My Mindless Ramblings

Today Apple posted their highest quarterly earnings ever, despite all of the issues surrounding the iPhone 4 release, their net profit rose 78% to 3.25 billion dollars per quarter. Since i've been a Apple user my entire life, I decided I would muse a little about why I think they have been so successful.

Its no doubt that over the past 12 years Apple have completely reinvented themselves. When I was a child I was never sat down by my parents and asked which operating system I wanted to use. Which is probably a good thing, because when I was a child I would probably have asked for a Windows PC. Back then what you could do on the Mac operating system was very limited, most importantly I couldn't play games. Of course when I was old enough to choose for myself I was bought into Apple wholeheartedly. Being the odd one out I was mocked as a child for using a non-compatible computer system, kids can be so mean.. Fast forward to now and I get a feeling of sick pleasure when I think that all the people who mocked me through my childhood are now all Apple users themselves.

So what did Apple do to reinvent themselves from the brand for stubborn geeks, to one of the coolest and most recognisable brands on the planet? The first advent of change was that they brought in design. They were, in my opinion the first large computer manufacture to really focus on producing an aesthetically pleasing design for their products. The first iMac, albeit flawed, was a great design which inspired people to notice Apple once again. To reinforce this image Apple brought in usability. OS X marked a new era in operating systems, one where it is more important to make a usable product than a fully functioned one, this is a philosophy which can be seen in many of Apple's later products.

So with OS X, iMacs and iBooks laying the ground work Apple came along with the iPod. There is no doubt in my mind this was a significant turning point for the Apple brand. Unlike the previous Apple offerings the iPod was significantly better than everything else on the market. It was smaller in size, better looking, more usable and simply put just cooler.


Now lets look at what the Apple marketing machine had been doing in the meantime, take a look at the first ever iPod advert and the first iMac advert. You'll notice that they don't mention price, specification, functionality or anything else which is normal in computer product advertising. Unlike other manufacturers who were competing on price or hardware speed, Apple were competing on brand.

And they were winning this battle, the Apple brand is growing and growing. With every revision of the iPod and every new iMac or MacBook Apple secured themselves further as a company who produce high quality fashionable products. What about the Apple hype machine? No doubt all the rumours about new products emerge from deep inside Cupertino. For years people and press alike were talking about fabled products like the Apple phone or the Apple tablet, with ever major keynote where these products weren't announced the hype just seemed to grow.



The iPhone was another landmark in Apples success, this was the first product in my opinion where Apple removed functionality to increase usability. The focus on the iPhone was purely to create a user experience second to none. On the face of it the iPhone was an underwhelming product, lacking in functionality that had been part of other phones for years. For the user the iPhone was a dream to use, and this was cleared reflected in its sales.

"we weren't first to the party, but we're gonna be the best" - Steve Jobs on iPhone multitasking

From this point onwards, Apple moved beyond a brand. People often joke about the Cult of Mac, but we see it every day with people queuing for hours to get their hands on the latest iPhone, or iPad. Users talk for hours about the applications on their phones or preach to the world about what they do on their iPad. Like it or not, Apple is here to stay, not everyone of their products is going to be a success, but its going to take a lot to knock the iPad and iPhone from their position at the top of the market.

Look at Apple's advertising for the iPhone 4, It again doesn't describe the product, just tries to highlight what an important part of your life the iPhone can be.

Just for fun, over the years i've owned the following Apple products:
6 Mac desktops (Classic, LCII, Quadra, G3, G4, MacPro)
4 Mac laptops (iBook, PowerBook G4, Macbook Pro 15", MacBook 13")
7 iPods (1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, iTouch x2 and Nano)
2 Apple Monitors
1 iSight
and i'm pretty sure I owned a couple of Apple printers...

Music is a much more important part of my life that I give it credit for.

Modern entertainment has evolved in a fairly standard fashion, books, television, films and video games have all become bigger, more expensive, longer and more complex. Music is one of the exceptions to this case, since the inception of the short format pop song, very little has changed in the music industry.

What other format can you digest and enjoy in just a few short minutes?

Cinema, television, books and video games all rely on engaging a person and keeping their interest throughout, this is their bread and butter and how most people define a successful piece of entertainment. Music can be successful, can convey a message and tell a story in a fraction of the time other entertainment formats can.

What other format can you watch, read, play or in this case listen to over and over again and still enjoy it as much as the first time?

Music is one of the few formats which does not rely on the element of surprise. To me, big reveals and plot twists have become the crux of modern entertainment. Its techniques like these which have made the "replay" value of modern entertainment very small. Music is one of the few forms of entertainment I can enjoy over and over again without the benefits diminishing.

The Music Industry

The main reason I've been thinking about music a lot is because of the many changes currently undergoing the music industry. The music industry is failing to react to the digital generation, instead of finding new business models they are rapidly moving to sue illegal downloaders and put laws in place which allow them to do so more freely. Now lets be honest, music is going nowhere. If anything its becoming an even larger part of our lives with products like iPods and Spotify keeping music with us wherever we are. So why are the big record producers failing to adapt to the shift in the market?

The Death of the Album

In my opinion, the music album is dead. Digital media makes it easier to get just a couple of songs which you like, at a fraction of the total album cost. The advent of iTunes has shown this, that individual music sales completely outstrip album sales. The last nail in the coffin was a number of my favourite artists saying that they were no longer going to follow the studio, album release, tour cycle which has been the backbone of musical industry for a while. Instead they are opting to only produce singles. Allowing them to produce music of a higher quality backed with regular touring. This is a format for music which fits the modern market a lot better than the album ever did.

Music and me

I surround myself in music, I listen to it whenever I'm on the move, at work and at home. As I mentioned previously music has a great effect on my mood and the right song in the morning can make or break my entire day. I have a collection of music which could last me a month, however when anyone asks me what I enjoy in life, I never say I'm a music fan. When I look back at my sporadic blogging I notice that half of my posts are about music, I promise this will be my last post about music for a long time. But it gave me pause for thought, music is a bigger influence on my life than I will ever give it credit for.

"I was in the darkness, So darkness I became" - Cosmic Love, Florence and the Machine

I bought my first iPod in 2002 and they have given me years of faithful service. Around when I made the switch from CD's to digital music I noticed my music collection swell. Of course this was the era of music downloads, Napster and BitTorrents so it was bound to happen. The second iPod I owned turned out to be too small to hold all my music, which made life very difficult for me.. I would spend hours picking which songs, albums and artists to include. Then I would find myself wanting to listen to the songs not included. I realise of course that this was just a mindset but this was when I vowed to never buy an MP3 player which couldn't hold my entire collection.

A couple of weeks ago my iPod broke, it was still under warranty so a week later I got a replacement, two days after that the replacement broke. During this three week down period of not having an MP3 player I had a lot of traveling to do, and since I had some cash to spare, I decided to shell out £45 for an 2gb iPod Shuffle. I sat down at my computer fearful of the prospect of having to choose from thousands of songs to just a select handful. I worked my way through my collection, taking a song here and here, a few artists were even lucky enough to get a handful of tracks on there. I was quite please with myself when I had finished, I was certain that this iPod would be enough to sustain me while I waited for my 'real' one to return. It was only when I started listen did I realise how wrong I was.

I love the shuffle, love it. I realise now that I was spoiled by choice before, I would spend more time thinking about what to listen to next than actually enjoying the song which was playing. The iPod shuffle reminded me that its about the music. Its the perfect mix of size and simplicity for me, it holds so few songs that I love every single one of them. Additionally having only three controls (volume, next and previous) removes all necessity for thought, making it perfect for me.

Of course, I doubt it would be suited for everyone, i'm just surprised about how long I dismissed the shuffle though. I always assumed not having control over the music and not being able to see which song is playing would be a deal breaker for me. Turns out I was wrong. I kept my other iPod though, they both have their uses!

I mostly want to reiterate something i read on Ryan Sohmer's blog. We often refer to ourselves as a species of exploration. A race which likes to explore every inch of its surroundings.

But something seems to have come to a halt, its been 40 years since man first landed on the moon, and in those 40 years we've come no closer to exploring the universe or reaching the stars. I heard the other day that the US government had spent 1 Trillion Dollars on military action since 9/11, i can only imagine what we might have achieved if that money was given to NASA.

Again the same can be said for the deep ocean, i often hear it referred to as our planets last mystery yet we put so little money into trying to discover those mysteries.

This is mostly a rant, but personally i think we've let down the generation of 1969 who thought that once we had landed on the moon it would open the doors or exploration.. instead we seem to have closed them.

To be honest, we are pretty damn terrible at predicting the future. I don't see the flying cars, the evil AI, the robots or the apocalypse. Which leads me to believe countless books, films and games have been lying to me all these years.

Although some people have left big impressions about the future in my mind, the first being George Orwell and 1984. Orwell paints such a simple vision of the future, one of big brother and thought police, one where people who try to swim against the current are taken away and broken back into society. A future without privacy where people have no rights anymore.

The second being Max Barry and Jennifer Government. I know Barry is not the first person to write or think about a capitalist future, but he takes it to such extreme comical levels it struck a real chord with me. Barry's future is one where governments have no power, where people are named after the companies they work for. A world where you can only go to a hospital which is part of your companies alliance, where police from another global alliance refuse to help because you aren't covered by them.

As i see it, these are the futures we have to choose from. I look at the world around me and i see little signs. Recent moves by the British government to archive everyones SMS and E-mails. Recent 100 riches lists having more corporations in than countries. I would say its up to us to decide which future we want to live in but its not. We really have no say, to quote a friend.

it is really not about how the future turns out, but what you can do to prepare yourself for whichever future might come

So i'm starting with socialism and heavy encryption of all my communications.. you never can be too careful