Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, two long-time newspaper men with the Washington Post, heading into an ad break for their ESPN program, Pardon the Interruption, on Monday, May 23, 2011 [mp3]:
TK: Here’s whats over: boxing and newspapers.
MW: Yeah. Maybe not in that order.
TK: And horse racing.
MW: And horse racing!
The Daily is an iPad-only news source. The iPad runs iOS exclusively. iOS has never and likely will never run Flash. So why does The Daily have Flash-only video anywhere?
(Is video uploaded directly to Tumblr — as opposed to a YouTube embed — played back in Flash instead of something mobile-friendly?)
The candy jar on Daniel Victor’s TBD.com desk
Daniel Victor’s How TBD’s candy jar is a seamless metaphor for news site participation
So my new mission was to create a sustainable, crowdsourced candy jar operation, beneficial to all but cumbersome to none. To do this, it’s not enough to simply rely on your reputation as the desk where everyone can find candy. Emotional appeals and guilt-pushing wouldn’t work, as that would simply turn people off. No, you have to give them non-financial incentives to participate.
I’ve been using an iPad for a few weeks and it has replaced my laptop PC for a lot of things: web surfing, Twitter, reading RSS feeds, watching video.
For these, it’s better than anything else I’ve ever used: my workhorse desktop at work, my personal laptop, my “Internet tablet,” my Android phone. It’s comfortable to use and easier to read on. I don’t have to be plugged in, and it’s battery lasts longer than I need.
But there remains a big gulf between the world in which “post-PC devices” exist and a post-PC world. There are many simple things that I, irritatingly, still need a PC for.
I don’t mean specialized video editing and transcoding, multimedia production, or coding, either. I mean pretty light-weight tasks.
An example: Every week, I take a simple CSV file, open it in a spread sheet, delete some columns, modify the formating of the dates and save it as a plain text file which I e-mail to a weekly newspaper. Every week, I have to turn on my PC for this specific, straight forward task. (My phone can handle the e-mailing of the plain text file more easily than the iPad.)
And, of course, before you can use Apple’s new magical post-PC device, you have to plug it into a PC running iTunes.
Clearly the iPad is a success; with sales of 15 million devices and $9.2 billion, and the spawning of competing tablets (some of which have actually shipped to customers), there can be no argument that Apple has produced a huge hit with the iPad. But the limits Apple places on iOS itself prevent it from taking us all the way to a post-PC world.
Update: This gets at the marketing-buzz-word-iness of “post-PC”:
When it becomes possible for the most studliest of power users to do their work with an iPad or other tablet of their choice, it won’t be because you can no longer run Microsoft Office and Photoshop on your desktop. It’ll be because you can run them or full-featured equivalents on the tablet.
And when you can run them better on the tablet—no compromises—then “post-PC” won’t be a marketing buzzword anymore.
I’ve been reading The Daily, the iPad-native magazine, for the last few weeks, at least flipping through it almost daily. I find it a nice take on tablet news reading, though not without frustrations or room for improvement—it is still version one after all.
Others have shared their thoughts on The Daily. Here are mine. (I also provided these to the staff there.)
There is yet another Android device saying the advertised Flash support won’t be available until “after launch.” This is embarrassing.
I like Android. I don’t hate Flash. But both Adobe and mobile hardware makers need to come to terms with the fact that Flash and mobile devices are not friends and may not be friends until it’s too late to make any difference. My Android phone supports Flash, but I have long since uninstalled it and haven’t really missed it. My iPad doesn’t support Flash and I haven’t really missed it. There are millions of devices using the Web that do not support Flash. These people are getting along just fine and are, in fact, buying more devices that do not and will not support Flash. I’m convinced that the only people who see Flash on a mobile device as a something desirable are those that have only used Flash on their PC.
So my totally unsolicited advice to mobile hardware makers: stop using Flash as a selling point against iOS devices. It’s been difficult to deliver on time, with smooth-playing video or playable games. Never mind whatever effect it has on battery life. If you can add it, great, but stop razzing Apple by promising something you can’t deliver. It’s pathetic.
Adobe and some hardware maker may, eventually, build a mobile device that can display Flash well, but by the time they do, the world of content providers (and, along with them, consumers) will have moved on.
The phrases “fail” and “epic fail” appear all over the place. Yet, they are so ugly and say so little.
Let’s do better. Please.
The media world is on fire with news that Apple is finally allowing subscriptions in iOS apps! I want in, too, so here’s Apple’s press release and my blow-by-blow commentary.
CUPERTINO, California—February 15, 2011—Apple® today announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store℠, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. This is the same innovative digital subscription billing service that Apple recently launched with News Corp.’s “The Daily” app.
Cupertino is where Apple is headquartered. Cupertino is headquartered in California. At least today, Feb. 15. (Note to journalism students: this is called a dateline, despite its emphasis on place.)
Subscriptions purchased from within the App Store will be sold using the same App Store billing system that has been used to buy billions of apps and In-App Purchases. Publishers set the price and length of subscription (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly). Then with one-click, customers pick the length of subscription and are automatically charged based on their chosen length of commitment (weekly, monthly, etc.). Customers can review and manage all of their subscriptions from their personal account page, including canceling the automatic renewal of a subscription. Apple processes all payments, keeping the same 30 percent share that it does today for other In-App Purchases.
Apple continues to try branding generics (note the capital letters): App Store, In-App Purchases, Publishers, Customers. Don’t try to use these terms without Apple’s permission. One-click is, apparently, a compound adjective and different than a single click in Apple’s usage. Apple likely didn’t call it One Click because Amazon has patented the amazing innovation that is clicking a button to buy something. And I’m still unclear about who picks the length of the subscription: the publisher or the consumer.
“Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers.”
Nearly a third of a subscription price seems like a hefty amount to charge publishers for reselling subscriptions. Maybe junior-high students would be pleased with such a cut (in my day, we were given little colored cotton balls with feet and eyes glued on). But don’t worry, it’s just a philosophy so — oh it’s a take-it-or-leave it philosophy? Hmmm. Don’t forget, subscribing for things is innovative. Or maybe it’s just the charging for subscriptions? Or maybe that’s just a word Apple likes to attach to as many things it does as possible.
Publishers who use Apple’s subscription service in their app can also leverage other methods for acquiring digital subscribers outside of the app. For example, publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their web sites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple. Publishers must provide their own authentication process inside the app for subscribers that have signed up outside of the app. However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.
Leverage? Whatever. And “publishers may no longer provide links in their apps which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app”? Anyway, remember when the iPad going to save the old print philosophy model? LOL.
Protecting customer privacy is a key feature of all App Store transactions. Customers purchasing a subscription through the App Store will be given the option of providing the publisher with their name, email address and zip code when they subscribe. The use of such information will be governed by the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s. Publishers may seek additional information from App Store customers provided those customers are given a clear choice, and are informed that any additional information will be handled under the publisher’s privacy policy rather than Apple’s.
“Here,” says Apple, “have a bone. A small bone.”
The revolutionary App Store offers more than 350,000 apps to consumers in 90 countries, with more than 60,000 native iPad™ apps. Customers of the more than 160 million iOS devices around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.
“Can we use ‘innovative App Store’?”
“No, I don’t think so. What’s the thesaurus got?
“How about ‘revolutionary App Store’?”
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
“How about ‘digital music revolution’?”
“Too techno-y?”
“Look, dude, I’m just trying to go home.”
Press Contacts:
LOL. Like you’ll get a call back.
Janet Coats’ Changes at TBD show Godzilla just keeps winning
Apologies for blockquoting 50 percent of the original post, but there were so many media metaphors I couldn’t help it. — Nick
Bill Clinton
I don’t envy the folks at TBD.com, especially those in leadership positions.
I’ve been in that awkward position of trying to balance my journalistic obligation to truth-telling with my fiduciary responsibilities as a company manager. Even when you hew strictly to the facts in those situations, the nuance comes out as a painful parsing. You feel like Bill Clinton, clinging to the definition of “is’’ as your last line of defense.
Julius Caesar
Take it from those of us who’ve been on the front line of that culture war: Old media won. While TBD the Product may survive for a while, TBD the Culture is as dead as Julius Caesar.
Mating Godzilla and Mothra
A decade ago, when I was about the business of trying to integrate print and television newsrooms, I kept saying that the effort was a lot like trying to get Godzilla and Mothra to mate. These two beasts just weren’t destined to come together and form a common culture. The best you could hope for was cooperation.
An immune system
I think we can claim some very limited success at shifting the culture in those hybrid print/television/online newsrooms in Sarasota and Tampa. But the truth is that every time we started to push the organization around the next turn, those powerful legacy media cultures fought back. Triggered like an immune system, the impulse to timidity would kick in. And usually, we’d actually lose a little ground in the process.
Fragile shoots
So the green shoots get stepped on and ground out. And the leadership keeps clinging to models that creak and groan and show every sign of giving out.
Android’s conscientious users are the same people who choose to run Linux on their desktops, said Dan Benjamin in a discussion with John Gruber on the latest episode of The Talk Show.
Now, this is nothing more than total annecdotal evidence that doesn’t prove anything, but this I found it interesting: A discussion on a normal, non-techy friend’s Facebook wall asking “iPhone or Droid. Which way does this current BlackBerry girl go?” (I’ve removed names and some off-topic responses.)
So 12 answers, only of which are three pro-iPhone. It’s a glimps into the way normals think about Android (which they don’t think of as “Android” but, rather, as Verizon’s “Droid” branding of Android). Also interesting was the comment a non-geek made away from keyboard about being unable to figure out his s0n’s “iTouch,” the term for an iPod Touch that instantly labels the user as a non-geek, while at the same time having no trouble navigating and using his own “Droid” phone.