Beats update...

In my last post I talked about why I think Apple is acquiring Beats- because Apple's current headphones are throwaway junk. 

As it turns out, Tim Cook says that Apple acquired Beats mostly for the streaming music service. They plan to keep the Beats brand alive and continue with the headphone business.  They also plan to keep iTunes Radio going alongside Beats streaming music service. I'm not sure what advantage they gain by having 2 different music streaming services, especially if they believe the new one they just bought is so much better.  Nevermind that the new service has only 250000 active users. 

Apple should have success marketing and driving up subscribers for Beats. If that happens I think it will be at the expense of iTunes Radio subscribers and listeners. 

Anyway, Tim Cook didn't say much about my headphones prediction. However it does sound like Jimmy Iovine agrees with me when he said smartphone makers include the earbuds to "make sure the sound works". Ouch.  Time will tell if Apple's existing headphone line gets a massive revamp in the upcoming Apple/Beats era. 

Why Beats?

This one is a little bit if a head scratcher. You can read the tech news and quickly get several opinions as to why Apple would pay $3.2 billion for Beats. 

Some say they bought Beats for the revenue of the headphone business which brings in over $1B in revenue per year. If true Apple could recover its $3.2B in a few years. 

Others say they bought the company for the people that run the company- Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Apple has done this kind of thing before with much smaller acquisitions. 

Still others say it is for the streaming music service started by Beats. They say Beats has high free-to-paid customer conversion ratios. This may be true but they also have low numbers of subscribers. Personally, I don't know a single person who has or is even talking about their music service. 

While these are all good reasons and might be part of Tim Cook's reasoning, I think there is one more obvious reason that has not been mentioned yet. 

When was the last time you saw these?

(There is supposed to be a picture of a young hip looking college student sporting the iconic white corded headphones of an iPhone, BUT they are so unpopular I couldn't find a good pic in less than 2 minutes on Google so I gave up) 

My point is you never see people walking around or working out at the gym with the stock Apple headphones anymore. 

Now type "cool headphones" into Google images and this is the first pic that comes up - in less than 2 seconds. 

So here's the bottom line. I think most people who purchase an iPhone or iThing don't use the included headphones for more than a few days. I never used the included headphones at the gym or on the go because they didn't stay put in my ears and I never thought they sounded good - despite the Steve Jobs distortion field telling us they were amazing. 

I think one day Tim Cook said -"No one uses our headphones because they stink." So they went out and bought the best and coolest headphone company in the world. 

Now for my first tech prediction...

I read recently Nike has just  laid off a huge portion of its wearables/fitness employees. I doesn't make sense to me that they would pull away from a fledgling market without some clear reason- like a massive product failure or massive financial losses relates to wearables. 

Whenever something doesn't seem to make sense it usually because there is more info that you are not aware of. 

To quote a smiling Inigo Montoya as he was losing badly at swordplay to the Man in Black- "because I know something you don't know." (Turns out he was not left handed and he lost anyway, but you get then point).  

I think that something we don't know is that Nike has opted to join forces with Apple and abandon its own hardware in favor of the expected iWatch. This makes all the sense in the world to me. Apple is perhaps the worlds premiere hardware company. Nike just can't compete in this arena once the iWatch comes out. It's a simple case of " if you can't beat em, join em."

That's pretty much a lock. You can take it to the bank. You heard it here first ...

Stay tuned for my next rock solid prediction related to the Beats by Dre rumored acquisition. 

Links:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/21/tech/mobile/nike-apple-fuel-band/

The beginning ...

Hello to whoever finds this blog. This will be the start (hopefully) of something big. I am a self described technophile and apple nerd. I am always scouring my favorite websites for apple and tech news. I wanted to have a place to write about the news and share my thoughts- but more importantly- to share predictions about the future of technology.

 I have always been fascinated with how technology can change our lives. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not. Ask anyone how they liked that new system upgrade at work. Odds are they didn't like it at first. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether that's just fear of change or if the new thing kinda sucks. 

Several years ago I came across the concept of "diffusion of innovation". It describes a bell shaped curve that shows the adoption and usage of any new technologies. 

The slope of the curve is dependent on a lot of factors. The basic idea is that if the benefits and advantages to the new idea are obvious and tangible the progress will be quick over the curve towards 100% adoption. On the other hand, bad ideas will never make it over the hump and die in the early stages. 

I love this notion, because I think it's absolutely correct AND because Apple has had several products that have rapidly moved to the right of the curve- most notably and first in a long line of many superior products- the iPod. What's important to remember is that the iPod was not the first MP3 player. It WAS the first to bring real tangible benefit to people's lives and music listening habits. The other MP3 devices that existed at the time were simply not good enough to get up the left side of the curve. The old ways of transporting music are long gone (thankfully).  No more mix tapes from the radio. No more CD wallets on your car visor. No more skipping or scratched CDs. Now, do I get nostalgic about my old cassette mixtapes? Yeah. Will I ever make another one? Nope.  

And that's what technology does- it makes us change. Sometime it's for the better- sometimes it's not. 

Check back later for my next post - my first official apple news minute prediction...

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