Tag: Apple

I already own an iPod mini, and if/when Apple releases an 80gb iPod I’ll be right there to scoop it up. Currently I’ve got 7,644 songs on my hard drive occupying 57.7 gb.

But now Napster is preparing to unveil a new ad campaign with an interesting message — I’d have to be an idiot to buy an iPod. Napster chief Chris Gorog told Forbes,

We’re going to be communicating to people that it’s stupid to buy an iPod.

Part of what’s going on there is Napster’s claim that you can fill your music player with 10,000 tracks for $15/month at Napsters vs. buying 10,000 tracks from ITMS which would cost roughly $10,000.

I don’t have any interest in buying songs at ITMS either, but at least those 10,000 songs don’t simply expire the second you decided to stop buying from ITMS, whereas all those 10,000 songs are rendered worthless once you stop paying Napster its $15/month fee (or Napster goes out of business, stranding its customers).

The irony, of course, is that most of the people I know with iPods have them filled with MP3s. Moreover, most of the MP3s they have tend to be illegally acquired from P2P services that Napster pioneered. I prefer to simply buy used CDs and rip them.

But I think Napster has the cart before the horse. Napster seems to think that the MP3 player market is driven by download services, and that people choose which player they’re going to buy based on the download service they’re using.

That’s rubbish, IMO. People are buying players based on their preferences and then subscribing to the download service that will work with their device and offers the music/price they’re looking for.

The iPod is still simply the best MP3 player of its type available. The design of both the iPod and iTunes are amazingly easy to use which is why even the Wintel-centric people I know tend to have iPods.

The Mac Mini is the perfect move for Apple. Personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on one.

This is a much better approach than Apple’s “Switcher” effort. I don’t want to switch — I have way too much invested in Wintel software and hardware to suddenly switch and go with a Mac-only solution.

On the other hand, KVM switches are dirt cheap and $499 is exactly the right price to buy a Macintosh as a second machine.

Way to go Apple.

Jim Roepcke makes the case for Apple developing its own infomercials to highlight how much better the Mac OS X is compare to Windows XP. It’s not a bad idea, but I think the problem is that most of the things that make Mac OS X truly superior to XP are geeky things that the average user doesn’t care about.

Roepcke’s post is a reaction to another article by a different writer about spyware and viruses. But here’s my take on that — this is a user problem, not an OS problem. I know users who actually read most of the spam they receive. I know users who will click on pop-up ads that promise them 100 cute cursors and gleefully proceed with the install. I know users who regularly forward the most obvious fake urban legends spam. Switch all these people to Mac and all that’s going to happen is that the spyware and virus writers will switch platforms. Maybe you could get these folks to switch, but they also tend to be from my experience the most cost conscious computer users. Apple has done better at its pricing, but its just not going to lure the woman running a 3 year old E-Machines piece of crap whose idea of an expensive computer is anything over $700.

If I were Apple I’d go at it from the high end. Who are the people spending ridiculous amounts of money in the PC environment? They’re hardcore gamers. Ran into one today who had a gorgeous Voodoo Envy laptop that probably cost around $3500. What do you get if you buy a pimped out Mac laptop? Answer: you get to wait 9-12 months for the latest PC games to be ported to Mac.

So what Apple should do, if it’s so inclined, is do what the console sellers do and pay for the development of a kickass must-have game that is available *only* on the Mac. PC gamers regularly spend outrageous sums to be able to play the latest, greatest game like Doom 3. If there were say, something like a multiplayer Fable-like game that was Mac only, I’d bet these same folks would rush out to buy a Mac to play it.

The problem of course is that the game has to be kick-ass. And preferably you’d want to release 4 or 5 such games over a 24 month period. Which is difficult because most games suck and it costs a lot of money to develop even the ones that suck.

CNET notes that a web site setup to complain about Apple’s iTunes service has backfired somewhat with people using the site to flame Real.

Well, duh. Real has treated its customers like crap for years, so it’s hardly surprising that few people exactly want to rally around it. Real’s major complaint against Apple is that Apple doesn’t license its FairPlay DRM scheme to other companies. This means that only Apple can sell DRMed songs that are playable on the iPod.

I don’t see anything wrong with that at all (although I personally hate DRM schemes and wouldn’t buy any iTunes music). It’s certainly not anywhere as evil as fooling your customers into buying software they don’t want, which Real did for far too long.

Real went ahead and cracked FairPlay and is, at least for now, selling songs that work on the iPod — as long as you’re using a Windows machine.

Presumably, Real won’t mind if some enterprising person hacks their songs to allow them to be stripped of DRM entirely — it clearly limits competition, after all, if I can’t play the songs on my non-DRM MP3 player.

Source:

Real gets flamed over iPod campaign. Jo Best, CNet.Com, August 18, 2004.

I was really hoping Apple would announce a 60gb iPod this week, but like the rest of the world I was disappointed (the price drop on the 40gb iPod tempts me, but my music collection is currently 56.2gb, so I’ll hold out a bit longer).

About a month ago I picked up an iPod mini. I don’t think I could say enough good things about it — this is one piece of kick-ass consumer electronics. I use it mainly to listen to music while weight lifting or audio books while running.

Of course it weighs so little I barely notice it, and the Click Wheel is an amazingly easy-to-use interface for making changes quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

It just works.