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Apple
Monday, December 25, 2006

Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL, LSE: ACP) is an American computer technology corporation with worldwide annual sales in its fiscal year 2005 (ending 24 September 2005) of US$ 13.9 billion.^[3] The company has 14,800 employees in several countries. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Apple develops, sells, and supports a series of personal computers, portable media players, computer software, and computer hardware accessories. The company's best-known products include the Macintosh line of personal computers, the Mac OS X operating system, the iPod portable music player, and the iTunes Store.

Apple operates retail stores in the United States, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom. The stores carry most of Apple's products as well as many third-party products and offer on-site support and repair for Apple hardware and software.

For a variety of reasons, ranging from its philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design to its countercultural, even indie roots as a company that differentiates itself from the rest of the industry by “thinking different,” Apple has cultivated a customer base that is unusually devoted to the company and its brand.

History

Main article: History of Apple Computer

Apple has revolutionized personal computing since its founding in 1976. The Apple II microcomputer, introduced in 1977, was a hit with home users. In 1983, Apple introduced the Lisa, the first commercial personal computer to employ a graphical user interface (GUI), which was influenced in part by the Xerox Alto. Lisa was also first personal computer to have the mouse. In 1984, the Macintosh was introduced, furthering the concept of a user-friendly graphical user interface. Apple's success with the Macintosh became a major influence in the development of graphical interfaces elsewhere, with major computer operating systems such as Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST, appearing on the market within two years of the introduction of the Macintosh.

In 1991, Apple introduced the PowerBook line of portable computers. The 1990s also saw Apple's market share fall as competition from Microsoft Windows and the comparatively inexpensive IBM PC compatible computers that would eventually dominate the market. In the 2000s, Apple expanded its focus on software to include professional and prosumer video, music, and photo production solutions, with a view to promoting their computers as a "digital hub". It also introduced the iPod, the most popular digital music player in the world as of August 2006.^[4]

[edit] 1975 to 1980: The early years

Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne^[5] (and later incorporated January 3, 1977^[6] without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak) to sell the Apple I personal computer kit at US$666.66. They were hand-built in the garage of Jobs' parents,^[7] and the Apple I was first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club.^[8] Eventually 200 computers were built. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips) - not what is today considered a complete personal computer.^[9] The user was required to provide two different AC input voltages (the manual recommended specific transformers), wire an ASCII keyboard (not provided with the computer) to a DIP connector (providing logic inverter and alpha lock chips in some cases), and to wire the video output pins to a monitor or to an RF modulator if a TV set was used.^[10]

Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, which ordered fifty units and paid $500 for each unit after much persuasion from Jobs. Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronic parts distributor. Using a variety of methods, including borrowing space from friends and family and selling various items including a Volkswagen Type 2 bus, Jobs managed to secure the parts needed while Wozniak and Ronald Wayne assembled the Apple I.^{[citation needed]}

The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. Despite a price higher than competitors, it quickly pulled away from its two main rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, to become the market leader (and the symbol of the personal computing phenomenon) in the late 70s due to its color graphics, high build quality, and open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, this was quickly superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II.

Another key to success for Apple was software. The Apple II was chosen by programmers Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston to be the desktop platform for the first "killer app" of the business world—the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II, and the corporate market attracted many more software and hardware developers to the machine, as well as giving home users an additional reason to buy one—compatibility with the office. (See the timeline for dates of Apple II family model releases—the 1977 Apple II and its younger siblings the II+, IIe, IIc, and IIGS.)

By the end of the 1970s, Jobs and his partners had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The Apple II was succeeded by the Apple III in May 1980 as the company struggled to compete against IBM and Microsoft in the lucrative business and corporate computing market. The designers of the Apple III were forced to comply with Jobs' request to omit the cooling fan, and this ultimately resulted in thousands of recalled units due to overheating.^[11] An updated version was introduced in 1983, but it was also a failure due to bad press and wary buyers. Nevertheless, the principals of the company persevered with further innovations and marketing.

In the early 1980s, IBM and Microsoft continued to gain market share at Apple's expense in the personal computer industry. Using a fundamentally different business model, IBM marketed an open hardware standard created with the IBM PC, which was bundled with Microsoft's MS-DOS (MicroSoft-Disk Operating System).

Apple's sustained growth during the early eighties was in large part due to its leadership in schools around the world, particularly with its marketing of Apple Logo, developed by Logo Computer Systems Inc.(LCSI) of Montreal, Canada. The majority of the first computers entering schools around the world were Apple II's with Apple Logo. The drive into education was accentuated in California with the donation of one Apple II and one Apple Logo software package to each public school in the state. The deal concluded between Steve Jobs and Jim Baroux of LCSI, and having required the support of Sacramento, established a strong and pervasive presence for Apple in all schools throughout California. The initial conquest of education environments was critical to Apple's acceptance in the home where the earliest purchases of computers by parents was in support of children's continued learning experience.

Based on the marketing and technical savvy of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the business expertise of Mike Markkula, Apple dominated the personal computer industry from 1977 to 1983.

[edit] 1981 to 1989: Lisa and Macintosh

Apple's 1984 ad, set in a dystopian future modeled after the Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, set the tone for the introduction of the Macintosh in one of the most famous ads ever aired on television.

Jobs and several other Apple employees including Jef Raskin visited Xerox PARC in December 1979 to see the Alto computer. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for selling them US$1 million in pre-IPO Apple stock (approximately US$18 million net).

Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a GUI, and decided to take over design of Apple's first project, the Apple Lisa, to produce such a machine. The Lisa was named after Jobs' daughter (however, a backronym, Local Integrated Software Architecture, was coined). He was eventually pushed from the group due to infighting, and instead took over Jef Raskin's low-cost computer project. Branding the new effort as the product that would "save Apple", an intense turf war broke out between the Lisa's "corporate shirts" and Jobs's Macintosh "pirates", both teams claiming they would ship first and be more successful. In 1983 the Lisa team won the race, and Apple introduced the first personal computer to be sold to the public with a GUI. However, the Lisa was a commercial failure as a result of its high price tag (9,995 USD) and limited software titles.

In 1984, drawing upon its experience with the Lisa, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by a single national broadcast of the now famous US$1.5 million television commercial, "1984", based on George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The commercial was directed by Ridley Scott and aired during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. Jobs' intention with the ad was to represent the IBM PC as Big Brother, and the Macintosh as a nameless female action hero portrayed by Anya Major. While the Macintosh initially sold well, follow-up sales were not particularly strong. The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first laser printer to be offered at a reasonable price point, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing (DTP) package. The Mac was particularly powerful in this market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, a side-effect of the GUI, and it can be said that the combination of these three products are responsible for the creation of the DTP market. As DTP became widespread, Apple's sales reached a series of new highs.

In anticipation of the Macintosh launch, Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, was given several Macintosh prototypes in 1983 to develop software. While the company was indeed ready with its BASIC and the MultiPlan spreadsheet at the Macintosh's launch, in 1985 Microsoft launched Windows, its own GUI for IBM PCs using many of the elements of the Macintosh OS. By 1990, Windows 3.1 was a usable alternative to the Macintosh.

An internal power struggle developed between Jobs and new CEO John Sculley in 1985. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley, and Jobs was removed from his managerial duties. Jobs later resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc., a computer company that built machines with futuristic designs and ran the UNIX-derived NeXTStep operating system. Although powerful, NeXT computers never caught on with buyers, due in part to their high purchase price.

[edit] 1989 to 1991: The Golden Age

The Macintosh Portable was Apple's first "portable" Macintosh computer, released in 1989.

Having learned several painful lessons after introducing the bulky Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple turned to industrial designers and adopted a product strategy based in three portable devices. One portable was built by Sony, which had a strong reputation for designing small, durable and functional electronics devices. Sony took the specs of the Mac Portable, put in a smaller two-hour battery, a much smaller (physically) twenty megabyte hard drive and a smaller nine-inch passive matrix screen.

Called the PowerBook 100, this landmark product was introduced in 1991 and established the modern form and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer.^{[citation needed]} This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer, both of desktop and now portable machines.^{[citation needed]} The same year, Apple introduced a massive upgrade to the Mac OS, in the form of System 7. Although resource-hungry (for the era), System 7 dramatically improved the Macintosh experience, adding color to the interface, simplifying common operations, and introducing a number of powerful new networking capabilities. System 7 would be the basis for the Mac OS until 2001.

The success of the PowerBook and several other Apple products during this period led to increasing revenue. The computer press listened to Apple press releases with rapt attention, and speculation was rife about what projects from Apple's famed Advanced Technology Group would next come to market. Apple merely had to mention a technology, Taligent for instance, for people to christen it the "new standard". For some time, it appeared that Apple could do no wrong, introducing new products that were the best on the market, and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 to 1991 the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.

The continuing development of Microsoft Windows eventually resulted in an interface that many people thought was superior to the Macintosh in terms of ease of use and overall look and feel. Combined with a huge base of low-cost computers and peripherals and an improving software suite, an increasing number of potential customers turned to the "Wintel" standard instead.

Apple, relying on high profit margins to maintain their massive R&D budget, never developed a clear response. Instead they sued Microsoft for theft of intellectual property. The lawsuit dragged on for years before finally being thrown out of court. Worse, the lawsuit distracted management while a deep rot developed within the engineering ranks, which became increasingly unmanageable. At first there was little outward sign of the problem, but a series of major product flops and missed deadlines destroyed Apple's reputation of invincibility.

A QuickTake 200 digital camera, released in 1997. The QuickTake line of cameras was not successful for Apple.

At about the same time, Apple branched out into consumer electronics. One example of this product diversification was the Apple QuickTake digital camera, one of the first digital cameras brought to the consumer market. A more famous example was the Newton, coined a PDA by Sculley, that was introduced in 1993. Though it failed commercially, it defined and launched the new category of computing and was a forerunner and inspiration of devices such as Palm Pilot and PocketPC.

During the 1990s, Apple greatly expanded its computer lineup. It offered a multitude of models ("Quadra 840av", "Performa 6116"), but many felt Apple failed to adequately differentiate one model from another and the cost of supporting so many products adversely affected profitability. Apple lost market share to Microsoft Windows, particularly Windows 95 - a major turning point in the history of the rival Windows operating system.

[edit] 1994 to 1997: Attempts at reinvention

Apple Computer, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA.

By the mid-90s, Apple realized that it had to reinvent the Macintosh in order to stay competitive in the market. The needs of both computer users and computer programs were becoming, for a variety of technical reasons, harder for the existing hardware and operating system to address.

In 1994 Apple surprised its loyalists by allying with its long-time competitor IBM and CPU maker Motorola in the so-called AIM alliance. This was a bid to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform or PReP), which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple's software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind, thus countering Microsoft, which had become Apple's chief competitor.

As the first step toward launching the PReP platform, Apple started the Power Macintosh line in 1994, using IBM's PowerPC processor. This processor utilized a RISC architecture, which differed substantially from the Motorola 68k series that had been used by all previous Macs. Apple's OS was rewritten so that most software for the older Macs could run on the PowerPC series (in emulation).

Throughout the mid to late 1990s, Apple tried to improve its operating system's multitasking and memory management. After first attempting to modify its existing code, Apple realized that it would be better to start with an entirely new operating system and then modify it to fit the Macintosh interface. Apple did some preliminary work with IBM towards this goal with the Taligent project, but that project never produced a replacement operating system. A new internal effort, Copland, ran afoul of Apple's now uncontrollable engineering and became a massive failure. A new attempt was made with the Gershwin operating system.

They then investigated using Be's BeOS, NeXT's NeXTSTEP OS, and also Microsoft's Windows NT. NeXTSTEP was chosen, and this supplied the platform for the modern Mac OS X. On February 7, 1997, Apple completed its purchase of NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system, thus bringing Steve Jobs back into Apple.^[12] On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors after overseeing a 12-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. Jobs stepped in as the interim CEO and began a critical restructuring of the company's product line.

On November 10, 1997, Apple announced a new online retail store, based upon the WebObjects application server the company had acquired in its purchase of NeXT. The new direct sales outlet was also tied to a new build to order manufacturing strategy, and announced at the same time as new machines using the G3 PowerPC processor.

[edit] 1998 to 2005: New beginnings

Steve Jobs introducing the original iMac computer in 1998.

On August 15, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one Macintosh reminiscent of the original Macintosh 128K: the iMac. The iMac design team was led by Jonathan Ive, who later designed the iPod. While technically unimpressive, it featured an innovative new translucent plastic exterior, originally in Bondi Blue, but later many other colors. The iMac proved phenomenally successful, selling close to 800,000 units in its first five months and significantly boosting the company's revenue and profitability. Thanks in part to the iMac, fiscal 1998 was Apple's first profitable year since 1993. The iMac is now considered an industrial design icon of the late 90s.

At the National Association of Broadcasters convention, Apple purchased the Final Cut software from Macromedia, beginning its entry into the digital video editing market, and signaling a return to application development after a decade long policy of delegating non-system software to its Claris subsidiary. iMovie was released in 1999 for consumers, and Final Cut Pro was released for professionals in the same year. Final Cut Pro has gone on to be a significant video-editing program. Similarly, in 2000 Apple bought Astarte's DVDirector software, which morphed into iDVD (for consumers) and DVD Studio Pro (for professionals) at the Macworld Conference and Expo of 2001.

In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, the operating system based on NeXT's OPENSTEP and BSD Unix. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Mac OS X sought to marry the stability, reliability and security of the Unix operating system with the ease of use afforded by a completely overhauled user interface. To aid users in moving their applications from Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications through Mac OS X's Classic environment. Apple's Carbon API also allowed developers to adapt their OS 9 software to use Mac OS X's features often with a simple recompile.

Company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California.

In May 2001, after much speculation, Apple announced the opening of the Apple retail stores, to be located in major U.S. consumer locations. These stores were designed for two purposes: to stem the tide of Apple's declining share of the computer market and to counter a poor record of marketing Apple products by third-party retail outlets. The company faced challenges to balance the deployment of its own retail stores with its dependence on, and the demands of, its existing channel partners and dealers.

On October 23, 2001 Apple introduced its first iPod portable digital audio player and released it on November 10 of that year, a product that has proven phenomenally successful. Nearly 60 million units have been sold even though it was not originally perceived to be a successful product.^[13] Apple's iTunes Store was introduced soon after, offering online music downloads for US 99¢ a song and integration with the iPod. The service quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over 1.5 billion downloads by September 2006.^[14]

In 2002 Apple purchased Nothing Real and their advanced digital compositing application Shake, raising Apple's professional commitment even higher. In the same year they also acquired Emagic, and with it, obtained their professional-quality music productivity application Logic, which led to the development of their consumer-level GarageBand application. With iPhoto's release in 2002, this completed Apple's collection of consumer and professional level creativity software, with the consumer-level applications being collected together into the iLife suite.

Apple progressively abandoned flashy colors in favor of white polycarbonate for consumer lines such as the iMac and iBook, as well as the educational eMac, and metal enclosures for the professional lines. This began with the 2001 release of the titanium PowerBook and was followed by the 2001 white iBook, the 2002 flat-panel iMac, the 2003 Power Mac G5 and the 2004 Apple Cinema Displays. Divergent to this consumer/professional identity, the low-cost Mac mini has an aluminum case while featuring the distinctive white polycarbonate top.

posted by E @ 11:00 PM, ,

iPod is a brand of portable media player designed and marketed by Apple Computer and launched in 2001. In addition to the full sized models, there is the iPod mini, which was discontinued with the introduction of the iPod nano, and the iPod shuffle, so called because it has no screen and was marketed with the ability to shuffle songs. Recent iPods are designed around a central scroll wheel — although the iPod shuffle has buttons only. The full-sized model stores media on an internal hard drive, while the other models use flash memory, allowing for a physically smaller size. The most expensive iPods can hold audio, photos, movies, and games, though most are used primarily as music players, which is the originally intended design function. Like many digital audio players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices, holding any file type.

Apple focused its development on the iPod's unique user interface and its ease of use, rather than on technical capability, which has been criticized for not including certain features such as radio. For simplicity, media files are not managed on the iPod itself but instead take advantage of Apple's jukebox application, iTunes. The software now runs cross-platform on Apple's Macintosh computers and competitor Microsoft's Windows operating system, as do recent iPod models, and is available as a free download from Apple. It stores a comprehensive library of music on the user's computer and can play, burn, and rip music from a CD, and serves as a browser for the iTunes Store, all of which can be done without an iPod. However, iTunes is required to sync media files to an iPod.

The iPod is currently the world's best-selling range of digital audio players and its worldwide mainstream adoption makes it one of the most popular consumer brands. Some of Apple's design choices and proprietary actions have, however, led to criticism and legal battles.

History and design

The iPod came from Apple's digital hub strategy, as the company began creating software for the growing market of digital devices being purchased by consumers. While digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, the company found digital music players lacking in user interface design and decided to develop its own. "iPod" was a name that Apple registered for Internet kiosks, but never put to use.^[1]

Apple's hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinstein assembled a team of engineers to design it, including engineers Anthony Fadell, Stan Ng and Jonathan Ive. They developed the product in less than a year, and it was unveiled on 23 October 2001. CEO Steve Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put "1000 songs in your pocket."

Uncharacteristically, Apple did not develop the iPod's software in-house. Instead, Apple used a Design Chain and contracted with PortalPlayer, who already had a reference design (based on 2 ARM cores) with rudimentary software running on a commercial microkernel embedded operating system. PortalPlayer had previously been working on an IBM-branded MP3 player with Bluetooth headphones.^[2] Apple contracted another company, Pixo, to create and refine the user interface, under the direct supervision of Steve Jobs.

Once established, Apple continued to refine the software's look and feel. Starting with the iPod mini, the Chicago font (once used on early Macintosh computers) was replaced with Espy Sans, which was originally used in eWorld and Copland. Later iPods switched fonts again to Podium Sans — a font similar to Apple's corporate font Myriad. The iPods with color displays then adopted some Mac OS X themes like Aqua progress bars and brushed metal in interface used to lock the volume limit in place.

[edit] User interface

A mock-up display of the fifth generation iPod, playing the song "Feel Good Inc." by the band Gorillaz

The iPods with color displays use high quality anti-aliased graphics and text, with sliding animations. These iPods have five buttons and the newer generations have the buttons integrated into the scroll wheel — an innovation which gives an uncluttered, minimalistic interface. The buttons are:

Menu — to traverse backwards through the menus, and toggle the backlight on older iPods
Center — to select a menu item
Play / Pause — this doubles as an off switch when held
Fast Forward / Skip Forward
Fast Reverse / Skip Backwards

The other operations such as scrolling through menu items and controlling the volume are performed by using the touch-wheel in a rotational manner. These iPods also have a Hold switch at the top, which prevents accidental button presses. Newer iPods automatically pause playback when the headphones are unplugged from the headphone jack, but playback does not resume when the headphones are re-inserted. An iPod that has crashed or frozen can be reset by switching 'Hold' on then off, then holding Menu and Center (Menu and Play on the 3G iPod) for 6 seconds. Apple also provides further troubleshooting advice.^[3]

The iPod shuffle does not use a touch-wheel and instead has five buttons positioned differently to the larger models. It has a Play / Pause button in the center, surrounded by four buttons: Volume Up / Down and Skip Forward / Backwards.

[edit] Software

The iPod can play MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless audio file formats. The fifth generation iPod can also play MPEG-4 (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC), .mp4 and QuickTime video formats, with restrictions on video dimensions, encoding techniques and data-rates. Unlike most other media players, Apple does not support Microsoft's WMA audio format — but a converter for non-DRM WMA files is provided with the Windows version of iTunes. MIDI files cannot be played, but can be converted to audio files using the "Advanced" menu on iTunes. Alternative open-source audio formats such as Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are not supported.

Each time an iPod connects to its host computer, iTunes can synchronize entire music libraries or music playlists and the user can choose for automatic or manual synchronization. Song ratings can be set on the iPod and synchronized later to the iTunes library. If songs were added to the iPod on other computers, however, they won't be copied back to the music library.

[edit] iTunes Store

Main articles: iTunes and iTunes Store

The iTunes Store (formerly iTunes Music Store) is an online media store run by Apple and accessed via iTunes. It was introduced on 29 April 2003 and it sells individual songs relatively easily and cheaply, with typical prices being US$0.99, EU€0.99, or GB£0.79 per song. iPods are the only portable music players that can play the purchased music in its original format (encrypted AAC); users can re-encode purchased music via iTunes into formats playable on any portable music player. The store became the market leader soon after its launch^{[verification needed]} and Apple announced the sale of videos through the store on 12 October 2005. Full-length movies became available on 12 September 2006.^[4]

Purchased audio files use the AAC format with added encryption. The encryption is based on the controversial FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) system. Up to five authorized computers and an unlimited number of iPods can play the files. Burning the files onto an audio CD removes the DRM, at a cost of reduced quality when re-compressed from a lossy format to the standard CDDA (CD audio) format.

iPods cannot play music files from other competing music stores such as Napster or MSN Music which use rival DRM technologies like Microsoft's protected WMA or RealNetworks' Helix DRM. RealNetworks claims that Apple is creating problems for itself,^[5] by using FairPlay to lock users into using the iTunes Store. Steve Jobs stated that Apple makes little profit from song sales, but Apple uses the store to promote iPod sales.^[6]

[edit] File storage

All iPods can function as mass storage devices to store data files. If the iPod is formatted on a Mac OS X computer it uses the HFS Plus file system format. If it is formatted on Windows, the FAT32 format is used because Windows cannot access HFS filesystems. Unlike UMS/MTP-capable digital audio players, simply copying files to the drive will not allow the iPod to properly access them (although some third party iPod software allows this). Instead, the user must use iTunes or a compatible third-party software to load audio, videos, and photos in such a way that they are playable and viewable on the iPod.

An iPod formatted as HFS Plus is able to serve as a boot disk for a Mac computer, allowing one to have a portable operating system installed. The older iPods with FireWire ports could additionally function in FireWire Disk Mode. With the advent of the Windows-compatible iPod, the iPod's default file system switched from HFS Plus to FAT32, although they can be reformatted to either filesystem (excluding the iPod shuffle which is strictly FAT32).

iTunes cannot transfer songs or videos from device to computer (although iTunes 7 allows it for music purchased online). The media files are stored on the iPod in a hidden folder, together with a proprietary database file. However, the hidden content can be accessed on the host operating system by enabling hidden files to be shown. The audio can then be recovered manually by dragging the files or folders onto the iTunes Library or by using third-party software.

In earlier iTunes versions, files were copied into these hidden folders using their original filenames. In later versions of iTunes, files were copied using random four-character filenames (such as ABCD.mp3) to make it more difficult to simply search for files and drag them out of the hidden folders. This can be worked around by either using an application that can read the tags from the files directly and display and copy them along with the filenames, or by using third-party software that is able to read the iPod database format, since the iPod's database links the randomly-named files to their titles, artists, and other information.

[edit] Additional features

The larger models also have limited PDA-like functionality and can display text files. Contacts and schedules can be viewed and synchronized with the host computer, and some built-in games are available including Brick, Parachute, Solitaire and Music Quiz. Brick (which is a clone of Breakout) was originally invented by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in the 1970s.

A firmware update released in September 2006 brought several new features to 5th generation iPods including downloadable games, adjustable screen brightness, and gapless playback.

[edit] Open-source alternatives

The iPodLinux project has a port of an ARM version of the Linux kernel alongside an interface called "Podzilla" that runs on all iPods, although only the first, second and third generations are officially supported by the developers. The iPod shuffle is not supported and the September 2006 iPods are incompatible.

An open-source firmware called Rockbox allows the iPod nano, mini, and all display-capable iPods after the third generation (except for the updated video iPods) to play Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Musepack, WavPack, Shorten, and MIDI files, but not FairPlay-encrypted files. Rockbox also offers gapless playback and a more sophisticated equalizer but is in a testing stage as of September 2006.

There are also several open source alternatives to iTunes. gtkpod allows machines running virtually any OS to connect to the iPod. Yamipod is a free application to manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. ephPod is another Windows iTunes alternative. MediaChest is a Java application which allows users to synchronize the iPod from different operating systems. There are also iPod plug-ins for popular music players.

There are several closed source and commercial iPod content synchronizers.

[edit] Connectivity

Originally, a FireWire connection to the host computer was used to update songs or recharge the battery. The battery could also be charged with a power adapter that was included with the first 4 generations.

The third generation began including a dock connector, allowing for FireWire or USB connectivity. This provided better compatibility with PCs, as most of them did not have FireWire ports at the time. However, the device could not be charged over USB, so the FireWire cables were nonetheless needed to connect to the AC adapter. The dock connector also brought opportunities to exchange data, sound and power with an iPod, which ultimately created a large market of accessories, manufactured by third parties such as Belkin and Griffin. The 2nd generation iPod shuffle uses a single 3.5 mm jack which acts as both a headphone jack and a data port for the dock.

The fourth generation iPod allowed recharging via USB and eventually Apple began shipping iPods with USB cables instead of FireWire, although the latter was available separately.

As of the 5th generation iPod, Apple discontinued using FireWire for data transfer and made a full transition to USB 2.0, due to its widespread adoption. FireWire was then used for recharging only.

[edit] Chipsets and electronics

posted by E @ 10:43 PM, ,

Making money
Friday, December 01, 2006

Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…

Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.

Can most people do it?

No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK, actually I do.

This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.

Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:

blog publishing software
HTML/CSS
blog comments (and comment spam)
RSS/syndication
feed aggregators
pings
trackbacks
full vs. partial feeds
blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
search engines
search engine optimization (SEO)
page rank
social bookmarking
tagging
contextual advertising
affiliate programs
traffic statistics
email

Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.

I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet. Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking. And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it. To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work. I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.

Thriving on change

Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you. Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities. You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset. Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains. It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst. Blogging is cheap. Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal. Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily. You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities. I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.

The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity. It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear. If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out. Many opportunities are temporary. And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned. And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.

I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies. It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry. And the rate of change is accelerating. Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road. Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself. But I learned to love this insane pace. If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too. And people who only do this part-time will be very confused. If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up. So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high. Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur. This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea. Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous. Let it inspire you instead.

What’s your overall income-generation strategy?

I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs. They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money. While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim. Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.

Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site. If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income. You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is. An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month. It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances. I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005). And since then it’s continued to increase nicely. Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain. It’s a lot more secure than a regular job. No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones. We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…

Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else? Maybe you want a combination of these things. However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing. I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy. I only update it about once a year and review it once a month. This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed. It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.

Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site. Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that. Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site? Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches. Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.

When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too. Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money. I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income. Later I added donations as well. This is an effective combo.

Traffic, traffic, traffic

Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.

Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views. That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.

Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).

When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge. All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic. If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed. So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months. I just focused on traffic building. Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan. For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK. Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.

Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.

With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews. Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers. Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about. These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out. Popular sites have a serious advantage. The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.

If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.

How to build traffic

Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?

I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there: How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog). If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later. That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors. No games or gimmicks.

There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.

Blog Carnivals. Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know). Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche. Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free. Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form. Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.

In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog for free. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore. Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic. But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start. Plus it’s very easy.

If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong? Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right. Again, making mistakes is not the issue. Missing opportunities is.

Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?

Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:

Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.

Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.

I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.

I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.

posted by E @ 8:56 PM, ,