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The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

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Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#11

Post by SilverBirch »

bowsamic wrote: post #4

Classic Steve Jobs move. On the absolute limit of ethics for the sake of Apple

What do you mean for the sake of Apple? This didn't benefit Apple. He screwed with this guy for months because of a mistaken idea that the guy should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy without being told, and after months of messing him about sent him back the signed contract the second he had given up. There was no benefit to Apple here. In fact he harmed Apple by limiting their music collection in the initial stages. It's also not on the limits of ethics. It's unethical.

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#12

Post by sublinear »

SilverBirch wrote: post #11
bowsamic wrote: post #4

Classic Steve Jobs move. On the absolute limit of ethics for the sake of Apple

What do you mean for the sake of Apple? This didn't benefit Apple. He screwed with this guy for months because of a mistaken idea that the guy should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy without being told, and after months of messing him about sent him back the signed contract the second he had given up. There was no benefit to Apple here. In fact he harmed Apple by limiting their music collection in…

> should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy

I have to assume you and the author (at that time) aren't familiar enough with the corporate world to realize all discussions containing privileged information (contract details that would never get a press release) are confidential by default.

Of course Apple would never think they'd have to explain this. It's a reasonable expectation for them to have.

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#13

Post by detourdog »

danlitt wrote: post #7
jdw64 wrote: post #3

After reading this story, I do think Apple is bad, but from a business perspective, it makes sense. (By 'business perspective,' I mean it's immoral but profitable.) Because if CD Baby was acting as a middleman and a gateway for indie music distribution, Apple's move to shut it out was about preventing power from becoming decentralized and keeping control concentrated in Apple's hands to position iTunes as a premium p…

> By 'business perspective,' I mean it's immoral but profitable. So, the purest form of evil there is? > Sometimes I wonder why people don't get as angry at Apple as they do at Microsoft. They are indeed just as bad as each other. I think Microsoft just got unlucky and had a lot of bad-PR emails leak. If that had happened at Apple he'd probably have someone killed.

I was a sysadmin through the 90's and my distaste for Microsoft was that it wasn't plug and play and they would distribute software on 35 floppy disks instead of a CD-ROM. Finally their business practice. If Microsoft was unlucky, remember we make our own luck.

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#15

Post by jasode »

>A month later, Steve Jobs did a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes. People had been criticizing iTunes for having less music than the competition. They had 400,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.)

>Four minutes in, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach:

>“This number could have easily been much higher, if we wanted to let in every song. But we realize that record companies do a great service. They edit! Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries? We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40? Well we don’t want to let that stuff on our site! So we’ve had to edit it. And these are 400,000 quality songs.”

In 2003, there were 2 special events with Steve Jobs keynotes about iTunes and he's referring to the 2nd one on October 16, 2003 (deep link to that quote) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvCJ613HORA&t=9m00s

(For trivia reference, the first one was April 28, 2003 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF9o46zK5Jo)

>Whoa! Wow. Steve Jobs just dissed me hard! I’m the only one charging $40. That was me he’s referring to!

The author Derek Sivers left a lot of details out but here's how I interpret the situation ...

As prerequisite background, you can categorize "record labels" into 2 groups:

(1) the record label pays the artist for music via "advances", paying upfront recording costs, marketing etc. These are the traditional record labels like Warner, Universal, Sony, Motown, etc that "develop" the artist by making financial bets and losing money on most of the signed roster but making a profit a tiny number.

(2) the artists pay the "record label" -- where these entities are mostly used as a "distribution" intermediary. CD Baby and Tunecore would be typical examples.

Now look at the convoluted process with physical CDs that Apple forced CDBaby and other independents to use:

>The Apple guys said, “Sorry, you need to use this software; there is no other way.”

>Ugh. That means we have to pull each one of those CDs off of the shelf again, stick it in a Mac, then cut-and-paste every song title into that Mac software. But so be it. If that’s what Apple needs, OK.

That is basically a form of "proof-of-work". Apple didn't necessarily want everything from CD Baby. Instead, they just wanted the stuff CD Baby thought was worthwhile enough to expend time & effort to mess around with physical CDs.

The big labels didn't have to do that because they already did a form of "proof-of-work" via paying in advance for artists.

The issue is that Derek didn't "read between the lines" to understand what Steve Jobs and the convoluted upload process was trying to accomplish. I suppose business people could just speak plainly so they don't get mixed messages but sometimes they don't.

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#16

Post by sublinear »

jasode wrote: post #15

>A month later, Steve Jobs did a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes. People had been criticizing iTunes for having less music than the competition. They had 400,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.) >Four minutes in, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach: >“This number could have easily been muc…

I think it's more likely that the iTunes software was just immature at that point.

What you're describing is a nice side effect of that for Apple, but the reality is they're not going to do the bitch work of importing all those songs from a hodge podge of whatever formats they're given. They didn't have a better tool available at that time to make their catalog consistent.

It's very believable that Apple felt enough urgency to rush this phase.

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#17

Post by SilverBirch »

sublinear wrote: post #12
SilverBirch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean for the sake of Apple? This didn't benefit Apple. He screwed with this guy for months because of a mistaken idea that the guy should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy without being told, and after months of messing him about sent him back the signed contract the second he had given up. There was no benefit to Apple here. In fact he harmed Apple by limiting their music collection in…

> should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy I have to assume you and the author (at that time) aren't familiar enough with the corporate world to realize all discussions containing privileged information (contract details that would never get a press release) are confidential by default. Of course Apple would never think they'd have to explain this. It's a reasonable expectation for them to have.

I work in the corporate world, I have detailed confidential discussions about technical details of upcoming products and contract details. The first thing we do in those situations is we all sign NDAs. The idea that you'd do a presentation to a hundred people and expect that information to stay confidential without specifically informing them is just absurd. Which is part of the reason Jobs just screwed him around rather than doing what you're meant to do - get the person to sign an NDA and then sue them if they break it.

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#18

Post by hk1337 »

jasode wrote: post #15

>A month later, Steve Jobs did a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes. People had been criticizing iTunes for having less music than the competition. They had 400,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.) >Four minutes in, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach: >“This number could have easily been muc…

> I suppose business people could just speak plainly so they don't get mixed messages but sometimes they don't.

When you’re putting out a message to a large amount of people, no matter how much time and effort you spend trying to get the words just right so everyone understands, there’s always going to someone that misunderstands it and gets offended.

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#19

Post by PunchyHamster »

bowsamic wrote: post #4

Classic Steve Jobs move. On the absolute limit of ethics for the sake of Apple

You mean on the limits of being sued for. Coz this man had zero ethics anywhere in his life unless "being ethical" was somehow correlated with also making money

Re: The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

#20

Post by snowwrestler »

I remember when this happened. Apple’s corporate staff screwed up and didn’t have the contract done in time to have the music in by the keynote. And of course they are not going to move the keynote. So Jobs had to spin it: the small number of songs is a good thing, actually!

He was one of the best at this. PowerPC is not keeping up with Intel? Spin it! (Then switch.) Everyone hates DRM? Spin it! (Then drop DRM.) People are nervous about your antenna design? Spin it! And give ‘em a bumper. (But don’t change the antenna.)

What he said publicly was not necessarily a reflection of reality, it was whatever he thought would best position himself and his organization at that moment. In tech they called it a reality distortion field. In politics it’s called a day ending in -y. :-)

Obviously Apple did not have a problem with CD Baby because they did do the contract. And obviously they did not actually have a quality concern about the cheap $40 fee because they kept them even as it went to free.

It’s a classic small business supplier story: the big guys will do what works best for them and the little guy will have to deal with it in order to get the benefit. The most common example is how long most big businesses take to pay their small suppliers. It’s not intentionally malicious, just relative indifference. Like a big truck running over a raccoon because it’s so hard to swerve or stop.

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