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Ah, that would make sense :) But is that percentage of computer sales per year, or total installed base? I presume the former. There are some interesting stats here for anyone interested: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/12/11/apples_leopard_to_boost_mac_sales_while_dell_hp_slump_report.html ... according to that, around 30% of new home computer sales in the US, that's not to be sneezed at.

Last I heard, Macs were HUGE in Japan though far behind Sony which still can do no wrong (even after all those crappy Vaios with proprietary innards).

Google: apple market share

Appleinsider.com references the Gartner Group for these numbers.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/17/apples_u_s_mac_market_share_rises_to_8_1_percent_in_q3.html

Apple's own financials have shown extremely strong quarter over quarter sales increases (compared to their own historic sales). Once again, Apple has sold more Macs than ever before. I mention this not to prove overall market share but just to show that Apple's sales are increasing very well, at a rate that other vendors dream about.

That all said, I like Dell. We almost exclusively purchase Dells and Apples (for non-*nix systems). The new Dells are very nice.. well designed, quiet (BTX). We see a pretty low failure rate too and I've got a decent sample. I support, directly or indirectly, roughly 2000 systems.
I'm not bashing Dell or propping up Apple, just reporting the figures. :-)

Ffakr.

Oh. I don't think a firewire audio interface would have been very useful for Apple. I seem to recall hearing about that and hoping Apple wouldn't bother. Most people don't really need/want it, even far less so than Apple TV. There's only a pretty select market for a firewire audio interface, and it's already pretty well served by M-Audio, MOTU, Edirol and others.

Although, reading that the Asteroid/Q97 device was supposedly being worked on by former Emagic employees makes me think it actually could have been a worthy addition to Apple's hardware lineup. I just still feel it might have been quite a niche kind of thing when most of the new Macs already have audio I/O ports of quite reasonable quality anyways (with even the Mac Mini having digital I/O for that matter)...

That was, of course, US market share, which lists at 8.1% today. 8.1 divided by three is about 2.7%. I think the numbers for 2002 were actually 2.2%, by sales. That's about triple, huh?

I said 20 times "market value" not market share. Please reread my post. In fact, Apple's stock evaluates today at 27 times the value it had 5 years ago today.

Umm, okay, but you still don't list any reason why your prediction should be considered credible. I asked before. Why would Apple's market share raise more in 2008 than it did in 2007? They seem to be continuing a steady trend of chipping away, bit by bit. We might expect 10% of US sales in 2008, but the point at which MS's ability to hinder that growth with their monopoly is not until something like 20-30% of the market has shifted, so I don't see why we'd expect anything unusual.

Do a Google search for "Apple market share" and the second result is this article quoting a report from Gartner on computer OEM market share as of Q3-2007, listing Apple at 8.1% of the US market up 37.2% from last year, right in line with the numbers I mentioned earlier. Does that seem fairly credible to you?

No it isn't. It is slightly off. Looking more closely it is more like 10% for two of those years.

I'm not going to go link crazy here. There are plenty of number on Apple's market share available from Google. and I already gave you one of them.

Well the CNet "review" says:

"Disclaimer: This is all based on what I've seen and read. I haven't seen a Kindle in person. Yet."

WTF?

If you want an excellent review that goes through the whole thing in excruciating detail, you should read the AppleInsider review:

In-depth review: can Amazon's Kindle light a fire under eBooks?

Disclaimer: I wrote it.

If you like that sort of non-stop information that demands an attention span, I also wrote about iPod/iPhone video cables.

I also wrote a disassembly of the George Ou Mac OS X vs Vista Vulnerability Numerology

Well the CNet "review" says:

"Disclaimer: This is all based on what I've seen and read. I haven't seen a Kindle in person. Yet."

WTF?

If you want an excellent review that goes through the whole thing in excruciating detail, you should read the AppleInsider review:

In-depth review: can Amazon's Kindle light a fire under eBooks?

Disclaimer: I wrote it.

If you like that sort of non-stop information that demands an attention span, I also wrote about iPod/iPhone video cables.

I also wrote a disassembly of the George Ou Mac OS X vs Vista Vulnerability Numerology

No to mention the keyboard freeze bug that appears to be affecting MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/11/21/macbook_macbook_pro_owners_suffer_keyboard_freezing_with_leopard.html

I generally love Apple, but I have to agree.

Specifically, though, some applications tend to cause the system to KP, but only on Macbooks and Macbook Pros. One of the most prevalent is Azureus.

If you've been seeing panics, especially when running azureus, little snitch, or parallels, you might find the following interesting:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5665070
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1224480

The latest suggestions are that the IPv6 code in the Airport kext is at fault, which can be disabled easily (for now).

I've also had about five panics after turning the screen off. This appears to be the same panic, as covered below:

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?p=1174408

Anyway, I'm getting really tired of it, and have started using my ubuntu desktop for primary productivity. Probably will downgrade to 10.4.11 if no effective fix comes out in the next few days.

Unfortunately, the problem is very real for macbook users.

well I hope you're using a marker on your palm and not a Palm Treo, because the Treo sucks:

iPhone vs. Palm Treo

Yes.

Its listed under system and finder.

The implementation is also so cool. Apple added a new API called FSEvents (file system events) that notifies Time Machine whenever any file changes. That way, Time Machine always knows what files to back up. They also augmented the file system to allow "multi-hard links". So, think of a hard link in Linux, then imagine adding a reference-counting scheme to it so every file knows how many hard links it has, then imagine adding the ability to hard link entire directories, too. All of this is part of the POSIX specification, but hardly anyone ever implements it. But it does allow for space-efficient incremental backups without resorting to any additional jiggerypokery in Time Machine to make it all work. For the most part, it's difficult to implement and not very useful outside of an application like Time Machine.

AppleInsider did a much better job than me of explaining all of this in their "Road to Leopard" series. Page 2 gives the technical details on Time Machine: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/road_to_mac_os_x_leopard_time_machine.html&page=2.

If only they'd ship the ModBook! Since the ModBook has been delayed, I wonder if that has anything to do with Apple.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ModBook/
http://www.macworld.com/2007/01/firstlooks/modbook_fl/index.php/
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/01/11/unofficial_mac_tablet_draws_record_crowd_at_macworld_high_res_photos.html/

Apple should buy Sony. Apple should buy Sun. Apple should buy SGI. Apple should buy Alias Research. Apple should buy Nintendo. Apple should buy AMD. Apple should buy PortalPlayer. Apple should buy Pixo. Apple should buy Palm. Apple should buy into the 700 MHz spectrum. Apple should buy Pixar. Apple should buy Disney. Apple should buy Universal. Apple should buy TiVo. Apple should buy YouTube.

Apple has bought 2 years of flash memory, 50 more acres of land in Cupertino, Next, Coverflow, CUPS, Emagic, Nothing Real, Soundjam MP, plus goodness knows what else (feel free to add to this list.)

But Apple buying Adobe?

That'd scare the heck out of a lot of folks. Apple has bought numerous products & smaller companies for code, patents, or teams before but Adobe (+ the former Macromedia) is a peer on the software side. That'd alienate the huge Windows userbase as well as freak out the many Adobe partners.

And to gain what?

Adobe already sells massively to Apple's customers. Sure their apps may lag, but Adobe has a huge set of codebases that has gone through 68000 -> PPC --> MacOS X --> x86, so if getting things up to speed & certified on each new iteration of MacOS X takes a bit that's not unreasonable.

To Mac-ify the apps? Again, why? Sure Apple is famous for doing really good (if not perfect) UIs but Adobe has some serious credibility too. Indeed it's been pretty clear that Apple & Adobe competing directly in some areas has improved both offerings.

Sorry, but I'm guessing Apple has enough on it's plate now. They'd just be complicating an already good, already mutually profitable situation for little reason or much greater profit.

Indeed look at the list above of companies & products folks think Apple should have bought, and in retrospect consider if they really would have been good investments...

"We know that Apple has destroyed the music business -- in terms of pricing -- and if we don't take control, they'll do the same thing on the video side," Zucker said at a breakfast hosted by Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications.

Apple pays the record labels for every download they sell. If they're not paying them enough, the labels have the right to take their business elsewhere but (except for NBC) they don't, so by definition they're making enough money.

The key to understanding his complaint is his phrase "in terms of pricing". What that means is that the labels can no longer monopolistically control the price of recordings any more.

And I think this is a good thing, good for the fans, and good for the people who really deserve to benefit from it: the musicians.

I think such a loss of control is the reason the labels are so opposed to Internet radio: because everyone and his dog can run a streaming radio station from their home, Internet radio takes away from the big labels the ability to decide who the big stars are going to be. Payola just doesn't work anymore when fans have a choice of thousands of streaming music stations to listen to at every computer.

The result of this is that I've noticed artists who were first made popular at places like Radio Paradise getting airplay on traditional broadcast stations. And I can't remember the last time I listened to a ClearChannel station.

That's not factually true -

Apple hit 10 million users sometime in 2004 - http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/06macosx.html

As of March 07, there were about 22 million OS X users - http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/03/02/mac_install_base_estimated_at_22_million_pre_leopard.html

And last quarter alone, Apple shipped over 2 million macs - http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=3502&rfp=dta

Oh yeah, and Apple is #3 in laptop sales behind only Dell and HP.

Yes, still more Windows users (ZOMG! I can't believe it!), but c'mon, give OS X credit where credit is due - it is definitely selling, and selling pretty well.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/road_to_mac_os_x_leopard_time_machine.html&page=3

Have a read before you diss Time Machine

Shadow Copy is certainly not an easy to use consumer backup solution (nor is intended to be), which is what Time Machine expressly is.

In Windows Vista, Microsoft also tied Shadow Copy into System Restore, which allows users to roll back their entire PC software install to a previous point in time.
This is not a backup system either; it's a system wide undo.

It doesn't go back and find something lost from the past; it reverts the clock to a previous checkpoint and throws away the future from that point forward. System Restore is not even loosely related to Time Machine in what it does, how it does it, or why it exists.

This article should clear up your confusion about Time Machine.

From the article (page 3):
The Time Machine settings in System Preferences show the time scheduled for the next backup. When that time arrives, it displays a progress thermometer during the backup, which typically only takes a few seconds, unless you've generated a huge amount of new content in the last hour. Again, that's because Time Machine doesn't scan through your entire drive looking for changes, but rather only consults FSEvents for a listing of what has changed recently.

and more from page 4...
Time Machine has been frequently compared to Microsoft's Shadow Copy (or Volume Snapshot Service), because both systems involve file backup. In reality, they are not really very similar at all. Microsoft uses the background Shadow Copy service to duplicate files on the same disk. Those shadow copies record a "snapshot" of the file at a given moment in time, and can be accessed by the user using Previous Versions (which shows up in the file properties viewer), or tapped into by an external network backup system. Backing up these "shadow copies" simply prevents the external backup system from running into problems trying to back up live files that may be locked by the user working on them.

The data backup features related to Shadow Copy are only useful if a Windows machine is running in an environment with a server backing them up. Shadow Copy is not in itself a backup system, although it can present a listing of duplicated files that were captured by the shadow copy service. Without a dedicated backup system, Previous Versions only shows local shadows of a file. It does not copy files to an external disk for safekeeping, and its shadow copies can't be browsed through by the user in the file system by date or by query. Shadow Copy is certainly not an easy to use consumer backup solution (nor is intended to be), which is what Time Machine expressly is.

In Windows Vista, Microsoft also tied Shadow Copy into System Restore, which allows users to roll back their entire PC software install to a previous point in time. This is not a backup system either; it's a system wide undo. System Restore is oriented around undoing the problems caused by installing a software title, a Windows software update, an unsigned hardware driver, or some other event that causes problems that need to be rolled back. It doesn't go back and find something lost from the past; it reverts the clock to a previous checkpoint and throws away the future from that point forward. System Restore is not even loosely related to Time Machine in what it does, how it does it, or why it exists.

Actually, their whole series on Leopard called The Road to Mac OS X Leopard is rather good. Lots of facts and history.

Uh, they do work together on security. Seriously, google around for security conferences.

AppleInsider has an interesting series of articles looking at the technology behind features in Mac OS X Leopard and ancestor systems that came before it, including the classic Mac OS , NeXT, Be, Amiga, DOS/Windows, and the development of Unix. Great for nostalgic nerds, and puts the new stuff into perspective against how tech has developed. Road to Mac OS X Leopard Server: Collaborative Info Sharing Services.

Most of the studies online put apple's market share at around 6%. I could find only one article putting apple in the 8% range http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/17/apples_u_s_mac_market_share_rises_to_8_1_percent_in_q3.html

and even that article mentions that the study contradicts another study for the same time period.

Apple is a good solid well run company and their market share has been slowly climbing, but the 8 percent number is likely an error as it represents quite a jump over historical values. I suspect they might be at that number in a year or so, but it just seems off for now.

Mozilla's Sunbird calendar and even Microsoft's Outlook--with the installation of a third party plugin--can be used with iCal Server. Boeing has also developed a CalDAV connector for Exchange Server. Microsoft itself has been quiet about supporting CalDAV. That may be related to the fear that an open market in calendaring would not help the company maintain its dominance over Windows-bound IT shops

It sounds like a high-level player finally decided to take on Exchange.

According to this article, apple corporate has switched from a third party calendaring program to iCal so those feature additions make perfect sense.

Even home users that have no need for group calendaring will benefit from the new server-side improvements to iCal. That's because Apple didn't just build its iCal Server to fill out a feature check list. It has also begun using it company wide as its own corporate scheduling software in place of Meeting Maker. That means Apple employees are also now using the iCal client, and the result is that iCal itself has progressed rapidly.

• It's written in the carbon rather than cocoa framework. This means a lot of the nice things about the Mac OS platform don't apply. (certain keyboard shortcuts, system optimizations, services, UI elements)
• It hangs for a very long time if a volume (like an ipod or external drive) is disconnected unexpectedly.
• It makes connecting to shares clunky and counterintuitive
• It breaks the "physical metaphor" of the file system without gaining much by doing so.

There's a good description in this article.

From what I understand, the new version of Finder is written in cocoa which fixes a lot of the problems mentioned. Also, they rethought how people will want to interact with the filesystem by emphasizing spotlight and categories over the physical metaphor of folders within folders. I'm anxious to try it out.

Well, there's that.

But also, to put it as simply as possible OS X works; VISTA is a bloated buggy nightmare.

Seeing as how Apple has around 6 percent of the market and climbing

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/06/10/18/apples_share_of_us_pc_market_jumps_to_61_percent.html/

they might want to keep pointing that out.

This has nothing to do with AT&T.

Apple has already announced an exclusive deal in France with Orange (France telecom), and it's this deal that is in danger because of the law. Apple is partnered with T-mobile in Germany and O2 in Britain, so this really isn't about any worldwide exclusivity for AT&T.

AppleInsider's report on this situation.

Although you're right that the "tech-ignorant media" and the blogosphere are spreading their conspiracy theory about the iPhone update, there is a reasonable amount of information about what the update did. You just have to spend about 3 seconds googling for it:

iPhone update 1.1.1 security items
Apple iPhone update 1.1.1

Uh... and a video. Yeah. A video that tells you about the software update.

iPhone September '07 software update

Oh, as far as I'm concerned, and as far as anyone who owned a Mac back then, when Half-Life's Mac version was canceled Valve can just shut the frak up. Yeah, ask Gabe why they canceled THAT. Sure, it was tainted by being a late-Sierra project [1], but it was Half Life ! And it was gonna be on the Mac ! Bastards.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/archive/index.php/t-18299.html

Bastards !!!

[1] No network play with PCs, PC mods wouldn't work, this is why Sierra died.

Once someone purchases the hardware it becomes THEIR hardware to with as they please.

All this means is that they KNEW it was going to break the things - it was intentionally put out there to break it. [...] Because Apple did it though, it's perfectly OK.

What if (this is hypothetical since the only thing this firmware update seems to have done is broken iPhones)

I _needed_ some fix that was part of this update? Then what? Or what if it's some sort of security update - like the Wireless encryption not being properly implemented and therefore suceptible - Apple designs a firmware fix - EVERYONE needs that.

Software does not destroy your warranty clauses and should not be expected to do so.

You're comparing one time construction costs to four years of operation? The credit card transaction fees alone are estimated at an average of $0.10 per song (once estimated as high as $0.25/song; current figures rely on batch processing, volume discounts and such).

And do you have any idea what rack space costs? Clean power, cooling, bandwidth, opeators, monitoring? Initial build-out is generally the smallest consideration for a large scale site.

I'd say Apple has probably made over $500M so far on music alone, which would put the profit per song cumulatively around 17 cents, and rising every day (the profit per song today could be 20+ cents).

I'll believe an actual analyst. Especially since Apple first mentioned a profit from iTMS in their August 2005 earnings statement.

Both Steve Jobs and Greg Joswiak have indicated they have a "neutral" stance on 3rd party hacking that's related to native application development. The area they have problems with is SIM unlocking.

I'm Canadian, I've been paying AT&T for a while (they make it a PITA too when you don't have a U.S. credit card). I don't have an issue paying AT&T money given how crappy our data plans are in Canada so far anyway.

Now, I've unlocked my phone, and am even happier. Sure, I'll be disappointed when future modem firmware updates break the unlock, but frankly, I expect it. There are no guarantees with hacking. But I also expect the hackers to overcome new firmware changes within a matter of days, unless there is a major software change to the way the iPhone firmware works (not likely).

He said Apple doesn't oppose native application development, which was new to me. Rather, Apple takes a neutral stance - they're not going to stop anyone from writing apps, and they're not going to maliciously design software updates to break the native apps, but they're not going to care if their software updates accidentally break the native apps either. He very carefully left the door open to a further change in this policy, too, saying that Apple is always re-examining its perspective on these sorts of things.

Meanwhile, Jobs acknowledged that third-party developers have started to produce several intriguing, yet unofficial iPhone applications. He said Apple is looking at some of them closely, especially those that don't require a connection to the Internet. It's likely that those applications would be the first of any to receive an official endorsement from Apple, according to Jobs' comments, as those that require Internet access could threaten the 'high standard' of experience customers have come to expect with the iPhone.

Speaking of which -- on those pictures, I see no Samsung CPU as the summary stated. The only major Samsung chip I can see is the flash chip.

I know with my iPhone I can easily click the volume up/down button on the side in my pocket and I can stop/start/skip ahead songs using the button/microphone on the headphones. (which can also answer calls, send to vm, place on hold, etc). iPod touch probably has a similar feature.

You can double-click the Home button to bring up on-screen playback controls, even when the screen is locked. Nifty. But, unlike the iPhone, the Touch has no hardware volume buttons, and it doesn't have a play/pause/next-track clicker on the headphone cable. That clicker is my very favorite thing about the iPhone's music player; I think it'll be a pain to use an iPod Touch that's in your pocket. (AppleInsider notes that you can't just plug iPhone headphones into an iPod Touch, either -- the Touch doesn't support the clicker.)

Don't forget, they sued Apple for using "Tiger" in the name of their operating system, too. This revolutionary reverse-engineering of the 3.5mm jack is clearly TigerDirect striking back.

Well, according to appleinsider at least: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/09/13/ipod_touch_unpacking_tour_and_first_look_photos.html

They do actually have that type of meter in that area of Montreal. I can't think of any places downtown that have older style ones.

The problem can't be the meter itself, which is located a few metres down from the store front area, it must either be the parking spots themselves, or the signs they use to indicate the code you enter in the meter for those spaces.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/08/16/apple_to_begin_work_on_montreal_flagship_this_winter_photos.html

I think Apple won't be worried about the parking spots when they find out there's a guy in front of the Ogilvy a few steps away that plays the spoons to really loud folk music.

even though I don't quite understand the comment of feeding the meters, wouldn't people just park for free anyways?, THERE ARE NO METERS!

They installed these all over downtown a couple of years ago, to much complaining all around.

You go to a station and pay for your spot number, so if a new person comes to your spot after you paid for 2 hours and left after 5 minutes, they can't know how long has already been paid, so they pay again!

The city has already hiked the prices a couple of times, you now 5 minutes for a quarter... from a meter!

Anyways, the new flagship store should be cool, although we have one just off the island, in a mall already.

No, Europe is just the perspective of the article summary. U.S journalists were invited to the event at the Moscone Center, while the Europeans are being webcast in.

Engadget has a helpful rumor roundup - just to keep the /. discussion lively with speculation. Aside from the next-gen touchscreen iPod, there's the Beatles' catalogue on iTMS, direct-to-iPhone (iPod) music store downloads, and increased capacity in the Nano. "Analysis" (i.e., educated speculation and wishful thinking) available from CNet, ArsTechnica, and AppleInsider (1, 2, 3).

Engadget has a helpful rumor roundup - just to keep the /. discussion lively with speculation. Aside from the next-gen touchscreen iPod, there's the Beatles' catalogue on iTMS, direct-to-iPhone (iPod) music store downloads, and increased capacity in the Nano. "Analysis" (i.e., educated speculation and wishful thinking) available from CNet, ArsTechnica, and AppleInsider (1, 2, 3).

Engadget has a helpful rumor roundup - just to keep the /. discussion lively with speculation. Aside from the next-gen touchscreen iPod, there's the Beatles' catalogue on iTMS, direct-to-iPhone (iPod) music store downloads, and increased capacity in the Nano. "Analysis" (i.e., educated speculation and wishful thinking) available from CNet, ArsTechnica, and AppleInsider (1, 2, 3).

Word on the street is they plan to announce just that, this week: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/08/31/appl e_to_launch_ringtone_service_for_iphone_users.html

Since you haven't made much effort to persuade me otherwise, I maintain that there exists a design philosophy difference between Apple and the rest of the cell phone industry, and that this philosophy is a carry over from their PC design philosophy. Honestly, I didn't really expect the address book example to be contentious. Programmers (like bjourne) who understand the relative horse power requirements of different storage and search solutions should know that most phones on the market in the past several years had enough horse power to solve this problem, and there has been plenty of time. For crying out loud, iPhone was in development for three years. Apple designed a new phone from scratch. Surely Nokia or Motorola could have built a decent address book in all that time? The fact that they did not should tell you something. Furthermore, you don't need to be a programmer to get this. Anybody who has ever filled up their address book should know the frustration of being forced to pick which ones to carry with you on your phone. I chose this example, rather than others, because quite honestly it's not really controversial and it's pretty easy to understand.

There are counter examples, of course, perhaps there will soon be another, ring tones, which we are likely to discover next week will be absurdly restricted on iPhone: you'll be able to pay to use any section of a song you like as a ringtone, but you might not be able to use your own audio files as ringtones. If that happens, it will be an interesting counter example to my argument. Note, however, other music related restrictions that people didn't like about iTunes (e.g. DRM) turned out to be due to the requirements of industry partners, and Apple has been quietly working in the background to move the industry away from excessively restrictive DRM, at signifiant risk to Apple's own business model, I might add, as evidenced by today's announcement regarding NBC Universal. (DRM is only one factor in that negotiation, of course, but it is a factor.)

It would be amusing to run style (1) comparing a large sample of Anonymous Coward postings to those by logged in users. If you really think the words I use are too big, please consider that you came to Slashdot, not ZDNet, and presumably nobody forced you. Didn't you know that Paul Murphy uncovered the astounding truth that Slashdot posts have an average reading grade level higher than some other tech industry rag forums (see: Are Mac Users Smarter Than PC Users? )? The Macintouch crowd put us Slashdot geeks to shame, though, so we can't get too smug. Yeah, I'm perhaps a bit of a geek, since I really do read the dictionary for fun sometimes. And Dude... uh... like, did you fail to notice that I'm posting a series of connected statements intended to establish a proposition, logged in using my real true name no less, while you are calling me names as an anonymous coward? I'm definitely not worried about being perceived as the friendless geek with no social skills in this conversation. Since I don't care what you think, try calling me a sociopath next. You'll still be wrong, but you'll get to use a big word and I won't be much affected by your tantrum. Heck, maybe you're not a pedant, you only play one on Slashdot. Perhaps I give you insufficient credit for a fine sarcastic wit.

--
For kicks, I ran

Jackass Jaguar

That one might cause confusion. Fitting though.

Apple doesn't lose out of this, so I can't see them rushing to redesign the hardware or software.

But then, assuming it's my computer and my Rio player (or iPod, today), I'm only going to be listening to one at a time. I could reasonably claim that the other is merely a backup copy.

In the original article a commenter provides a link to prior art http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=77424#7 The old gray scale Palm keyboard, because nobody in the right mind could figure out grafitti writing.