This week I’m gonna do something a little different. I’m gonna give the richest man in the world some advice. Now, I don’t know if he gets the Times Record on his doorstep out there in the “Great Northwest”, but I’m told by reliable sources he possibly reads the web edition each week (probably to catch up on BathMatters, but, I digress).

Anyway, why would the founder of Microsoft, a technological soothsayer of the highest order, need advice from a humble techno-columnist in a market barely big enough to support an office products superstore? Because he’s just not “getting it” it when it comes to this portable digital music and video player business. Microsoft gimmicks like “Plays for Sure” logos on the boxes of dozens of poorly-designed players with tortured interfaces and goofy names, and rent-a-song online stores, haven’t slowed the iPod/iTunes steamroller one bit.

So, Bill, I’m offering some suggestions, free of charge, to get you and your company back on track in the online media business. That’s right, free of charge. I ask only for a small charitable donation to my newly-founded non-profit organization. PayPal only, please, to BuyPeteANewPowerMac.org.

First suggestion: instead of aiming at where Apple is today, then delivering 80% of that six months from now, why not aim instead at where Apple is going to be six months from now and deliver that today?

This is difficult, as Apple is very much a moving target. Microsoft’s past practices of pooh-poohing someone else’s new idea to constrain the market until they’ve either copied or purchased the idea doesn’t seem to work with the new Apple.

Here’s an example. This week Apple was granted a patent for technology that most analysts believe will appear in a new iPod, most likely sooner than later. It’s quite simple. The iPod and other players all sport a screen and a control wheel, control slider, or some other way to select your videos and music. If you want to make the screen bigger without increasing the size of the player itself, you have to decrease the size of the click wheel. Or, do you?

If you had no click wheel, you could have a whopping (by previous standards) five-inch-plus-diagonal screen. But how would you navigate? Apple’s patent conjures an opaque “virtual” click wheel that appears on the screen when you touch it. Once you’re listening to or viewing what you want, move your finger off the screen, and the click wheel disappears.

So, Bill, this (actually past this) is where you have to go to “head Apple off at the pass”. Keep it simple. It’s pretty obvious that 80% of the personal player buyers out there don’t give a hoot about having an FM radio tuner or a built-in microphone on their player.

Oh, and about those player names. The mind-numbing combinations of letters and numbers like “Archos GMINI 202” or “iRiver U10” just don’t work. Even Sony has abandoned player names that read like license plate numbers for new names like “Core”, “Bean” and “Circ” (and don’t those just trip off the tongue as well?). Word has it that the name “Bean” will be coming available soon, as Sony plans to discontinue the human-organ-shaped flash-based player in the near future. Pay someone with some taste to come up with a catchy name that will stick. You’ve got the dough.

Finally, try this. Give one of your new players away with every copy of Windows Vista, either in the boxes with the operating system, or in the boxes containing the powerful new PCs everyone will have to buy to run it.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski