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Consumer limitations: With CE gear, is Apple-like hegemony the way to go?
By Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor -- EDN, 3/29/2007

Brian DipertEDN's Editor-in-Chief Maury Wright wrapped up a recent editorial (see "Has Jobs lost his magic," Feb 1, 2007) with the provocative claim that "a more open approach to the Apple codec and digital-rights management might ultimately serve the company much better than the current stance that limits content to Apple hardware." If you were to look at my past online and print write-ups, you might conclude that I'm in full agreement with my boss. Not so fast.

At the risk of making a career-limiting move, I disagree with Maury on this one. Although I'm generally an advocate of open standards, I also see plenty of examples where a competing de facto standard, defined by one or a few companies, thrives in comparison because it doesn't have to struggle with as much pace-slowing incompatibility or in-fighting between "partners" jockeying for proprietary "enhancements" or other means of market dominance.

One of the online feedback comments to Maury's editorial, from Steve Gates (who identified himself as an engineer at Microsoft) particularly resonated with me. Gates wrote, "The current mish-mash of products and technology from various ‘partnerships’ is the key reason digital devices have not proliferated at a much faster pace." I think he has a good point. Particularly in the consumer-electronics market that's front-and-center in my editorial beat, I've encountered plenty of situations where the setup simplicity of an Apple-like single-company ecosystem would have been a preferable, albeit perhaps more costly, alternative to the frustrating, more "open" alternative I was grappling with.

Here's an example. Family and friends are a key part of my product-review team; they inevitably encounter glitches that, due both to my accumulated technical expertise and the lessons I've learned from glitches surmounted in times past, I'd sidestep without perhaps even realizing that I was doing so. Therefore, when a couple I’m close friends with expressed an interest in Yahoo Music Unlimited's Microsoft codec- and DRM-based subscription service, and in piping that music from their PC to their living room, I thought it'd be a perfect opportunity for them to do some hands-on testing of the WMB (Wireless Music Bridge) that Linksys (which had publicly partnered with Yahoo on the WMB) had recently sent me for review. Note: Neither of my friends is in the computer industry, but they're both highly educated and intelligent professionals; one's a biologist, the other a psychologist.

The PC-based software for the WMB redirects audio that would otherwise go out the speakers or headphone jack, sending it instead out the computer's network port to a LAN-connected piece of hardware that subsequently feeds a stereo system's line input jacks. The Linksys device originally sold for $150, but it’s currently available on Amazon for just north of $80. To hit that price while (presumably) still turning a profit, Linksys' engineers had to cut a few corners on the features. To wit, my friends didn't want to run CAT5 cable from their office to the living room, preferring instead to use the device's built-in WiFi transceiver. However, because the WMB offers no integrated display or front-panel controls, they had to jump through a bewildering and intimidating (to them) set of hoops:

* Disconnecting the PC from the router, and CAT5-connecting it instead to the WMB.
* Running an installation utility on the PC and hoping that it would find the WMB (the first few times my friends tried, it didn't; then, it refused to accept the default password listed in the documentation).
* Figuring out the wireless network's SSID and encryption parameters, entering them at the setup screen, and (if the computer was running Windows 2000) rebooting the PC to allow the WMB's audio driver stack to complete installation.
* Reconnecting the PC to the wireless-inclusive router, launching the Linksys audio-redirecting software, and hoping that the PC and WMB would reliably communicate.

Two WMBs, five lengthy phone calls to tier-1 overseas and (later, after I reluctantly interceded on their behalf to my PR contacts) tier-2 domestic technical support, several weeks, and many bottles of Aspirin later, my friends gave up on Linksys. They finally got the PC and WMB to “see” each other, but they could never achieve stutter-free audio playback, even though the router and WMB were less than 10 ft (and one no-metal-inclusive wall) away from each other. I point the probable-blame finger at the audio-rerouting PC software stack, but who knows for sure? Had my friends not been reviewing the product for me as a favor, they emphatically told me, they would have been back at the store for a refund after the first unproductive phone call, if not sooner.

Conversely, they were up and running within an hour of cracking open the box of the Roku SoundBridge M1000 that I subsequently passed along to them. At around $200, it's roughly twice the price of the WMB, but it includes both front-panel controls and an LCD. It prompts you to enter wireless network parameters without any required PC intercession, and, as long as you have Windows Media Connect (which Microsoft built into Windows Media Player 11) running on the PC, it'll find, organize and play back the audio files stored on that PC all by itself. Granted, my friends haven't yet tackled subscription content; the unpredictable reality behind the PlaysForSure hype, which I've also personally experienced (and written about) on innumerable occasions, is food for an editorial all by itself. But I'm cautiously optimistic.

The M1000 was straightforward, but the Apple alternatives are even more so. Check out Apple's equivalent to the WMB, the AirPort Express. Or better yet, check out the video-inclusive AppleTV, which should be shipping by the time you read this. Computers and LAN clients automatically find each other via Bonjour, a protocol that in many respects is UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) on steroids. Apple has built support for those LAN clients into both the Mac OS and iTunes. Everything just works—maybe not in all cases, as a visit to Apple's support forums will point out, but I'd wager, in a higher percentage of situations than what I've previously described. See why Microsoft's supplemented—or, if you prefer, supplanted—PlaysForSure with the Apple-reminiscent Zune strategy?

Ecosystem standards only work if...well...they work. Most customers don't understand technology, and they neither have nor should you expect them to have the motivation to become IT experts to use your gear. They see their wasted time as wasted money. Spend a few bucks more upfront on your system's bill-of-materials cost and, yes, your marketing counterparts will have to figure out how to sell a few dozen bucks' more expensive widget. But in exchange, you'll get fewer support calls and fewer product returns, both of which gobble up any profit margin you might have otherwise achieved with the upfront sale. Happier customers become long-term customers and convert their families, friends, and coworkers into customers, too. With apologies to my boss, and until open standards work as smoothly as closed ones do, I'm with Steve Gates on this one.

P.S. Don't take my “career-limiting move” comment seriously, dear readers. The EDN culture encourages diverse thinking, and I don't anticipate any managerial backlash from publicly disagreeing with Maury's stance. With that said, if you send me an e-mail, and it bounces back as undeliverable....


http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6427217