Are the Apple Rumors True?
I love blogs, I love the internet, I love rumors, and I love technology. Therefore, I love rumors about technology generated by blogs on the internet.
On a July 21st post, I passed on a rumor from thinksecret and slashfilm regarding a possibly impending announcement at Apple’s August Worldwide Developer’s Conference that iTunes would soon be offering rentable movie downloads. None of us will know, of course, whether or not this is true until the WWDC actually takes place, but that doesn’t have to stop us from speculating (isn’t that the whole point of blogging?).
Macworld editors Philip Michaels and Jim Dalrymple recently offered arguments supposed to, respectively, disprove and prove these rumors.
Michaels makes three arguments for why the announcement WILL NOT happen:
1) The WWDC is for industry techheads who are interested only in hardware developments. The MacWorld Expo is for consumer-oriented announcements. Movie rental downloads on iTunes full under the latter.
2) Netflix and cable provider models like Comcast’s OnDemand already offer features that are similarly convenient. It is not in Apple’s history to be a late-in-the-game bandwagon jumper.
3) iTunes is about BUYING and OWNING media, NOT RENTING, which is what the movie download offerings are rumored to center on.
Here are Dalyrmple’s counterarguments:
1) Apple developers are just as interested in consumer-oriented announcements as consumers. In fact, this is a major reason for Apple’s success. Furthermore, MacWorld is in January. Why would Jobs wait?
2) Itunes is more convenient than Netflix because it offers instaneous access to media. Period. This is not to mention the success of the limited television-based downloads already offered on iTunes.
3) Apple simply hasn’t been successful in persuading the movie industry to allow for the download-to-own model. Anyways, who is to say that that model would even be successful? After all, the video rental business came into existence for a reason: people only want to watch movies once and will therefore be less interested in spending more money to buy (rather than rent) movies.
Here is my take on the situation:
For starters, Michaels’ claim that the audience at the WWDC wouldn’t be interested in consumer-oriented announcements like this one is silly. Last time I checked, Apple is a business, thereby making EVERY announcement essentially “consumer-oriented.” Dalrymple is right to point out that Apple developers in particular are especially cognizant of this, which is why Apple always puts out the most user-friendly stuff. Even the most minor technical hardware changes at Apple are done with the user in mind. Furthermore, it is ridiculous to think that offering a new type of media through iTunes has no effect on what Michaels calls “under the hood developments.” It goes without saying that iTunes movie downloads spells changes for iPod technology.
Michaels’ claim that iTunes would somehow be “contradicting itself” by offering movie rentals because the store is “about” buying is also absurd. The force behind Dalrymple’s point is that video is an essentially different form of media from music. Like books, it lends itself well to one-time usage. This is why we even have video rental stores (and libraries). To suggest that Apple wouldn’t want in on this potentially lucrative market simply because iTunes is in some vague way “about” buying and not “about” renting is just plain bizzare. Does Michaels think that this is going to somehow offend consumers?
Ultimately, I do think, however, that Michaels is on to something with his second claim. I simply do not a current market for downloadable movie rentals. Dalrymple can talk about convenience over Netflix all he wants but this doesn’t address competition from cable providers (who already offer this same service) or the fact that people want to watch movies on their TVs, in their living rooms (which both Netflix and cable provider-based models allow them to do). Until fully centralized media centers that allow for easy linkages between computers, televisions, stereos, etc. become the norm (which they certainly are not right now), I don’t see the movie downloading business taking off. One could press the portability benefits offered by potentially upgraded iPods, but how many people watch videos “on the go”? Isn’t the whole point of a portable music player that you can use it while doing other stuff, like working out or travelling? If so, does it even make sense to think of video this way? Maybe people will watch movies on the subway, but how long is the average subway ride? And how many people are really interested in watching a movie during rush hour in a packed train?
These are, of course, reasons why downloadable movie rentals won’t take off, not factual reasons why Apple won’t offer them. If the overhead of the program is low enough, I could see Apple doing it, even if the profits of the program end up being meager in comparison to music sales (which I am convinced they will be). This is what the truth of the rumor rides upon. Of course, if anyone is going to perfect this technology, it will be Apple.
In any case, I don’t think Netflix or Comcast should be scared. In fact, if the latter were able to increase its library, I can not think of any reason why movie downloading would survive, given the touch-of-a-button capabilities of models like OnDemand’s. If this were to happen, of course, OnDemand would simply become what the movie downloading companies are striving to be.
The end result of all this will probably be some kind of amalgamation of all three models that will allow for both Netflix’s extensive selection and the convenience currently enjoyed by OnDemand users.
UPDATE: As problematic as some of his arguments are, Michaels was ultimately right; Jobs did not announce anything about movie downloading at the August WDC. See the story here.