Apple Posts Earnings, Denies Bid for Universal

Lars T. writes "A number of things: Apple posts Q2 results, and denies it bid for Universial Music. Now a Register article quotes a Reuters article that 'Vivendi Universal director Claude Bebear didn't express his views on the merger talks between Vivendi's Universal Music Group (UMG) and Apple,' which was the claim of the Bloomberg article. Now who needs General Hospital?"

Comments

Re:BBC, the speed of news and editing

[ianscot]

A few different times now, I've sent something to the BBC's Web editors -- a little comment, a suggestion, a minor complaint about phrasing. (Once they'd put up an article about the ten-year anniversary of Prozac, IIRC, and their article basically treated Prozac as if it was the only SSRI or antidepressant around. I pointed them to some stuff about health plans in the US that had Zoloft on the formulary but wouldn't add Prozac any more, and suggested a less adulatory tone.)

In all three cases, they've actually rewritten their stories to reflect my bitching, at least in some minor ways. Amazing, huh? They responded, and actually rewrote copy, within a few hours.

On the one hand, how responsive they really are -- very cool, better than traditional papers by far and faster than, oh, a certain source of News for Nerds I can think of... ever try to get a headline changed?

But was there adequate editorial oversight, if one reader is capable of influencing them this much? These weren't even rush stories; they were more like the sort of thing where the "reporting" was largely transcribing chunks of a press release. They're rushing the stories up, even at the BBC.

Re:Apple is funny company

[otis wildflower]

Heck, I got nothin better to do for the next few minutes, so I'll bite...

They cost more.
You also get more. Firewire, DVD-R, gigabit ethernet. ON A 15" LAPTOP. THAT WEIGHS LESS THAN 6 LBS, INCLUDING BATTERY.

Audis cost more than Fords.

They are generally slower (I know this is getting better everytime they make the consumer cough up money for a new version Mac OS X).

Apple has been using the same 3D chipsets as PCs for a few years now (ATI, nVidia), and was in fact first with the GeForce 3. Apple doesn't have the benefits (and drawbacks) of the PC parts bin, though in the last few years they've improved this somewhat, by incorporating the aforementioned 3D components, as well as PC-standard RAM, PCI, etc. Therefore, games such as Quake, Warcraft III, et al. run pretty nicely.

The only performance gripes I have relate to DVD ripping. For my needs, anything over 400MHz with a decent 3D accelerator is perfectly adequate.

Oh, and Apple don't play dat DRM garbage (yet), so in theory you could grab an ISO file from a friend who works in a Mac shop, download it over the complimentary ethernet provided by your Vancouver hotel room, burn it on your laptop (after paying the Canadian CD tax :p) and run an upgrade.

In theory.

There is less software available in the retail markets.

There's more 'shrinkwrap'ware for OSX than there is for Linux. Not that I particularly care, but it's nice to see that games are available within a reasonable timeframe for OSX these days. Linux doesn't have nearly as much in the way of native apps, and you have to hope and pray that the games work with WineX (lessn you have the spare time to hack WineX, which in this economy you may have :p).

BTW, which Linux app did you use to do and file your taxes this year? I used TaxCut for Mac, and it couldn't have been easier. Saved me HOURS. I would have gotten TurboTax, but Intuit's DRM junk turned me off.

I am actually curious.

Hey, I'm curious about this: Why, if the PC world is so 'innovative', do they steal so much from Apple? People building systems these days don't bother with a floppy: Apple took that chance in 1998. Remember when USB was suffering from the 'chicken and egg' problem Bluetooth is now? Apple solved that problem by ditching ADB and serial ports outright (and in the process pissing off LOTS of the faithful, but it was the technically correct thing to do), with PCs eventually catching up. Bluetooth: bastard stepchild of wireless, but I would bet it grows now that Apple has started installing it standard across the line in new systems. GL-rendered, accelerated GUI? Maybe in the next M$OS, maybe someday down the line in XFree (or implemented kludgily per app), included NOW for Jaguar. Rendezvous == Zeroconf, and now that Apple's in the game, look for Linux to start incorporating interesting zeroconf stuff, followed by Microsoft (lessn they try to do their own NetBEUI-equivalent garbage).

Apple innovates in both hardware and software. Microsoft doesn't. Linux to some extent does, but not in any coherent fashion, at least as far as desktops go.

Macheads with the computer world so very Windows focused why do you still buy macs?

Because my time is worth more? Because standard PeeCee junk is an affront to any decent aesthetic? Because I don't want to have to futz with DLLs or LD_LIBRARY_PATHs, macro viruses, flaky windowing systems or schizophrenic hardware driver situations?

I can build a really slick linux box out of odd parts and get it working smoothly. I did so for my most recent job: Mandrake on an NForce1 micro-ATX box. I tilted my lance at NVidia's proprietary X and kernel drivers (to get the ethernet, sound and IDE working properly). I spent several hours on this, but I was paid to do it and the result is a blazingly-fast AMD Linux box.

For my personal life, where I'm not getting PAID for th