The thing I hate more than anything else in an electronic product is a crippled product. I understand that this is necessary sometimes (for product differentiation), but most of the time it only shows how stupid and short sighted the company is!
Apple released the fourth generation ipods today. Among other significant changes (click wheel, USB charging, better battery life), are a whole bunch of firmware updates and enhancements. I am pretty sure all of these enhancements can be backported to the gen 3 ipod without difficulty. In fact, I would not be surprised if apple even has an internal firmware release that does exactly that. However, in all its wisdom, apple has decided not to make these enhancements available to the older ipods. The download page now lists four different firmwares for different ipod generation, each having a different feature set (inspite of all ipods using very similar hardware and microcontroller).
The only reason I can think behind this strategy is to make people upgrade every year or two. They want to make people think of the ipod as a traditional consumer electronic product, which cannot be upgraded or changed except by replacing it with a newer model. This can only spell disaster for Apple in the long run. You can make the best products in the market, have the best design team, have all the rave reviews and the cool factor, but if you dont care about your customers, sooner or later you wont have any!
I was seriously considering getting a powerbook sometime soon. But this really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I dont know if I am all that enthusiastic about Apple any more. This is exactly the reason why I hate Microsoft, and Apple is turning out to be no different.
Here is what I think Apple (or any other company) should really do. Release all specs, and even the source code (or atleast parts of it) to the firmware/software for any hardware they sell under GPL or equivalent. There is no reason to hide code as Intellectual Property. Any decent programmer can dupplicate almost all the ipod firmware does in a under a month. The IP lies in the overall design and functionality of the product, not in the source code. This would encourage people to develop for the product and make it much better than the company can ever hope to make it. Why is the computer so popular - because the user can develop software for it and change it the way she wants. I see no reason why doing the same for consumer devices would not work. A drastic change in its business practice is what is needed for Apple to have any chance of competing against Windows/Intel/Linux.
I doubt it would help, but sign this online petition if you are affected by this issue. There is nothing more that can be done other than avoiding purchase of Apple products and waiting for someone to hack into the firmware.
Posted by ankit at July 19, 2025 10:41 PM | TrackBackApple has been pretty much headstrong with its iPod success. The moment you see any competition, all this will change. I see that Dell etc. are coming up with cheaper music players. Ofcourse, they lack the "coolness" of the iPod ... Although I've been fascinated many times by Apple powerbooks, G5s etc. but I will NEVER buy one for myself. Its just too gaudy for my tastes!
Posted by: Sayantan Sur at July 20, 2025 09:14 AMHistorically, some of the most sucessful products have been those which allow third party contributions to content: PCs, radios, TV and so on. But its extremely challenging to think of third party software contributions to consumer electronic devices, which is what an iPOD is in its current avatar (correct me if I am wrong, I dont own an iPOD). IMO There exists a market for an iPODish general purpose computing and communications device, and when that comes on the market Apple will once again see its fortunes decline.
Waise, I dont know why you find it that surprising, Apple has always been a verticaly integrated company, they sell the hardware AND the software that goes with it.
Posted by: uspeed at July 23, 2025 06:57 PM