This quote had me spitting up my tea.
“Apple is a very canny company that doesn’t necessarily originate ideas, but its core strength is in the implementation,” said Little. “This what is what Apple is about: it may one day be a first mover, but in most cases it’s a second mover where it has implemented things across a platform and ecosystem in a much, much better way than others do it.”
It’s from this article on the Huffington Post, which has more second-guessing about Amazon’s Cloud Player service. So it’s come to this, huh? Apple is now like Microsoft — an imitator, but an excellent implementer? I don’t think Apple’s at that point yet, with the iPhone and iPad being innovative, market-leading products (I own neither). However, in a couple of recent examples, Apple has been a follower. Apple took Roku’s lead with a small, diskless streaming video player, and Amazon is offering a service that Apple doesn’t. This quote in the article also seems off-the-mark to me.
“I’m not convinced that there is a huge consumer need” being filled by the offering, said Carl Howe, director of consumer research at the Yankee Group. “I have yet to see this as a big deal for consumers. It goes back to whether consumers are looking for a cloud-based music streaming service for music they already own. Do consumers really want to pay more for music they already own?”
The first five gig on Amazon Cloud Drive are free and available for uploading whatever music files you already have — the catch being they need to be MP3’s. (Correction: AAC is also supported.) For $20/year you can get 20 GB of online music streaming. Maybe that’s not enough for an entire music library, but it’s plenty for what you’re currently into hearing. Once Amazon offers Cloud Drive access on other platforms, especially the Logitech Squeezbox Radio and Roku player, it will be servicing my consumer need very well.