Steve Jobs Hates Your Podcast. And Your YouTube Video, Too.
Sep 8th, 2010 | By James Lewin | Category: Audio Podcasting, Internet TV, iPods & Portable Media Players, Podcasting, Video
Remember when Apple was the king of tools for creating your own media and it was hyping podcasting and user-generated media?
When Steve Jobs bragged about the company hitting milestones with its iTunes podcast directory? When it added podcasting support to Mac OS X? And when podcasting was a selling point for Garageband?
It looks like the thrill is gone, baby.
At Apple’s Sept 1st iPod refresh event, Jobs rubbed a lot of new media geeks the wrong way when he called new media content the “amateur hour”.
People want “Hollywood movies and TV shows,”Jobs said at the event, adding that “they don’t want amateur hour.”
People don’t want to have a selection of hundreds of thousands of podcasts to listen to. People don’t want to watch Diggnation or Ask A Ninja.
Social networking site Facebook isn’t really the #2 site on the Internet.
Video publishing site YouTube isn’t the #3 site.
And blogging site Blogger isn’t the #8 site.
Arguing that people aren’t interested in amateur and indie content on the Internet is ludicrous.
The cat is out of the bag on this one, Apple. And no content deal is going to put it back in.
What do you think?
Is Jobs right about people not wanting the “amatuer hour”? Or did Steve Jobs forget to turn on the reality distortion field last week?
via Rob Greenlee
It makes sense if Jobs was not talking about demand, about those people who consume media, but rather about people (like himself?) who need to control and protect their costly-produced content. “They” really do not want “amateur” content, because all the lawyers and marketing hacks don’t know how to profit from it without lifting a finger, the modus operandi they were used to with “Hollywood shows and TV”.
Just my humble opinion.
WoW nicely said. Don’t be humble about telling it like it is. I am over 60 and I say Sweetness to your comments. I feel for people that are trying to make a cut in this life. Take F Day in the TV Podcast “The Guild” or “Doctor Horrible Sing along” and many others that are for change. These type of people are making changes in the way we view the world. Entertainment is free and is streamed to us any time We want to see it not Steve Jobs and others. Keep up the good fight of this change. Podcasting Rules…
Wit from a Nit wit over sixty… Growing old and loving it
This is the first time that I’ve heard Steve say something that sounds hauntingly familiar to “Hey, kid. Get off my lawn!”
Yes! When I heard him say that, I took it as “FU, podcasters!”
Apple hasn’t been saying much about content creation for a couple of years now. It seems like they’re turning their attention away from content creators to general consumers. But it feels like they’re blowing us off.
I’d like to see a Mac app that would make it easy to make ebooks for the iPad. Right now, it seems like Apple’s only interested in big company’s ebooks.
People consistently mistake Apple’s target market. “The iPhone won’t be big! It doesn’t have all of these features that geeks want!”. “The iPad won’t be big! It can’t be used like a laptop!”. Never mind that nobody else has a single product remotely as successful as either of those.
With the AppleTV, they are targeting people who don’t know or care what a podcast is. When he says that “people don’t want amateur hour”, what he means is that they don’t want that *exclusively*.
I have lately seen several articles from this site that are obtuse beyond my ability to excuse. I’m removing it from my feed reader.
“what he means is that they don’t want that *exclusively*.”
If that’s the case, why isn’t he able to articulate himself correctly? What’s a CEO doing at an important speech not saying what he really meant, but instead what puts many of his supporters off?
That aside, the overall point is right: People want both, professional and amateur-produced content.
No – Jobs said that people don’t want to watch amateur hour – they want to watch network TV and Apple wants to sell it to them.
Maybe that’s true – a lot of people do just want to watch TV and not have to think too hard. But Jobs hasn’t been able to cut content deals with anybody, so there’s nothing to watch on Apple TV and no sign of apps coming.
It’s like Jobs is trying to make Apple TV more like TV, instead of making TV more like the Internet. Maybe that’s what people say they want, but people won’t tell you what they don’t know they want.
Google TV is starting to a lot more interesting to me than Apple TV.
I feel it’s not about new media, it’s about independent films, not on the internet.
The main focus of Apple TV isn’t watching YouTube or listening to Podcasts, it’s renting movies and TV Shows. Neither of those are new media.
I feel by putting support for YouTube in the new Apple TV, he’s supporting the content creators on the site (Assuming Apple TV doesn’t block the ads, which would be illegal.)
When he said “Amateur hour” I think he meant small budget films. Amateur doesn’t necessarily mean bad, it means someone unexperienced. (On average, an indie film-maker’s first feature will not have as big of names, and talent that is still budding.)
Dear Steve:
I’m honored to live among the “amateurs.” I’m sorry that we can’t all make YOU money, but that’s just life, I guess. I’ll remember you the next time I hear from someone who listens to my podcast, or the next time I watch/listen to other independent media. You see, a whole lot of us are still living by the concept of “think different,” even if you’re not.
Hugs,
Clinton
I can understand what Jobs meant, although he didn’t phase it well. It still takes a million dollars to make a million dollar show. There is some good amateur content out there, although the general public still goes after the mainstream media. And when you look at downloads it’s those things with production value that tend to become popular.
It’s not so much the amateur material he’s riling against as much as the amateurish material. That is, those things which don’t have the skill behind them. But it’s through using the Internet that one can develop the skill. It takes about 10 years to become an “overnight star.” Very few podcasters have more than 5 years experience. Yet we could see many new stars appearing in the next couple decades that got their start doing podcasting.
Apple is simply positioning itself to make income. That is, after all, the bottom line.
The original business plan of encouraging the masses to create content they could monetize on backfired – it simply didn’t work. Big money is not interested in funding what is now considered to be what is equivalent to Public Access TV.
Steve is right!…
It is amateur hour, a lot of people don’t make any money out of it but some are still very good at it.
Some who aren’t any good are getting better and will be great in time.
Look at the film industry in the early 1900’s, Look at the music recording industry in the 1930’s, Look at television in the 1950’s.
All of them were amateur hour when they started, look at them now!
I see a very large wave building behind us and I want to ride this sucker.
Who’s coming surfing with me ? 🙂
Owning two iMACs in 10 years, and an iPHONE 3G, and in the market for 4G, and an iPAD, producing a weekly podcast using GARAGEBAND, and a YouTube channel using IMOVIE, I am DEEPLY offended by these words. As a matter of fact, my friend’s Android OS phones are looking pretty good to me. Apple, Steve, you showed your cards and I don’t like what I saw. …iPAD is off my list now too.
Don’t forget that the 1st launch of the iPhone forbade 3rd party apps. True. You could only use native apps that Apple put on there. There were no games either. It was the AMATEURS that wrote code and created content and begged to get on the iPhone. It was these amateurs that raised the level of the Apple and the iPhone and its copycats to where they all are now.
Jobs didn’t see this potential before the *amateurs* did. It’s like we’re all serfs to him.