Steve Jobs has retired from his throne. A seat at the head of an engineering company who became the most valuable emporium with a designer as a king, as opposed to say… a software company with a royal …
somehow related
Intermediary who?
The music market is, from all the art industries, the one which has probably suffered more changes and (forced) evolutions in the distribution and PR models over the last decade. Bleeding labels, piracy issues, market monopoles, streaming services …
AICP show installation
The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) opened its annual program (this year in its 20th edition!!) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York last week with “The Art and Technique of the American Commercial”, …
↓ Apple or McDonalds?
One day walking down the street you see a massive banner with a shiny colourful thing on it, whether it’s the latest Macluxury or Appod you don’t remember, but it gets stuck into your brain. The following week you accidentally pass near a Mapple store and ask yourself … let’s give it a try…
You enter the restaurant yearning something that you got attracted to because of its nearly perfect visual marketing; trying to calm your wild satisfaction. Which menu will you choose?
McDonald’s products are appealing, desirable and even tasty but not consistent enough so you’ll start feeling hungry shortly after ending your meal. The thing is that Apple products (especially Ipods) are starting to feel like that…
While Apple may not be reducing its product’s lifespan, they’re certainly speeding up the replacement cycle so you end up buying or needing a new version many times only one year after your shopping.
The iPod is the perfect example of this “best before…” strategy.
By introducing at least a new Generation of iPod per year Apple has managed to convince their current users to buy the new version of their PMP using the “cool” factor. But do these seasonal device enhancements justify a new purchase?
The MacBook family Timeline is another example of this replacement and collection strategy. And while any ordinary consumer may accept to replace its 80 or 400 buck iPod, changing its $2000 Mac is definitely not a good choice even if Apple insists and tries to convince us to do so.
What Apple have done with the iPod is what most electronic companies have been trying for decades without any real success: make the consumer believe that such a disposable piece of plastic (or aluminium) has to be renewed yearly. Or in other words…. make consumers feel like spending hundreds of bucks worth only one year of music, or two years of graphic design…. make us think that portable devices get old even before they’re released.
Cool huh?
If we keep like this then disposable iPods will be real in just a few years, just like Vat-Grown Kobe Beef and Flintstones Ritalin imagined for the “2013 Happy Meal” (it includes a disposable iPod with a review of the Harriet Potter Saga!). From the “Found” stories @ Wired.
See you @ Rennes