Being Played? Flash, Music, and Manipulation – Wait-a-Thon
Rumor gets reported there will be Flash on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rumor gets reported there will be unlimited music on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rinse and repeat.
What’s going on? Why aren’t we getting these stories straight?
Turns out maybe these stories weren’t meant to be gotten. Turns out maybe these stories were meant to get us.
There was a time when media really was the fourth estate, when it reported the news. In something akin to the scientific method, media observed what was going on in the grand experiment that is society, looked for pattern and flaw, then contextualized it, gave it form and flavor, and broadcast it by mule and truck and cable and fiber to those who wanted or needed to know.
Now media is entertainment and is competing with itself and other forms of entertainment for your attention and your dollar. One of the ways to compete is to get mysterious “un-named sources” to give you the highly prized “sensational headline”. And instead of digging for these sources and convincing them to come forward, the anonymous sources now trip and push past each other to get to the reporters first. Why? Because controlling the story is important. Information is power and spin is leverage.
Okay, soap-box, what does this have to do with the iPhone? Two interesting and very similar blog posts emerged recently shedding new light on both the Flash and unlimited music stories that have been all over the web lately. Let’s take a look:
Flash first. GearLive heard it was good to go. Adobe said they didn’t know. Steve Jobs said not so much. Adobe’s CEO said the SDK would allow it. Then Adobe contradicted their own CEO. Is there really so much confusion? Is Adobe’s CEO really that tech un-savvy? Is El Jobso?
Robert Scoble (via Fake Steve) calls shenanigans on all of them:
Today I got a note from someone I know who works closely with Adobe and Apple. [...] He says that he’s seen Flash running on an iPhone in a lab and that it’s been running for quite a while and that it’s not a technical issue that caused Steve Jobs to go public about not putting Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone. [...] So, what’s the reason, according to my source? Adobe is playing hardball with Apple over their PDF renderer. “Adobe wants Apple to use the Adobe PDF renderer.” His thesis? Steve Jobs is playing hard to get to get Adobe to give up this demand.
Unlimited music next. The Financial Times reported that Apple, long hating on the subscription model, was doing an about-face and embracing unlimited music, only to have Business Week report the exact opposite the very next day. Both cited high placed sources. Both can’t be right, can they?
Matt Buchanan over at Gizmodo believes they can — if only by virtue of opposing manipulations:
The labels, particularly Universal, are known to be hot on a subscription deal, since it’d provide more reliable revenue from iPods [...] Apple, on the other hand, is already [earning revenue] with iTunes just the way it is. [...] Since the labels really want a subscription model, it makes sense that label sources would play it up to the press, giving them more leverage at the negotiating table by showing the heavy buzz/demand the rumor is generating. Apple-side sources would spin the opposite way, since—if they really were considering a subscription model—it would give them weight to push down the price, both what they’d give labels and what they’d charge us. And as both the FT and NYT have noted, price is likely to be the major sticking point.
Nate Anderson coverage on Ars Technica also reminds us that the manipulations aren’t just limited to Apple, Adobe, and the recording industry — iTunes competitors aren’t going to miss a chance to rattle the “monopoly” saber either:
The argument is a simple one. “Apple has a monopoly,” [eMusic CEO David] Pakman told me Friday, citing their US market share at 80 percent. Companies in that situation have to play by a “different standard,” especially when it comes to anything that could be construed as “tying” (recall that Microsoft was accused of exactly this sort of tying when it rolled new “features” like Internet Explorer into Windows and then had to deal with years of litigation). If every iPod comes with [the hypothetical service], that’s tying,” Pakman said. eMusic and others would certainly bring the matter to regulators’ attention.
Could they be right? Is whether or not the iPhone can run Flash academic? Is whether or not some consumers might want the subscription model just as irrelevant? Are Adobe, Apple, and Big Media just playing games? Are would-be competitors playing along to send a message? Are reporters, desperate to fill column inches and make post counts, playing along? And are consumers — the people to whom these issues matter most — providing very loud, very public reactions, only to get played by all sides?
If so, this means iPhone users won’t get Flash or unlimited music — even if we want it, even if big business would make money and increase market share by giving it to us — until “those who sit above in shadow” decide they’ve leveraged and manipulated every last little bit they can from us and from each other.
And we should know that by now, shouldn’t we?
March 25th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Leaks are definitely a conscious part of testing the waters for people’s desire for a given feature. Sure, we’re enablers, but we also get a chance to apply pressure with the way that we report the rumors and the companies we “play” off each other to try to get the stuff we want.
updated this post – definitely wait-a-thon worthy!
March 25th, 2008 at 11:39 am
…and dugg!
http://digg.com/apple/BeingPlayedFlashMusicand_Manipulation
March 25th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Thanks and agreed!
March 25th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I’m done getting excited over all of these rumors… I’ll believe it when I see it for myself. And I’m so over all the the numerous threads on other forums regarding the 3g iPhone and all of the people who post the same thing over and over again…. should I wait until the new iPhone comes out, etc…
Ok I’m done ranting.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
@Bad Ash:
You say that, but you won’t really be done until you hit rock bottom and admit you’re powerless to stop your cravings for rumors and give yourself up to a higher power.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Dang it Jobs so what if we use adobe for looking at PDFs does it really matter come on I want flash and I want it yesterday. So not that it was likely me but who was last weeks wait a thon winner where are the winners being posted?
March 25th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I work in graphic design (among other things) and I’ve literally saved hours on the Mac by having the built-in Apple Preview open PDFs near-instantly rather than the bloated Acrobat which seems to take over a minute just to launch.
Since Apple uses a system very much like PDF for all their 2D graphics rendering, I don’t know about you, but I would never want to give up the near instant iPhone experience for something sluggish from Adobe.
(Then again, I really am in no hurry to get the Flash tech on my iPhone either…)
March 25th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve opened a PDF on my iPhone in the almost year I’ve owned it so to me its a worth while trade off.
March 25th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
If the SDK opens it up to becoming an e-book reader (which would be great considering the text-rendering quality), then I think the negative impact would be tremendous.
Adobe just don’t know from skinny.
March 25th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Serendipitously by way of Gruber:
March 25th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
… or the problem could be rumors being reported as news. Sure companies of all sorts float rumors to test the waters or play spoiler, but electronics consumers (like us) are just bit more rabid for more info than in many markets. The blogs trade rumors readily, it’s kind of fun. However, the “legitimate” news now references rumors from the blogs as sources. That’s just silly.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I agree, must of this rumors are to get more clicks on the page than anything else. And the worst part is that works all the time. If you look around all the tech blogs, they keep repeating the same stuff and the ones with the iPhone on it generates a lot of comments. We can only hope that some of them materialize. In terms of flash, i miss it but if it’s going to stall my iPhone on every page, no thanks. It’s annoying enough on a regular computer, so I prefer the skim milk version of the iPhone. On the other hand, I do miss MMS, search and cut-n-paste, in case somebody is listening.
March 25th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I was listening to TWiT yesterday and Jason Calacanis (sp?) was on, who founded Weblogs Inc. and Engadget. He said what often happened was that people at the big tech companies like MS, Palm, and Apple, who were unhappy with this or that corp. decision would leak it to Rojas (sp? Founder of Gizmodo and Engadget) or Ryan Block (current EiC of Engadget) just to get negative attention and try to get the policy changed.
Two other crazy stories he told was that, right when rumors broke of a the first WinMob Treo, he asked Rojas if he knew anything about it, and Rojas just smiled and pulled one from his pocket. Far as Calacanis knew, only Gates and Colligan had them at that point, but Rojas said he was slipped one because they wanted his opinion.
Lastly, Calacanis said he met Jobs while wearing an Engadget name tag and Jobs commented that he liked Engadget. Jason was surprised Jobs read it but Jobs said Engadget did a better job of providing competitive info than anything Jobs could do.
March 25th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Re-MMS, I think cell-specific techs like SMS and MMS will begin to fade as general net standards like Email become available on more and more phones. (Phones that don’t have keyboards could still make use of email protocols to send between themselves and non-phone clients).
March 25th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Don’t you feel, as the general consumer, you are getting played by the big corporations?
March 26th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Welcome to the wonderful world of owning, and caring about the future of, Apple products. Something about Apple has more than other computer makers is the rampant rumor scene. Maybe Apple brings this on themselves by hyping everything, but even that is mostly out of their control. I mean any time Apple even hints at a new product people go nuts, most of the hype isn’t Apple created. Anyway, when dealing with Apple rumors remember this tried and true rule of thumb:
No one knows **** and anyone who tells you they do is making money from banner ad impressions on their site.
If you remember that, never believe any rumors and never get excited for products/updates/features that rumor sites predict then you’ll rarely be disappointed by Apple announcements. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard some jackass on a Mac related forum site proclaim “Worst MacWorld ever!!1!” immediately after Jobs’ keynote just because all of the outlandish, rumored-to-be-certain products weren’t announced.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I read the rumors. I enjoy the rumors. I sometimes hope the rumors come true. But I never believe the rumors until they are real.
There are lots of things I would like to see on the iPhone but Flash I can live without (fancier ads oh joy) and subscription services (miss a bill and kiss your music goodbye) I don’t want.
March 26th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Yellow iPhone pre-loaded with Beetles catalog!
(TM Merlin Mann)
March 28th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Those subscription services… ugh, they’re called negative option marketing and sometimes it’s you buy those with the iPhone or no buy at all.