Microsoft employee Omar Shahine, who is a manager in the Windows Live Mail team, recently ended a 17-month search to find a suitable replacement for the iPod. While he loved the MP3 player, he disliked iTunes, so he set out to find a new one that met his extensive list of criteria posted on his blog. Ultimately, he failed, despite buying and testing many devices.
His quest began on Oct. 21, 2004. On March 10, he gave up, acknowledging: “Apple has constantly moved the needle forward in a number of areas. We are still far behind, and in all likelihood, when we catch up, Apple will have something like [the revamped video iPod].”
On March 13, he summed up his reasons why he failed in his search, noting: “Designing a good user experience across hardware and software is hard. There are very few companies which are capable of making the necessary level of investment to make something that’s arguably a work of art, but also a functional music player.”
He continued: “I have learned that in a commodity business, you will never find a company that will make that level of investment unless they own the entire value chain (Macintosh, XBOX, PlayStation etc) … Creating an open ecosystem where anyone can sell music or create a music business does not matter if 1) the devices that are required to play that content are hard to use, hard to charge, or require a firmware update to function correctly 2) you don’t have the content, 3) cannot interoperate with the world’s most successful portable music device.”
While he believes that “iTunes still has a ton of problems,” such as the inability to import album art while transcoding WMA files, Mr. Shahine said that “the iPod is successful because it’s a great easy to use product. It’s also successful because it’s instantly recognizable in every respect. As a result of it’s success it’s pervasive and you can find iPod solutions for the car, home and when traveling. People buy them for the same reasons they buy sexy phones.”
However, he did say he hopes that “someone figures out a way to get us out of the DRM headache whereby I am locked into a device platform. Well if Apple offers a subscription version of iTunes this problem gets bearable. I think this is one area where Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should get together and decide to make all our lives a little bit better by supporting interop between iTunes and PlaysForSure. Everyone wins (at least I think).”