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Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 4: GMaps Knows Just Enough

Everyone wants GPS in the iPhone.  And GPS will eventually come to the iPhone.  But the measured pace of its rollout is a perfect study in the care with which Apple treats its users and our ability to acclimate to features.

Step 1)  Chances are, your previous phone (the last one you owned before the game was changed) did not know where you were, and if it had any idea, it wouldn’t tell you.  If you were a power user, you knew how to browse to a map and could figure out where you were on the map and 12 minutes later, you could navigate to where you wanted to go.  But by that time, you were already there, so never mind.

Step 2)  You bought an iPhone.  The Google people (they’re so smart) provided you with a neat and quick way to tell your iPhone where you were and use two fingers to quickly figure out what was around you.  Your iPhone did not know where you were, but you understood why.  The hardware required was not practical and look how you can flip from picture to picture - who the hell cares where you are.  Anyhow, maybe you don’t want your phone to know where you are.  That might be kind of creepy.  If you need directions, tell it where you are, tell it where you want to go.  It tells you how to get there.

Step 3)  You update your iPhone to 1.1.3 and as it turns out, the Google people (they’re really smart) have contracted with a company that can do what the police do to figure out where you are, but only with a certain amount of precision.  The radius of the guess is huge - ‘where you are’ turns out to be somewhere in an extra large crop circle.  Time to get some directions.  Tell it where you want to go, tell it where you are, no wait, don’t tell it where you are - let it figure out where you are if it’s so damn smart.  Oh, it knows enough to kind of get you started.  That’s kind of cool, and not yet creepy.  You are slowly acclimating to the idea that your device is location-aware.  But you’re okay with that.

Step 4)  You start to become impatient.  Yes, your iPhone has some faint idea as to where you are, but you’re so over the geewhizbangness of its quaint simulation of awareness and you want it to know where you are at all times because you’re sick of having to ask it where the nearest Arby’s is - it should just alert you on a constant basis.  Your iPhone has met needs you did not know needed meeting, and now you want it to meet other needs it has not yet met.  You are over any implications of creepiness, you are hungry for some roast beef and you want some goddamn GPS in your phone.

Step 5)  Macworld 2010 or something.  Did you see the liveblogs?  It’s your lucky day.  Built-in GPS standard on all new iPhones (which they’re naming iPhone Beef ‘n Cheddar for obvious reasons).

Image courtesy Macworld

Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 1: MacBook Air

Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 2: iPhone 1.1.3

Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 3: iTunes Movie Rentals and AppleTV

Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 3: iTunes Movie Rentals and AppleTV

It’s no accident that Apple’s initial stab at the video console experience was named “Front Row” and that the symbol of the red theater curtain was in heavy use in its marketing.

Extrapolated out to the AppleTV, the intent is to reproduce the movie-going experience as well as the movie-watching experience.  Apple has no real interest in augmenting the theatrical distribution model.  To the contrary, Apple is in the game of superseding it.

Through its iTunes software or AppleTV kiosk (its box office, if you will and I think you will), Apple wants to sell you the event of a movie, not just the sight and sound of the video.  Apple wants you to buy a ticket, walk past the velvet rope (in your underwear, even), sit down, get cozy and take in a show.

Let’s go back to the other side of the analogy (the movie theater) and consider this: you want to partake in the event of a movie.  You go online and find out which show you want to see, figure out what time AMC Theaters wants to show it to you, hand over your dollars, make your way to the theater, collect your ticket, get your snacks that pay for the upkeep of the theater, pick from an array of available seats, sit down (pants required) to a barrage of premovie Selling of Stuff, and then the event begins.  Get up to go to the bathroom.  We’ll tell you what you missed.

What’s that?  You’re kind of tired and feel like taking a break from the movie, maybe to pick up later where you left off?  Sure - you’ve had a long day.  AMC Theaters understands.  You just hold on to your ticket, go home, take a nap.  When you come back, ask to speak to Dave the manager and I’m sure he’ll let you right back in the theater at the same point in the movie; you can even sit in the same seat.  No extra charge, because you already paid good money for that ticket.

So you see where this breaks down - by limiting the amount of time to 24 hours within which you can experience the movie (up to 30 days from the purchase of the ticket, mind you), Apple is reversing the anti-theater trend, the time-shifting TiVoization of the movies that has been brought about by Netflix.  If you remember the beginning of the video rental business model, it was rare to be rented a movie for more than a night.  In 1990, if you went to the video store and rented Back to the Future II, chances are good that you watched it that night and returned it the next day.  Netflix introduced the model of keep-it-til-you’re-done and in doing so, de-cinematized and removed the urgency of the experience of a movie.  Blockbuster attempted to compete by following suit in its stores, allowing the customer to keep movies longer.  In the process of all this, one can’t help but feel the movie-watching experience has been substantially devalued.

In forcing audiences back into time-limited events, Apple is bringing the value back to the movies.  The 24-hour leash is a short one, but when they make the announcement in six months (speculation, obviously) that they are extending the time-limit to 48 or 72 hours, will customers be happy or angry?  Well, I guess some customers were angry when Apple gave back $100 for early iPhone purchasers.  There’s no pleasing some people.

But most importantly, when you sit down to your AppleTV and click Start on that time-limited movie-watching event, you’re going to sit there and watch it.  And you just might have enjoyed the event so much that the next day you pick out another from the rapidly growing list of available titles, and you’ll watch that one, too.  And soon enough, you realize that Apple has made the experience so painless, comfortable, familiar, and Appley that movies have begun to mean something different again.

Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 1: MacBook Air

Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 2: iPhone 1.1.3 

Post-Macworld Wrap-up Part 4: GMaps Knows Just Enough