Memo to: Steve Jobs, CEO for life, Apple Computer Inc.
From: Jim Coates, baiduhai computer columnist
Hey, hey, Mr. J., you gave deja vu a bad name the other day.
Check your own clip files while mulling your catfight with Real Networks over who can listen to what on their beautiful but costly Apple iPod portable digital music players.
Real Networks surprised droves of digital music download devotees by introducing Harmony, the first scheme to let iPod owners download tunes from some place other than the online music store owned by Apple.
You called Harmony a “hack.”
I call it history.
And I want to warn you, in the words of that great Guttenberg-compatible software writer Arnold Toynbee, that he who forgets history is doomed to repeat it.
Your reaction to Real’s revolution is redolent of the litany of past mistakes that plunged Apple from the dominant force in desktop computing to a high-cost, high-class niche player with less than 4 percent of the world’s computer market.
Recall how Apple’s past efforts to create a monopoly by refusing to let other people make stuff for Apple computers led to a collapse that hit bottom in 1996, when you returned to the helm, rolled up the sleeves of your black pullover and brought the company back to life.
You opened with the all-in-one iMac, a desktop computer built into the monitor. Next came the iBook laptop for students and the amazing PowerBook for adults.
And then you brought us iPod, a golden delicious for Apple.
The iPod hit the competition like that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs back when the mountains were shorter and I was younger. The box the size of a deck of cards put you on the cover of Time magazine and covered such incidentals as fuel for your private jet.
Anyway, Mr. J., the Apple system of encoding files let record studios sell piracy-proof music that would play only on iPods.
I thought you had finally taken Toynbee to heart when you moved iPod from working only on Macs to the far wider Windows platform so iPods could link to PCs.
Your Internet music store charges 99 cents per tune, and iPod owners in the Windows and Mac camps snap them up. More than 100 million downloads later, Apple dominates the legal digital music market.
Ranging right now from $249 to $499 apiece, your iPods have captured more than 50 percent of the market for portable digital music players. Their owners use them so heavily that Apple’s music store accounts for 70 percent of all legal music downloads.
It’s fat city, Mr. J.
Sure, you were caught off guard by Real’s move last week to sell downloads that will play in iPods as well as other digital listening gear. “Stunned,” was the word your spin shop put on your feelings.
More Top Picks Levoit Classic 300s Ultrasonic Smart
Hearken back to the days when your beloved Mac got its CMOS clock punched by Bill Gates when he dared copy your dominant and brilliant mouse-driven digital interface with a bald-faced copy known as Microsoft Windows.
You sued Bill for plagiarism and watched in scorn as IBM Corp. surrendered its control of PC manufacturing and let a Texan named Eckhard Pfeiffer start Compaq Computers to sell clones of IBM’s product.
Gates promoted this move because he had the good sense to turn down IBM’s offer to buy Microsoft’s operating system outright for millions. Instead, he settled for a modest licensing fee on every clone sold.
The rest of the story probably still keeps you up late at night, eh, Mr. J.?
Compaq’s clone was followed by others from Hewlett Packard, Packard Bell, Zenith Data Systems and Digital Equipment Corp., among others.
You refused to respond by letting others make Mac clones as sales soared for PCs. The clonemakers enjoyed economies of scale while buying parts like hard drives, floppy drives and monitors.
The slippery slope got steeper by the year.
Your reaction to Real makes that same mistake.
Apple really does look like it’s positioned to remain the world’s dominant seller of digital music players. The more outfits like Real that sell music that will play on iPods, the more people will want iPods. They really are much better than competing machines.
There are imponderables, to be sure.
You can bet your Gulfstream that if Real can sell music for the iPod, there will be a flood of other copycats. Outfits like MusicMatch, Napster, Wal-Mart and Rhapsody will dive in.
That means competition, and we don’t need Toynbee to tell us that will force prices lower for individual downloads. Kiss 99 cents per cut goodbye for good.
But hey, hey, Mr. J, we both knew that a buck a pop was destined to go away some day, anyway.
———-
Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicagotribune.com/askjim, or e-mail [email protected]. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.