However, in recent years Apple has been more chatty than ever before: Steve Jobs has written a whopping total of 2 blog posts, and even allowed 3 entire posts about the Mobile Me launch before silencing poor David G. 

Traditional Media Communication

Apple’s primary channels of communication haven’t really changed since Jobs returned to Apple in 97 though. They are (in order of importance):

- Live events

- Press Releases

- Traditional media outlets

However these are mostly put to use when large product announcements are made:

The live events are self-explanatory: a Steve Jobs keynote is guaranteed to cause weeks of speculation and coverage all across the internet and news media. These events are supplemented by Apple press releases and Jobs will occasionally even give TV and magazine interviews as well. The “Big Two” tech journalists, Walt Mossberg and David Pogue usually have their reviews ready to go immediately as well.

Why does “the Media” play along? Because an Apple product launch has the potential to be something truly newsworthy and revolutionary. These expectations are amplified by weeks of speculation on the internet, increasing the attention paid to these types of announcements and any stories about them.

“Underground messages”

More interesting though is the new approach Apple seems to be taking in regards to announcements between large announcements. Instead of relying on their traditional outlets, they now use three alternative channels of communication:

- Articles by Steve Jobs posted to Apple.com

- Email responses to complaints sent to stevejobs@apple.com

These types of messages receive attention firstly because it’s so unusual to hear anything besides meticulously prepared PR releases or rehearsed events from Apple. But they also receive coverage because they almost always include some new product news or information as well:

Both of Jobs’ Apple.com articles so far have had a political motive. The first was an attempt to force the music industry’s hand in the DRM wars, the second was a response to negative PR Apple had been hit with by Greenpeace (who carry a substantial amount of authority in Europe). 

The secret is the sauce

But the real secret is the slip of the tongue that is almost always included. “A Greener Apple” included the tidbit that Apple was planning to introduce LED-backlit displays during 2007. That piece would have been a boring bit of eco-fluff on any other company website, the LED backlighting revelation made it a news piece.

Emails to customers purportedly from Jobs seem to serve a slightly different purpose that his “blog” posts: They are usually designed to address customer criticism about a product directly. One revealed that the iPod touch would be gaining calendar editing functionality, whilst two more recent emails have divulged information about the iPhone 3G connectivity issues. Coverage on the internet was against assured by the calendar functionality revelation in the first case and the promise of a new software update by September in the second. 

This allows Apple to address concerns amongst users effectively, without having to go through the embarrassment of publicly announcing shortcomings.

Conclusion

Apple’s legendary secrecy has also been seen as a weakness by some pundits: Whilst other companies will readily comment on ongoing issues they may be having through spokespeople or interviews, Apple traditionally hasn’t. The new avenues of communication they’ve opened up seem to suggest a willingness to address issues more directly than previously – a good move for consumers.

The Genius feature is the only one that is really new, whilst the Grid view is mostly a new take on the old “Albums with cover thumbnail” list. To be honest, whilst it’s visually quite appealing, I don’t find it very practical for actually finding music. iTunes very rarely finds the covers for all the songs in larger libraries (CoverScout anyone?) which will leave most users with a lot of black missing covers.

The same goes for the Genres Grid-view: Whilst Apple includes attractive artwork for the most common genres, others such as Funk, Grunge and Porn Groove (don’t ask) are instead assigned the cover of one of the artists within that Genre, leaving you with an odd mix of album art and genre-designs.

The Genius feature works fairly well and seems like a great way to find new music or just rediscover your own library. Whilst some have suggested Apple could have gone with one of the existing similar services Pandora or Last.fm, it’s easy to come up with half a dozen reasons for not doing so (e.g. tracks not available on iTunes, require customers to sign up to another service, both not available in all the countries iTunes is etc.).

The service first needs about an hour to analyze all of your tracks (your mileage may vary) and then uploads that information to Apple. I almost expected the upload not to work yesterday, given the amount of users probably trying the new service out, but everything went without a hitch – kudos to the iTunes team!

The visualizer was also updated, as rumored, but isn’t much to write home about in my opinion (who even uses visualizers?). 

Overall iTunes 8 seems like a pretty solid update, even if it’s a bit light on new features. The Genius is pretty cool though and even the iTunes store integration is fairly discreet and doesn’t feel intrusive.