Can a church get too popular?
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The Washington Post had a long piece yesterday on the Apple Store phenomena and its possible decline.
Not 18 months ago, cultural essayists and architecture critics would wander into flagship Apple Stores around the world (SoHo! Fifth Avenue! Regent Street!) and go long and poetic about Apple’s revolution in hipster elegance, the clean lines, the retail frontier. And indeed, these are beautiful places, pluralistic to the point that you can use their bathroom, and check your e-mail on their display Macs, and be among friends you always dreamed of having, somewhere. It was a glimpse at a world where everyone is smart, and agreeably diverse, and able to spend lots of money. Now you have to brace yourself to walk into the Apple Store. The question so recently was: What is the Apple Store doing to us, as a people?
Now the question is: What are we doing to it ?
Can you smother a store to death?
Very much worth a read if you’re a fanboy or interested in commercial culture. I love how the essayist, Hank Stuever, works in the Apple-as-religion meme:
According to Buinessweek, Apple has studied the possibility of joining the FCC’s auction for 700 MHz wireless spectrum. That would make less sense for Apple than for Google.The specialists and geniuses are in their black Apple T-shirts, wearing name tags (Adam, Matt, Luis and the endless supply of Ryans, and an occasional Jen).
And talkingrillyfast. Rillyrlyfst. Allfthem. Glare-eyed, too happy with themselves, like Jesus people holding up one finger on 1970s street corners. They know you aren’t One of Them, but they forgive you. Nothing expresses both virtue and contempt like forgiveness. That’s life in church. They know what Steve Jobs wants of them, and they live to serve.
Steve Jobs oral history
Check out this oral history of Steve Jobs from the Computer History Collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. It’s basically an extended interview in which he talks about his biography, Apple’s origins, NeXT, Pixar, and much else. The neat thing is the interview was conducted on April 20, 1995 while Jobs was still in exile from Apple. Apple would buy NeXT a year later to use it as the core of Mac OS X and Jobs would return to eventually take over. Here’s one of his perspectives at the time:The Macintosh will die in another few years and its really sad. The problem is this: no one at Apple has a clue as to how to create the next Macintosh because no one running any part of Apple was there when the Macintosh was made–or any other product at Apple. They’ve just been living off that one thing now for over a decade and the last attempt was the Newton and you know what happened to that. It’s kind of tragic, but as unemotionally as I can be, that’s what’s happening. Unless somebody pulls a rabbit out of a hat, companies tend to have long glide slopes because of the installed bases.
Why no preloaded iPods?
Ever since the first days of the iTunes Music Store I’d always wondered why Apple didn’t see iPods preloaded with music. Why not sell a Beck iPod, say, with every track ever released on it and maybe his autograph etched on the back? When Apple came out with the U2 special edition iPod that included their music catalog in the price, it didn’t come preloaded, you had to use a coupon code to download the music.Well, today comes the answer that I can’t believe I hadn’t see before, because I’d look. iLounge reports that the settlement agreement Apple had with the Beatle’s Apple Music Co. over their trademark dispute included a clause that prohibited Apple from selling “physical media delivering prerecorded content[.]” This deal was struck before the iPod, so they never could have guessed its implications. In fact, the clause was probably just meant to cover CD sales.
Now that the two companies have resettled, you can bet you’ll see preloaded iPods. I wouldn’t be surprised if a Beatles iPod is the first.
Think diffident
I have a new article up at American.com on Apple’s controversial $1.99 charge to upgrade consumer’s Wi-Fi cards. Snippet: “The rule that made Apple’s mess predates Sarbanes-Oxley—but Sarbox’s stiffened penalties may well have changed Apple’s calculus. What was previously an accounting principle that could have, in a special circumstance like this one, been benignly neglected with the use of an explanatory footnote, the Act now makes rigid. The possible criminal penalties that can now attach to any unusual accounting mitigate the incentives to account for things elegantly, when the elegant way of keeping track of things requires some added explanation.”SOX sucks: The case of Apple
At an Apple Store a few weeks ago a clerk had to take down info from my driver’s license so that I could qualify for the education discount that previously only required that I flash my school ID. “Sorry, Sarbanes-Oxley,” she said. Really? “Yeah. Also, if you buy a custom Mac now, you have to have it shipped to your home; you can’t pick it up at the store anymore.” Whah?Well, if you need one more reason to believe that the unintended consequences of SOX really suck (especially for Mac people, it seems), today comes word that SOX may force Apple to charge Mac users for a feature that would otherwise be free. See, Wi-Fi comes in three flavors: 802.11b, g, and n, each respectively faster. The “n” standard is still a draft, but it’s almost complete. Apple has been shipping computers with unadvertised “n” capability that they have left dormant. That is, you buy a notebook with what you think is just a “g” Wi-Fi card and three months later, when the standard gets ratified, Apple sends you a software update that unlocks it into an “n”. Voila, surprise instant upgrade and a happy customer.
Unfortunately, the word is that Apple will charge $4.99 for the upgrade, which is a suspiciously un-Apple thing to do. iLounge editor Jeremy Horwitz offers an explanation: “Because of the [SOX] Act, the company believes that if it sells a product, then later adds a feature to that product, it can be held liable for improper accounting if it recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn’t finished delivering the product at that point. Ridiculous.”
Update: Houman Shadab took this story and ran with it. He posts a great explanation (via iLounge) of how SOX accounting rules could result in the $5 charge. I’m posting it in full after the jump. Continue reading this post »
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This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
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