The power of a dollar
Mar 3, 18:17
There has been a lot of talk about the new iPods and their lack of certain previously-included accessories. The iPod photo now comes without an AV cable or dock, and the mini ships sans AC adapter. Most notably missing are the Firewire cables from these products- all come with USB2 cables. There have been claims in internet-land that ‘Apple is moving away from Firewire’ or that Apple is ‘focusing its attention on the Windows’ market. For the record, the new iPods continue to function perfectly with Firewire connections. USB2 is just the default now, and the only one available without the purchase of additional components. Apple has made a business decision designed to increase profit.
I call it lame, mostly because of its implications for Mac users.
Regardless of my personal opinion, there are some perfectly good reasons for Apple’s move:
- USB2 is more common on PCs than Firewire
- The majority of new iPod owners are going to connect it to a PC
Apple made a decision to stop distributing the iPod with a Firewire cable based on these facts. It was probably a cost-reduction strategy, one that could save several million dollars depending on iPod sales. iPods have a particularly slim profit margin, so this makes sense. The majority of new iPod owners won’t realize they didn’t get a Firewire cable at all. So no big loss, right, and a few million in extra profit? Sounds good to any profit-driven organization.
If only it were that simple. There is a flip side, one which really screws anyone with a Mac older than a year (myself included):
- USB2 is a lot slower then Firewire on Macs
- USB2 has been standard on Macs for a little over a year
- iPods will function over USB1 but it is painfully slow
- A Firewire iPod cable sells for $19
Perhaps claims could be made that Apple is simply pushing technology forward the same way it did with the iMac by forcing adoption of new technologies. Planned obsolescence is not always a bad thing. With the iMac, Apple replaced old serial connections with USB, a bold move forward. Peripheral manufacturer, or at least those interesting in the Mac market, had to cater to the needs of iMac users as it was Apple’s fastest selling desktop. This meant producing USB devices. (It has been pointed out that the iMac was crippled by having no high speed expansion, which I agree with. This wasn’t rectified until Firewire was finally added to the entire line a few revisions later. Perhaps if it had been introduced sooner, it might be more common today. Perhaps not, though, as USB is Intel’s baby.)
The problem with the technology advancement theory is Firewire is a superior technology to USB2 for high speed data transfer. Apple’s recent move is distinctly different from its protocol shifts in the past because a less popular but superior technology was replaced with a more popular inferior one. The only motivation for such a shift in policy could be the financial implications of supporting two protocols using separate redundant hardware. Solution: axe the less popular one. Score one for the bottom line.
Apple was shipping Macs without USB2 a year ago (eMac), and six months prior to that the iBook, iMac, and PowerBook still had USB1. A few months earlier the G5 came out- the first PowerMac to tout USB2. This means there are a lot of Mac users with resonably-new Macs who can look forward to exceptionally crappy performance should they decide to purchase one of the new iPods- unless they shell out another $19. Even if you happen to have a brand spanking new Mac with USB2 labels all over it, you’re still going to get poorer performance than you would with either a PC and USB2 or Firewire and your Mac. Why? Ask Apple-it’s their USB2 that sucks.
At least a new iPod still kind of works under USB. (This is up for debate- copying even a single gigabyte over USB1 is not exactly something you pay $250 to enjoy. Good luck if you buy the photo version.) I can remember when I bought a Palm m100 in the mid-nineties. I had to order a special Mac adapter for it because it came with a dock equipped with a PC serial connection. A classic case of Mac-user-as-second-class citizen. There really is nothing like having to pay extra to use something the same way everyone else can. With the adoption of universal connectivity technologies, I had thought I’d seen the last of this scenario years ago. Back then it was always the third party screwing the Mac users. These days it’s an internal Apple responsibility.
When you buy an Apple product you are buying into the Apple brand, one based on elegance, simplicity, and user-friendliness. An identity also increasingly based on the ultimate marketing gold mine of being ‘cool’. Since long before iPods were technologically feasible, Mac users have been devoutly loyal to a company based partly on its technology and partly on buying into the brand. This loyalty is not completely logical, but somewhat understandable-Apple does make some good pieces of tech. But like pretty much anything else for sale in the tech market, the end of the affair occurs at the time of purchase.
The biggest problem with being so faithful to Apple is your loyalty is not reciprocated.