I like to call today’s Napster “Napster,” since it has little in common with the legendary service that bore the same name other than music. It hasn’t been a hit. But now it’s getting another shot at success.
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Author Archive | Harry McCracken
Exclusive: The Seinfeld/Ballmer TV Ads We Didn’t Get to See
It wasn’t that I thought we’d never see him represent Microsoft again…just that he might take a breather and let Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, or other execs step into the spotlight, as it were. They may not represent a fresh new face for Microsoft, but they’re the guys who are responsible for the company’s present and future. (Gates may be unshakably synonymous with Microsoft, but he also represents its past.)
So when the news about Seinfeld/Gates broke, my first thought was this: What if the ads had costarred Seinfeld and Steve Ballmer? It wasn’t such a crazy thought–the man is, after all, the CEO of the company, and he’s anything but shy and retiring. And then it hit me: Thanks to the miracle of modern video technology, I didn’t have to wonder about Seinfeld/Ballmer Windows commercials. With enough painstaking effort, I could create a reconstruction that would reveal with uncanny precision what such ads would have looked and sounded like.
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Apple to iPhone Developers: Don’t Compete With Us?
Back in March, I attended one of the more exciting Apple press events I’ve ever been to–the one in which Steve Jobs and company unveiled their plans for the iPhone SDK and App Store. Jobs showed off the iPhone platform, introduced the App Store and explained how it worked, noted that it would be the only way to distribute iPhone applications, and said that Apple would make the final decision on which apps were and weren’t acceptable.
Here’s a brief highlight reel from the March event at Apple headquarters, with Jobs touching on some of these points:
When I heard Jobs say that Apple wouldn’t distribute each and every iPhone application that developers wrote, I thought to myself that such a policy was both inevitable and logical–but that it also had the potential of hobbling the platform, if Apple’s approval process was unclear or too motivated by self interests or the interests of carriers. I’m realizing now that I wasn’t anywhere near paranoid enough about the implications of what Steve Jobs said.
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Seinfeld/Gates: Not About Vista
Back in my post Twenty Thoughts About a Microsoft Ad Campaign I Haven’t Even Seen Yet, which I wrote when the news broke that the company’s spots would costar Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, thought thirteen was as follows:
13. To what degree will these be Vista ads? The immediate goal, of course, is to move copies of Vista and PCs that run the OS. But I think there are signs that Microsoft is already trying to move past Vista and prepare itself for a Windows 7 launch that goes better than Vista’s spotty history to date. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the ads feel more like they’re about improving Windows’ image in general than bolstering Vista specifically–and if Microsoft sees them as an early salvo in the Windows 7 rollout, even though the chances of the ads mentioning Windows 7 directly are less than nil.
There’s lots we still don’t know about the ads, but over at the official Windows Vista blog, Microsoft’s Chris Flores has provided some information that’s relevant to my thoughts above:
“[This] campaign, when fully unveiled, will talk about Windows in all its forms. Not just the OS for PCs we happen to be shipping today. In fact, not just an OS. And not just on PCs. Simply put, this campaign isn’t about Windows Vista. It’s about Windows.”
So yeah, the ad campaign is about Windows, including versions that don’t exist yet. (Flores doesn’t mention Windows Seven explicitly, but the “Not just the OS for PCs we happen to be shipping today” is presumably a reference to the campaign aiming to help out with future versions of the OS as well as Vista, Windows Mobile, and other current cariants.) Makes sense to me–if I were spending $300 million on ads, I’d want them to be about a lot more than a single product which already ships on the vast majority of the world’s PCs.
Flores also reiterates that if the two ads that have aired so far have gotten folks talking, they’ve done their job. It’s later ads in the series that’ll more explicitly promote Windows.
I’m kind of a hidebound traditionalist when it comes to advertising–I wonder if any campaign that needs to be explained by the company behind it can be as successful as one that’s so clear that no explanation is necessary. (The “Get a Mac” ads and just about every other famously successful campaign I can think of, such as “Got Milk?,” speak for themselves.) But I’ll hold off on coming to any conclusions about these ads until I’ve seen more…and once I have, maybe I’ll go back and revisit more of my original twenty thoughts.
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The iPhone’s Secret Snapshot History of Your Life
There are privacy threats that are scary because hackers are already taking advantage of ’em. There are ones that are theoretically dangerous. And then there are ones that are just plain weird.
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Software Update 2.1: A Cure for What Ails the iPhone?
If you own an iPhone 3G, the most insanely great news at Tuesday’s Apple event might not have involved the new Nano or Touch or iTunes 8. Instead, you might have been most excited by the news that the iPhone 2.1 software update was imminent. Just rereading what Steve Jobs said (via Daring Fireball), I find my pulse is racing a bit:
“2.1 software update is a big update. It fixes lots of bugs. You’ll get fewer call drops. You will get significantly improved battery life, for most customers. We have fixed a lot of bugs where if you have a lot of apps on the phone, you’re not going to get some of the crashes and other things that we’ve seen. Backing up to iTunes is dramatically faster. And so just a lot of bugs have been fixed.”
As promised, the update is now available–if you’ve got an iPhone, plug it into and use iTunes to check for an update. Apple has caught a lot of flack lately for vague release notes on updates (“bug fixes”); it may have been listening to the gripes, since the list of fixes you see before installing 2.1 is long, specific, and nifty:
That encompasses most of the quirks I’ve encountered with my iPhone 3G, and I’ll be happy to have Genius playlists available right on the phone. And I figure that once Apple’s squashed the biggest bugs, it can devote most of its time to adding new stuff that the iPhone clearly needs, such as cut-and-paste and synching of iCal and Outlook to-do lists.
I’m downloading and installing 2.1 right now, and if I have anything to say about, I will. But I figure that if the update does its job, it’ll be kind of hard to review–I’ll just notice over time that my iPhone has stopped doing all the things that made up the hate half of the love-hate relationship I’ve had with it. (Actually, there’s one formal test I know I want to do–there’s a hotel lobby in downtown San Francisco where my iPhone drops every single call I make. If that problem goes away, I’ll consider iPhone software 2.1 a miracle cure.)
If you install the update, lemme know what you think…
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New iPod Nano: The Technologizer Review
The iPod Nano isn’t just the smallest iPod with a screen–it’s also the one that Apple reinvents on the most aggressive schedule. It debuted as a skinny plastic music player in September 2005; became a skinny aluminum music player a year later; and transmogrified into a short, squat aluminum music and video player a year after that. And earlier this week, the Nano morphed once more: It’s now skinny again, but with the video capability of its third-generation predecessor, and a few new features and refinements.
The visual difference between the new, narrow fourth-generation Nano and the square model it replaces is the most striking industrial-design change for an Apple product since…well, since the square Nano replaced the narrower 2G model. The new Nano may look different, but its features haven’t changed radically; most owners of the previous Nano shouldn’t feel too lustful over its successor. But I ended up liking the new model more than I thought I would at first glance.
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Random Thoughts About the Second Gates/Seinfeld Windows Ad
I swear that I’m going to stop writing about these Bill Gates-Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft ads soon. Or at least I hope so. The second ad in the series has aired, and not only is it even more dramatically odd than the first one–it also feels like it’s about seventy-five minutes long:
A few quick thoughts on it:
–the ad seems to say quite explicitly that Bill Gates is an enormously wealthy man who has trouble bonding with normal folks. It’s at least superficially in jest, but I can’t quite tell if there’s an implicit acknowledgment there that Microsoft’s reputation among its customers could be a lot better.
–quirky though the spot may be, it feels like it has a touch of the patronizing “Your Potential. Our Passion” tone that I associate with Microsoft advertising. It’s full of little people! With hopes and dreams just like yours and mine! Who are honored by a visit from the founder of Microsoft!
–Like the first ad, this one segues into a slightly harder sell at the end: Jerry helpfully reminds Bill that the latter has “connected over a billion people,” presumably to get TV watchers thinking positive thoughts about Microsoft’s place in the world. Kinda odd to make it that personal, though–does that mean that when my PC bluescreens, I should hold Bill personally responsible?
–At the end of the commercial, the phrase “Perpetually Connecting” turns into the abbreviation “PC.” I can’t think of another ad in recent Microsoft history that’s made reference to Windows-based computers as PCs–it feels like an almost direct response to Apple’s Get a Mac ads and their Mac and PC characters. I wonder if future ads will also call PCs PCs. (Actually, I hope not: I used to be a stickler for the notion that all personal computers, including Macs, are PCs; I’ve sort of given up, though.)
–When word broke that the $300 million Windows ad campaign would star Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, everybody and their brother (including, well, me) squawked that Microsoft was showing it was out of touch by signing an aging comedian whose glory days were more than a decade ago. After watching this ad, it looks like maybe it was all intentional–Bill and Jerry are proudly, aggressively middle-aged and unhip in this spot.
Over at All About Microsoft, Mary Jo Foley has some more thoughts and facts about the ad. She says an ad that’s more traditionally about Windows will be along shortly. One can only hope…
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T-Poll: iPod Nano Abbott vs. iPod Nano Costello
The new skinny iPod Nano is here, in its 8GB version, at least–I know, because I have one right here. I’m working on a review, and one of the most significant differences compared to its predecessor is the one that’s by far the most obvious: The old one was short and squat, while the new one is tall and slender.
Which design is better? On some level it probably boils down to personal preference. I’m still making my mind up, but I thought I’d ask you which has more appeal. (Other differences between the two Nanos: The new version is thinner and lighter, and the color is on both sides, versus the silver back of the previous model.)
Here are the two candidates–that’s the new guy on the left, of course. (Abbott and Costello metaphor used in headline stolen from Ryan Block.)
And here’s the poll–thanks for voting!
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Department of Alarming iPhone Error Messages
Okay, I just plugged my iPhone 3G into its sync cable, and got this message in iTunes:
Pretty alarming, no? And vague–what does “not recognized” mean? Why is it talking about activating the phone for service, when I activated it the morning that iPhone 3Gs went for sale? Why does it suggest that I travel to an Apple Store for more information? There’s nothing that Apple’s knowledge base could tell me? What’s with the little padlock in the upper right-hand corner?
Postscript: Rather than making plans to visit an Apple Store, I unplugged the cable, then reconnected it. My iPhone is fine, and I’m relieved…but still puzzled.
Anyone else ever see this?