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Another version of the story here: http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/58905-hollywood-goes-too-far-to-protect-content

Sorry everyone /. was a little too powerful for my hosting company and they won't let me up my quota. If anyone knows of any webhosting companies that can handle the /. effect, I'm in the market for a new one. In the meantime, here is a link to another copy of the article in case you would like to read it. If someone can get Commander Taco to update it in the main article, I would appreciate it. Thanks for all the support and I hope that you don't hate me too much for making the mistake of buying Vista and DRM movies. Sometimes you have to experience how crappy DRM is first hand, in order to realize how much value it strips from your content.

In the period ended November 3, the company earned a sickening $2 million (1 cent per share). That's far below the $196 million ($1.27 per share) it earned in the same period last year. It's also 49 cents below what analysts had been expecting.

The article doesn't give profit numbers, but each Apple store averages $4-5K per square foot revenues per year, which is 6x Neiman Marcus, 4x Best Buy and 1.5x of Tiffany's.

or something like that?

According to the Fool Apple's market share is 6.3% slice of the domestic PC market, twice what you say. However that's still a small share of the market. However it looks as if Apple Macintosh Computers Likely To Gain Market Share. And a Wharton Prof Debunks Market Share Myth.

Market share is a big part of the drive.

Piracy does help them to a certain extent, it pushes their products into markets where people cannot afford them, or just flat out don't want to pay for it, which still ultimatley counts towards their market share.

The real wake up call was not the fact that a few copies sold that would have otherwise been pirated. The wake up call was that the kill switch was a reliablity issue for many who avoided using it purchased or not and using something else more reliable.

They had a problem. On the one hand you have piracy.. It eats into sales. On the other hand you have competition. A buggy product (Activation issues) kills sales.. Now it boils down to how to keep market share and reduce piracy. It's a tough balancing act. It was better when they were the monopoly. For those not locked into Windows, the sales figures are up. So is the distribution of free alternatives.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/13/october-leopard-sales-outpace-windows-in-japan
"Though Apple has only seen a "modest" increase in Mac shipments to Japan lately, sales of Mac OS X Leopard has reportedly leapfrogged past Windows in the country. It now claims 53.9 percent of Japan's OS-only market in October, according to Japan's Business Computer News. Mac OS X sales increased from 15.5 to 60.5 percent year-over-year, while Windows suffered a sudden drop from 75.3 to 28.7 percent over the same period. "

http://seekingalpha.com/article/53450-first-weekend-leopard-sales-on-par-with-initial-vista-sales
"Apple (AAPL) Thursday announced that it sold two million copies or about a million a day of Mac OS X Leopard in the first weekend. I tried to find similar statistics for the Microsoft (MSFT) Vista launch, but the best I could come up with was that Vista sold 20 million copies in the first month (February), resulting in an average sales rate of 714,000 a day. Both numbers reflect pre-orders and machine installs, not just upgrades. So at least for now, Leopard is running neck and neck with the Windows Vista install rate."

http://robitaille.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/ubuntu-now-has-over-8-millions-users/
"Q: What about growth in adoption rates, any kind of numbers that you can give me?

A: We know now that there are probably at least 8 million [Ubuntu] users."

This confused me also, I figured Wii is a no-brainer, even if it's not at the maximum resolution that Netflix is willing to stream. So, since I've been considering buying shares in Netflix, I decided to actually RTFA.

The author of the article on Gamasutra.com used PS3 and XBox as examples. The actual transcript of the conference call does not mention PS3 or Xbox, just this:

"In terms of enabling the viewing of online content on the television screen, we are exploring a variety of options, including Internet connected, high definition DVD players, Internet connected game consoles, and dedicated Internet set tops, with a variety of partners, trying to understand the best ways to provide inexpensive viewing of online content on the television."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/50856-netflix-q3-2007-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo

So... the millions of Wii's out there will probably have their chance at this too, IMHO.

No, seriously folks, at some point these stories about Vista have to lead to a stampede away from the product. Just watch for the signs....like the one above.

(ObDisclaimer: I am employed by Seagate.)

And that is - and always will be - true for some people. There is a market, certainly, for both hybrid and flash - and the storage people agree.

It's just like the SCSI vs. ATA question a few years ago: if you need performance, you went SCSI, and if you needed cheap and big, you went ATA. I don't see that division going away, and I don't see either hard disk or flash technology changing in such a way as to bridge that gap.

Okay, I get it, you don't like Apple, [...]

I don't really care either way about Apple. I am merely pointing out that their server hardware is poor value unless you happen to need OS X Server.

[...] but your pricing analysis isn't quite on par with these analysts.

My "pricing analysis" is trivial for anyone with a web browser and internet access to reproduce. Further, it's up to day with current pricing, something the one you are quoting clearly isn't. In fact it is from over a year ago.. Not to mention some obvious bias (calling a low-end $180 consumer video card "comparable" to a $1500 professional workstation video card) calls the whole thing into question.

Yes, Dell has special offers and does offer 3 yr support. Have you ever seen an Xserve, I have seen both and it's very clear to me that Apple makes better hardware.

Yes, I have seen both, numerous times. Dell and Apple are getting their components from the same place. However much you might be impressed with Apple's shiny fit and finish, it certainly doesn't make up for a 30% - 300% price differential, especially when you're talking about hardware that will spend 99% of its lifetime stuffed into a rack.

Users rate Apples service higher than any hardware mfg., even Dell (which has been falling in the rankings)

Don't conflate budget desktop support with enterprise server hardware support. Dell's server support is *excellent*.

Want lower end servers or more processors, check out Sun (JAVA), they rock and are priced better than Dell too.

Not from what I can see (although they *are* a much better value proposition than Apple's Xserve because they've got (sometimes significant) additional features over Dell's hardware to justify the higher cost).

Did you actually read that report? In my humble opinion, it was basically some guys opinion dressed up as a scientific study. There was no repeatable methodology and the author didn't even bother to fully fill out the matrix. Go read the comments on the story you linked to, if you want to get more detailed commentary.

Incidentally, I say this as a very biased person. I work for Google, on Google Maps. As per usual, what's written here is my own opinion and not that of my employers. I won't comment on the Google vs Microsoft debate - it's not my place to do so - but I'd like to say that I've seen first hand (and participated in) the very strict procedures we have in place to protect peoples privacy.

For instance, I'm one of the very few people who have Maps logs access (ie, I can see cookies and IP addresses), and that's only because I work directly with the servers on a day-to-day basis and do abuse handling as part of my job. The vast majority of Maps developers have no logs access at all. I have to periodically rejustify my access, I'm not allowed to track any individual cookie or IP address for longer than 24 hours, my own usage of the logs is recorded and audited, I'm not allowed to take the logs out of their secure holding area and am not allowed to give logs in non-scrubbed form to anybody else. Violating these rules is grounds for instant termination. Contrast this with ISPs which sell clickstream data on the open market.

I'm not trying to make any statement of policy or anything, because that's not my job, but if end-user privacy is going to be a deciding factor in which maps product to use, hopefully now you have more insight into how seriously we treat end user data (what I described applies to all Google products by the way).

MICROSOFT was the company that paid big $$$ for exclusive content in GTA4.

Please cite.

How about here, here, or directly from Take-Two.

While the FUD machine has done an admiral job at making Vista seem like a steaming pile, that's all it has been: FUD.

I've been using Vista since November of 2006, essentially days after it was released to MSDN, and it is without a doubt better than XP. The improvements are both obvious and subtle. I'm not going to list them all here, because others have done a good job already.

So if Vista is superior to XP technically, which was deemed by most as a great success, then Vista being a failure must be attributed to sales data. Many early reports showed Vista having poor sales, but those reports were flawed due to the fact that they compared the launch of Vista to the launch of XP. Vista launched Jan. 29th, long after the holiday season was over, where as XP enjoyed the entire holiday season to boosts its sales.

Once this was corrected, reports showed that Vista was selling on pace with XP. Indeed, as of March 2007, Vista's sales were double that of XPs.

In addition, despite being released to consumers and businesses separately, Vista's sales were only 4% behind XP, which was released to both simultaneously. In other words, Vista beat expectations by a long shot.

So it must be that sales of Vista have stagnated since March... opps, that's not true either. Apparently, Vista sold so well that it offset the massive hit Microsoft took as part of extending the Xbox 360 warranty to 3 years.

And then there is the wonderful story that Vista has somehow boosted XP sales, which is completely silly. It didn't boost XP sales. There was a larger proportion of XP sales than were expected, but the breakdown is about 80% Vista, 20% XP. Part of this is thanks to the FUD machine (good job guys) prompting some large OEMs, like Dell, to offer XP on lower end machines. Microsoft underestimated the FUD machine's ability to influence the market. (By the way, there were 7% more XP sales than were expected. Hardly a tidal wave of XP purchases.)

Sorry guys. I know you desperately want to believe that Vista is a failure, both technically and in terms of sales. But you're wrong on both accounts. 2 years from now, when 90% of PCs are running Vista, you'll probably still claim it's a failure, although you'll fall back to the technical side of things.

I'll be sure to bookmark my post and repeatedly link to it in all those flame wars.

There's more sense in that comment than most people realize, and it's why the eternal argument will never be settled: everyone has different valuations for their time. Carl Howe covered this awhile back; he is usually pro-Apple, but this article is well-balanced: http://hardware.seekingalpha.com/article/30109.

AT&T is using Microsoft's trouble-laden IPTV software.

According to Intel and IDC, the HOME pc market is only 10% of the total PC market...

The consumer market is 40-50 percent of the total PC market.

if apple has 3-4% marketshare and we know they dont sell much to the business market.

You think that Apple is mostly selling to consumers? You're wrong.

"Apple's Macs are primarily targeted at three core markets: consumer segment (25% of Apple's PC business), education (33%), and SMB with a strong focus on creative professionals." (Deutsche Bank report citing IDC figures)

Apple is selling hundred thousands of Macs in the education sector, in this earnings call transcript Tim Cook mentions two large contracts totaling 50,000 units and this is not an uncommon occurrence.

"Ten percent of the Company's net sales in 2006 were through its U.S. education channel, including sales to elementary and secondary schools, higher education institutions, and individual customers." (Annual annual report 2006)

Apple is also doing well outside of the U.S., last year a Gartner analyst told Macworld: "For the first time, Apple is number one in the EMEA education market with 11.6 per cent of the market in Q3/2006 against 9.6 per cent in Q3/2005."

they might have at least a 1/3 or more right now of the home market.

Apple is gaining market share in the consumer segment, in Q2 2005 Apple's share increased to 5.5 percent in the U.S. and 3.1 percent worldwide (Deutsche Bank report citing IDC figures). It must be higher by now, but nowhere near 33 percent!

You mean is supposed to make people more productive?

I could be 100% wrong but could this decision be (at least in part) that EA and Valve are waiting for the userbase of the XBox 360 and PS3 to hit a point where it would be worthwile?

An article I saw on google news earlier today was titled EA: Microsoft, Sony, We Have a Problem argued that EA's bottom line was being hurt mainly because they banked on massive success for the PS3 and XBox 360; it is debateable as to whether this is true or not. My thought is that if you were anticipating releasing a game to a combined console userbase of 20-25 Million users worldwide, or 10+ million users in North America the latest forcasts in sales of the PS3 and XBox 360 would likely mean that you'd want to delay your game by 3-6 months.

Just a thought though ...

Absolutely, positively, INCORRECT. Sony did not SELL 1.8m PS3's...they SHIPPED 1.8 million PS3's. Many of them are sitting in stores, right next to the ones that were returned by many eBayers unopened because they eBay sales tanked. THEY ARE NOT SELLING. Period. End of story. Sitting there collecting dust. They are not coming in and going right out and then being restocked - they are just sitting there. You honestly are the first person I've seen with the balls to argue otherwise, because arguing anything but is like saying New Coke wasn't so bad.

Bollocks. Clearly they were sold and clearly Sony have manufactured and sold many thousands more since. Besides, MS claimed 10 million sold too, but guess what - they meant shipped as well and went through all kinds of verbal gymnastics to explain why sold meant shipped. Either way that's the only metric these companies have the ability to actually say with certainty. Just accept it and move on.

Dude, I'm sorry, but I guess we just can't finish the conversation, because you are simply talkin' crazy and now you are bringing up whole other topics when your basic knowledge seems to be extremely adverse to reality. You obviously do not follow the industry, because the facts at the base of your reasoning are simply WRONG. There is no other word for it. I mean, you must not even read /. regularly. That's fine and all - not everyone needs to stay on top of such things, but if you are going to tell someone they are "completely incorrect" or that their simple facts are "bollucks", you really should know what the hell you are talking about.

Sony announced after Christmas that it had SHIPPED 1.8 million units. Go to their website - look at the press release. The wording was very exact. They did not SELL 1.8 million units. This is fact reported by every gaming site and many mainstream publications.

There have been dozens of articles about how poorly all this has been going for the PS3. Either you are blind or you do not read.

Here is an article about retailers having PS3's sitting on their shelves for a week or more (70% in this case!).

Here is an article (with nifty graphs and everything!) that explains how the PS3 on eBay market CRASHED...before CHRISTMAS! It was so bad that scalpers were returning them to the stores because they weren't worth the bother to ship because they were all over retail stores and, again, no one was buying them (nor are they now).

Here is an article that confirms that Sony shipped 1m units to the US, and less than 2/3 of them sold. You will also note that this article is also about analysts cutting predictions for the PS3 based on it's bad sales - there are again dozens on the topic if you search.

Finally, here's yet another article detailing just how slow demand is. Stores are stocked - people don't want 'em.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a PS3 sucks debate, but man, you are just so ill informed about this topic one can't communicate with you on the others. My only point, from the beginning, is that PS3 sales are not going to win this format war. You have gone on and on like a friggin' press release about all this peripheral bullshit regarding the PS3, and how I don't understand "what Sony intends the PS3 to be" - we can't have that discussion while you are so ill informed about how the PS3 is really faring in the marketplace.

You'll also notice that those articles are from a selection of times - one before XMAS, one right after, one in early Jan, one last week. Before you start saying that "X-site is wrong, blah blah" I encourage you to seek out the other news stories out there abou

PS3 with blu ray will be the biggest failure of sony's history, bigger than betamax.

http://ce.seekingalpha.com/article/17605

I don't agree that it will take the company down with it, but sony will be hurting...

http://ce.seekingalpha.com/article/17895

It's been reported (though not confirmed) that Toshiba makes the Zune hardware; that the first edition of the Zune is a rebranded Toshiba Gigabeat plus wifi plus ties to the Zune store.
See:
Zune revealed by FCC as "Toshiba 1089"
iPod Wars: Microsoft and Toshiba Team Up Against Apple

If so, then you're right that MS is using foreign labor. Though whether Toshiba uses sweatshops like Apple does is open to question.

...yet I've only ever heard bad news about the PS3. The Wii is the first console I've ever been excited about, simply because it's meant for my gaming style: multiplayer, social fun.

People fail to realize that Netflix is making money on what some would call an old-fashioned profit model: mail DVDs to people and they mail them back. They may spend millions and millions of dollars in postage (and impacted by postage hikes, but they do not have these limitations. People also do not realize that YouTube is losing loads of money every month. Online video has a place, but it is not in replacing DVDs with DRM.

From http://japan.seekingalpha.com/article/14649, Matsushita owns 52% of JVC. That makes JVC a subsidiary of Matushita, though not a wholly-owned subsidiary. Matsushita owns a controlling interest in JVC. A few years ago, you could draw a similar distinction between the different divisions of Sony, too, though I'm not sure this is the case these days. That doesn't make it a truly independent company in my book.

The risk for investors isn't only the reputational damage and potential fines; it's that CEO Steve Jobs may be forced to resign if it is proved that he knowingly took an option grant at below market prices. The stock impact would be dramatic because Mr Jobs has been responsible for turning around Apple over the last few years.

1) Everyone is NOT doing it. Even if another 200-300 companies come forward in the coming months as having committed some measure of backdating, that's but a small fraction of the overall public equity universe and hardly excuses the practice.

2) Anything that misaligns company interests with that of its outside shareholders IS a big deal. While backdating wasn't technically illegal (as long as it was disclosed to shareholders and properly accounted for), the irregularities we're seeing are, at best, misaligning the motivations of management with outside shareholders and, at worst, far more nefarious. As a public equity investor, there is an implicit fiduciary responsibility that public company executives maintain a fairness to all their constituencies, backdating does not - in any way - do that.

The risk for investors isn't only the reputational damage and potential fines; it's that CEO Steve Jobs may be forced to resign if it is proved that he knowingly took an option grant at below market prices. The stock impact would be dramatic because Mr Jobs has been responsible for turning around Apple over the last few years.

1) Everyone is NOT doing it. Even if another 200-300 companies come forward in the coming months as having committed some measure of backdating, that's but a small fraction of the overall public equity universe and hardly excuses the practice.

2) Anything that misaligns company interests with that of its outside shareholders IS a big deal. While backdating wasn't technically illegal (as long as it was disclosed to shareholders and properly accounted for), the irregularities we're seeing are, at best, misaligning the motivations of management with outside shareholders and, at worst, far more nefarious. As a public equity investor, there is an implicit fiduciary responsibility that public company executives maintain a fairness to all their constituencies, backdating does not - in any way - do that.

Oh, and...

This transcript was originally posted by Seeking Alpha. No, I don't work for them, I'm just doing what their copyright policy requires.

... because if it doesn't break Microsoft's grip on the browser, it will lose its search business, as this article argues.