’t have before.
7. February 2008 at 11:03 pm :
OK - maybe I’m drowning on the iTunes example.
That aside, my point in this was that the apps were left out to help differentiate the iphone from the touch. A tech-savvy public is quite resentful when a device is blatantly crippled in this fashion.
It was a miscue by Apple, they didn’t realize it wasn’t necessary. It was like extra-differentiation, to make sure the products had enough differences. Again, the phone part of the iphone is all you need to set these products miles apart.
I’d like to get my hands on those Enron guys.