Apple prepares to ‘Rock’ in a hard place

 

How the green-eyed monster may be stalking backstage at tomorrow’s Apple Event 

The less than ambiguous press invitation

As Apple gears up for its imaginatively titled ‘Apple Event’ in San Francisco tomorrow at 10 a.m. (6 p.m. BST), the usual outlets of internet rumour are sourcing, crafting and spinning the usual variety of scoops and predictions about the show’s content.

This is, of course, entirely normal: what would be the point of the internet were it not for its primary function as a vessel for amplifying even the faintest of Chinese whispers and transmitting them, if not at the speed of light, at least at the speed of the finest optical fibre cable to every inch of the globe covered by its octopoidal embrace? 

It was ever so with Apple’s stage shows: both the company’s devotees and its detractors have always been fairly easy to whip up into a frenzy by a little Jobsian oratory, to the extent that ‘one more thing’ now has a similar effect on a certain audience as ‘once more unto the breach’ once had on its congregation. The chattering classes have always loved their drama.

Increasingly, though, the slightest of Apple’s announcements, even the most sotto voce of its declarations, has provoked the most disproportionately intense media speculation far beyond the usual technorati circles. The reason, of course, is Apple’s latter day success in the consumer market, principally with the iPod, the iTunes store and, now, the iPhone. Both the company’s detractors and those in the general media without any axe but the dull instrument of ‘good copy’ to grind are now in on the act, and the occasion of an Apple Event offers the ideal showcase for such whetting and stropping.

Likely announcements

We’ll sample a little of the whetting and stropping later. Turning to the Apple Event itself, a quick tour of the usual places shows that the following announcements are likely to be made tomorrow:

• iTunes 8 for OS X and Windows, featuring a new visualiser called Magnetosphere (which will, no doubt, ‘rock’)
• A ‘genius’ mode in iTunes that will attempt to create playlists of songs in your collection that would fit well together, and will suggest purchases to complement said playlists
• HD video downloads for computers as well as the existing ones for Apple TV
• Upgraded iPods, principally a new Touch and a new 4th Gen nano (pictured below)

It’s speculated that when the new nano is held horizontally while a video plays, that too will rotate to provide landscape viewing in the fashion of the iPhone/Touch. Seems pretty logical, and credible.

Other, weaker, rumours are of a possible iTunes Store subscription service, and upgrades to the MacBook range (although it’s at least equally likely that this will come later in the year).

If the compass of these rumours is anywhere near accurate, this will hardly be an earth-shattering event: pleasant enough as a tick-over, but nothing more. However, it still puts a spotlight on the company’s success, and as is the case with these things, the spotlight often throws some stark shadows. Co-incidentally or not, the past 24 hours have seen some more negative attention drawn to Apple’s stage to counter the whoops and cheers.

Shadows behind the curtain

In an article in the Mail online, it has been revealed that the creator of the iPod was not in fact the Devil via a pact with messrs Jobs and Ive, but one Kane Kramer, a British inventor who came up with the idea – and even patented it – in 1979. Unfortunately for Mr Kramer, the ‘design’ became public property in 1988 when he was unable to raise the money needed to renew the patents. Apple have used his testimony on the lineage of the iPod to defend an action against the firm Burst.com, who had themselves claimed the possession of patents to the tech, so – despite the Mail’s proclivity for hyperbole – it looks as though this story has a certain degree of credibility, this underlined by a drawing that Mr Kramer made of his 1979 prototype:

Spookily familiar: Kramer's proto-iPod

Obviously, that’s not actually an iPod, but (in the absence of direct access to the deposition filed by Mr Kramer) it’s not entirely unreasonable to to conclude that there is more to his father figure claims than a mere sketch. Kramer has yet to see a penny for his ‘invention’ and is, by all accounts, in fairly dire financial straits these days, giving him an ideal opportunity to deliver a killer one-liner:

‘I can’t even bring myself to buy an iPod for myself,’ he said. ‘Apple did give me one but it broke down after eight months.’

Nice touch. Although there’s no doubt that Apple’s actions here are perfectly legal – the patents had slipped, after all, however sketchy or detailed their conceptualisation – it’d be hoped that the negotiations in which Kramer has allegedly now entered with Apple will bag him at least a small part of the billions that Cupertino has made from the Walkman of the 21st century. It’d be an exceedingly poor show if he didn’t profit from his own invention, even if all that ultimately amounted to was series of sketches used to defend Cupertino from allegations of impropriety. And, with all the success Apple is having of late and the cyclical nature of these things, Steve Jobs might need all the good karma he can get one day.

Apple is the new Microsoft

So says Daniel Lyons in a unremittingly tendentious piece for Newsweek that carries the headline ‘One Bad Apple’. Oh, please, Daniel: your slip is showing.

We’ve all read these supposed ‘parallels’ between the two companies before, alongside the accusation that Apple’s monopolistic practices would have been as much clamped down on as Microsoft’s were Apple the success that its rival is. And this one adds nothing much to the argument, save for being timed to coincide (however, erm, co-incidentally) with yet another Apple Event and riding on the wave of the company’s recent successes. So I’ll not devote too long to this one – I include it more as an example of how sharp those knives can get when they’ve been sharpened for so long than for any reason of credibility, in contrast to Mr Kramer’s story – but I’ll select a couple of snippets that should give the flavour of the piece.

A former lieutenant of Steve Jobs’s once told me something surprising about his ex-boss. “Steve is a monopolist at heart,” he said. “He’s just like Bill Gates. He just hasn’t been as successful.” Well, Jobs is getting there.

That’s Lyons’ rather tart (if not outright bitter) stall set out right at the beginning of the piece. Tart, yes; surprising, decidedly not.

Not long ago Apple was just a niche PC maker selling to diehard fans who were quick to forgive (or even celebrate) Apple’s quirks and foibles.

Ouch. I never knew that about myself until now. I was always fond of a nice caricature, though, so fair play. By the way, have you heard the one about the lazy journalist?

The really scary thing about Apple is that it doesn’t just make hit products—it controls entire ecosystems. Just as Microsoft controls both the operating system and the applications that run on top of it, Apple owns popular hardware platforms (iPod, iPhone) and operates the only store that can sell music, movies and software programs for those platforms. Apple sets prices and takes 30 percent of the money.

Looks like Daniel’s not only seen the caricature but been so impressed with it that he bought the cliché. Because if that’s not the personification of lazy journalism, he must be correct in the central premise of his piece, and if so it is impossible for me to have bought music from the other retail stores I’ve bought music from to put on my iPod. I’ve also never ripped my own CDs to the device. And I’ve clearly never, ever, put any films, or TV shows, or home videos, or music videos onto my iPod, unless they were bought from the iTunes store, even though I have clear recollections of having done all these things and still have all of these songs, music videos and films on my iPod. Because I can’t have done that, else the control of the entire ecosystem that Apple has, and which is the central tenet of this article, does not, in fact, exist.

Perhaps a quick trip to Bleep.com (or any other of the many online music stores that provide music in a way that’s compatible with the iPod) might change Mr Lyons’ mind. But I suspect not: one should never let an awkward plot detail – and certainly not the odd fact or two – get in the way of a good drama.

Better watch yourself, Steve: the knives are out backstage, and they’re sharper than ever.