Apple understands what the others don’t

by Legozilla

★ The Chair
[Via Daring Fireball]

Even the chair on the stage was the same.

Yesterday’s iPad 2 introduction felt like a repeat of last year’s event for the original iPad. Same place. Same pace and structure for the presentation: a brief prelude of statistics showing how well Apple is doing company-wide; a positioning statement for where the iPad fits, why it exists; the reveal of the product; the specs; a tour of the system software; and, then, some demos of a few impressive iPad applications from Apple that are available for just $4.99 in the App Store.

Delightfully, the host was the same as last year, too.

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Not only a great description of the event but it hits on something I’ve mentioned – the entire ecosystem Apple has created results in something unique and powerful.

Jobs seemed particularly ebullient throughout, but never more so than when discussing the iPad’s competition. There’s a palpable sense among everyone from Apple I spoke to yesterday that this is the biggest and most important thing in the history of the industry. The this isn’t just the iPad. It’s the whole iOS ecosystem — iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, the App Store, the 200 million iTunes Store account holders, the Apple retail store empire where customers get to touch these things that must be touched to be understood. But the iPad best exemplifies the advantages Apple draws from these things.

Nobody else has this, not even a reasonable part of it. That is Apple’s reason for being so ebullient. The rest can just create pale copies.

The iOS App store is bad because it is too good?

Apple iOS App Store blamed for too many apps as Sony NGP is called “dead on arrival”
[Via AppleInsider]

Speaking at the Game Developers Conference held in San Francisco this week, Trip Hawkins railed at Apple’s App Store for having too many titles, while blaming Nintendo for inventing the concept of licensed games as Ngmoco proclaimed Sony’s Next Generation Playstation “dead on arrival” due to the App Store’s success.

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To paraphrase Yogi Berra “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

The iOS Store is no good because only a few apps make a lot of money? Or maybe your business model just cannot survive in an app economy?

Some businesses entering the app economy sell more in 3 weeks than they previously sold in a year. That is the direction to go – rapid development, connection with the customer.

So that’s how talk radio gets those callers – they pay for them

by nickgregan

Radio Daze – by Liel Leibovitz > Tablet Magazine – A New Read on Jewish Life

[Via Tablet]

Last year, a young man called in to a radio station with a problem. He’d recently attended a bachelor party, he said, and a friend of the groom-to-be, clueless of the unwritten etiquette of maledom, brought his girlfriend along, derailing what was supposed to be a weekend of gambling, girls, and general debauchery. The caller told his story with passion and verve, and then asked the station’s listeners for their advice on how to treat his clueless pal.

Or at least he would have, had this been a real conversation. The young man—who asked to remain nameless in order to protect his chances for future employment—was an actor, and the staged call an audition. A short while later, he received the following email: “Thank you for auditioning for Premiere On Call,” it said. “Your audition was great! We’d like to invite you to join our official roster of ‘ready-to-work’ actors.” The job, the email indicated, paid $40 an hour, with one hour guaranteed per day.

But what exactly was the work? The question popped up during the audition and was explained, the actor said, clearly and simply: If he passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio. He would never be identified as an actor, and his scenarios would never be identified as fabricated—which they always were.

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Wow. $40 an hour with an hour per day guaranteed. ANd they can get the voices fast. I’d imagine that anytime they needed, they could get the voice they wanted fast. I’d imagine they’d even hand out the scripts beforehand so the actors would not have to read the script cold. Or, as stated, they can pre-record the actor, ready to use when needed.

This appears to be a Clear Channel outfit, as the terms state that the site is owned or managed by Clear Channel Communications. Talk about astro-turfing:

Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service,” read the service’s website, which disappeared as this story was being reported (for a cached version of the site click here). “We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners.

They defend this by saying they just provide a service. How it gets used is not their concern. The actors come in, pretend to be somebody they are not and read a script. Sounds like the movie Wag the Dog, just more crass and commercial.

Of course, the parent company syndicates a lot of talk shows like Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity. So the next time you are in your car, turn on the radio and listen to callers, just know that most likely the great sounding ones – the ones with the nice voices and the wonderful story – are probably well-paid actors planted to fill the air space. Not a regular joe.

They can do this because the point of talk radio is to entertain, not tell facts. The courts have even stated that news programs can lie. So why not talk radio .