New iPod Shuffle defies “race to the bottom” First Take

For the third week in a row, Apple came out with a surprise announcement this morning. No it’s not a 10” netbook, think smaller. A lot smaller. Today’s news has to do with a revamped iPod Shuffle. When the Shuffle was introduced, it cracked the barrier for the $99 iPod and at the same time, re-defined the market for low end devices. The 2nd generation of Shuffle was even smaller and while still focused on the low end of the market, it also became a fashion accessory as well, designed to be clipped to clothes, something that had nothing to do with price. This dual world of the Shuffle is important to understand as the Shuffle has never just been about a “race to the bottom” to make the cheapest MP3 player for the moment. It’s always had a value and identity that brought its own value to the market.

Today’s 3rd generation Shuffle does that as well. It’s the smallest iPod Apple has ever made. If you can imagine, it’s about half as small as the prior generation. Yep, half as small. How did Apple manage that? Well, they’ve totally removed all the hardware controls off the device which is now totally controlled by the headphones, much as the iPhone and iPod Touch can be used in that manner. Apple’s also beefed up the capacity to 4gb so there’s now the capacity for 1,000 songs on your Shuffle. That presents a little problem. With no screen (much less no buttons) how does one navigate through 1,000 songs that is likely to be broken into different play lists? Here again, Apple has shown a novel approach and why this product isn’t just the cheapest in the line. Apple uses text to speech called Voice Over to allow users to hear what track and artist is being played and what the title of playlists are to navigate. It’s brilliant, works well and changes the way one interacts with their music player on the go. (I’d love to see this integrated into every other Apple music device). The magic is done through Eric, Apple’s best voice for Leopard OS. Non leopard users and Windows users can install a speech pack for a similar (if not quite as good an experience).

Old Shuffle will still sell for $49 and the new model comes in at a pretty affordable $79. In touch economic times, the challenge is to create products that are not only affordable but also have perceived value. New Shuffle purchases don’t have a stripped $79 iPod. They do have the smallest iPod on the market, that still delivers 10 hours of battery life and a cool new speech UI that doesn’t exist (yet) on the Shuffle’s more expensive family members. This is exactly the type of products that it makes sense for Apple to be working on.

Now, wonder what next Tuesday has in store for us? I’m pretty sure it won’t be a netbook, but that’s another story :)

When the simple becomes the complex

Bruce Tognazzini offers part II of his analysis of Apple’s technology. I thought the first part was a must read, Part II is even more so.

Kindle goes from device to platform

I suggested when Amazon launched Kindle 2, it would be a good idea for them to take the Kindle beyond a dedicated e-book reader and work to make it a platform

What Amazon most needs to do is make the Kindle a platform. Get content onto other devices like the iPhone ASAP so consumers can finally be taught how to read books and other long form content on mobile screens. At the end of the day as long as I”m buying my content from Amazon they should be cool with whatever device I’m reading it on (Even if they prefer I read it on a Kindle). This eco system push should have been part of today’s news. Bezos hinted at it when he talked about WhisperSync. It should have been explicit and part of today’s news.

Today’s news is that they’ve done just that. With the release of an iPhone Kindle App, the Kindle is now far more important than it was yesterday. While the Kindle hardware play isn’t dead, it’s important to remember that Amazon’s core business is selling books (and newspapers and magazines). The hardware was all about the content. Moreover, the $359 price point was too daunting to a lot of folks not familiar with the value proposition of the eBook. By leveraging the iPhone (and likely other devices) Amazon can allow users to begin to understand the notion of the eBook with little or no costs to them. Over time, many of them will opt for the premium experience of a larger screen, eInk and other features only found currently in the hardware version. For Kindle owners, it allows them to leverage their investment in content in places where it’s neither convenient or possible to carry the Kindle (waiting in line for example and using that time to read a few pages).

While there are other eBook readers in the iTunes store at the moment, some with more features than Amazon’s first offering, the Kindle app has now become the most important platform for eBooks in the market. If Amazon continues to leverage the strength of its offerings, we will see the emergence of a real mass market for eBooks and periodicals, something that has eluded the market for more than a decade.

Slacker ate my Blackberry

Yesterday, as I was trying to frantically escape the NY area to get to Seattle before the snow hit, I decided to try the offline cache mode of the Slacker Blackberry client. Seemed pretty straightforward. Tag the station you want cached, connect to a PC via USB (although why it won’t update over WiFi is a mystery to me) an voila, lots of interesting new content to listen to on the plane. Wrong. Fifteen minutes in Vista started telling me there were serious problems with the Blackberry drive. The processes locked up and the Blackberry was now a nice sickly shade of white. Killing the process and re-boot Blackberry and all will be right with the world? Wrong! Blackberry is now stuck on the white screen of death. I, of course have no recent backup, which doesn’t matter as I can’t get the Blackberry desktop to recognize there’s a device. Fortunately, I’ve been in this position before and a few hours later I had a working Blackberry again, albeit with no data, apps or the like. Thanks to an nearly four hour delay at the airport, I had time to get it mostly working again, with once exception. No more Slacker. This is about the worst hosing I’ve seen of any device due to a mobile app. Going to take it off my iPhone as well.