Apple Is Not Like Sony: What Does the US Do Really Really Well? (keep creativity in education in America)

UPDATE 4-15-12: This in from ZDNet: Sony revival plan: Cut 10,000 jobs; refocus on phones, TV, gaming

When I got my first generation Sony Walkman(tm) as a Christmas gift from my older sister from New York, it cost $200. "Everyone has them, in New York," she said. She was quite pleased that she’d pulled off such an amazing surprise. Of course she had no idea how transformative her gift would be for me and for the world.

I walked around the next 10 years, through high school and straight into college, working to make my Walkman(tm) experience better and better. Thinner versions, versions that used fewer batteries, utilitarian plastic versions. And I bought a new pair of hi-fidelity headphones about every six months. There was a huge market in high-end headphones.

And Sony was sitting on top of the global electronics industry. Everything Sony touched was "the best" engineered and designed product made. TV’s, chordless digital phones, cell phones… Uh, wait, let’s come back to that one.

Then came the MP3 format, unleashing on the world a simple and fairly good compression scheme to get digital music CDs from the unfriendly 300 mb to more manageable 70 mb. And all hell broke loose. Napster arrived and the world of music was forever changed. The only problem was… SONY MISSED THE MEMO.

Rather than embracing the new format that was creating new companies overnight trying to meet demand for the players and the web services, SONY did something very corporate, very uncreative, very stupid. SONY bet against the MP3 format, in favor of their own proprietary digitally-protected format. A removable media format called Mini-disc. Ever heard of it? If you have you probably remember the Beta-Max.

Jump cut to today, SONY is floundering. They’ve hired and fired CMOs, CEOs, CFOs, and no one can seem to unlock the formula for success that SONY used to thrive by. And they continue to bet against the rest of the world with their "proprietary" technologies. I am not sure if it’s the SONY-PRIDE "made here" mentality that keeps them pressing things the global consumer doesn’t want, like memory sticks rather than the smaller and more inexpensive micro-ram cards. Heck they were even caught with their hands still in the DRM cult when a local Austin developer discovered SONY’s audio CDs were installing some kind of virus on his hard drive when he played them. (Welcome to SONY 2008!)

And here’s the rub. SONY still makes some of the best-designed and best-engineered products in the world. While they have lost some of their dominance in the TV and Laptop business, their products are some of the most Apple-like, cult-inspiring products on the market. So why don’t we care? Why did I steer my friend away from the Sony VIAO laptop she liked and advised her to buy the Toshiba?

Okay, back to the music fiasco in the making. SONY SIMPLY OWNS THE PORTABLE MUSIC PLAYER until the MP3 format began to catch on. Rather than create some innovative MP3 products, SONY fought for their "superior" product. And they even launched aggressive anti-MP3 campaigns, being that they own one of the largest music catalogs in the world. So to protect their corporate profits both with the portable music player and the licensing and distribution of music, SONY did a historic face plant.

If you look at Apple and the iPod and contrast that with SONY and the Walkman you begin to see how the two companies approach EVERYTHING differently. (Other tech companies that are more SONY-like: HP, Dell, Motorola)

While SONY was protecting their device format and their music business in the name of their shareholders, APPLE went in the opposite direction. Steve Jobs return to Apple signaled a new era in innovation and forward thinking. And the iMac was the first HIT. Overnight Apple changed the industry again, with a beautifully simple, brightly colored, computer. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody was able to copy them quick enough, though many tried.

Next, perhaps the technology that sold more iMacs than even the cool design and the cool colors, MUSIC. Of course Apple and the Mac had always been computers for Designers, Artists, Musicians, and the "rest of us." But the Christmas of 2001 Apple launched a full-out assault on plain the beige box desktops and black laptops of EVERYONE ELSE. The campaign slogan. RIP. BURN. PLAY.

The Apple iMac was exponentially leapfrogging everyone else in design, yes, but it was jumping into bed with the Napsters and Open Anarchists of the world. The corporate world was not impressed. The consumer market ignited and the sales of blank recordable media skyrocketed. Apple had produced the first, affordable music authoring, MP3 ripping, and music CD burning device on the market.

And the world did not see what was coming next. Even Steve Jobs himself, was a bit surprised by the smash hit that arrived next. The iMac re-established Apple as a profitable computer company. Jobs was the returning champion, the prodigal son, the idiot savant that had solved both the cool computer design problem and distributed the RIP. BURN. PLAY. software on the iMac for FREE.

The next act: iPod.

So why didn’t SONY create an iPod? Why was the SONY Digital Walkman such a flop? And even when the SONY Digital MP3 Walkman(tm) launched, SONY was practically out of the game all together. Again, when was the last time you heard the name "walkman?"

And with the iPod selling in the millions almost over night, Apple again had created a problem for the music business. Even though the iPod entered the market as the highest priced MP3 player, they had solved the User Interface Problem with the amazing click-wheel. (See Dell’s Digital Jukebox, or Microsoft’s Zune for failed copy attempts. And probably SONY’s MP3 interface was awesome, but nobody outside of Japan or SONY-fanatics wanted a Walkman. It was a dead brand.)

Okay, so you’ve just bought a device that will hold 20 gigabytes of music in the palm of your hand. And you’ve got a lot of cds, maybe even records and cassettes. What are you going to do? Are you going to digitize all of your music from your CD’s, if you have CDs? Are you going to hammer Napster and other pirate services and build up your collection again? What are your options at this point, for filling the other 18 gigs of storage space on your shiny new iPod?

Enter the iTunes Online Music Store.

For people willing to fork out $200+ on a portable music player, the idea of buying a song for ¢99 was a no-brainer. And Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and Thriller by Michael Jackson are STILL the #1 selling digital albums of all time. Suddenly the music business was back in business, sort of, because people needed to renew their libraries in digital format to get them on their devices. And Napster and Kazaa and other peer-to-peer systems exploded. The world suddenly had an even bigger appetite and room on their iPods for thousands of songs. And guess what, we wanted our music.

But the music business was not experiencing the great rush of cash that Apple was. In fact, just the opposite, sites like Napster had taken a huge toll on the buying public and the demand for their physical CDs. (Today, I bet you can count the number of record stores in your town on one hand.) And SONY, being a leader, and stakeholder in all things technological, innovative, and musical, put their foot down with their DRM formats, their PLAYNOW music site, and even cell phones that did a pretty descent job of emulating an iPod, long before the iPhone was even a glimmer in Apple’s eye.

Within a year, Apple had the entire music industry over a barrel with a stunning accomplishment. The iTunes store was the largest music retailer in the world. (Still is.) And the ¢99 song was born. SONY’s PLAYNOW was charging $3.50 per track at the same time.

How is SONY doing now?

They’ve still got some great products and brands

• VAIO – laptops
• Playstation 3
• And a bunch of other stuff: tvs (trinitron is dead enter WEGA), phones, and the AIBO robot dog.

But SONY as a force in the universe had aligned itself with corporate interests and not the demands and creative interests of the general public. Much like Microsoft with Windows and Internet Explorer, dynasties change and fail.

What’s the component that SONY is missing that APPLE cultivates?

Creative Thinking.

Last part: As innovative and amazing as Steve Jobs was, one of the things you’ll see a little bit of if you read the Issacson biography is this. He missed a lot of things as well. He is surrounded by Jonthan Ivys and Tim Cooks. Initially as iTunes and the iPod first came out, long before the huge success and long before the online music store, Steve Jobs voted vehemently against a WINDOWS version of the iTunes to allow PC-users Apple-owned access their iPods. (The hacks for the PC were already available for the iPod music management.) He was bitter. He didn’t really want to give Bill Gates access to his greatest invention.

Mythology (and the non-Issacson-telling) has it, that when Bill Gates was shown his first working iPod he said, "Holy Shit, we’re fkd." He was kind of right. But the slide and de-evolution of Microsoft had already begun at that point. And immediately Bill Gates wanted an iPod for the PC. And of course Michael Dell wanted an iPod for the Dell. (Hm, Dell’s plan sounds a bit like SONY’s Walkman(tm) strategy.)

Where are they now? Dell, HP and SONY have all entered and exited the Music Player business. They are all scrambling to catch the iPad with Android and the very-late Windows 8, called METRO.

But we don’t really want everyone else to fail. We need Microsoft, Google, and Sony to keep pushing the envelope. And as Steve Jobs was dying he vowed to go Nuclear with every resource at his disposal to kill Android. Once again he’d been ripped off, first by MICROSOFT WINDOWS, and now by GOOGLE’s ANDROID OS, which often looks and functions like a crappy iOS clone. We need these other innovators to push Apple and Dell and Acer to greater things.

And we need global winners like Apple. We need David and Goliath stories, we need the triumph of good (design and morals), and we all need a great rival who pushes us to work harder, to do more, to be better.

Again, Steve Jobs voted against allowing iTunes to be ported to Windows. He was overruled and he was wrong and Apples star rose even higher as a guide star for the industry. And the iPod enabled the iPhone and the iPad and ultimately… the iTV rumored to be on the way for next Christmas.

So even geniuses miss the mark. But they keep at it. And if we teach ONE THING IN THE US, we need to teach creativity. Sure math, science, and language arts are important. But if we kill PLAY and the ARTS from the curriculum we’re gonna end up being a country that’s a lot more like SONY than APPLE. We need to fight to make sure that does not happen.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)

permalink: https://uber.la/2012/04/apple-is-not-sony/

References:

• Five not-so-obvious reasons why Apple won’t be Sony redux (ZDNet)
• The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century – Thomas Freidman
• Steve Jobs – the "official" Walter Issacson biography
• iSteve Jobs – my tribute page
• Steve Jobs Biography Misses the Mark – my review of the Walter Issacson bio
• The Year The Music Dies – Wired Magazine, 11/2002
• Steve Jobs iTunes Music Store 2003 Introduction at MacWorld (Video)

Other posts to help you kick ass in social media:

• My Dream for You; How Social Media Can Change Your Life – This Is What I Do
• Results of my 2012 Evolutionary Online Marketing Plan: Um, Excuse Me, Are You Listening?
• The Forced Evolution of Twitter
• The 7 Connective Practices of a Tribe – How To Build and Support Shared Plans
• Social Media Workflow: What’s Your Daily Cadence for Sharing on Social Networks [infographic]
• Let’s Talk About Your Evil Plan(tm) – Yeah, But What Else Are You Doing?
• The Quick Course in Online Marketing: Big Picture (Social Media, Search Engine, eMail, Content Marketing)
• New Web Design Standards: Flexible-Width and non-IE Browsers Abound
• 8 Steps Getting Social Media To 5 Goals & 2 Wins the [INFOGRAPHIC]
• ROI ROI ROI and Social Media; We Need to Have This Discussion Again
• Pinterest and the Power of Social Bookmarking: Tag Yourself (Web Design is Dead)
• Social Media MBA – The Reading List

Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it. (from Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement)

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The last SONY Walkman(tm) I ever bought. It probably still works.

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iSteve Jobs (my tribute page)

Tags: american education, apple innovation, apple ipad, apple iphone, apple ipod, apple iTV, apple vs sony, bill gates, education, education in america, GAMES, gaming, ipod vs walkman, learning through games, microsoft vs apple, play in education, sony walkman, steve jobs