In the 560-odd years since Gutenberg’s printing presses consigned illuminated manu-scripts to museums, the written word has been replaced by an ever-accelerating kaleidoscope of media.
Whether Christianity would have taken such a firm hold had St Paul used bulk e-mail and SMS to get his message to people in other lands is open to debate. What cannot be contested is that in the past century the proliferation of methods of communication has been matched only by the number of separate devices required to render the messages comprehensible.
But, as the IT industry expands and matures, developers have realised that the way forward is to create a lingua franca for the cyber house of Babel. Some sort of confluence of technology is needed before the limited number of eyes, ears and hands of the human anatomy forces consumers to become selective in what they buy.
The call is not coming from ageing technophobes but from a tech-savvy generation who have not known life without computers and cellphones. It was for this young, sophisticated and wealthy market that the iPhone, which launched this month, was developed.
Apple Macintosh, always the innovator in computers, putting its mega-selling iPod music device into a cellphone made by Motorola, leaders in mobile style, seemed guaranteed to create the must-have fashion accessory of the year.
And, from November, Multichoice subscribers will be able to enjoy the personal video recorder (PVR), a decoder and recorder in one. The version to be launched on the South African market was previewed to the local media after the deadline for this article, so I’m in the dark on the details of the model that will be available — despite several requests — but the basics are simple. The decoder has a hard drive to which television programmes can be directly recorded, without the need for a DVD or tape.
The first PVR was unveiled by TiVo in 1999 as a device to allow individuals to stream TV programmes to the hard drive of their home PCs, but the concept has quickly been adopted by broadcasters such as Sky Plus in Britain. Among the PVR’s box of tricks is that it lets the viewer pause or view instant replays while it continues to record.
Multichoice is also in beta-testing of a service to allow subscribers to view TV on their cellphones. An example quoted by the company’s PR folk is that it would allow “the kids” to watch Cartoon Network while being ferried around in Mom’s Taxi.
All this — bar the appalling image of cartoon-junkie children — paints a rosy picture for a future containing fewer, smarter devices. Why, then, is Multichoice doing an egg-dance when asked for pre-launch information on its PVR system and, an even bigger question, is Apple boss Steve Jobs dismissing the iPhone as little more than a test run just weeks after its launch?
One of the PVR’s other features is that it can be programmed, by the viewer, to skip ads. At the time of writing the Multichoice people appear to still be wrestling with their souls — or their profit margins, which can appear to the cynical to be much the same — over whether to disable this capability in their units.
The iPhone case presents a slightly different problem. I’m already behind the times, calling it the iPhone, although this was how both Mac and Motorola punted it until its mid-September launch. Now it is called the “MotoRokr with iTunes”, a clunky title to go with a clunky turkey that arrived far too early for Thanksgiving.
The hip young market that couldn’t wait to get its hands on the iPhone is scathing about the Rokr. There are three main areas where the device falls short of expectations: the iPod component holds a maximum of 100 songs; you cannot use WAP or similar technology to download directly from iTunes, forcing you to go via a desk or laptop; and you cannot use one of the downloaded songs as your ringtone. To add aesthetic insult to opportunities-missed injury, it’s the ugliest Motorola ever. As it is not yet available in South Africa, imagine the E368 model — the one that doesn’t fold in half — in silver.
Apple and Motorola have failed in the area crucial to attempts to cut down on the number of gizmos. They are scared that merging technologies will undermine sales of existing products — that it will “cannibalise their core industries”, in corporate-speak. Apple fears that, with a decent-sized drive, buyers would choose the iPod-phone combo rather than the standalone. And if it allowed WAP downloads, people would stop buying Apple Macs. If it believes people get the iMac because it makes downloading from iTunes so easy, it has forgotten how good its computers are.
Motorola’s fears are more base: it suspects people might baulk at continuing to pay about $20 per song off a ringtone site when the same song by the original artist can be downloaded for less than $1 on iTunes.
Where it has misread the market is in thinking that its audience wanted a cellphone with an iPod component. This new consumer is willing to pay Apple prices to get Apple’s legendary quality. He or she will ignore the fact that the geek-next-door’s Nokia can run rings (and ringtones) around the Motorola, because no Nokia will ever be as beautiful as a Motorola.
But, most important, he or she expects companies that were established prior to 2000 to be able put even more computing power than goes into the iPod Nano into the sexiest little Motorola ever. As a concession, it can still be silver.