What acquisition means for Shazam

I was surprised to see the news that Apple is acquiring Shazam. After all, they’re a devices company, right? Maybe not, as the “services” division is the second-strongest line and growing. So what does Shazam do to help Apple? Two things that I see.

The first is that it gives them an avenue for selling music. Hear a song and wonder what it is? Fire up Shazam to identify it and here’s a handy link to buy it in the iTunes store. Right now (at least on Android), users have a choice between Google and Amazon for track purchases. You have to think Apple would want to get in on that. It’s a prime opportunity for impulse buys.

The second benefit is that it gives Apple more data about the songs people are interested in. The utility of this data is not immediately obvious to me, but I’m sure someone in Apple’s spaceship can figure out how to put it to use. Can they execute on that idea, though? I admittedly don’t pay a lot of attention to Apple, but they don’t seem to have the data chops of Google or Amazon.

But the title of this post is what the acquisition means for Shazam, not what it means for Apple. My first thought was “well I guess I won’t be able to use Shazam anymore.” Most of Apple’s software acquisitions have been focused on Siri or Apple Maps. Neither of those are available outside of the Apple ecosystem. CUPS (yes, the Unix print system) is the only acquisition that remains available outside of Apple, as far as I can tell.

Apple has no real desire to make it’s software available to non-iOS/macOS users. iTunes is a notable exception, but for the most part, you can’t expect Apple software outside of Apple hardware. Apple makes its money on services and hardware sales, not on software. And I can’t fault them for sticking to what works.

The question remains: will Shazam continue to be available across platforms? If Apple’s motivation is primarily to use it as an iTunes sales engine, I think it will. If they want to use it as a differentiator in a competitive smartphone market, they won’t. I’m inclined to favor the sales engine scenario, but time will tell.

Will Apple get tangled up in wireless headphones?

Last week, Apple announced the latest version of their flagship product. The iPhone 7 will begin shipping to customers on Friday and it will be the first to not have a headphone jack. The 3.5mm jack, which has been around since at least 1964, is the standard appearing on computers, music players, phones, some airline seats, and more. The standardized technology means you can use one set of headphones in any of those places without hassle (except for detangling the cords, of course).

But no more, says Apple. They used “courage” to describe this decision, a phrasing that has been soundly mocked. Courage probably isn’t the right word, but it’s certainly bold. This is a big risk that Apple hopes lays the foundation for additional changes that will lead to an inarguably better product. Of course, it might serve to further put the brakes on plateauing sales and a growing sense of meh.

Apple supporters are quick to point out that the doomsayers were wrong about Apple’s decision to remove floppy drives, CD drives, and ethernet ports. This feels like a different scenario, though. In previous cases, there was always something better to use instead (though I still wish the MacBook Pro I use at work had a wired ethernet port). Particularly by the time the optical drive was killed, USB drives and network services met the needs of the average consumer much better.

What’s the better option for the iPhone 7? Purchasing headphones that can only be used with Apple products, that require charging every few hours, that can’t be used while the phone is charging without an additional adapter? Will the technology used by these wireless headphones avoid the lag and disconnection issues that can frustrate Bluetooth device usage? Will noisy spectrum become an issue in crowded spaces like buses and subways? Will people be able to avoid losing them?

Apple’s previous removals proved to be successful enough that other manufacturers followed suit. But that success was possible in part because better standard solutions were available. This time, there’s no standard; it’s Apple or nothing. I don’t see that there’s a compelling enough story for the average consumer to support this as a long-term change. I’m no soothsayer, and I could end up complete wrong. But I bet Samsung really wishes they could have a do-over on the Galaxy Note 7’s battery: it could have been a great chance for them to take some of Apple’s market share.

Who’s competing with whom?

In Sunday’s Lafayette Journal & Courier, the USA Today section included an article by Matt Krantz comparing Microsoft and Apple. He treats the two companies as arch rivals, comparing them to the Cola War participants and to the longstanding animosity between fans of Ford and Chevy pickups. And he wasn’t wrong 20 years ago, but he is now. The OS wars are, if not entirely over, at least in a state of permanent cease-fire. Microsoft has very clearly won in volume; Apple turns a handsome profit. With the move toward a browser-based world, the OS on desktops and laptops is becoming increasingly irrelevant to mainstream consumers.

Indeed, the desktop and laptop are becoming less relevant (though not irrelevant, despite the slower sales in recent years). Over half of Apple’s Q3 2014 revenue came from iPhone sales. Macs (and the attendant Mac OS X) were a mere 15% of revenue. Apple could completely abandon the PC market tomorrow and still be fine. They’re clearly in the mobile device (and services) business today. Sure, Microsoft has a mobile offering. I’ve used a recent Windows Phone and it was pretty nice. But Microsoft is competing with Apple in the mobile space the same way that Apple is competing with Microsoft in the desktop OS space. As a hint, it’s the same way that this blog competes with Ars Technica.

If Apple is a mobile company, then who are they competing with? The obvious answer is Google. While Google doesn’t really do devices, they control the Android ecosystem (although the degree of control is debatable). Steve Jobs was willing to declare “thermonuclear war” on Android. I’m not aware of him harboring a similar hatred for the Windows Mobile devices that existed many years before.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and Krantz argued that Google is an ad company, whereas Apple and Microsoft are “technology companies”. The distinction is lost on me. Technology is such a broad term that it is effectively meaningless. And while Google may derive most of its revenue from advertising, it’s only capable of generating that revenue because of the technology it produces and acquires.

There’s just not much meaningful competition between Apple and Microsoft these days. Both of these companies compete with Google, but in different spaces. The recently-announced partnership between Apple and IBM may bring Apple back into competition with Microsoft, but that remains to be seen.

So what are the lessons here? First: just because a guy has a money column in USA Today, that doesn’t mean he understands the technology (overly-broad term used intentionally) industry. Second: just because you were once bitter rivals with a company (or a person), you may not stay that way forever. Third: it is very important to be aware of who is in the space you want to be in so you can do it better than they do.

 

My future with Apple products

Despite having been given the “Mac Guy” appellation by Mario Marathon viewers, I am not an Apple fanboy.  Don’t get me wrong, I really like my current and previous Mac Book Pros.  The hardware has been solid (as a few encounters with gravity can attest to) and OS X is a great mix of power, reliability, and ease of use.  There’s no doubt that Apple turns out quality products, I don’t have an issues with their offerings.  It is a philosophical problem that I have.  As an advocate of openness, can I continue to support a company like Apple?

Apple has shown a willingness to support open source software on some occasions (as one would expect, those occasions are the ones where it suits Apple’s interests to be supportive), but at times the Apple model stands in opposition to the ideals of freedom that open source (and open standards) movements are based on.  The most recent example was reported by Wired earlier this week saying that the next minor release of Snow Leopard would “break” some “Hackintoshed” machines, specifically those using Intel’s Atom processor.  I get it, Apple is foremost a hardware company.  The software exists to promote the sales of the hardware, so allowing the software to be used on non-Apple hardware doesn’t serve Apple’s interests.

I don’t deny that Apple has the right to do what they’re doing, although if they had a larger market share, the Department of Justice might start taking notice.  No, to me, it’s not about whether or not they can do this, but whether or not they should.  The interests of Apple’s shareholders say “no”, the interests of the Apple community say “yes.”  Apple certainly has no legal obligation to do what’s in the best interests of users, but if they want to differentiate themselves from Microsoft, then perhaps they should.

What it really comes down to, then, is the question of “how closed can Apple (or any other company) become before I am no longer willing to give them my business?”  Or should it even matter?  If I give up Apple, should I also give up Skype, Flash, video drivers, and many other things that restrict my ability to use a product how I see fit?  These are not easy questions to answer, and the answer is different for each person.  For myself, I will wait and let my thoughts on the matter evolve for a while.  Hopefully by the time I’m ready to replace my current Mac Book Pro, I’ll have figured it out.

Microsoft’s Mac products

There’s a lot of hate out there for Microsoft.  Some of it is deserved, some is mere fanboyism.  For my own part, I generally avoid Microsoft products where I can.  It’s not that I absolutely refuse to touch anything that comes out of Redmond, but there are generally free-er and better tools available to accomplish the same ends.  Still, there are some things Mircosoft does very well.  Apple support is not one of them.

Now, I understand that Microsoft and Apple are competitors in some sense.  (I would argue that Microsoft is a software vendor and Apple is a hardware/ecosystem vendor, but that’s another discussion).  To some, it might be surprising that Microsoft has any Apple offerings at all, but the reality is that it is in their best interests.  Macs, especially the laptops, are becoming more prevalent in enterprise settings (especially in education, where Apple has long enjoyed a higher-than-average market share).  In order for Microsoft to keep their death grip on the lucrative enterprise environment, they need to make sure their products can continue to be used.

Unfortunately for the user, Microsoft does not seem to have put much effort into their Apple offerings.  Whether this is by choice or by circumstance, the end result is the same: people can’t get work done.  At the risk of sounding like a cynical anti-Microsoft zealot, I’m going to guess that this is an intentional move.  It does make short-term sense, after all.  By making gestures, Microsoft can be seen as playing nicely, but when things don’t work as well as they do on Windows, people will have no choice but to abandon Apple.

Now, I can’t speak to the Office products very much.  Outside of Access, I’ve barely touched Office 2007, so I don’t know to what degree it is crippled compared to the Windows versions.  I do know that VBScript is not supported in Office 2008, which causes all kinds of problems for some Serious Business(tm) in Excel.  Check boxes in Excel sheets also seem to not print, which is a bit of a hassle when I go to turn in an absence form.  Of course, Access doesn’t even have a Mac counterpart, which wouldn’t bother me except I have yet to find the time to migrate our inventory database out of Access and into something more platform-independent.  This leaves me stuck with running a virtual machine or keeping a Windows box on my desktop any time I want to do something with the inventory.

My big gripe today, and in general, is with Entourage.  It is a pretty lousy e-mail client, although 2008 is an improvement over 2004.  Entourage is a little bit on the clunky side.   For IMAP accounts, Apple Mail would be my choice.  Exchange support is the one feature that give Entourage a raison d’etre in the first place, and it is lacking in a few key areas.  The worst failing is the lack of support for Exchange tasks and notes.  Because my Blackberry has great Exchange support, it would be really nice if I could make notes on my to-do list and have them show up in Entourage.  I can’t.  Since I’m primarily at my desk all day, I primarily use Entourage for my to-do list.  This means I’m stuck without it if I don’t have my laptop with me.  (Or I have to switch to a third-party app, which isn’t that appealing either).

The other complaint is the lack of support for Outlook .pst files.  I’m not that big a fan of .pst files in Outlook either, but I accept they’re a necessary evil.  Regardless of my feelings on .pst in general, it seems silly that Entourage only supports a different (non-Outlook compatible) file format.  Mail storage is a tricky business anyway, and I just prefer to use an IMAP account when I need extra storage space.  That way it is compatible with any modern mail client.

So now that I’ve complained about Entourage, here’s the whole point: the Evolution groupware client supports Microsoft Exchange better than some Microsoft products do.  Imagine my surprise when I was setting up Evolution on my Linux box only to discover that not only did my e-mail and calendar synch, but my to-do list did, too!  I about keeled over from the shock.  This is where Microsoft needs to pay close attention to what others are doing.  If other vendors support your products better than you do, that is a Bad Thing(tm).

Fortunately for Microsoft, getting Entourage working on the Mac isn’t as simple as the Linux side.  Using fink gets you caught in a web of dependencies that don’t seem to be resolvable as of this writing.  Novell issued a Mac build that installs okay, but I’ve had problems getting it to enable an Exchange account.  I’m not the only one with this problem, as the bug report indicates, but the solution that worked for others so far has not worked for me.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep hoping that Microsoft improves the next version of office, or that better competitiors will come forth.