Mobile, schmobile. Few people carry a smartphone, but every home contains a couch. God’s sake, don’t quote me on that.
Observers of the tech scene were shaken with disbelief noticing spiritual idol, Steve Jobs, among the glitterati last Sunday at the Oscars. What has always been a night of prime Hollywood superficiality and old-fashioned gossip, was infiltrated by the squeaky-clean and digital, the perfectly featured iPad between sets, and its commandant between panting agents. I, however, am almost as shaken by a different sight entirely: Google knocking at the doors of dens and living rooms everywhere – a last enclave of television where we can sit for five minutes without a Google search box to remind us that there is much investigating still to do – inserting its technology into Dish set-top boxes. And of course, this is only the beginning. The two events are undoubtedly related.
Most of us would be likely to forget that, in some ways, Steve Jobs is as much a part of the Hollywood community as he is of San Francisco. But we should not need a cameo appearance at the Academy Awards to remind us. Jobs was, after all, the CEO of Pixar and is currently the single largest shareholder of Walt Disney. He is not only on the company’s board, but is actively involved in the management of the Disney/Pixar combined animation business. (Here is an even more interesting piece of trivia, based on very cursory and approximate web research (using Google): Jobs’s dollar ownership of Disney, based on recent market caps, exceeds his dollar ownership of Apple.)
There has always been a distinction in the media world between entertainment and information, as much as there has been a separation between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and, for that matter, New York. If the open web is about speed and efficiency and completeness of information – in short, utilitarian functionality – then Apple has always been about style: controlled design, premium and highly architected content. If the open web is about Google, then Apple is no doubt about Hollywood and New York: film studios, magazines, music. All those things for which consumers still pay, not on the basis of speed or efficiency or information flow, but on the basis of pleasure, quality, enjoyment.
In the iPad commercial that ran during the Oscars this weekend, we saw image after image depict home relaxation. We did not see a mobile use of the product on the go, and we did not see an office use where the likely need is news or some other information. We saw private individuals kick back in an armchair, on a couch, in a living room or elsewhere inside a residential setting, with an iPad on their lap. We saw them use their iPad in the same setting in which we now read magazines, watch rented movies, listen to music on speakers, and consume cable television. This was the same posture, incidentally, in which Jobs sat as he presented the iPad on stage at its first launch.
This association of Apple products and relaxed entertainment has been years in the making. iTunes, after all, which dominates the music business, is central to the iPod experience, and the iPod was the precursor of the iPhone, which is the precursor of the iPad. During the same period of time that Apple was systematically immersing itself into entertainment and leisure, Google was establishing itself as the platform of choice in the realm of open web traffic with superior utility. These are two entirely different worlds, two entirely different consumption profiles, which require entirely different tactics, entirely different modes of approach.
If Apple has never tried to offer a search product of its own, if Apple has never presented itself as primarily utilitarian, there is a reason. The CEO’s Hollywood education has undoubtedly taught him about consumer behavior and taste, and that consumers approach premium content and utilitarian functionality in different moods. It is easy to understand why Google would look to expand into television, particularly as cable access and web video are becoming increasingly intertwined. But there may be a culture clash ahead for the search giant, which will make the den a more difficult place for Android to break into than the open streets on the go.
