Observations

“Tomorrow is just another day…”

from Apple.com

Yesterday, Apple got the tech world buzzing with a full-page teaser on the Apple.com homepage promising a big announcement about iTunes: “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget”.  The artwork featured four clocks side-by-side in a newsroom configuration, one for each of the landmark timezones: California, New York, London and Tokyo. Immediately, tech pundits and blog-runners began speculating on what the subtle hints within the ad could mean. It was only a few hours before TechCrunch published a piece of speculation that foretold of the future very simply and accurately.  That is, the clocks on Apple.com vaguely resembled the artwork for the Beatles album, “Help!”, in which the four members of the band are standing beside each other with their arms pointing in all different directions.

Sure enough, this morning at 9am CST, I loaded up Apple.com to find the words “The Beatles. Now on iTunes”, with a press photo of the band in their heyday. I was pleased with the announcement.  I was not expecting anything major regarding Apple’s own product line because they had not scheduled a press event. Just a simple promise for some big news. And they delivered.

Of course, I think things through.  I always enjoy going to the most active forums and reading comments from the most vocal, and usually irate users.  When it comes to Apple, that forum is MacRumors. At the time of this posting, the story about The Beatles on iTunes has received 592 negative ratings.  That large number of negative ratings is a testament to the shallow understanding that most people have regarding the business of media.  The fact of the matter is that Apple, Steve Jobs and anyone else involved with the deal to bring The Beatles to iTunes should be very proud of what they’ve done, because they’ve managed to bring the most popular and prolific musical group in the history of the world into the Internet. This has been a battle almost eight years in the making, and they’ve succeeded in striking a deal that nobody else could.

Congratulations, Steve. You’ve turned the iTunes Store into the most complete source for digital media ever. By a long shot. Anyone who doesn’t understand the significance of this day doesn’t understand a lot of things.