Whether by design or accident, Ping’s lack of integration with other social networks, or even with the web itself, is now its most compelling feature — at least from a strategic perspective. It’s essentially an e-commerce platform for music disguised as a social network.
Apple found a way to cram a large number of iPhone 4 features in the new iPod touch: retina display, two cameras with FaceTime support, and the A4 chip. So it’s just like a contract-free iPhone 4 without voice right? Wrong on at least three counts.
During today’s press event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that 450 million TV episodes, along with 11.7 billion songs, 100 million movies and 35 million books, have been downloaded from the iTunes store, making it the number one digital media store in the world. How will its newly announced 99-cent rental program change the marketplace? It depends what’s on offer.
When we compared Hulu Plus to Netflix Instant during its launch, we found while the back catalog was comparable, Hulu Plus had Netflix easily beat when it came to new episodes of current shows. Apple’s rental program, though, draws from a larger pool of content, which could be a game changer.
Note the use of the word “could” here. Jobs announced that so far, only ABC and Fox have signed up for the 99-cent rental program. While we don’t yet know what specific shows will or won’t be available for 99 cents, based purely on studio, the below chart indicates that about a third of the content Hulu Plus is offering this fall won’t be available for rental on iTunes.
| AVAILABLE ON HULU PLUS | ITUNES RENTAL? |
| 24 | Yes |
| 30 Rock | No |
| American Dad! | Yes |
| Bones | Yes |
| Brothers & Sisters | Yes |
| Castle | Yes |
| Cougar Town | Yes |
| Dancing With The Stars | Yes |
| Desperate Housewives | Yes |
| Family Guy | Yes |
| Find My Family | Yes |
| Friday Night Lights | No |
| Glee | Yes |
| Grey’s Anatomy | Yes |
| House | Yes |
| Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution | Yes |
| Late Night with Jimmy Fallon | No |
| Law & Order: Special Victims Unit | No |
| Lie To Me | Yes |
| Minute to Win It | No |
| Modern Family | Yes |
| Parenthood | No |
| Parks and Recreation | No |
| Private Practice | Yes |
| Saturday Night Live | No |
| Shark Tank | Yes |
| Supernanny | Yes |
| The Biggest Loser | No |
| The Cleveland Show | Yes |
| The Good Guys | Yes |
| The Office | No |
| The Tonight Show with Jay Leno | No |
NBC is clearly the missing link here, and if it decides to participate in the future, that would put Hulu Plus and iTunes on par with each other. Of course, you can’t necessarily compare a subscription service to a per-item rental service; for the $10 a month I pay for Hulu Plus (which, without shelling out $99 for an Apple TV, I can watch on my television thanks to the PS3), I have unlimited access to the service’s catalog of content.
That definitely works in Hulu Plus’s favor. When the new fall season starts, for example, I’ll be watching the theoretically rentable Castle, Glee, House and Modern Family on a weekly basis. If I were renting them a la carte from iTunes, in a month when each show premiered three new episodes I’d spend $11.88 to keep caught up, and if I wanted to review them after 48 hours, I’d have to plop down another 99 cents each. Compared to Hulu Plus, that’s not a great way to spend my money (even with the commercial-free video Apple provides).
The deal breaker here is that the iTunes catalog extends well beyond ABC and Fox, thanks to its relationships with pretty much every major TV network and studio. If cable or premium channels like AMC, HBO or Showtime — which do currently sell episodes via iTunes — join the rental program, it could be a very different marketplace indeed.
Frankly, Mad Men is half the reason I still have a cable subscription, which currently costs me $100/month. If I could rent the weekly misadventures of Don Draper for 99 cents each, that’d leave me about $96 a month in savings, which I’d find much easier to use towards a la carte rentals and purchases for series and movies not available through subscription services like Netflix and Hulu Plus.
In short: The iTunes rental program might not make me rethink my Hulu Plus subscription, but if more content providers get on board, it could make me rethink cable.
Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Three Reasons Over-The-Top TV Apps Will Beat Big-Cable
At this morning’s Apple press event, streamed live, CEO Steve Jobs announced a new Apple TV that’s a quarter of the size of the original box, with all-HD content (when available), cloud storage, and Netflix and YouTube access. The new Apple TV also allows content to be streamed from your computer or iPad to the television. The $229 price is dropping to $99, with pre-orders available today.
Oh, and as we reported, the price for renting TV shows in HD is dropping from $2.99 to $0.99 HD TV shows is shifting from $2.99 to buy to $0.99 to rent for the ABC and Fox shows that will be available at the outset. Other broadcasters have yet to commit to the service, but Jobs said that “other studios will see the light soon, and get on board with us.”
HD movie rentals are set at $4.99 for first-run films, which Jobs says will become “cheaper as time goes on.” The new store also includes Rotten Tomatoes ratings and cast/crew listings “for the first time.”
Jobs called the Netflix interface on Apple TV “the best implementation of Netflix yet,” though he was probably saying that because the interface is a direct ripoff of Apple’s Front Row interface.
Jobs also announced a complete overhaul of the iPod line, including FaceTime for the iPod touch. The iPod nano now has a square face and is smaller, and today’s demo emphasized the device’s music player and other features, including a clock face. The iPod nano camera has been removed, and the square screen implies that there’s a de-emphasis on video.
That just means more cameras for the iPod touch! The new version of the device will have front- and back-facing cameras, allowing people to communicate using FaceTime. On-device editing and direct upload to YouTube will also be possible.
Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Apple’s Path to the Living Room
We’re here at the Yerba Buena Center for the Apple Music event, and for all of you without Apple hardware who can’t see the live stream, we’re going to live blog the thrill, chills and anticipated product releases. So check back for the news.
Updated: For the first time in a long time, an Apple press event will be live streamed to the public, the company announced today. Starting at 10 a.m. PT tomorrow, Apple.com will host a stream of the highly anticipated announcements of (if rumors and expectations hold true) updated iPods, iTunes rentals, and an overhaul of the Apple TV.
Update: As commenters have pointed out, this is not Apple’s first-ever live stream, just the first in a long time (and in the modern video era). Some of us vaguely recall a crappy 2004-era Quicktime video stream. If you can remember what happened, please leave a comment.
In some ways, this is the end of an era. Due to intense interest in what was being announced to a closed-door audience, Apple press events played a huge part in the birth of the art of live blogging. Sites like Engadget honed awe-inspiring team efforts to live blog every word out of Steve Jobs’ mouth and punch it up with snarky fanboy commentary, pictures and analysis, with fresh updates coming every few seconds.
To a lesser — but still significant — degree, Apple keynotes also helped streaming services like Qik get off the ground. Their early viewing records for livestreams were set by illicit video capture from the events. I know many people scramble around on sites like Justin.tv hoping to find a stream running during the event.
Since Apple doesn’t typically post video from its product launches until later in the day, demand for breaking news is incredibly high. Often, live event coverage influences the stock market. I’ve heard that even Apple employees drop what they’re doing during keynotes and tune into the live-blogs from their desks.
There’s clearly been latent demand for video from Apple’s events for some time, so I have to wonder why it came now. One potential factor might have been the trouble Jobs had getting a reliable network connection to do a live demo of the iPhone 4 at its launch in June, which he attributed at the time to bloggers using MiFi and similar devices to run their own Wi-Fi networks.
To be sure, many desk workers will still prefer text coverage to video. But the true fanboys and girls will want to see Steve for themselves in real time.
One interesting twist is that video coverage will only be available on Apple devices. This is a bit absurd, but I suppose it fits with the company’s passion for controlling the user experience. It’s possible the livestream is being used as the “gimmick” for the Apple TV relaunch, hence the OS X/iOS requirements. Besides, most watchers will be on a Mac or iOS device anyways.
Here are the viewing details:
Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com.
Meanwhile, we video industry watchers will have to hope that after the event Apple tells us how many people tuned in. It’s sure to be a lot.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Apple’s Path to the Living Room
Photo courtesy Tom Coates.
Autodesk, the software company behind 3D design and engineering software, AutoCAD is releasing a Mac version of its software. it is launching a new free app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch that would allow owners of AutoCAD to edit & share files on these devices.
The Register reported last week that Apple is looking to fire back at iPhone jailbreakers with an application to patent a system designed to identify the “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking or removal of a SIM card” from a phone so the device can be located and its data erased. The company has released a new firmware update for the sole purpose of patching a hole that was being used to jailbreak handsets running iOS 4 as well, according to the group of developers that created the first iPhone 4 jailbreak.
As I write in my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro, it makes no sense for Apple to pour efforts to these kinds of things; allowing jailbreaking – even implicitly — could actually help move iPhones off the shelves.
Sure, jailbreaking gives iPhone users access to a growing number of apps not supported by the App Store (tethering apps and porn among them), but even then, there’s no downside for Apple. Any tethering usage would be mitigated by AT&T’s metered data plans, so it’s not like users could truly abuse them. Also, when it comes to porn and anything else users could access, Apple can simply say, “We don’t support that garbage,” maintain its policy that jailbreaking automatically voids warranties and remain unsoiled in the public eye.
Revenues from the App Store are a drop in the bucket compared to Apple’s overall bottom line. The company uses the retail channel as a tool to boost sales from its lucrative hardware business. Apple sells DRM-free tunes and allows users to put their existing music libraries on the company’s devices because those strategies are good for gadget sales, where the money lies. So, like iTunes, why invest in efforts that restrict users to running only Apple-approved apps on their handsets and tablets?
At the end of the day, the iPhone Dev Team may have given up (for now), but other hackers will surely find ways around Apple’s efforts to prevent jailbreaking.
Read the full post here.
Image courtesy Flickr user Rennett Stowe.
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