It’s tough being a Mac user in Australia sometimes. Especially this year; it just seems like sometimes we are a country that Apple says “Oh, we have a market in Australia? Alright, I s’pose we’d better send something their way.” We get products that are geared for an American market (Apple TV, Video iPod are two great examples) which with our video-less iTunes, are laughable as a ’seamless’ way to load and enjoy media. Is this entirely their fault that they have a neglected market in Australia? Not really, but let’s examine some of the issues at play here.
Videos in iTunes:
Ok, I’ve got my brand new 80gb iPod ‘with video’ and brand spanking new 160gb Apple TV. Let’s jump into the iTunes Store, and take a squiz at what I can buy to start filling these babies up.
Huh? Did I miss something? Do Apple expect me to gorge my appetite for media on Pixar short films and crappy music videos? Where’s my latest Lost episode? Where’s my Arrested Development collection? Where’s Deadwood Season 3? Movies are also sadly AWOL - bit of a pity if I wanted that copy of Pirates of the Carribean loaded up on my iPod for a long trip. Sure, with a bit of geek-savvy and a couple good programs, I can get some use out of my Apple gear, but why should I have to? To an average consumer, looking for an easy-to-use, friendly device, the AppleTV is just about perfect and yet totally useless at the same time.
Australian Broadband Sucks:
Another issue in Australia is our little broadband problem. Paraphrasing from that fantastic article at MacTalk, it says our carriers are charged for each gigabyte we download - and it’s not cheap. Therefore it’s impossible for them to offer a plan with an unlimited download limit. What does this mean for iTunes? Bad mojo, real bad mojo.
I’ll give you an example; I’d love to buy season 1 (23 episodes) of Heroes on iTunes when it comes out. I’m going to guess, and say the DVD will be around AUS $70, maybe $80 in stores when it comes out. Assuming it’s the same price on iTunes, I click my download button, and away I go. Come back tomorrow, and hey great! it’s all done and sitting on my hard drive. Wait, what’s this? Each episode was 500mb to download? Uh-oh, I’ve just gone over my 10gb download limit in one swift hit. I’m now reduced to dial-up speed on my broadband connection until the end of the month. That season of Heroes just cost me 80 bucks, plus the 60 bucks I pay for internet each month. That amounts to a 75% markup to download a single season of a TV show, and now I’m stuck on snail-pace internet for the rest of the month. Care to do that again? Uh, no thanks, I’ll just go down the shop instead and get the DVD.
No wonder Australia has such a high rate of BitTorrent use; we get massively delayed TV shows, and no other choices for consuming media. On BitTorrent, we’re at least getting something valuable out of the broadband bill we pay.
I see this issue as one of the major shortcomings of Apple Australia and a key indicator of their focus on the American market. They’ve developed these products and pushed them out into the marketplace without a strategy to simultaneously push out their international media distribution at the same time. What’s the result? In Australia, we end up with a 160gb Apple TV that can play music, video podcasts, display photos and play pixar short films. And that’s it. Yippee.
iPhone will take forever to get here:
Australia, in the last 6 months particularly, has been starved for useful Apple products. All we’re getting are the spec bumps for Macs. No useful AppleTV - short of hacking it to play useful formats. No iPhone for a long, long time - I’m betting Australia won’t even see the first gen of the iPhone until the second gen is imminent in the states. Couple that with the fact that it’s going to be locked to at&t, available via contract-only: therefore impossible to import grey-market (as if I could afford that anyway). Logically, that means I don’t really care about it - why get excited about a device I can’t have? I may as well be excited about flying ponies, or Duke Nukem Forever.
I’m a pretty big Apple fan. I got up at 3am on June 12th to catch the WWDC keynote liveblogs. I was hoping for iMacs, or iPods, anything which would be useful over here. Instead, I got a re-hash of Leopard features, more info about a device I don’t care about, and a web browser I don’t use, on an operating system I don’t use.
Do you feel my pain here?
A good analysis from the Australian perspective. I’m also an Australian.
Have you noticed in Myer, a DVD playing on a large screen TV that touts the Apple TV, but doesn’t mention movies or TV shows, even though the menus are impossible to miss? Understandable, but no mention of the other 2 features doesn’t inspire confidence. You realise that Australian movie and TV ratings are built into iTunes as of version 7? It’s no indicator of time frame in which we could expect these, but they are obviously thinking about it.
My first thought regarding the absence of video on iTunes is that the studios must be to blame, but maybe the situation is more complex. It strikes me that indie content should be made available, regardless. In Australia, we have, right off the bat, a property perfect for iTunes: Tropfest. Sure you can get the DVD for free every year, but many people would miss it. You can buy Tropfest on DVD, so why not on iTunes? Make a splashy PR campaign out of it using its name recognition.
I bought the Apple TV because I had made a one-and-a-half year time investment in iTunes, initially ripping DVD for my 5th-gen iPod. It takes ages to rip but I so love the result–ripped at full resolution with low compression, artwork and complete tags including ratings–that I’m willing to put in the time. I know that there would be very few who would do this. Your computer is key. I’ve got a dual 1.8GHz G5 that can take about 3-4x real time to rip at full resoltuion. My iBook 1.3GHz reported that it was going to take 9 hours to do one of two passes of a 20-minute TV episode! That’s completely unviable for a consumer-machine user.
I’d be very interested to know how the Apple TV is selling in stores. I bought the first model, then updated as soon as the 160Gb model came out. I just sold my 40Gb on eBay for $305. Prior to me, 3 others in a similar boat sold their 40Gbs for $335-$340AUS. Resale value is not good, but interest is high. At close of bidding, 47 people were watching the auction, which is about the highest I’ve seen for an iPod/Apple TV auction. I believe that lack of content is the key here.
iPhone will take ages to get here. 2008 was initially quoted for Asia, but does that include us? Is that a geographical or political designation? I’m not a phone guy but hope that this heralds the future of the iPod, because I want a widescreen touchscreen iPod with a honking great hard drive.
So I feel your pain and do feel neglected. Whether the government, content providers or Apple or any combination is to blame is hard to say. As far as video content goes, I’m happy to buy the DVD and rip it myself. Just like with music, if I buy the physical media, I get a far better quality master from which to create my files. I would do this even if iTunes Australia had content to sell, although I definitely would buy some.
I completely agree with you Japester about ripping DVDs in order to have your master as high (or low) quality as you would like. In fact, I’d bet that Steve Jobs himself agrees with us, despite Apple’s official position. Here’s an extract from his recent essay ‘Thoughts on Music’:
“…In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves…”
He knows that people, for the same price, will buy a CD to have a flexible master copy that’s independent of format. Why is DVD any different? Jobs himself would tow the offical MPAA line and argue that because DVD has an entrenched DRM system it differs - but we all know CSS has been virtually abandoned as a viable content protection system, so I don’t consider it an issue.
The reality is that at present, physical media formats are still the best of a bad bunch. My opinion of the current worth of AppleTV would shift 180 degrees today if iTunes would include one tiny little button on it’s interface - Import DVD. It would be the true ‘iPod’ for your TV. For now, Handbrake/Mac the Ripper fills that hole for me, but it leaves me with a longing for the seamless way in which iTunes ‘just works’ with a CD.
BTW, thanks for stopping by the blog! I don’t mean to pry, but how did you find me over here?
In any case, your blog looks fantastic and you’ve obviously gone through some of these thoughts and issues yourself. I’ll be digging through your archives ASAP!
DESIGN EDIT: woah, my stylesheet is stuffed for my own comments! I’ll fix that up tonight…
Thanks James. I found your blog through Your Mac Life, at www.yourmaclifeshow.com. Have you heard of it? It’s a very long-running live internet radio show hosted by Shawn King. I have an Audible.com subscription, so I listen every week to a paid archive. Being in Australia, with the time-zone differences, I can’t listen to the live show, which is every Thursday about 1:00 PM our time.
Anyway, Shawn links to a lot of stuff and yours was there on the front page. I took a look at your entries and realised you had gotten about one comment. I’m not getting much traffic at my own blog, so I know what this must feel like and so I thought I’d give you something. It happens to be very much in my line of personal activity at the moment.
Sorry, I’ve never heard of it before - but I will be having a look soon. I try to listen to MacBreak every other week, but sometimes Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann crap on so much about other stuff, it can get tedious at times.
Thanks for the heads up on the link from yourmaclifeshow.com - I’m actually really surprised that Shawn found my article! I dugg it and tagged it on my del.icio.us, but figured that nobody else did, so it went unseen. Obviously not!
I’ve gone ahead and added your blog to my feed reader, so expect some more comments from me on your stories in the near future. Us Aussie bloggers have to stick together!