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HP Dumped Napster for Apple
Pieter Townshend writes "Found on GMSV: 'In the days leading up to Napster's re-launch last October, a deal that would have put Napster links on millions of Hewlett-Packard computers went bad. HP withdrew from the agreement at the last minute, its reasons for doing so becoming clear three months later when it announced a surprise partnership with Apple to feature the iTunes Music store on HP computers and sell Hewlett-Packard branded iPod music players.'"
Steve Jobs
Carla Fiorina
Steve Jobs
Carla Fiorina
Equivalent to going out and buying a CD every month. With the rate of quality music being released these day, buying once a month is way too frequent for my taste.
Personally I have gotten most of the pre-Internet era music from Kazaa Lite, so paying $1 a song would suit my needs much better. Or I could just stick with Kazaa Lite some mroe.
Maybe HP and Napster will run into each other at some bar after one to many rum and cokes and for some reason Apple will be out of town on business or something... sparks will fly and BAM... 10 years later herpes!
So, what will HP call thier branded I-Pod? I supposed they could go with H-POD, but then people might get confused. "H? But H comes before I, is it the older model?" Then I guess there is HP-POD, which could be pronounced "Hip-Pod", but then Steve Jobs would be all, "Waitaminute, Apple is WAY MORE Hip, than HP! OK so we both started in Garages, but I sold my my VAN, to start the company, a VAN, man. And Woz had to sell his Calculator! His Calculator, man, one of those nice Programable HP ones... oh, wait. OK"
--- Ready to be modded down this time...
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
Dumped Napster
Dumped-Napster
DumpedNapster
Dumpster
It all becomes clear.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
See what the man did to you? Now your chasing down other peoples' trash to snag some free songs. Its like when a GHB addict goes to Home Depot to sniff some thinner.
RC cola is better anyway.
But its Apple DRM. Which is good for some reason. Unlike Microsoft DRM, which makes baby Jesus cry.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Seriously, though, how does eschewing Napster for iTunes benefit HP from the point-of-view of independent operation? Instead of being dependent on Napster and MS, and having to develop or purchase and promote an unknown player, they're dependent on Apple, and get a really popular, already developed, and expertly promoted player to go with.
It has nothing to do with gaining indepedence from MS, which pretty well missed the music downloading boat anyways, and everything to do with riding the iPod's wave. Meanwhile, there's still Trusted Computing chugging away and all their computers still ship with Windows...
So don't worry. HP still likes it rough.
Oh yes, because iTunes comes with lots of spyware and adware.
Yeah, but we don't *want* you to have it. If Linux gets any of our apps, that's less reason for Linux users to switch to OSX. It's a one-way street. Your software will be ported to the Mac, but you'll end up with nothing from us, if we can help it.
So now im guessing any ipod I buy will be bloated with extra software to check the integrity of my mp3's, give me weather updates, and provide easy online customer support... just what I was looking for.
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and she made an educated guess that Napster would last about as long as Right Said Fred.
I'm too sexy for my iPod.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Also I am not drinking soda. I am drinking water.
Pepsi is 99% water, so I figure that's close enough.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Instead of picking Napster, which is doomed to failure, they instead went with a company who has a solid, proven track record of being THE industry leader in online music distribution and top-of-the-line MP3/AAC players.
But hey. We all know Apple is dying too, don't we?
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Yeah, I'm warning people at the office when they get set up with iTunes for the first time. One guy had the CD player in his laptop break and blew $150 before it got fixed (not from my office, not mine to fix).
The worst part is, now there's a $0.99 tax on getting a song stuck in your head.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951