Creative Friday

I swear that Digital Audio Player (DAP) choice is becoming a more difficult subject to discuss with people than religion. People are positively insane when it comes to defending their DAP of choice. In some ways it reminds me of the Mac vs. Windows discussions but they are much more volatile. If you don’t believe me, just go to Engadget and look at any article discussing an iPod, a Zune, or a player by iRiver or Creative. What you’ll see in the comments is abhorrent.

I have a theory but it’s groundless. I’ll share it anyway.

For years when Microsoft Windows pummeled all other operating systems out of existence and almost killed the Macintosh, the anger in any given discussion was on the Mac side of the fence. People who liked Macs fiercely defended its superiority over Windows. And some Windows users would even concede that, yes, the marriage of software to hardware did make for a better experience but the mind-blowing market share of Windows meant that it simply didn’t matter. They could smugly point out that the OS they chose was winning and that the Mac was going to be put out of existence sooner than later.

In the DAP market, this is very much a flipped scenario. Although the iPod doesn’t have the market-share percentage in DAPs that Microsoft has achieved in operating systems it still has the ire of the people. Note: Last I checked the iPod accounted for around 70% of all DAPs sold in the US, compare that to roughly 90% of Windows installations. So now these same Windows people that have been arguing with these same Mac people find themselves on the other side of the fence. They kick and scream and vehemently deny that iPod is a superior product. They believe to their core that there are better solutions, especially when connecting to a Windows machine, that if people would only try them they would see how superior it was and it would swing the control back to their side of the camp. Both sides of this argument are guilty in some way. Mac people are guilty of being smug about Apple’s dominance and Windows people are acting like their universe is crashing in because people won’t listen to them.

I’ve tried to get into these discussions with people and point out that maybe if you like your Creative Zen Vision M then you should be happy with that. Why do you need to make fun of someone or put them down because they don’t share your point of view? Why do you feel the need to point out how many songs iTunes has sold when you’re trying to prove that an iPod is better than a Zune? None of this makes any sense. You like Creative? Great! The use it. You like an iPod? Great! Then use it. But that’s not how people feel about this issue and it’s getting to the point where we’re all going to have to keep our DAP preference to ourselves the way we do with our religions and our politics. It’s just too personal for most people.

The only thing more disturbing than the DAP debate is the next-generation video-disc debate.

From Tom Yager of InfoWorld:

You can reasonably argue that in the commercial space, Windows is always Windows plus Office, and that the combination exceeds Leopard’s core capabilities in many ways. Setting cost aside for now, what Office opens to the user does not improve their productivity when they step outside Office. Indeed, there is an entire industry dedicated to creating desktops that effectively boot into Office and hide Windows entirely because, from the standpoint of IT, giving desktop users the run of Windows adds nothing but trouble. This is the reason behind Vista’s failure to thrive: IT doesn’t want a pretty Windows; IT wants a thin and invisible one, one out of users’ reach. Over time, Microsoft has filled out Office to function as a user’s sole interface, not only to the system, but to the network and the services wired into it. It usually falls to IT to extend Office’s capabilities at the server layer, and at great expense.

As much as the idea of a PC booting to Office appeals to IT, the idea of a Mac booting to Office is patently absurd.

People should really read this article and try to absorb what he’s saying. Comparing Windows to Mac OS X is unfortunate because they are so fundamentally different.

I’ve read some bru-ha-ha about Apple having a monopoly in online music distribution and I would like to debunk some pretty strange ideas.

Locked In
If buying music through iTunes that has the DRM that only allows you to play your purchased music on an iPod or burn it to a CD is considered locking in, how is it OK for Microsoft to have a Zune Store and Zune that do exactly the same thing? From what I’ve read, it sounds like people are just trading one lock-in for another. If you truly believe this system is anti-consumer, and you aren’t just bashing the iPod because you hate Apple and hate it’s popularity, then how on Earth can you praise the Zune for doing the exact same thing?

DRM
Lest we forget that it was the Music Industry that wanted songs to be wrapped in DRM and not Apple. If the stories are true, Stevie J. tried in vain to get the labels to at least try to sell songs without any silly DRM on them. Had the music industry not forced Apple to wrap their music in DRM, this whole sordid tale would be completely different now. Think about it. If music from the iTunes Music Store (Now just iTunes Store) was without DRM then Apple would have no such lock-in worries that people have today. You could buy any device that could play AAC files, of which there are many, and play your music. And if Apple was so damn interested in keeping the so-called lock-in in place, why on Earth would they allow EMI or anyone else to sell DRM-free songs in the form of iTunes Plus? That goes against everyone’s assertion that they are trying to lock you to their iPod and their store. You can take the iTunes Plus tracks and play them on your Nokia phone, your Sony Ericsson phone or any other device that plays AAC. It’s your call. You. The consumer.

A True Monopoly
If this were 1998 and Microsoft hadn’t yet bent Netscape over the barrel, this is exactly what a true monopoly would do:

• Give manufactures like Dell, HP, and Gateway a heavy discount for putting the Zune Store on the Desktop and removing any other competition from the machine.
• If they don’t want the discount, threaten to not sell them Windows at all unless they put the Zune Store on the Desktop and remove any other competition from the machine.
• Give away a free Zune 4 with every PC purchased, losing money on each freebie given but ensuring that the world will then own a Zune and have used the Zune Store and thereby crushing all competition before there can even be any competition.
• Deny any music label the chance to sell anything DRM-free because you effectively have the lock-in you were after in the first place.
• Force everyone to purchase a subscription of which you get a monthly piece of the pie and stop selling songs outright. If you want to hear your music in the future, you must continue to pay for the subscription as long as you are alive.

Apple’s iTunes and iPod are not a monopoly. They have a large market-share but that is not what defines a monopoly. You can currently purchase an iPod, a Zune, a Sansa, a Creative device, a Nokia phone, a Sony Ericsson phone, a Motorola phone, an HTC device, or any number of devices to play MP3s on. You can also purchase music from eMusic, or AmazonMP3, or you can go to any store and buy a CD and rip the track into MP3 using any software and play it on your iPod or whatever device you so choose.

When you have that many choices and that many options, how is this a monopoly?

That title is an amalgamation of every story on the front page of Digg.com. That site has completely lost its way and is overrun by kids who think they understand the way the world works and spammers who are having a lot of fun learning how to make Web 2.0 suck just as much as Web 1.0.

What a shame.

Right now, I love TaskPaper by Hog Bay Software. It’s by far the best Getting Things Done (GTD) application I’ve used. Everything about the philosophy of Getting Things Done by David Allen rings true to me. But the philosophy gets lost in translation when moving to electronic applications for some reason. Every application I’ve tried has too much stuff to fiddle with which means you’re spending more time worrying about the system and less time getting things out of your head and into a system you trust.

I have tried kGTD for OmniOutliner, I’ve tried iGTD, and I’ve been beta-testing Omni’s new OmniFocus for the last several months. OmniFocus was close for me, but I didn’t like that I had to keep my OmniFocus file in the Application Support folder. I wanted to keep it on my iDisk so I could travel with my tasks. But there’s no way to do that in OmniFocus. iGTD is just way too over the top for my needs.

The best answer is often the simplest one. I started using TaskPaper and immediately bought a license. Like smarter people than me have already said, it provided a solution for a problem I didn’t know I had. Once I fired it up it became painfully obvious that my other methods were not working. I love the simplicity of it and I would like to thank the developer for getting back to basics.

If you use the GTD system, I would highly recommend giving this application a whirl.