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BW: Apple should partner on iPod, offer more choices

updated 09:10 am EDT, Wed June 2, 2004

iPod partnerships needed


BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows says that Apple and consider adding more choices for consumers, including more iPod models and a subscription-based pricing model for music downloads: "Jobs needs to remember the prime lesson of the Mac: Make friends -- lots of friends. While the Mac was an early hit, Apple couldn't keep up against the investments of Microsoft, Intel, and a gang of rivals.... Jobs also should rethink his views on subscriptions. He has refused to offer them, saying music fans want to own rather than "rent" their favorite songs. But more than 1 million people now have online music subscriptions."


by MacNN Staff

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  1. Macola

    Mac Elite

    Joined: Mar 2001

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    06/02, 09:35am | report spam | Reply |

    Idiots

    "more than 1 million people now have online music subscriptions."

    I wonder if the same more than one million people are still renting their telephones from the phone company.

  1. OsakaBill

    Forum Regular

    Joined: Oct 1999

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    06/02, 09:53am | report spam | Reply |

    Conext Please

    The fact that 1 million people subscribe to a music service is meaningless without context to establish a background and setting for the statistic. Whoa re these 1 million people and why have they chosen a subscription service. The article (or rather the excerpt from the article) seems to indicate that these people willingly chose a subscription service modle over purchasing their music. That inference is cannot be solely established by the statistic alone.

  1. ethical_paul

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Mar 2002

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    06/02, 09:56am | report spam | Reply |

    This guy is wrong

    he says Apple misplayed its hand when it had a 16% share of PCs in 1980. In fact, big business at that time did not believe in PCs and was waiting for IBM to come out with one and others to try it before all the sheep followed along dutifully. How could Apple have prevented this? they couldn't. They had a fine PC, but business wasn't biting...only education was.

    He quotes the idiot at Napster who thinks the iPod is a more closed system than any of the other players, which is ridiculous. The iPod plays MP3s and Apple's AAC, just like all the other players play MP3s and their own (or Microsoft's) proprietary format.

    I can't wait for Napster to shrivel up and die so it's president can shut the h*** up.

  1. slider

    Mac Elite

    Joined: Oct 1999

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    06/02, 10:03am | report spam | Reply |

    Must me nice

    to sit behind the lines and come up with an idea and tell others that they should take their position and their money and take chances based on this persons whim. Blah

  1. rok

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Mar 1999

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    06/02, 10:08am | report spam | Reply |

    one million rent...

    ...and what, five million own ipods, and therefore probably own their music? and get your facts straight, i love apple and all, but the original mac was a disaster, sales-wise, which significant ammo in sculley ousting jobs in the first place. and yes, apple couldn't keep up against rivals... but apple wasn't the ONLY one suffering back then. ask ibm how they felt when compaq reverse-engineered the pc out from under them.

  1. gunnar

    Mac Enthusiast

    Joined: Feb 1999

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    06/02, 10:09am | report spam | Reply |

    all i see is ipods

    I'm getting tired of all these calls to open up the iPod. Everyone has iPods, everyone loves iPods. This situation never existed with the Mac. They aren't the same thing. Show me the competitor that is better than iPod and then maybe Apple should lower the price, but that will be quite sufficient to compete.

  1. throatmonster

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2001

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    06/02, 10:13am | report spam | Reply |

    (bad)Business(advice)Week

    "You're very successful so far, but you're doing it all wrong! You should do XYZ instead."

    I do agree that, in the long run, Apple will probably 'snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory' by keeping too tight of control on iTMS/iPod, though. Why not license the codec and DRM to others so that iPods can handle music from other vendors, and license and put more codecs in the iPod - again so the iPod can handle music from more sources? Apple has the opportunity to 'embrace, extend, extinguish' right now. But if they don't start doing some embracing, they will start experiencing marginalization.

  1. z10n

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2003

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    06/02, 10:16am | report spam | Reply |

    FUDfactor 7

    Sigh. Same old delusional criticisms of apple. You would think at some point people would get tired of it, but I guess not.

    (A) The desktop race is over (B) Microsoft won (C) Microsoft can weld monopoly power to take over pretty much any market they want to if they're serious enough about it (D) They can do this because they target Joe Sixpack who is a clueless moron (F) Apple appeals to smart people who care about design and are willing to pay more for it (G) There's more clueless morons out there then smart people (E) Apple's marketshare will always be low (F) and Apple doesn't give a c*** because they like doing things their own way and being different (G) Many have tried to change apple's philosophy, yet none have succeeded- that's just the way apple is. End of story.

    Regarding the actual article:

    (A) How the h*** is apple going to "make friends" when microsoft dominates everything? In the PC world, you're basically with microsoft or you're against microsoft. All of the big players basically joined up with microsoft a long time ago out of fear of being killed off. Convincing the big players to side with apple over microsoft is no longer a reasonable possiblity. That's why apple is moving into new markets, like digital media. Yet apple is not going to resort to becoming the walmart of anything. That is not what apple is about. If people don't like it, then they just don't understand apple.

    B) Same deal with music- it's the clueless consumer moron who is happy with shelling out money every month for a subscription, unaware that they're not actually buying anything. This is exactly what companies are hoping for, because that insures them endless profits. However, anyone with half a brain knows that subscriptions are just basically throwing money out the window. The only reason people accept things like TV subscriptions and such is because they have no other choice. The media companies banded together to force things to be that way. For me, the only reason I would by a subscription is to preview new music for a bit, which I can already do pretty much with iTMS. So what exactly does apple get out of the subscription model? Probably pissed off users who are used to buying the music they want. Pissed off because right now, apple is on their side- not forcing them to do anything or locking them into a system they can't get out of.

  1. Jablabla

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2000

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    06/02, 10:18am | report spam | Reply |

    The standard is

    iPod. Some people just need to get over it and accept it. Consumers are going to rally around the iPod. Most of all they are going to want to protect their music investements. I don't see em switching. To late for Sony and MS. Well, MS could of bought music match but oh well...

    Funny but I still don't have an iPod. I walked into Comp USA in my area. I wanted to get an iPod mini. But an hour before I got there they were sold out. Zip iPod minis at the store. I saw lots of tennagers mulling around for the iPods and they were looking at all the accessories. They were also drooling over the macs. Ahh...pretty.

  1. beeble

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Mar 2004

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    06/02, 10:25am | report spam | Reply |

    1 mil subscribe

    Between all subscription services. Apple on the other hand have sold over 70 mil songs now and their market lead continues to grow. Why do these idiot analysts come out and constantly tell the populace that what we (very obviously) want is not what we want. Apple is delivering what people want as proved by the numbers. When the numbers change, I'm sure that Apple will to.

    For the record, the Mac never had a market lead of any sort. The PC was already 4 years old when the Mac launched and it's early days were plagued by drastically slower sales than expected. It has been an up hill battle all the way for the Macintosh. Steve Jobs made sure that they didn't make the same mistakes again, assuming people would see the GUI and come running. They went out and pushed the the iTMS and the iPod into peoples faces and made them look, drool, buy.

    But don't let facts get in the way of a good article. That wouldn't be good modern journalism, would it?

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