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Apple Creates new iPod and Macintosh Divisions
KH2002 writes "According to a New York Times/Reuters report, Apple is creating a separate division for the iPod. Apple Senior VP Hardware Engineering, Jon Rubenstein, will head the iPod division, and Executive VP of Worldwide Sales and Operations Tim Cook will lead the Mac division. The report quotes a spokesman as saying, 'This organizational refinement will focus our talent and resources even more precisely on our industry-leading Macintosh computers and the wildly successful iPod.'"
Educational computing? (Have a look sometime at how many people at your local college have iBooks)
Multimedia work?
They're at the forefront of plenty of areas that they've been aggressively targetting for years. ~~~~
Philip Sandifer's academic website
The thing that I find the most notable about this is that Jon Rubinstein (not going to check the spelling, sorry) is the guy that everyone lauds for the iMac, the tiBook & the alBook, the cheesegrater, and the iPod's excellent design. You'll note how four out of those five items are Macintoshes and not tiny consumer electronic devices.
Are you sure you're not confusing Jon Rubinstein with Jonathan Ive? Ive is usually credited for the design excellence you mentioned.
Johnathan Ive which has already been mentioned, is the industrial design guru that should be rightly credited with the iPod, iMac, and the toaster Cube that flopped with consumers.
Jon Rubenstein comes from NeXT and was the former Head of NeXT Hardware, developed the Apollo line of HP Workstations before joining NeXT. Upon the NeXT Hardware being shutdown Jon left and worked on the PowerPC Hardware for a subsidiary owned by Motorola.
Jon currently is and rightly so credited for the XServe and XRaid product lines with all his experience and expertise. Having Jon add to his overseeing with the iPod tells me that Apple is getting ready to produce a Professional and Consumer Electronic Lineup that ties into its Professional and Consumer Software Application base that continues to grow.
Think of digital devices that Final Cut Pro can take advantage of, to name just one obvious option. Think of video add-ons for iPod users that could attach a DVD made via DVD Studio Pro.
I've owned Apple hardware before (eMate, 1st-gen iBook), and have no beef with the iPod. I think it's actually pretty cool, which is why I've held off on buying another handheld music player. It's not a question of economics -- implementing OGG wouldn't cost much, nor would it be horribly confusing if their music players suddenly gained the ability to play another format. Quicktime player already plays a number of formats, as does Windows media player, and nobody complains that they're too complex. I really just want to have something as cool as the iPod with the compatibility I need to make it work well with my Linux systems. I don't see why this desire should mark me as a troll.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
What I really want is a car head unit that has a slot that one just pops the iPod into.
It is coming......
This will be the first, others will come after....
Perhaps even an iPod changer for those who want more than 40 GB....
Fellowship 9/11
It will be a single connector to the iPod, plugging into alpine's ainet on the head unit. It will basically use the iPod as a portable hard drive, allowing the head unit to play music files from the iPod's hard drive. It uses the same interface that Alpine uses for its cd changers and other components so it would operate as if you have a 1000 disk changer. Google "alpine ipod" and you can see the press releases.
"I forgot my mantra."
Most of that $4B was stashed away in the 1980s when Macs had 50% margins. Look it up. Last quarter, Apple had only $46M income on $1.91B revenue, which is barely above break-even. They do have huge margins, but they also have huge R&D and marketing overhead.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.