This is part 4 of a series of posts documenting a vist to Apple headquarters in February, 2005. For the full series, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. and part 6.
In my last post, I outlined Apple’s business model, particularly as it relates to the higher education market. You can’t really understand why they have launched iTunes U without first understanding how they do business. And from what I’ve been able to see so far, iTunes U is exactly the opposite of what some fear it to be.
If you recall, Apple is focused on selling desktop and laptop computers to consumers. They don’t make significant money on the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). They make relatively modest amounts of money selling to higher education institutions. The do make significant money selling iPods, but they still see their long-term growth to be in sales of CPUs. The operative phrase at Apple for the items in their portfolio other than the computers themselves is “halo effect.” People who use iPods and the iTMS are more likely to buy Macs. Students and teachers who use Macs at school are more likely to buy Macs for themselves at home.
Now let’s look at iTunes U in this context. First of all, it’s not explicitly monetized. Apple is guaranteeing that it will be free until 2007 and has stated that they anticipate it will continue to be free thereafter. On the other hand, it probably won’t cost them much either. The vast majority of the software functionality already exists to support the iTMS. Given the volume of disk space and bandwidth they already purchase for the iTMS, the cost to them for iTunes U should be incremental. And they don’t really make money selling content anyway. So in the best case (such as the iTMS), they only could make a very modest profit, while in the worst case (such as the current free offering for iTunes U), they only suffer a modest (for them) loss.
In other words, in terms of its financial characteristics, iTunes U is a perfect halo effect vehicle. Apple isn’t sacrificing significant profit or suffering significant losses by giving it away. And because they’ve already made huge investments to support the iTMS, the cost of providing a multimedia distribution service to universities is far, far less than it would be for the universities to build up the same capability from scratch. For most institutions, setting up a distribution system for multimedia files would be cost-prohibitive. It’s not even a close call. For Apple, on the other hand, it’s very cheap. Whenever you can give something to customers (or potential customers) that costs you little but is worth a lot to them, that’s a golden brand-building opportunity.
But the question remains: Does iTunes U promote lock-in as part of the halo effect strategy? Consider the technical details of the service:
- iTunes U supports many MIME types: Contrary to the rumors, iTunes U does support MP3s. It also supports unencrypted AAC, which is an MPEG standard, as well as PDF and many other file types that you would typically transmit or play over the internet. (More on the implications of this in my next post.)
- iTunes U does not support DRM: The lock-in part of the iTMS that people usually complain about is Apple’s proprietary Fairplay DRM. Fairplay-encrypted files will not play on MP3 players other than the iPod. But iTunes U doesn’t support Fairplay or any other DRM. If you want to sell content to students, you have to establish a relationship like the record labels have with the iTMS. I didn’t get theimpression that Apple has any real interest in changing that state of affairs any time soon.
- Apple explicitly states that iTunes U is not designed to be a long-term institutional content repository: If you want to distribute, say, video files, then iTunes U is perfect for the job. But if you want to store video files, then you probably want to store much larger high-resolution source files than would make sense to have students download. iTunes U is a distribution mechanism, not a long-term repository. If you keep your source files in a repository, as you should, then you won’t have to worry about getting them out.
- Apple claims iTunes U has easy batch export: I didn’t see this myself, mainly because we didn’t have time. (My local rep has promised to give me a down-and-dirty hands-on demo of iTunes U some time soon.) But they claim to have one-click batch export.
- On your local computer, iTunes stores files in an open XML-tagged repository: If you want to get your files out of iTunes and into something else, it should be possible to write a utility to do so. Apple has done nothing to lock the files in.
All in all, I don’t see any sign that lock-in is part of the Apple strategy for iTunes U. That said, they make no secret of the fact that everything works better with iPods and Macs. For example, they have made no effort to make iTunes synchronize with non-Apple MP3 players (though now, with the advent of podcasting and RSS enclosures, there’s no reason why you couldn’t push iTunes U content directly to any MP3 player via any computer operating system). iTunes U will unquestionably be a better experience for Mac and iPod users than for others. But that’s a far cry from real lock-in. iTunes itself runs on Windows as well as Mac, and I suspect there would be a linux version as well if there were sufficient market demand. If your main goal is to distribute large files to (and from) students’ computers, then iTunes U looks like a sweet deal with no real strings attached.
It also has the potential to radically change the landscape for both the LMS market, the academic publishing markets, and student relationships to the class content. More on this in my next post.
Thanks so much Michael for the semi-inside scoops on iTunes U. It is very valuable to us here trying to understand what is on the table.
The questions I have are why do we have to guess what the plan, strategy is from Apple? There is some degree of opaqueness to them that maybe is a plan or not, but the side effect is conjuring up notions of conspiracy from those trying to “guess the apple”.
The vagueness of the “beyond 2000” plans is worrisome. Is it really unreasonable to wonder what happens past then?
Why does iTunes mask the URLs of podcasts? You can see, them, but there is no way to copy/paste them elsewhere outside of iTunes, say to another iPodder type app or just to use in some other RSS enabled application. This is either a simple techical oversight or …. a means of evil lock in. It seems silly to hide a piece of data that at somepoint a user enters inside iTunes.
What was helpful here is the reminder that the source content does not lie in iTunes- the podcasts are thus referring to content we still need to store in our own sites, servers, etc– is that correct? iTunes is merely the handy referrer and link in the plaback chain of content?
oops a wasted comment since I forgot to check “notify”.
Alan writes “What was helpful here is the reminder that the source content does not lie in iTunes- the podcasts are thus referring to content we still need to store in our own sites, servers, etc– is that correct? iTunes is merely the handy referrer and link in the plaback chain of content?”
I don’t believe that is correct. From what I am seeing, Apple does store the podcasts and information on their servers.
The larger issue– that they explicitly indicate they won’t be an archive/repository is an interesting one. One of the benefits of iTunes U, as envisioned by some commentators, is that it relieves them of the infrastructure needed for storage and archiving. I wonder what Apple’s conditions will be for retention?
At any rate, it seems to me that any program using the service would be wise to mirror content (easy enough to do) and certainly retain it for long term access. iTunes U is– as these articles so clearly spell out– a marketing tool. Use it, maybe, but not use it SOLELY.
Chris is correct; iTunes U does store content, but Apple encourages universities to think about iTunes U as a distribution mechanism rather than a long-term repository. In other words, just as you should keep your source documents for a course in, say, Blackboard stored somewhere other than only in the current semester’s course instance, keep your source files for iTunes U backed up somewhere else (or integrate iTunes U directly with your repository).
As for what happens after 2007, it’s not unreasonable to wonder, but it’s also not unreasonable for Apple to decide that they can’t guarantee free forever until they understand their long-term cost structures better for what amounts to a pilot program. The main point of my post is that Apple has no profit motive to charge, since it’s not really a viable business to do so and since they get more financial benefit by giving it away as part of their branding campaign.
I’m not sure about the URL masking; I’m pretty sure that it’s possible to use a non-iTunes client to podcatch from iTunes U but I don’t know the details. I’ll try to find out.
Regarding their degree of openness about their plans…well…they let me blog about it, so they’re not being too secretive. If you think about this as a non-revenue-generating operation with costs that are not fully known yet, it makes sense that they might go for a soft launch and not try to trumpet the details too widely until they have all the pieces in place. My sense is that they are feeling their way along with this somewhat. But really, I’m just guessing.
Yes, I did goof a bit in my thinking on the hosting bit of the final content. The having a backup is not really a big worry, since nearly any audio/video I have done that is streamed or podcasted does not just exist in its final server delivered form- there are the original source audio and video files which are used to generate the final mp3, m4a, etc. So it is really a workflow issue to consider generating content in perhaps two forms/places.
The URL masking is something I still stand on as a small fixable issue. Try this. Find a URL for a podcast feed from anywhere else on the web. Copy it. In iTunes, use the Subscribe option where you can paste in the URL.
Now when you have this feed embedded in iTunes, try to find a place where you can locate that URL, and copy/paste it outside of iTunes. I have looked high and low- the only place it is displayed (under Get Info for a feed) *** it is not copy-able *** This is either a minor software glitch (I hope) or a heinous plot. So for that matter, using anyother podcatcher would necessitate doing something like writing out the URL by hand on a piece of paper, and then typing it back in to the not iTunes catcher.
This disfunction, IMHO, is in serious conflict with Apple’s own interface guidelines. I would like to hear an offical reason for this, since it has been weeks since Jon Udell posted this. This is the vague-ness which gives Apple a bad rap.
> For most institutions, setting up a
> distribution system for multimedia
> files would be cost-prohibitive
I’m curious as to what you think the prohibitive costs would be. The two factors I can think of are disk space (cheap, and getting cheaper all the time) and bandwidth (in the UK, at least, bandwidth is a fixed cost for HE institutions for more capacity than we come close to using). Are there ways in which these two could be cost-prohibitive that I’m not seeing, or are there other factors I’m overlooking?
Nope, it’s just bandwidth (which is not a fixed cost in the US) and disk space. A lot of IT departments in US schools put sharp limits on large file sharing. It’s hard to say how much of this is real cost limitation and how much is just fear of opening the floodgates, but either way the practical effect is that faculty and, more to the poiint, students aren’t free to share multimedia files without sharp limitations.
Michael,
Nice series on iTunes U. We here at SUNY Oneonta just received word from Apple that we have been accepted into this program. We are looking at learning as we go and initially using it to reach out to Alumni, the general public and also give our students a place to post. For example, we have a large number of student musicans that could use this to post their music.
We don’t see this replacing our content managment or learning managmnet software at all (at this point). Rather just another option in the tools to provide content.
Jim! Glad you found me. (And sorry we somehow missed each other at TLT….)
Using iTunes U for social outreach to alumni and students is interesting; it hadn’t occurred to me. Let’s catch up about this via email; there’s a lot of interest at a number of SUNY campuses and I think we can do some interesting cross-campus collaboration here.
I would be interested in cross-campus collaboration ideas and talking about the pros and cons. I would be interested in cross-campus collaboration ideas and talking about the pros and cons. I have begun to talk to my Alumni Office, Student Affairs Office and Music Industry Program for ideas on how they might use this. We don’t have crystal clear ideas yet, but we do find the concept intriguing.
As for missing you at TLT, my campus responsibilities have taken over my professional life. The good news is my campus has gotten its act together with technology support and integration. This has resulted in my needing to focus all my attention here and being scarce at SUNY wide things. I do miss things like STC, Wizard, TLT, for sure, but I am enjoying the marvelous opportunities to do interesting work on my campus.