Being an avid Mac user articles and other forms of media that pertain to Apple ALWAYS spark my interest.

The past week two articles got my attention. How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong , and Breaking The Rules: Apple Succeeds By Defying 5 Core Valley Principles, both by Leander Kahney.

Apple has been doing everything right by doing everything wrong. Period. They definitely don’t act like any other large corporation. Where as every other large corporation has produced products to suit many different companies and applications, Apple in all its wisdom, saw the opportunity to grab an extremely large target market by becoming self sufficient. By producing products that work amazingly well (and rightly so) with their other products Apple has been able to increase their revenue with products like the iPhone, iPod etc… without the need to outsource much of their products.

Leander Kahney was able to come up with Apple’s unofficial principles that make Apple who they are:

1. COOPERATEValley RuleEmbrace open platforms. Software should be decoupled from hardware so users can access any program or data from any device. Example: Google’s Android, an operating system that will run on a variety of handsets from different manufacturers.Apple RuleDesign software to work on your own hardware — and not on anyone else’s. The OS X experience is made only for the Mac; iPhone apps function only on iPhones. And customers don’t seem to mind. Apparently, they’re willing to trade freedom for a kick-ass product.2. COMMUNICATEValley RuleTell your fans what you’re up to so they feel a connection to your company. Hiring difficulties? New strategies? Digestive problems? Blog ‘em! Customers will feel more invested and more loyal. Plus, their comments could give you some good ideas.Apple RuleNever talk to the press. Shut down rumor blogs. Threaten to sue children who send you their ideas. Never leak product news until you’re ready to announce it. Then use that discipline to create buzz and win coverage with every announcement.3. PLAY NICEValley RuleDon’t exploit your market-leader status. Software should compete on its merits, not its ability to shut out rivals. Microsoft earned an antitrust suit and decades of ill will by muscling PC makers into bundling its operating system and browser onto their machines.Apple RuleHardball tactics rule! Every Mac is preloaded with iTunes, which becomes the user’s default music program. And most iTunes purchases can be played only on iPods, creating a closed loop that has proven tough for competitors — and music labels — to challenge.4. LOVE YOUR CUSTOMERSValley RuleMake sure to lavish affection on your clients, and try to ensure that every one of them has a positive experience. Anyone can post a withering review on Yelp or Amazon, so you can’t afford to let a single complaint go unaddressed.Apple RulePlease yourself, not your fans. Release iMacs without floppy drives. Release MacBook Airs without optical drives. Cut the price of an iPhone by $200 two months after its introduction; when early adopters complain, offer them a $100 gift certificate.5. CODDLE YOUR EMPLOYEESValley RuleSince the best ideas bubble up from within the ranks, encourage autonomy by allowing workers free time to focus on their personal projects. Also, shower them with perks like free food and massages to make them feel special.Apple RuleMotivate through fear. Don’t be afraid to scream. Threaten to fire them. Withhold praise until it’s truly deserved. Go ahead and bring them to tears. As long as you can inspire them with your sense of mission, they’ll consider this the best job they’ve ever had.

Some of these rules/principles may seem harsh and may be over exaggerated.

Apple’s customer service is second to none. They treat people like people. Casual and easy to talk to, it makes you want to call customer service just to have a chat.

Its not news to anyone that Apple (or Steve Jobs) is extremely secretive. But this works to their advantage. By not talking to the press or leaking any information about upcoming advancements in technology or products, Apple is able to control a lot of information about them. By only announcing new technologies about a product days before its release, they are able to create incredible amounts of hype, and really know how to get everyone talking.

Apple’s corporate model is definitely one of a kind, but incredibly risky. Maintaining this model will make Apple a powerhouse, however if another company tried to adopt it, it would lead to imminent failure.

There has been a lot of coverage regarding successful companies like Google and Apple who have climbed the ladder of success using business models contrary to the traditionally proven models. Now that these companies are becoming more successful, other companies are beginning to emulate them, or are in the process of investigating how to become like them. A main component of this recent recognition stage is the documentation of these companies. Wired published an article on how Apple made it’s way to the top by breaking every rule. Siva Vaidhyanathan , media scholar at the Univeristy of Virginia, is in the process of writing a book called The Googlization of Everything. Also, Jeff Jarvis has recently been contracted to write a book about Google’s business strategy relating it to other businesses and industries, aptly named: WWGD – What Would Google Do? It is expected to be published next spring.

The method in which these publications are being or intended to be distributed is also relevant. Should the author choose methods analogous to the digital age which it is being written about, or by traditional paper-based methods? Jeff Jarvis is choosing to write his novel  book by taking and exploring topics covered in his blog, and getting as much input as possible from viewers. Using a discussioned based approach, Jarvis wishes to incorporate topics and comments which come about from this course of peer-review. Jarvis believes this approach will be more valuable to him, rather than posting finished chapters and asking for his readers’ reactions.

When the novel book is published, Jarvis intends to make it available solely in the form of a physical paper-based book. The writing process and development of the book will still be available on his blog. There was some commentary on his post announcing the contract, which believed that a PDF format release would be more appropriate to correspond to the material content, however Jarvis is opposed to this method of distribution. The reason why Jarvis is choosing to publish his book on paper, is that he wishes to “freeze-dry” the content of the digital age which he frequently discusses on his blog and thus make it available to an audience of readers who do not utilize his blog.

 With the rising popularity of publication moving online, will Jarvis’ book become lost amongst other innovative business model books? Unlikely. By incorporating a peer-aid writing process, Jarvis’ book will likely become a success. The comments on his contract announcement post were all offering positive congratulations and generous offers of help. Everyone seems to be in agreement with his book and wish to help join in the writing process, just as the peer process dictates.

So, should other authors take notice of methods which are being used to create works in the digital age? Yes! It will not only help ease the writing process itself spawning numerous ideas and topics which one author probably wouldn’t have given prior thought too, but it also opens up the potential to reach a larger market through increased distribution. The internet can reach more people than the bookstore down-street ever could!

While searching the Wired site for the article we were assigned last week, I came across apart of the site set up in a wiki format called “Wiki How-to Wiki”. It offers techie how-to’s on all kinds of topics. Here’s a couple:

Save YouTube Videos on Your Hard Drive

Watch YouTube on Your iPod

Watch Higher Quality YouTube Videos

Find Lost Web Pages

Make a Local Backup of Your Hotmail Account

Create Your Own Font

 Make Your Blog Popular

I just thought this site was really interesting to scroll through. If it continues to grow I imagine every hack available will be archived here. Enjoy!

Chris Andersen’s Wired post really made me think. What exactly these days constitutes free? In my honest opinion, everything has a price, whether are not you are paying it directly or not.

It cannot be denied, the web is in a sense a commercialized gateway to the entire world. If you take the ability to make money off the world wide web, it falls apart. While many of us use services like Google or Gmail daily for free, SOMEONE out there in cyberspace is paying for our usage. It is the advertisers on Google that make it successful. If there are no advertisements, there is no income, and if there is no income, there is no money. If they have no money they can’t operate, and Google is dead. It isn’t free to run that company, their computing and intellectual resources cost millions of dollars yearly.

Google is a fantastic example. Likely millions of people use it daily, yet no one pays for the right to use it. For us, it is free, but that is just a benefit most of us take for granted in this Web 2.0 world we live in. We as a society need online commerce and business just as much as the companies who run the sites need it to reach their financial goals, because really these sites MAKE the world wide web what it is today.

In terms of consumer products available for free online, I am still sticking by my title of this post: Nothing is free these days. Personally, I think you can think of it in two ways:

1. You are either paying shipping costs or some membership fee of some sort.
2. Even in the case like the free ebook from Oprah, many are likely to continue buying this authors works.

Those are two examples I can think of. I think in 90% of all cases, if you get something “free” you really are paying for it someway or somehow.

My personal favorite example of this are the “pyramid” free iPod deals. Sure at the end of the day you may get an iPod you didn’t pay for, but at what cost? You likely had to sign up for a few offers that had to pay for, then you had to recruit friends to do the same. The companies who you signed up for paid for it. Like my previous Google example, “It’s not free, someone else paid for it.”

The Internet is intriguing in that sense. Overall, it seems free. You could entertain yourself for days and not pay for it, but like i’ve said countless times in this post “Nothing is really free.”

-dc

   Chris Anderson’s popular Wired article, Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business, covered the various characteristics of free in relation to our ever-growing technology savvy society. One of the areas discussed stated that the question surrounding infinite storage was not if it would happen but when it would happen. And the answer is that it is already here, it’s just not all online services choose to embrace it. However the ones which have choose to embrace infinite storage, like Yahoo, are profiting from cooperation and collaboration with what their consumers want and will find a way to get. Other increasingly prevalent obstacles to the digital environment today, like free music, bandwidth, and processing power, are being considered by dominant firms like Google and in-turn are profiting the most from the predicament. It may appear to be free to the user, but someone else is picking up the tab; whether it is the company offering the “free” product, or the rule of 1% which claims that 1% of users support the remaining 99% through advertisements. Companies are no longer specializing in selling products, but selling advertisements or cheaper products which entice the consumer to purchase something else located in their store.

         The first example I came across of a company, other than Yahoo, offering unlimited mail storage to its clients, was Verizon. Verizon Communications Inc., an internet service provider, announced it now plans to help its users download shared files quicker by collaborating with file-sharing software makers. This will increase download speeds for peer-to-peer files by an estimated 60%. Before most internet service providers would ban, block, or greatly slow down peer-to-peer file sharing, thus discouraging it, but as Chris Anderson’s article suggests, the companies which embrace supporting free products will profit the most from it. Another aspect to create benefits for Verizon, is to alter the method which the files shared are delivered. Traditionally only 6.3% of the shared files would come from other users within close distance to the user. Verizon hopes to change this system to 58% locally derived files; through a system they are calling, P4P. This P4P trial would save the company money because when files are transferred from far distances like the remaining 93.7% of files, the ISP’s long distance carrying costs are higher than local.  Verizon is hoping to show ISPs that there isn’t a problem with P2P file sharing, but that it can be used to their advantages. File sharing accounts for 1/3 of all internet traffic, and by working with and not against the file sharing, Verizon hopes to create an advantage for themselves amongst the numerous internet service providers and set an example for other ISPs.

        In relation to infinite storage, I came across an alternative method to store your music files on a music server, instead of keeping the files on your computer. I think this is a great idea and definitely pertains to this topic. Let your data be stored digitally on a lone hard drive, or on an external drive, instead of your main computer drive. Creating your own private music server not only stores all your physical music saving shelf space, but also increases accessibility. You could access your music all over you house or connect the server to the internet and have access all over the world. Now this sounds a lot easier than dragging boxes of CDs around the world. A full version of the steps to creating your own music server is posted here.

        And it can even be done with the music in your iTunes library! It’s like serving up your own personal iTunes library, without iTunes.  I think the example of creating your own music server is an indication of potentially how music could be also distributed in the future. Companies selling digital music over the internet could take this finding into consideration, because if people are able to serve up music on the internet, its possible as another method of obtaining free music they could distribute it this way too.

In closing, I think Chris Anderson brought up a lot of excellent points regarding free; the most predominant being that it is only a matter of when free products will become globally acceptable and companies will stop fighting the consumer by embracing free and reaping the benefits already gained by some.

 Also as a side note…It seems that Radiohead is going to try and continue to ride the wave, requesting that fans create their own music videos for the In Rainbows album. Who needs to pay for making a video, when someone else can do it…for free. (actually, I lied…Radiohead plans on giving out a prize of $10,000) Here’s a link to an interview with David Byrne and Thom Yorke on Radiohead’s distribution strategy and what other companies and artists can learn from it. 

Reading Chris Anderson’s article from wired.com, shed a lot of insight onto how different businesses are developing a 0$ business plan, by offering many services and products for practically nothing. This has a lot to say regarding how different companies and markets are evolving to capture consumers minds everywhere.

After reading the article, there was one thing that stood out in my mind. From my marketing class that I took last semester we talked about pricing strategies. Not saying that companies GLOBALLY have adopted an experience pricing strategy (Where the longer you make a product you find cheaper/efficient ways of producing that product, thus forwarding the savings onto the consumer), although I believe this plays a role in why things are being able to be sold cheaper almost to the point of being free. Competitiveness. Companies are becoming more and more competitive to grab consumers from other companies, and because several aspects of their company (in storage, and other products that can be produced in mass quantity) have become cheaper to create, maintain, and obtain.

Webmail has been around since you first got your computer. Only once you signed up you were given a limited amount of memory in which to store your emails. Of course you were always given the opportunity to PURCHASE extra space at a monthy/or annual fee. This was how the companies gained a profit. However, with the ability to create more storage for less money, companies are now offering UNLIMITED storage for emails for free. How will they survive if they no longer charge for extra storage you ask? Take Yahoo! For example. If you have an email account with yahoo, you are more likely to use their other offerings such as search, IM, etc…. With more people drawn to their free unlimited storage, this would also increase the usage of their search engine etc… where other companies would be drawn to this customer base to advertise.

Cell phones are becoming more and more popular. Everyone goes through the hassle of researching monthly plans, phones that come with a plan etc… There are two things to discuss here. The cost of cell phone plans have stayed relatively the same over years, with phone companies gaining a lot of their income from users that go over their monthly limit on minutes, text messages etc… What has changed though is the number of calls you can make monthly. Each phone call you make has relatively no cost to the phone companies, therefore to stay competitive, they continue to increase the amount of minutes and/or text messages. For my first cell phone I was charged 25$ a month for 80 minutes. That’s right 80 minutes. That seems ridiculous if they offered a plan like that now. For the same price one can get a plan that has at least 100+ minutes. Again cell phone companies like to stay competitive.
With the ability to stay within your limit of phone calls and/or text messages how to cell phone companies gain income? If you’re unable to get a “free” phone with your plan, you’re looking at 80$ plus to have a decent phone, and if you don’t have a plan, you are looking at over 200$ for the phone of your choice.

Fred Wilson created a great term “Freemium”. This ties in with webmail, but applies largely to free applications. Many free applications are funded by advertisements, or restrictions on what you are able to do unless you purchase the “Pro” version. With this, companies that offer these such applications are able to make profits from other companies advertisements, especially if the application is powered by other users (ie Limewire, Kazaa etc..), and also make a profit from selling the “non-advertised” version.

The cost of music CDs has declined over time (I remember paying 20$ for a CD, when you can get CDs now for 12$ or even less). This could be attributed to many factors: rising demand of CDs over cassettes, the lower cost of producing a CD, or competition from downloads. The music industry is finally understanding that lowering the cost for music (for downloads mostly), is a great way to effectively reach many more people, and thus increasing the amount of sales for any given song.
In the future I KNOW we will see many more services, and products be offered for basically free of charge, even those services or products that we may have not been introduced to yet.