Valleywag
Michael Bull, a film and media professor at England's University of Sussex, has spent three years interviewing more than 1,000 iPod owners — only to reach the most obvious of conclusions. In the process, Bull dubbed himself Professor iPod and won a book deal. The book, Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience, holds no revelations: People carry their digital content around with them, relying on it to get them through the day. iPod owners use the devices to create personalized, controlled environments insulated from the dislocation of their work lives and the cacophony of the city. Is it any shock Apple found his research worthless?
When asked by Wired whether Apple had shown any interest in his research, the aptly name Bull replied:
The head of Apple's research division contacted me and said he wanted our results, and I said, "I don't have any." He wanted the quantity of things, and I said, "Well, I could give a seminar or come talk," and he said, "Well, if there were no results, I can't make time for you."Does Steve Jobs need a university professor to repeat to him the promises Jobs made to customers from the very introduction of the iPod in October 2001? Perhaps Bull should find a new market: All the gadget makers trying to compete with Apple, since they're the ones who seem to keep missing the obvious.
Comments
I feel bad for the guy. Sussex is my almer mater, and I was there when his research first started and he was labeled "professor iPod". So this is what all those years of research have yielded? Shame. Only, I haven't given it a read as yet, so I'll try to give it a look in.
You make an interesting last point, though: "All the gadget makers trying to compete with Apple [...] seem to keep missing the obvious." I can't stress how true this is. I realised not too long ago that there'll always be opportunity to make money in business because 80 percent of those engaged in any commercial industry (in MHO) are incompetent. It doesn't take a brain surgeon, or indeed a professor, to see what makes iPod/iPhone so successful. And yet...
So let me get this straight...
He could have done the same research twenty years ago on Walkmans and basically come to the same conclusions, right?
I want his agent.
Dear Tim
You've misinterpreted my comments made on Wired News. The point was that the Apple executive was too stupid to recognise or understand any research that wasn't quantative and market driven.
I had the same experince with Sony back in 1999 when they weren't interested in research into the Walkman (book reference below) - look what happened to their market! My own research isn't aimed at selling iPods - qualitative research attempts to look at material in more depth - not merely telling us that 40% of people prefer white to coloured toilet paper for example!My own research looks at new technologies as a kind of prism onto the changing nature of our social world - more philosophical than most business executives are interested in.
The interview in Wired News was a truncated version of the interview given. The aim of the research was to look at how mobile technologies like the iPod change or impact upon how we construct our sense of the social - of how we relate to ourselves, others and the places we inhabit or move through - like all technologies they are placed on a continuum - so one of your respondents is partially correct in that the ipod is an extension of the walkman (see my book Sounding Out the City.Personal Stereos and the management of everyday life (Berg 2000)Yet the iPod permits a micro management of cognition to sound which is new. Ther book by the way also discusses how iPod users use their mobile phones and automobiles - everything mobile in fact. As to the results - best read the book and come to your own conclusions!
all ther best
Dr Michael Bull
Dr Michael Bull
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