Comments When I was younger I read a lot of fiction and science fiction, and a fair amount of it was of the alternate history genre. How would the world have been different if this or that relatively small battle or other event had gone another way? The software equivalent happens a lot, although it’s generally more about things like what Xerox could have done with various things out of PARC (like the graphical user interface) then alternative endings to world wars.
We might have a new one to add to the list, now. I read this article on Ars Technica that indicates that Apple and Creative were initially going to work on an mp3 player together, and Creative decided not to go with the partnership. The iZen? How would that have changed the tech landscape? Considering how many people now refer to Apple as “the iPod company” (and that revenue from iPod and iTunes exceeded revenue from software and computers for the first time earlier this year) it’s safe to say that the impact would have at least been huge for them—and considering market share for iPod vs. Zen at this stage I’d have to guess it wouldn’t have been positive. Or could Apple have applied its firm aesthetic sense to mp3 players coming out of Creative? That seems unlikely.
I’ve heard lots of different opinions about mp3 players, from how “they’re great for keeping up on lots of different music” to “mp3s are killing appreciation for quality” to “all those headphones are isolating everyone, creating zombies.” I can see all those angles, but with the number of hours I spend on airplanes I know I simply couldn’t imagine not having my hundreds of albums in my bag. My serious listening still happens at home, but that CD book I used to carry back and forth with me to college weighed enough to hurt my back.
“Or could Apple have applied its firm aesthetic sense to mp3 players coming out of Creative? That seems unlikely.”The idea of Apple and Creative getting together is the stuff of nightmares.One does wonder, though, whether in the longer run, Apple would have ultimately been happy with Creative’s idea of how to manage marketing strategy by talking things up to the nth degree in a manner that – well, let’s say that rather a lot of it has no substance at all. I may have said some rude things about Apple in the past, but Creative’s marketing strategies sink to even lower depths as far as I’m concerned.Would it really have made that much difference to Creative, or the rest of the world? Somehow I don’t think it would have, because I don’t think that it would exactly have been a match made in Heaven, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have lasted.