But they are faced with that anyway. More and more are getting things from the internet. They can either go with it and find an easy way to provide it with ad support, or they can not and we'll all just stick with our nice commercial free torrents.
The only way that I can see TV companies continuing is if they start embracing the internet. There isn't really a lot that they can do to stop torrents. They are giving people a choice between watching the shows they want when they want, paying a ridiculous amount to download eps from iTunes, or setting up a nice convenient stream to download the shows automatically.
Exactly. Apple is happy being a niche, because they are still raking in money. Sure, it doesn't hurt if more people start accepting a 1199 computer every 3 years as being part of their budget, but I don't think they are ever really going to have a lot of low end.
The common car analogy applies. MS = Ford, Apple = BMW.
Sure, both will get you places, but Apple/BMW do it with a style and feel that MS just doesn't. And, like it or not, style is important to a lot of people. See: Macbook Air. Really doesn't compare to a lot of machines in its category (no optical, weight isnt that great, 1 USB, no ethernet, etc.) but people are buying the thing, and its receiving a ton of press just because its thin and stylish.
I think the reason that the labels dont like this is that before the itunes model you couldnt buy tracks a la carte. Meaning, even if you only wanted one song off of an album, you had to buy the whole thing.
I think the reason doesn't spread is because of the virtual monopoly windows has on the OS market. Linux is difficult to get on a system pre-installed, and its difficult to get a lot of mainstream software on Linux. Games are almost non-existent in any real way because developers just aren't producing for Linux. At the moment, it will take quite a bit for Linux to take hold of the OS market just because Windows has made it so hard to get in.
Im not sure why people look at it as being a $400 device. I've been reading ebooks on my palm (now a treo) since 2002. The first device I bought was $200, but you can get a cheap palm for as low as $99.
I think that as the tech takes off, we'll see cheaper dedicated readers. Like you said, it is especially helpful in schools. I'd imagine that even now it would be cheaper to by a kindle or something for each student (for like 4 years or so) then a text book for each different subject.
And last, I totally agree. As much as I hate DRM in all of its forms, putting it on ebooks just seems really stupid and shortsighted. I've got books that I've read dozens of times in the last 10 years, and I know that I haven't had the same computer, reader, phone, etc in that time. I don't really buy a lot of ebooks now because I want to be able to have them for a while.
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But they are faced with that anyway. More and more are getting things from the internet. They can either go with it and find an easy way to provide it with ad support, or they can not and we'll all just stick with our nice commercial free torrents. The only way that I can see TV companies continuing is if they start embracing the internet. There isn't really a lot that they can do to stop torrents. They are giving people a choice between watching the shows they want when they want, paying a ridiculous amount to download eps from iTunes, or setting up a nice convenient stream to download the shows automatically.
Exactly. Apple is happy being a niche, because they are still raking in money. Sure, it doesn't hurt if more people start accepting a 1199 computer every 3 years as being part of their budget, but I don't think they are ever really going to have a lot of low end. The common car analogy applies. MS = Ford, Apple = BMW. Sure, both will get you places, but Apple/BMW do it with a style and feel that MS just doesn't. And, like it or not, style is important to a lot of people. See: Macbook Air. Really doesn't compare to a lot of machines in its category (no optical, weight isnt that great, 1 USB, no ethernet, etc.) but people are buying the thing, and its receiving a ton of press just because its thin and stylish.
I think the reason that the labels dont like this is that before the itunes model you couldnt buy tracks a la carte. Meaning, even if you only wanted one song off of an album, you had to buy the whole thing.
I think the reason doesn't spread is because of the virtual monopoly windows has on the OS market. Linux is difficult to get on a system pre-installed, and its difficult to get a lot of mainstream software on Linux. Games are almost non-existent in any real way because developers just aren't producing for Linux. At the moment, it will take quite a bit for Linux to take hold of the OS market just because Windows has made it so hard to get in.
Im not sure why people look at it as being a $400 device. I've been reading ebooks on my palm (now a treo) since 2002. The first device I bought was $200, but you can get a cheap palm for as low as $99. I think that as the tech takes off, we'll see cheaper dedicated readers. Like you said, it is especially helpful in schools. I'd imagine that even now it would be cheaper to by a kindle or something for each student (for like 4 years or so) then a text book for each different subject. And last, I totally agree. As much as I hate DRM in all of its forms, putting it on ebooks just seems really stupid and shortsighted. I've got books that I've read dozens of times in the last 10 years, and I know that I haven't had the same computer, reader, phone, etc in that time. I don't really buy a lot of ebooks now because I want to be able to have them for a while.