The Book Cult of Mac by Leander Kahney

I have always been an Apple fanatic, but see, it’s not my fault. I was thrust into the computer age at the very young age of five, I think.

My father is a school teacher and he purchased an Apple two-plus for the house. The next couple years were a vast experience of syntax errors and catalog commands. I had to learn simple programming terms if I wanted to play any videogames.

As I grew, I found a different company and another cult following of something even better: The Amiga 500. It was my only brush with another computer system and not a bright one, although it’s word processor and printer got me through college. It has some great games and awesome graphics, but my overall use for the power of this computer of that time was far lacking.

As I sought a career in photography and journalism I realized that I needed to get back to Mac, and through college I was introduced to the iMac.

I graduated college and moved to Yellowknife. It was their I picked up my first Mac from a friend for $500. It was a great steal and allowed me to work from home and connect to the Internet, it was also nice to see Steve Jobs back on board.

My Amiga 500

And while I did occasionally use a windows machine, I still loved my Mac and how it was so simple to use. I was blown away when a friend of mine had upgraded to OSX but I knew my iMac couldn’t handle it. So I had to wait for the new OS.

Go East and find thy Jaguar

I left the North with my iMac and moved to the Prairies of Manitoba where my new job had me on a G4. Although it had the processing power it was still classic. This was all the power anyone could ever need, right?

I noticed more friends were ditching their spyware riddled window machines for the new, sleek and cool iMac and something called the iPod. While I decided to leave full-time employment and freelance my new laptop went on a safari and found a Jaguar (OSX v10.2).

I decided to move back to Vancouver and it seemed that everyone had an iPod. My laptop was showing its age and the 10-gig hard drive was barely enough to process files of today’s digital life.
As I reached the 30-something and ventured into a new career as a web designer, I found that the Mac is not perfect for everything and Mac still had a lot of work to convince the masses. But the tide was turning, the stable Intel chip was part of the process.

While my need grew from a 12-inch iBook to a 17-inch MacBook Pro, I also love the new chip and new power. I am left with a few questions for my fellow Mac cult members.

My 17" Macbook Pro

I have always loved my Apple for being the little quite guy in the corner who knew all the answers, just very few paid attention or cared. But now that people are flocking to the Mac and Apple is also the undisputed king of digital music, will they still be that friendly little (well not so little) company who make great products, have great customer service and a loyal cult following?

If we don’t remember History are we doomed to repeat it?

I remember a coffee shop that used to have great customer service and a loyal cult following. Unfortunately, it thought it could monopolize the market and lower quality and no one would care. Well I’d say you take a look at the Starbucks share price and tell me different.

Also, what is the difference between Howard Schultz telling me how I like my coffee to Steve Jobs telling me how I want to use my computer? Well essentially, there isn’t. And how are computers and coffee related? They are both related to the Customer Experience.

While Apple is riding the wave of great usability and Apple stores are opening up world wide to huge crowds and fan fair, can Apple really keep its loyal fan base while appealing to the mass-market consumer? Starbucks is having to close stores, retrain staff and look to save its reputation with the customers it still has left.

In an article written in wired magazine.

How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

Author Leander Kahney speaks about how Steve Jobs can rarely, if ever, give interviews. He never tells people when products are released, and released hardware and software locks down in propriety software and then people are told to sign a multi-year contract with one company or another. Yet Apple still wins over thousands of customers, which says something about how this one company is still doing everything right.

But if Shultz walked up and told me what coffee to buy or how to buy it and, oh yeah, sign this multi-year contract if you want to drink our coffee, I’d tell him to shove it.

So I will line up with the other members of this cult as that little company from Cupertino opens its latest Apple Store in Downtown Vancouver (Pacific Centre Mall, 701 West Georgia Street, Saturday May 21, 10:00am). I am still its biggest fan and avid user. But I only worry that if all the hype of a store opening and all the pomp and circumstance of a MacWorld will ever succeed the value of what is really important: the quality of the product.

]]> http://robertdall.com/blog/2008/05/21/once-you-go-mac/feed/ 0 http://robertdall.com/blog/2008/04/03/podcasting-the-future-of-radio/ http://robertdall.com/blog/2008/04/03/podcasting-the-future-of-radio/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:21:02 +0000 Robert http://robertdall.wordpress.com/?p=31

CBC Radio is branching out into social media

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) is increasingly putting all shows in podcast format, and even putting hourly news in podcast format for download. When Apple released their podcast friendly iTunes they looked to CBC to help promote their product.

“iTunes said you guys are one of view few music podcasts out their can we promote. For the first month they promoted the hell out of it and it gave us a really good start … Apple has been really good at it (podcasting) and they have been a huge factor in our success. In raising awareness that we are doing (podcasting) and we have been a fairly good market colleage for them.”
~ Steve Pratt, January 24, 2008 – Director CBC radio digital programing and CBC Radio 3 ~

CBC Radio 3 has made the most of it's online profile

They started in earnest two years ago and now, according to iTunes Podcast Directory, hold many of the top podcasts in Canada. CBC radio is only federally mandated to provide advertising time to candidates in either a provincial or federal election. They have no other mandate to sell advertising to on any of their radio programing.
However, just a year after they starting podcasting most of their radio shows, all podcasts are now sponsored before the start of the program. Steve Pratt – head of CBC Radio three and CBC Radio digital programing explains why the advertising is needed.

“Our License is only for terrestrial radio, so AM and FM broadcasting. And that is written into our mandate that we have to be commercial free for that. But that is where all our funding is directed as well, so all the government funding is directed towards terrestrial radio.”
~ Steve Pratt, January 24, 2008 – Director CBC radio digital programing and CBC Radio 3 ~

To fund the podcasting that was coming from CBC Pratt had to dip into the special programming fund and while that was ok when it was experimental and new as podcasting as it was going to be called became more mainstream, CBC had to find a way to fund the extra resources needed to make it’s shows available in a digital format.
The bandwidth was another issue for CBC but beyond that producers where puting a lot of resources to make the shows podcast friendly.
And while this might be easier for a local radio station to do CBC has 35 different locations across the country that both produce national and regional programing. It is a major shift of technology moving from a proprietary file format that is somewhat archaic to a MP3 friendly and more robust digital format.

“What we are implements and rolling out across the country is a program that is more MP3 friendly which requires less man ours and then using a content management system to deliver all the show to the various servers where our shows are hosted. For a broadcasters as large as the CBC it is a large rollout to producers across the country.”

“We rather look at ourselves as content creators rather then radio programers. We will find some really interesting extensions from the radio show that find themselves on a web or on a phone, it provides a really rich show experience which allows you to pick the way you want to get into it.”
~ Steve Pratt, January 24, 2008 – Director CBC radio digital programing and CBC Radio 3 ~

Spark is a CBC Radio show about technology

From expats who live around the world to Canadians who have moved across the country and still want news from their home town CBC is providing it’s listeners more way to connect and in return the national broadcaster is more relevant and has a higher listening audience.
Which really isn’t to far from the CBC’s original mandate when CBC radio went live back in November 2, 1936.

“It is pretty great. The feedback we have gotten about podcasting that is. It is really is remarkable what we hear from audiences is that as a broadcaster we need to be there. Because that is what Canadians want from us, And that our mandate is to provide programing to Canadians about Canadians for Canadians.”
~ Steve Pratt, January 24, 2008 – Director CBC radio digital programing and CBC Radio 3 ~

Podcasting is a new media where anyone can produce content and anyone can watch that content on a variety of devices, whether the business models of Podshow Inc. are a viable long term the next five years will be a very interesting time.

This America Life

This American Life is a radio program and produced by Public Radio International and WBEZ in Chicago, Ill. They are constantly a top rated podcast for both United States and Canada according to iTunes. But the popularity of this podcast has come at a price for the producers of this award winning show.

The bandwidth costs for the website thislife.org and feeds coming from the show is approximately $150,000 a year. This is a extra cost to the show that they don’t charge listeners for, they feel the show is more popular and better for it. The show is sponsored by Volkswagen and is casually mentioned at the end of the show, But according to Seth Lind, Production Manager for This American Life it is solely the users of the podcast who pay for the use of it. In his eyes it is a luxury to listen to the show when ever and where ever and twice a year there is a giving campaign by the show to collect funds from the podcast listeners.

“It’s true, last year we paid $152,000 for streaming and podcast bandwidth. The good news is, we recently added a fundraising message to our podcast, and in just two weeks we were able to raise enough money to pay for the whole year. It’s really heartening to know that listeners will step up and pay for something that they care about. We knew that with the pledge drive; that’s how public radio survives. But this shows that people value the ability to time-shift content enough to pay for the luxury. Given our podcast subscriber base, the bandwidth cost is less than 50 cents per person per year, so with any kind of serious participation, people don’t have to give much.”
~ Seth Lind, January 14, 2008 – Production Manager – This American Life ~

Part four will cover the future of podcasting and audio recording

iTunes 4.9 now with podcasting

Immediately after the release of iTunes 4.9, some podcasters saw a triple and quadruple subscription to their podcast. Finally users could automatically download podcast and sync them directly with their portable device.

Apple is certainly not the inventor the podcast nor do they produce much content in the way of podcasting. But what they do and do very well is a place where the normal joe can in one click pick podcast and be able to consume when you want how you want. All the back end is provided by the podcaster and apple is only providing the directory to find it.

A lesser used podcast icon

iTunes is also not the only directory for podcasts but it is certainly one of the biggest and it is a huge selling point for Apple to have this free directory available on their store.

But many podcasters suffered from their own success after Apple delivered podcasting to the mainstream, the bandwidth needed to keep up with demand became an increasing problem for some podcasters.

Claims by many service providers that they had unlimited bandwidth were met with anger and frustration by the like of Tikibartv.com a humors podcast about friends and cocktails. It was at one point the number one podcast in the United States, but keeping that number one spot was met with a lot of frustration as Kevin Gamble writes about in the tiki forum.

Kevin Gamble plays Johnny Johnny on Tikibar TV

“I gotta be honest, when we started hunting for bandwidth, all sorts of places looked good (and we tried a few cheap ones in desperation) and by the time we got to Libsyn, I was a little jaded – lots of sites say “UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH!” but then they have this fine print that usually says “note: unlimited bandwidth does not include files of any kind”. Or something. So when we found Libsyn, I was like “suuuure, unlimited. We’ll see how long THAT lasts”. Well, we’re still here, and Libsyn hasn’t pulled the plug yet. So that’s why I’m plugging THEM. Because they’re nice and they keep us streaming! So if you want to start that all important cat-podcast… or… catcast… check out Libsyn No, we’re not sponsored. They’re just really nice guys and if they go offline we’ll be real sad.”
~ Kevin Gamble, November 20, 2005 Plays “Johnny Johnny” Head Bartender at the Tikibar tv ~

Podshow Logo circa 2008

The industry responded by the creation of podcasting networks, Adam Curry, now named the godfather of the podcast, started one in October 2004 called Podshow Inc. (rebranded to the name Mevio in 2008) In August 2005 Podshow Inc. was given 8.85 millions dollars in venture capital and with in 12 months Podshow Inc. had raised 15 million in venture capital. These numbers aren’t small potatoes anymore, but what Podshow Inc. and many others have done is allowed husband and wife podcast teams like Geekbrief.tv to operate out of their own home and provided with server and bandwidth issues along with selling advertising to the show and providing support for sponsors.

Geekbrief.tv is based in Dallas, Texas and is operated by Luria Petrucci (aka Cali Lewis)and her Husband Neal Campbell out of their apartment. They use normal AT&T Broadband from home and work off MacPro’s in the home studio and the MacBook Pro on the road.

Luria Petrucci aka Cali Lewis

Cali Lewis is not her real name but both her and Neil thought they would have a problem with people remember and knowing Luria Petrucci. It is hard to know where Luria stops and Cali begins, but the podcast is created around a theme of the Cali Lewis presenting Geek Brief tips through the Geek Intelligence Agency, which is more or less the viewership of the show.

But that is really where the fantasy stops and the news broadcast begins; to be a show which bring happy shinny technology news to it 200,000 to 300,00 views four times a week for approximately 3 years which has developed into solid and creditable following around the world. The couples next project is to take their podcasting show on the road covering all 50 states (Don’t worry they are flying to Hawaii) in something called the big trip.

Part three will cover the cost of podcasting

First generation ipod October 2001

In the ever evolving world of digital media, podcasting is at the forefront of this current media revolution. People are consuming more and more information from the media on a daily basis, but most are missing their regularly scheduled program.

Yet, most are still able to watch their current shows, catch up on the latest tech news and serve up the best content then can through podcasting.

For those who don’t know what podcasting is, or where it got its name, well, you can thank Steve Jobs for some of that.

When he unveiled the iPod in October 23, 2001 it was heralded as an ultra portable device in a portable age; and the word iPod rolled off the tongue as easy as money flowed into apple coffers. It fit well into its strategy of iMac, iBook, brands. Podcasting borrowed from the name in that: one, it was portable and two, it was broadcasting or media. The name didn’t infringe on any trademarks owned by Apple and gave them free advertising.

Adam Curry speaks at Gnomedex

Originally, podcasting was just in audio format and it was audio that had already been recorded and was now available for download on the internet. You had to, however, download each and every episode or file yourself and you were never really told when a new version of your favorite show was available. RSS feed syndication had been invented by Netscape in 1999 and was in use, podcasting, didn’t have widespread usage. Although podcasting now uses the RSS feed syndication thanks to Adam Curry who first made podcasting viable format of delivery.

But it was still difficult to get your podcast on your ipod. There were some applications (eg. iPodder was one, but is now named Juiced after a cease and desist letter from Apple over trademark license infringement) and most early adopters were tech savvy enough to make it work, but mainstream usage was still far away.

Part two will cover the ethics of podcasting