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It’s called CMX. It’s not by itself either. CMX is a knee-jerk reaction to a project Apple us supposedly calling “Cocktail.” The premise is to package additional content into what would represent a digital album. You would of course get the music, but also liner notes, photos, videos, lyrics and the like. The goal is to revive life into the concept of the studio album.

The problem is that all of this content should be, and probably is, free elsewhere. I know the lyrics are online. Zune manages to package tons of photos in. For some odd reason these companies still try to charge people for music videos, which I always thought were a promotional vehicle to sell more music, but I guess I had that wrong.

This is just another example of the record labels refusing to understand that the business and the market has changed. I am a customer. Sometimes I want full albums, sometimes I don’t. I am savvy enough to easily find photos, lyrics, even the music videos are almost always available free on YouTube. I would love the lyrics to be available on the device, but it seems much more sense to just include them in the digital song file, instead of making someone buy the album to get them.

There is a trend in the software industry. The trend is that things go online, users pay more like a service, and instead of long drawn out release cycles with versions every few years, the software companies are able to be much more agile and release new changes when they are available. Give the customers what they want when they want it.

Apply that trend to the music industry, and you start to think about it differently. Artists release new music when they have it. They stay relevant the whole time they tour, and we don’t forget about them for years between each album. The album sales dwindle, sure, but the single song sales trickle all year, every year. The music, the videos, all drive us listeners to the concerts, they make money in product and movie/TV placements, and of course merchandise. There is absolutely still a profit model in music, the mob(Sony, BMG, RCA) has just lost their way to run a protection racket.

Most artists are starting to find the ability to record and engineer their own music. The need of a label to back a major studio is going away. The Foo Fighters, pictured above, have all the major label backing they could want, and they still built their own studio so they could engineer their own music and have control.

You find articles all the time about the music industry changing, and what they should do. Obviously they aren’t reading them, and they don’t care what customers actually want. Right now they are most concerned with trying to get you to pay $16 bucks for 4 good songs and 8 tracks of filler, because you chopped their leg off when you started only buying the good stuff.

I won’t make this long, just provide some realistic statistics. NPD says that 91% of all computers over $1,000 are Apples. First off, the thing they obscure a bit is that is 91% of all computers sold AT RETAIL. That means all desktop computers and laptop computers for businesses across the country aren’t counted, and that’s a lot of greater than $1,000 machines.

The Best Buy Study

I think we will all agree, that when the average person thinks retail computer sales, Best Buy is the Mecca. Current Best Buy inventory shows some pretty interesting things. 269 machines show up in their current online inventory. If you break those machines down, you’ll see

• 19 desktop computers over $1,000, 6 of those are made by Apple. (iMac and Mac Pros)
• 58 desktop computers under $1,000, two of those are made by Apple. (Mac Minis)
• 81 laptop computers under $1,000, one of those is made by Apple. ($999 White Macbook)
• 38 laptop computers over $1,000, 4 of those are made by Apple. (Macbook Pros)
• 72 netbook computers, none of these are made by Apple.

So what do we have? 211 computers under $1,000, and 57 computers over $1,000.

So now that we have an idea what percentage over $1,000 machines makes of buying options (27%) let’s take a look at what is actually selling.

When you search desktop computers, and sort by “Best Selling” you will find that the $1,499 24” iMac is the first Apple in the Best Selling computers, and it shows up 29th on the list. It’s also one of 3 computers over $1,000 in the top 30! That’s right one single Apple desktop in the top 30.

When you do the same for laptops, you will find the $1,199 Macbook Pro 22nd on the list of best selling laptops at Best Buy, and one of only two laptops in the top 30 over $1,000. Again, one Apple in the top 30.

So what does all this mean? It means that over $1,000 desktops make up 10% of the best selling desktop sales at Best Buy, laptops over $1,000 make up 6% of the best selling laptops at Best Buy, and obviously, every netbook is under $1,000 and not made by Apple.

So, of the 27% of machines for sale at Best Buy, that cost over $1,000, 5 of them have managed to make it into the top 60 selling machines, not including netbooks, and TWO of those are made by Apple. That goes against the 91% number pretty heavily, but even if we give them the benefit of the doubt, I hope that Apple is damned proud to own 91% of 8 1/3% of non-netbook computer sales at Retail (at least @ Best Buy)

Parting Shots

Keep in mind that the American heartland buys a LOT of computers at Wal-Mart, of which none are made by Apple, and that is counted as retail. I would guess that most of those computers are under $1,000, further skewing this number into looking like some sort of victory. The fact of the matter, is that sub-$1,000 computers are where the real users are, netbooks or not, that IS the market these days. HP, Dell and Gateway aren’t slashing their prices and profits because the race to the bottom is their idea. They sell what is selling.

Apple fanboys love to say “You pay more for a BMW because it’s a BMW, it costs more than a Chevrolet because it’s better.” The problem with that logic is that unless you are talking about a very expensive Bimmer and a really cheap Chevrolet, the difference isn’t all that huge, it’s pretty easy to spend $35-40,000 on a Chevy. As PC prices plummet to the $300s, the difference between a $300 laptop (you can get a $299 laptop in lots of places) and a $999 laptop, is suddenly striking and causes the biggest consumer segment pause to wonder why they are paying 333% more than they have to.

I had to laugh at a recent development on a thread I have been following. For the most part the conversation has been lively, relevant and fun with a little good natured MS and Apple ribbing here and there, but one comment posted tonight kind of quantified the type of “Stockholm Syndrome” that many Apple users seem to have to the almighty fruit.

I had left a comment earlier saying I was frustrated a few years ago when I bought a brand new Powerbook 12” and a Dual 2.0Ghz G5 PowerMac within a few months of Aperture’s original release. As both of those machines lacked video cards with Core Graphics support, I was left out in the cold of Aperture support on both machines. (Although it did seem there was a hack you could do to enable the support which makes me wonder why they didn’t support them after all – but that’s another topic | while I am on topics, Adobe Lightroom manages non-destructive image editing without Core Graphics, but I digress again )

So here I am with what amounts to $5,000 worth of new computers that are both unable to run Apple’s latest software.

The comment that rubbed me the wrong way said:

I have to nit pick with your examples contrasting Microsoft’s generous and noble legacy support with Apple’s irresponsible abandonment. You mentioned you had a dual-2Ghz Power Mac G5 that wouldn’t run Aperture due to the lack of Core Image support. I also had a Power Mac G5. At worst, you would have had to do a graphics card upgrade (even the ATI 9600 would work) to run Aperture on it. Graphics card upgrades are not unheard of in the Windows world, either.

Bot.

Ok, you got me, graphics card upgrades are common. Of course the PowerMac could not be upgraded, but setting that aside, this is a perfect example of the Apple fan mentality. They are so agreeable, that they find it totally reasonable to have to replace the video card in a $3,000 computer, two months after purchase, to support the latest software. Am I the only one that finds that a bit odd?

Let’s run down some of the things they have done recently:

- Snow Leopard officially drops support for PowerPC computers, that means in 2006 Apple began a transition to Intel chips in Macs. I think it was a great move. OS X supports universal binaries so apps can be written to support both platforms, sweet right? Except here we are in 2009, and your Three year old “Super Computer” they sold you is at it’s end of life as far as being able to run Apple’s newest OS. To think people give Microsoft shit about Vista requiring something newer and up to date for decent performance, G5s and below are cut off for good. Ouch.

- Although they seem to have recently have had a change of heart, Apple recently decided you had to spend big bucks to get FireWire, and dumped it off all but the high end Macbook Pros. Game changing, no? But if you are a digital audio or video geek, suddenly you were searching for used laptops when you wanted to upgrade.

Of course those are two little incidents, but I just wonder why so few people in the Apple camp find it offensive when Apple arbitrarily makes a design decision that is so obviously not customer motivated. If they decide something is aesthetically unpleasing to Steve Jobs, it risks getting the axe, no matter what the customer thinks.

I recently read an article where Jonathan Ive said that Apple doesn’t do any sort of focus group testing, and I see how that has it’s advantages, but I also think that being so out of touch with your customers can be a cancer also. Once the Apple love affair ends, people are going to start getting upset at iPhones and iPods that get replaced way before your contract allows an upgrade, or features mysteriously being jettisoned even when many people use them.

And of course, when they charge you extra for features you should have gotten free. (n support, iPod OS updates, etc.)

And don’t get me started on replaceable batteries!!!

I want to be clear, I work for Microsoft, but I am an Apple user, I carry an iPhone, I have a 24” iMac, 15.4” Macbook Pro and dual quad 2.8Ghz Mac Pro, even an AppleTV. Of course I have just as many PCs, and I choose a Zune over an iPod, but I think it’s fair to say I am not some Microsoft blue blood that doesn’t have a realistic perspective.

If you have seen Apple’s recent crop of ads to counter Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter Ads, you will find two themes: Apple Genius’ are amazing at technical support, and Windows computers just don’t operate without crashing and constantly catch viruses. Of course these are just marketing gimmicks, just like the Laptop Hunter ads were also, but I think it’s fair to take a few minutes to talk about something we often forget, reality.

Watered Down Geniuses

When you walk up to the Apple Genius Bar, the cool cats in the brightly colored shirts give off quite the air of style and chic, but does that translate to great technical support? Before I relay some of my own personal experiences, how about a reality check. On average, Apple Geniuses make about $25,000 a year, that translates to about $12 an hour. Now this is just mean, but if you stand behind a bar for 40 hours a week for $12 an hour, how smart are you really? The reality is that the average age that I see is around maybe 20?

A great place to start is reading “A day in the life of an Apple Genius” from Maclife. There are some great tid bits in this article like:

• Probably 70% of the stuff we see is physically damaged by the customer
• People should not use extensive mods to their OS, it always causes problems

The basic rundown is this. A Candidate gets screened by a round of troubleshooting questions. If he answers most of those correctly, he gets a two week training session in Cupertino that results in three certifications. The source for Maclife’s article admits the tests aren’t particularly hard. After testing, the candidate gets some real world retail training. That’s where they learn the ticketing system and such. In these two weeks they are well versed in AppleCare policies, entering information into the support database as well as general Apple policies. Finally the genius does a couple weeks training in a real store and bam, they stamp genius on his or her head and he may stand at the alter in an Apple Store. Excuse my cynicism here, but 6 weeks does not a genius make. Malcolm Gladwell posited in Outliers, that it took 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. Apparently it only takes 240 hours to become an expert at all things Apple, and that’s assuming that they were absorbing for a solid 8 hours per day over these 6 weeks.

I want to be clear, I am not saying that you shouldn’t go to a Genius Bar to get your Mac Fixed, I just did. But I will say that had I not did 10 minutes of due diligence on Google before going in, my repair would have cost me $1,000 vs. free. The Genius was not aware that there was an issue with nVidia chips that was nearing class-action status and because of this Apple had extended the warranty on machines with the issue to two years. Seems like something you would hope they knew, right?

The time before I went to get an Airport Extreme card installed in my Mac Pro, only to have them accidentally disable Bluetooth in the process.

The point is, don’t expect them to be all knowing and never make mistakes, they are Apple’s Geek Squad, no different.

For a more amusing read, check out the MacLife article’s source’s blog, Ungenius.

Viruses Smiruses

I encourage you to first think back and tell me the last time you or someone you know got a virus on their PC. I know it does happen, but I also know it is much less common than the general perception is. I can’t remember catching one myself since “I love you” in 2000. It was a nasty bugger, but it was proliferated across the network because at the time people pretty much opened anything that came in an email attachment without ever looking at it. I like to think people are a bit smarter now.

Also software is better. Despite the hordes of Apple and Linux aficionados that will quote the countless thousands you will have to spend to hopefully be protected, I have been using AVG Free edition from Download.com for years. I would say that more often I hear of virus hoaxes than actual viruses.

Probably the only companies happier than Apple that Viruses DO exist, are anti-virus software makers themselves. It’s become a tremendously profitable industry spawning not only software sales but ridiculously expensive subscriptions. I personally have no problem installing Windows XP, Vista or 7 on a new machine and connecting it to the internet with no Virus protection software. 99% of not being affected by viruses is using your computer responsibly.

The point is that the Apple commercials are hyperbole, Viruses and OS Crashes are nowhere near as common as they would like you to think. As a parting note, Apple’s DO get viruses too. You can only expect them to rise with popularity. The most common, and true, argument is that Windows machines have more viruses because 90% of people use Windows computers, if you are trying to cause damage, you go after the larger target. OS X won’t find safety in it’s small numbers forever.

Now That’s Good TV

It is. The commercials are absolutely brilliant from a marketing perspective and have done wonders to create FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) about Windows Vista, PCs and pretty much anything that isn’t Mac. The laptop hunter commercials are great too, and now Apple is attaching those as well. Enjoy the commercials, but I sincerely hope that you don’t use them to make purchasing decisions.

Smashing magazine inspired this post. They listed 13 applications to make your life easier, but I really didn’t think any of them were that useful. Here is my list to help you trick out your new Mac.

1. QuickSilver: I love this application. It’s a launcher on steroids and is probably the application I miss the most when I am using Windows. I can call up any file or application with just a few keystrokes. I don’t mean Ctrl-Alt-T-Left Big Toe and Nose, I mean Ctrl-Space and start typing the name of it. It’s a wonderful tool and I recommend not only installing it, but giving it a good effort, it might seem awkward at first, but within a week you will never know how you lived without it. Download
2. Growl: Growl is your swiss army knife notification engine. You can style your notifications to display when, where and how you like, and tons of applications support it. It’s an essential add-in to Firefox and Adium. Download
3. Cyberduck: Cyberduck is my FTP client of choice on Mac. It’s probably not a lot of good to a mainstream user who has little need to FTP, but if you are a webmaster, you will love it. Download
4. Adium: Chat people, iChat is cool but serious un-equipped to communicate with your mass of PC friends. Adium supports it all, it’s infinitely skinnable and in a few years of my use, very stable. If you want to chat on MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, AOL, Facebook, MySpace, ICQ, and many more at once, this is the tool for you. Download
5. Live Mesh: Forget .Mac or .Me or whatever they are calling it these days. If you just want to keep files in sync across a few machines, both Mac and PC as well as Windows Mobile, Mesh is incredibly valuable. I run it on every computer I own and use it at least once a day. Files in your mesh are located on all computers set up to syncronize and also in your free space on the web. Never wish you had that file again and save tons of wear and tear on your thumb drives. Download
6. Text Wrangler: This is kind of like Cyberduck, your general user won’t need it, but if you ever touch HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, etc. It’s a great color coding text editor. Download
7. VLC: Let’s face it, not everything runs in Quicktime, even if it did, who would want to? VLC is your one player to show just about anything. This one of the first apps I install on a new Mac. Download
8. Handbrake: Like to watch your DVDs when you travel but wish it was easier to get them on your iPhone, iPod, Zune, PSP, etc.? Handbrake will rip DVDs to just about any format you could need. Download
9. Firefox: Safari is fine, but I just love Firefox, especially since I can mirror the setup on my PC and keep everything in sync with FoxMarks. Download
10. Spaces*: Yea, this is a cheat, it comes with OS X, but that makes it free right? If you are not using multiple monitors on your Mac, you should be using Spaces, enable it and see what it’s all about. Download

Give some of these a try and let me know what you think? If I missed some, add them in the comments below!