iPod clones, iTunes Video Store coming?

Another full of crap article Macnn somehow saw fit to slap on their front page.. WHY!??

Why do all of these "analysts" insist that Apple must exit the computer business and only sell software?

Have you even read Cringley before?? He gave a pretty accurate prediction for Carly Fiorina at HP at the time of the Compaq merger and has been accurate on a number of other fronts. Unlike a host of windows hugging PC writers and Mac fanatics, he has taken a rather unbiased look at the tech world and given his opinion. It is nothing more than that, and hardly worth berating MacNN for posting it.

Cringely has been around forever and actually is quite unbiased. He did the NERDS documentaries for PBS on the beginnings of Apple and MS which speak for themselves. He is far from a hack and is generally has insight that nobody else does since he actually seems to know everyone in the industry. Go read all the columns he's written before-- they're very interesting. He's not always right but he's always got a fascinating theory or two.

Why do all of these "analysts" insist that Apple must exit the computer business and only sell software?

Because they suck at making computers. They don't market them. They don't make them to sell in quantity (i.e. cheap), they don't make them to fill more than niche markets (and then overprice them for those markets). The only computer Apple sells that I would call a 'switchers' computer is the mini, because it let's you bring your own monitor, and its fairly cheap. Its also fairly underpowered (its cheap, what do you expect), which isn't going to draw rave reviews for its performance (yeah, I know, who cares, it looks nice, and it'll be a great media-center hub, once you add another $500-$1000 worth of software/hardware). They have the lovely stupid habit of crippling their low and mid-range computers to force people who need a specific feature to buy high-end. Is there any reason that dual-monitor support is disabled in the iMac or iBook other than for Apple to say "Hey, that's a pro feature, you need to spend another $500 and get a Powerbook instead, who cares if there's nothing else in the powerbook you want"? No (esp. since there's a hack that gets it to work, in most cases). Have you ever heard of a PC manufacturer doing something like this? Do you think Dell would put a motherboard in their 3000 line that had an AGP slot, but screwing up the BIOS to disable it, telling customers "You want a replaceable graphics card, you need to buy at least this." (sure, they sell computers without the AGP slot, but cheap mobo in a cheap computer, you expect that. Apple's video cards support the feature, its just being disabled).

BTW, Tiger reportedly adds support (if you're monitor and card can handle it) to rotate your monitors. People are claiming this is great. Me, I see it as an accident, that Apple didn't realize the feature was in the drivers, and that 10.4.1 will disable this feature. They've never liked people computing in any way they don't envision.

Because they suck at making computers. They don't market them. They don't make them to sell in quantity (i.e. cheap), they don't make them to fill more than niche markets (and then overprice them for those markets). The only computer Apple sells that I would call a 'switchers' computer is the mini, because it let's you bring your own monitor, and its fairly cheap. Its also fairly underpowered (its cheap, what do you expect), which isn't going to draw rave reviews for its performance (yeah, I know, who cares, it looks nice, and it'll be a great media-center hub, once you add another $500-$1000 worth of software/hardware). They have the lovely stupid habit of crippling their low and mid-range computers to force people who need a specific feature to buy high-end. Is there any reason that dual-monitor support is disabled in the iMac or iBook other than for Apple to say "Hey, that's a pro feature, you need to spend another $500 and get a Powerbook instead, who cares if there's nothing else in the powerbook you want"? No (esp. since there's a hack that gets it to work, in most cases). Have you ever heard of a PC manufacturer doing something like this? Do you think Dell would put a motherboard in their 3000 line that had an AGP slot, but screwing up the BIOS to disable it, telling customers "You want a replaceable graphics card, you need to buy at least this." (sure, they sell computers without the AGP slot, but cheap mobo in a cheap computer, you expect that. Apple's video cards support the feature, its just being disabled).

BTW, Tiger reportedly adds support (if you're monitor and card can handle it) to rotate your monitors. People are claiming this is great. Me, I see it as an accident, that Apple didn't realize the feature was in the drivers, and that 10.4.1 will disable this feature. They've never liked people computing in any way they don't envision.



Why do people like you even read this board?

video would be interesting -- perhaps a video iPod would become a reality.

it would be nice to be able to download missed episodes of TV shows, such as LOST or Battlestar Galatica, etc. Folks I've spoken with use something called Bit Torent to do that now.

There is no way that they will open a video store. Since this is the year of HD they would have to have HD videos available and the smallest you are going to get a standard 100 minute movie in HD quality is around 4GB. The market for customers that have the bandwidth to download 4GB per movie is very small and would never be profitable for Apple or anyone else. Standard Def is possible, but even with H.264 it still would take around 600MB/movie and although that is more reasonable it would still be impossible for most people to download on a regular basis.

Where did I hear that before ? Rebranded Ipods - Yes Clones - No. I doubt that Apple will give others the right to produce Ipod clones, even if the clones were restricted to only buy music from the itunes store like it is at present, because they don't eran money from selling music, but from selling ipods. I woul drather think that Apple would license the ability to supply music to ipods to other music stores. Right now they can't ( all major ones only sell some MS specific crap ) but it would make sense to them, because the Ipod owners out there are the majority and have a huge market share. With the ever greedy Music industry and the tendency to restrict the usage of even the bought music more and more I guess that Apple would rather drop selling music and sell that business to others then cutting ipod sales by giving away a license for cloning them. Nobody from the music industry saw or anticipated Apples success with the Itunes store and selling music over the internet, and after the current success they will rather try to get Apple out of the business and make the money themselves ( or be stupid and rather support MS than Apple ). So the purpose of the store was to have a platform to sell music to ipod owners. Concentrating on making and selling ipods and the itunes software and let others run the stores sounds like logic to me.

Greetings

Thomas

Analysts have been predicting Apple should exit the hardware market and go strictly software for years. Yet every year Apple releases something that drops their jaws. Look how many gushing reviews there were for the iMac G5 and Mac OS X Tiger. Apple will not port Mac OS X to Mac clones or open up the iPod until they at least hit 40-50% marketshare. Now the iTMS might work for movies because it has quicktime trailers and music videos. I am just not seeing the connection between music and movies for now. There would need to be a video iPod which will not debut this year. I find it hilarious that now people in the pc world are crying, "Stop! stop! that's a monopoly!"