1) Subscribe, pay for a month or two 2) Download every track available 3) Strip DRM from every track 4) Stop subscription when all tracks are downloaded 5) Wait until more music is available
On the way people will be distributing and sharing the unprotected tracks, too, further decreasing the need for a Napster subscription.
If there was a way to instantly photocopy books, it is like you advocating everyone go to the library, copy every book you want, and never buy another book again, at least until a sizable collection of new books is available.
Once all the labels have a good DRM that works, they can all just walk out on iTunes and anyone else who doesn't want to play by their rules. And the DMCA and other laws are there to help them. It's not about the market and choice any more. It's about legislation, collusion, and the shift to a "you rent your content" philosophy. Fight it or die trying.
Once all the labels have a good DRM that works... they still need a storefront to distribute said music.
Apple is the online equivalent to Walmart right now. Apple can shut out music companies, but music companies can't shut out iTunes.
The first company to walk out on iTunes loses millions. Money that will be, incidentally, made by the companies who DON'T walk out. That is the problem with oligarchies such as OPEC. If 9 out of 10 companies collude, the 10th company that steps out of line reaps all the reward.
I mean, if a person owns an iPod and then uses it at work, is that product placement, or endorsement, or is it, you know, using the tool to get the job done?
Al Gore uses his PowerBook and Keynote to do his presentations.
Reduced profitability due to increased input costs does affect a business model!
Look, Microsoft has to spend several years and billions of man hours to write an OS. Apple has the freedom to use source from FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD as their foundation, freeing them up to instead write innovative front end solutions, such as Expose, Quartz, Dashboard, and Time Machine in the time that it takes Microsoft to release something equivalent to Quartz. At the same time Apple is also a smaller, much smaller, company, and has the resources to diversify profitably! Apple has the quite profitable iPod series and iPod accessories, compared to Microsoft's unprofitable XBoxes, and Apple has a profitable iTMS compared to Microsoft's half hearted PlaysForSure and Urge music store. On top of that they have branched out into supercomputers, storage networks, filmmaking software, servers, and consumer applications all because they don't have to waste time, resources, and effort writing their own OS!
So as such here is how Apple's business model works: Use an open source OS (BSD+Mach) instead of develop their own. Microsoft writes their own. Spend the resources prettying and increasing usability instead. Use an open source compiler (GCC) instead of develop their own. Microsoft writes their own. Spend the resources on alternative projects, such as XCode, instead. Use open source tools, where applicable (KHTML) instead of developing their own (Microsoft writes their own, duh). Spend the resources on alternative projects (such as Safari). This can be found EVERYWHERE in Apple. Look at their OS X Server; it uses SMB, Apache, and other open source server tools, instead of, like Microsoft, writing their own (IIS, for example), or in their storage network software, or in their just about anything that both Apple and Microsoft produce.
Last I checked, the only things Apple DOES write, in house, on their own are projects like iTunes, GarageBand, Final Cut, etc... and they BOUGHT the original source for those programs rather than write from scratch!
Apple's OS depends on BSD and Mach for it's kernel and userspace, CUPS for printing, gcc for compiling their OS and applications, SMB for Windows file sharing, etc.
If they DIDN'T use those OS programs, they wouldn't have half the features or capabilities, which would severely affect their business model... that, or be very expensive and time consuming to develop themselves.
Apple counts because they actually have developers contributing to Open Source projects. That they use Apache means they aren't wasting resources reinventing the wheel nor supporting closed programs like IIS.
You don't need Quadra Magic and MP Turbo with a W-Summon at all. Let's see, I had something like quad-slash with counter; one attack from an enemy would triger a 4x counter five times, which means in any one battle my characters would attack 120 times a minute.
What? There was the Chocobo Sage plus the girl/boy at the Chocobo ranch to give you hints and clues. As per the actual locations of WHERE to find the various Chocobos, that wasn't hard at all. Capturing chocobos was easy if your party was high enough level!
Apple, for example, relies heavily on GCC to make their applications and OS and contributes extensively to the GCC code base. The same with WebKit/Safari/KHTML, though they have been accused of being not quite cooperative in the past, they did get past that. Then their is their use of BSD in their OS, their release of the QuickTime Streaming Server, Bonjour networking protocol, their use of the CUPS print system, and a couple other examples including Apache, Javascript, etc.
Apple of course is not an OS company, since they make money off iPods, MacBooks, and iTMS, but they use OS to their advantage. You don't make money unless you can add value, and because OS is already free and out in the open, Apple does so with services(iTMS), product integration(OS X), and design(iPod).
Argh. No, they would be sued for uncompetitive business practices only if they threatened to raise the price of Windows or withheld Windows licenses from OEMs for bundling Picassa or iTunes or other "competing" products.
Hence, the nature of ANTICOMPETITIVE. Bundling of software is COMPETITIVE. Microsoft, if you look it up, threatened Compaq when they attempted to bundle Netscape, they said, "No Windows for you" and that is anticompetitive. They also threatened IBM and raised Windows prices because IBM was developing OS/2, a competitive OS for the PC.
So if Windows bundles their own brand of Live Life Tools, the only anticompetitive option is if Microsoft attempts to extort their partners to not bundle Google, Adobe, or other similar tools.
why Apple, won't you let me run your OS on other Intel hardware?
Because Apple can't afford it (yet). If they get 25% margin on their PCs and the average Mac price is $1200, across their entire brand, they make $300 per sale out of 4% right now.
If they get 80% margin on their OS, at $120, for $100 per box, they would need to sell 3x as many, or 12%, to stay profitable.
So if they sold their OS (which probably would cannibalize half of their existing customer sales), they would need to triple the sell rate: their hardware would drop to 2% and their OS would need to sell to more than 6% of users if you assume a lot of the higher end sales would go away.
Overnight they would need to hit something like 10% marketshare. You tell me, can they overtake Acer, Gateway, and Fujitsu, and Lenovo all at once? Because really, what is compelling about buying a Mac, if you can get the OS for 1/10 the price?
I'm willing to bet that Apple would only open up it's OS once it hits 15% or 20%.
Sales for the third quarter of fiscal 2006 decreased by 32% compared to the same quarter in the prior fiscal year mainly due to a reduction in sales of digital audio players. Sales of personal digital entertainment ("PDE") products, which include digital audio players and digital cameras, decreased by 40% compared to the same quarter in the prior fiscal year and represented 60% of sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2006 compared to 68% of sales in the same quarter in fiscal 2005.
Thier DAPs are roughly 40% of sales, and that is going up, not down..
I would argue that the iPod IS Apple's core competency:
The iPod originally was: 160x160 grayscale screen 32mb RAM 5gb HDD dual core 90MHz CPU Five buttons and a touchpad Fast serial bus Stereo speaker out
That's a computer if I ever heard one. On top of that they designed two pieces of software to integrate with it: iTunes and the iPod OS, also both strong competencies of Apple.
So with the original iPod they designed a portable computer, an OS, and an application. Things that Apple is very skilled at.
Later when they branched off to music, what they were REALLY selling was a database application, another of their core competencies, what with their experience with WebObjects, FileMaker, iTunes, and OS X. The distribution mechanism probably drew very heavily from their existing Akamai/Quicktime Movie Trailer connection, and the database population was probably very similar to how iTunes works, except in much heavier volumes and higher quality sources.
Apple diversified intelligently. They did something really well, and then decided to grow the market for that something. If they continued to diversify in the same manner, expect them to release HDD based camcorders/cameras, or HDD based car stereos, or HDD based home theater boxes. Essentially anything that can be done with a computer, an OS, and an application.
Microsoft, with the XBox and Zune, aren't sticking to core competencies. What is Microsoft's core competency?
OS bundling. Perhaps if they had partnered with Nintendo to design a killer web browser and OS for the DS and Wii, they would have done a lot better... they don't manufacture PCs, they don't design PCs, they don't distribute PCs...
Overhyped a difficult and expensive PS3 Overpriced a lower quality UMD Restricted the PSP to UMD and flash sticks Released a rootkit on "CD" Manufactured defective LiIon batteries Released stupidly restricted "MP3" players that didn't play MP3s until 2005
If she were using iMesh and BearShare, what happened is that she, if you want to use the analogy of stealing, stole hundreds of thousands of copies of 15 songs and then gave those hundreds of copies away before destroying her own copies.
At least that's how it appears when you violate the distribution clauses of copyright by using P2P programs.
You are right, the conversation took a detour. You were NOT talking about launchd; to quote:
So if they bundled everything you list (anti-virus, anti-spam, encryption, etc.) into the operating system, you don't think they'd be accused of illegally leveraging their monopoly advantage? Just look what happened when they integrated a web browser into the OS a few years ago.
Let me recap the way the conversation is going in MY head: Article: it always traces back to Microsoft's untenable policy of maintaining gaps in Windows security to avoid competing with 3rd party vendors and certified partners. (where the list of features is "Anti-virus, anti-spam, encryption, image backup and restore, offsite safe storage through.Mac, and launchd")
You: If Microsoft built in $WHIZBANG_FEATURE, people might complain that they are illegally leveraging their monopoly.
Me: (this is where you misunderstand my point and focus on bundling, wrongly) Microsoft doesn't get in trouble for bundling, they get in trouble for threatening the OEMs with higher prices and withholding licenses for competing with Microsoft.
You: Okay, but $WHIZBANG_FEATURE can't be unbundled, so they might get in trouble (by your own reasoning) if they implemented it.
Me: I go off on a tangent because we are talking about different things. I still hold to the concept that Microsoft is guilty of abusing it's monopoly, you still hold to the concept that Microsoft is in trouble for bundling. I therefore provide examples of where Microsoft could choose to bundle where OEMs could uninstall and replace, and you think I am crazy and irrelevant.
Let me reiterate my point. Microsoft abused it's monopoly. It's monopoly itself was not illegal, and bundling was not illegal, it was the abuse as leveled by IBM and Compaq from the original antitrust lawsuit. Had Microsoft ONLY bundled, as I said before, none of this would be an issue. Then Compaq would have UNBUNDLED IE and provided Netscape and IBM could have shipped systems with only OS/2 and not be threatened with higher costs or withheld licenses.
Because Microsoft DIDN'T only bundle, but also pulled licensing ransom tricks, they were found guilty and now are scrutinized every time they bundle in the off chance that they repeat those tricks in the future. They
Uh, only if you consider launchd bundled in the first place.
Considering that launchd is a mechanism for starting and stopping services on the Mac... launchd is INTEGRATED into the OS. Without launchd the OS would fall back on cron, initd, inetd, etc, but only because it is in transition.
By my own logic, there are applications NOT critical to the OS that can be unbundled: Safari : IE Mail : Outlook Express iCal : ? AddressBook : ? QuickTime Player : Windows Media Player iTunes : Windows Media Player
And there are services that cannot be unbundled because they are integrated into the OS, or are integral frameworks: WebKit : IE AppleScript : VBScript QuickTime : Video For Windows Finder : Explorer Quartz : GDI+
My critical difference still does hold: Apple's distributors can choose to install alternative browsers (Opera, Firefox, Camino, or OmniWeb) instead of Safari, while Microsoft's distributors can only choose to install alternative browsers alongside IE.
And Apple could never do the things Microsoft does: 1) Threaten Compaq with withholding OS licenses if Compaq installed Netscape Navigator as the default browser 2) Threaten IBM with increased OS license fees if IBM did not drop OS/2
Those were the lynchpins of the antitrust lawsuit. If Microsoft had ONLY bundled, they would not face monopoly abuse charges. Then HP could have UNBUNDLED IE and installed Firefox, or IBM could have unbundled Windows and installed OS/2.
Apple's bundles can be unbundled. That is the critical difference. Drag Safari, Mail, Virex, Appleworks, iCal, and Quicktime to the trash, and the OS still works.
Sigh. The issue isn't bundling. Read. Please read! The issue was illegally leveraging their OS monopoly to abuse/obstruct competitors.
Bundling is fine if OEMs, such as HP, Dell, and Compaq, can UNBUNDLE IE and install Firefox, for example. What happened was that Microsoft threatened Compaq with withholding OS licenses if they installed Netscape Navigator as the default web browser. Had they ONLY bundled, nothing would have been brought up against Microsoft.
What are you smoking? Over population hasn't been a problem for years now. The new bogeyman is overconsumption; aka, SUVs, $3 gas, plastic+paper packaging, disposable diapers, etc.
Don't believe me? Look at the CIA factbook for Japan, US, and China: Japan's birthrate is lower than it's deathrate. It's fertility rate is only 1.4. China's birthrate is higher than it's deathrate for now, but it has a below 2.1 fertility rate. That means they too will have a smaller population in the future. The US also has a below 2.1 fertility rate (at 2.09), so it too will be seeing population decline were it not for immigrants. See Overpopulation.com for more about the fertility rate and population growth.
Maybe because it's not similar treatment. If an artistic style is applied, it does not fall under the guise of "cel shaded" or "similar treatment". There is, for example, impressionist, cubist, super-photorealistic, pointilist, watercolor, oil, sumi-e, woodblock prints, and silkscreen, none of which count as "cel shading".
Ah, well, if you consider that the #1 complaint of the "sweatshop" workers was lack of available overtime (read the article!) followed by lack of transportation from dorms after work hours... And that Apple re-opened the Darwin source after releasing the Mac Pro... and that OSS geeks had ALREADY figured out how to make OS X work on commodity boxes... then your arguments hold no water.
Find some better arguments, such as: 1) They like DRM because it ties the music to the iPod 2) They like high margin, low volume sales because it maximizes their resources 3) They continue to dominate the music player scene with attractive pricing and aggressive marketing
All those actions continue to make money for their stockholders. Your arguments do nothing for their stockholders because they aren't true.
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Um, well, it goes like this:
1) Subscribe, pay for a month or two
2) Download every track available
3) Strip DRM from every track
4) Stop subscription when all tracks are downloaded
5) Wait until more music is available
On the way people will be distributing and sharing the unprotected tracks, too, further decreasing the need for a Napster subscription.
If there was a way to instantly photocopy books, it is like you advocating everyone go to the library, copy every book you want, and never buy another book again, at least until a sizable collection of new books is available.
Once all the labels have a good DRM that works... they still need a storefront to distribute said music.
Apple is the online equivalent to Walmart right now. Apple can shut out music companies, but music companies can't shut out iTunes.
The first company to walk out on iTunes loses millions. Money that will be, incidentally, made by the companies who DON'T walk out. That is the problem with oligarchies such as OPEC. If 9 out of 10 companies collude, the 10th company that steps out of line reaps all the reward.
If everyone did this, as you suggest, Napster would go out of business.
Better for you NOT to advertise this solution and instead take advantage of the fact that not everyone does this.
Does it matter that Al Gore uses Macs at home?
I mean, if a person owns an iPod and then uses it at work, is that product placement, or endorsement, or is it, you know, using the tool to get the job done?
Al Gore uses his PowerBook and Keynote to do his presentations.
Reduced profitability due to increased input costs does affect a business model!
Look, Microsoft has to spend several years and billions of man hours to write an OS.
Apple has the freedom to use source from FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD as their foundation, freeing them up to instead write innovative front end solutions, such as Expose, Quartz, Dashboard, and Time Machine in the time that it takes Microsoft to release something equivalent to Quartz. At the same time Apple is also a smaller, much smaller, company, and has the resources to diversify profitably! Apple has the quite profitable iPod series and iPod accessories, compared to Microsoft's unprofitable XBoxes, and Apple has a profitable iTMS compared to Microsoft's half hearted PlaysForSure and Urge music store. On top of that they have branched out into supercomputers, storage networks, filmmaking software, servers, and consumer applications all because they don't have to waste time, resources, and effort writing their own OS!
So as such here is how Apple's business model works:
Use an open source OS (BSD+Mach) instead of develop their own. Microsoft writes their own. Spend the resources prettying and increasing usability instead.
Use an open source compiler (GCC) instead of develop their own. Microsoft writes their own. Spend the resources on alternative projects, such as XCode, instead.
Use open source tools, where applicable (KHTML) instead of developing their own (Microsoft writes their own, duh). Spend the resources on alternative projects (such as Safari). This can be found EVERYWHERE in Apple. Look at their OS X Server; it uses SMB, Apache, and other open source server tools, instead of, like Microsoft, writing their own (IIS, for example), or in their storage network software, or in their just about anything that both Apple and Microsoft produce.
Last I checked, the only things Apple DOES write, in house, on their own are projects like iTunes, GarageBand, Final Cut, etc... and they BOUGHT the original source for those programs rather than write from scratch!
Apple's OS depends on BSD and Mach for it's kernel and userspace, CUPS for printing, gcc for compiling their OS and applications, SMB for Windows file sharing, etc.
If they DIDN'T use those OS programs, they wouldn't have half the features or capabilities, which would severely affect their business model... that, or be very expensive and time consuming to develop themselves.
Apple counts because they actually have developers contributing to Open Source projects. That they use Apache means they aren't wasting resources reinventing the wheel nor supporting closed programs like IIS.
You don't need Quadra Magic and MP Turbo with a W-Summon at all.
Let's see, I had something like quad-slash with counter; one attack from an enemy would triger a 4x counter five times, which means in any one battle my characters would attack 120 times a minute.
What? There was the Chocobo Sage plus the girl/boy at the Chocobo ranch to give you hints and clues. As per the actual locations of WHERE to find the various Chocobos, that wasn't hard at all. Capturing chocobos was easy if your party was high enough level!
What is "Open Source based"?
Apple, for example, relies heavily on GCC to make their applications and OS and contributes extensively to the GCC code base. The same with WebKit/Safari/KHTML, though they have been accused of being not quite cooperative in the past, they did get past that. Then their is their use of BSD in their OS, their release of the QuickTime Streaming Server, Bonjour networking protocol, their use of the CUPS print system, and a couple other examples including Apache, Javascript, etc.
Apple of course is not an OS company, since they make money off iPods, MacBooks, and iTMS, but they use OS to their advantage. You don't make money unless you can add value, and because OS is already free and out in the open, Apple does so with services(iTMS), product integration(OS X), and design(iPod).
Argh. No, they would be sued for uncompetitive business practices only if they threatened to raise the price of Windows or withheld Windows licenses from OEMs for bundling Picassa or iTunes or other "competing" products.
Hence, the nature of ANTICOMPETITIVE. Bundling of software is COMPETITIVE. Microsoft, if you look it up, threatened Compaq when they attempted to bundle Netscape, they said, "No Windows for you" and that is anticompetitive. They also threatened IBM and raised Windows prices because IBM was developing OS/2, a competitive OS for the PC.
So if Windows bundles their own brand of Live Life Tools, the only anticompetitive option is if Microsoft attempts to extort their partners to not bundle Google, Adobe, or other similar tools.
Because Apple can't afford it (yet).
If they get 25% margin on their PCs and the average Mac price is $1200, across their entire brand, they make $300 per sale out of 4% right now.
If they get 80% margin on their OS, at $120, for $100 per box, they would need to sell 3x as many, or 12%, to stay profitable.
So if they sold their OS (which probably would cannibalize half of their existing customer sales), they would need to triple the sell rate: their hardware would drop to 2% and their OS would need to sell to more than 6% of users if you assume a lot of the higher end sales would go away.
Overnight they would need to hit something like 10% marketshare. You tell me, can they overtake Acer, Gateway, and Fujitsu, and Lenovo all at once? Because really, what is compelling about buying a Mac, if you can get the OS for 1/10 the price?
I'm willing to bet that Apple would only open up it's OS once it hits 15% or 20%.
Thier DAPs are roughly 40% of sales, and that is going up, not down..
Obviously the 8% benefit, instead of the 6%.
I would argue that the iPod IS Apple's core competency:
The iPod originally was:
160x160 grayscale screen
32mb RAM
5gb HDD
dual core 90MHz CPU
Five buttons and a touchpad
Fast serial bus
Stereo speaker out
That's a computer if I ever heard one. On top of that they designed two pieces of software to integrate with it: iTunes and the iPod OS, also both strong competencies of Apple.
So with the original iPod they designed a portable computer, an OS, and an application. Things that Apple is very skilled at.
Later when they branched off to music, what they were REALLY selling was a database application, another of their core competencies, what with their experience with WebObjects, FileMaker, iTunes, and OS X. The distribution mechanism probably drew very heavily from their existing Akamai/Quicktime Movie Trailer connection, and the database population was probably very similar to how iTunes works, except in much heavier volumes and higher quality sources.
Apple diversified intelligently. They did something really well, and then decided to grow the market for that something. If they continued to diversify in the same manner, expect them to release HDD based camcorders/cameras, or HDD based car stereos, or HDD based home theater boxes. Essentially anything that can be done with a computer, an OS, and an application.
Microsoft, with the XBox and Zune, aren't sticking to core competencies. What is Microsoft's core competency?
OS bundling. Perhaps if they had partnered with Nintendo to design a killer web browser and OS for the DS and Wii, they would have done a lot better... they don't manufacture PCs, they don't design PCs, they don't distribute PCs...
Well, what has Sony done right?
Overhyped a difficult and expensive PS3
Overpriced a lower quality UMD
Restricted the PSP to UMD and flash sticks
Released a rootkit on "CD"
Manufactured defective LiIon batteries
Released stupidly restricted "MP3" players that didn't play MP3s until 2005
If she were using iMesh and BearShare, what happened is that she, if you want to use the analogy of stealing, stole hundreds of thousands of copies of 15 songs and then gave those hundreds of copies away before destroying her own copies.
At least that's how it appears when you violate the distribution clauses of copyright by using P2P programs.
Let me recap the way the conversation is going in MY head:
Article: it always traces back to Microsoft's untenable policy of maintaining gaps in Windows security to avoid competing with 3rd party vendors and certified partners. (where the list of features is "Anti-virus, anti-spam, encryption, image backup and restore, offsite safe storage through
You: If Microsoft built in $WHIZBANG_FEATURE, people might complain that they are illegally leveraging their monopoly.
Me: (this is where you misunderstand my point and focus on bundling, wrongly) Microsoft doesn't get in trouble for bundling, they get in trouble for threatening the OEMs with higher prices and withholding licenses for competing with Microsoft.
You: Okay, but $WHIZBANG_FEATURE can't be unbundled, so they might get in trouble (by your own reasoning) if they implemented it.
Me: I go off on a tangent because we are talking about different things. I still hold to the concept that Microsoft is guilty of abusing it's monopoly, you still hold to the concept that Microsoft is in trouble for bundling. I therefore provide examples of where Microsoft could choose to bundle where OEMs could uninstall and replace, and you think I am crazy and irrelevant.
Let me reiterate my point. Microsoft abused it's monopoly. It's monopoly itself was not illegal, and bundling was not illegal, it was the abuse as leveled by IBM and Compaq from the original antitrust lawsuit. Had Microsoft ONLY bundled, as I said before, none of this would be an issue. Then Compaq would have UNBUNDLED IE and provided Netscape and IBM could have shipped systems with only OS/2 and not be threatened with higher costs or withheld licenses.
Because Microsoft DIDN'T only bundle, but also pulled licensing ransom tricks, they were found guilty and now are scrutinized every time they bundle in the off chance that they repeat those tricks in the future.
They
Uh, only if you consider launchd bundled in the first place.
Considering that launchd is a mechanism for starting and stopping services on the Mac... launchd is INTEGRATED into the OS. Without launchd the OS would fall back on cron, initd, inetd, etc, but only because it is in transition.
By my own logic, there are applications NOT critical to the OS that can be unbundled:
Safari : IE
Mail : Outlook Express
iCal : ?
AddressBook : ?
QuickTime Player : Windows Media Player
iTunes : Windows Media Player
And there are services that cannot be unbundled because they are integrated into the OS, or are integral frameworks:
WebKit : IE
AppleScript : VBScript
QuickTime : Video For Windows
Finder : Explorer
Quartz : GDI+
My critical difference still does hold: Apple's distributors can choose to install alternative browsers (Opera, Firefox, Camino, or OmniWeb) instead of Safari, while Microsoft's distributors can only choose to install alternative browsers alongside IE.
What if you are listening to 196kb AACs? Or even the default 128kb AAC? Doesn't the codec count for anything?
And Apple could never do the things Microsoft does:
1) Threaten Compaq with withholding OS licenses if Compaq installed Netscape Navigator as the default browser
2) Threaten IBM with increased OS license fees if IBM did not drop OS/2
Those were the lynchpins of the antitrust lawsuit. If Microsoft had ONLY bundled, they would not face monopoly abuse charges. Then HP could have UNBUNDLED IE and installed Firefox, or IBM could have unbundled Windows and installed OS/2.
Apple's bundles can be unbundled. That is the critical difference. Drag Safari, Mail, Virex, Appleworks, iCal, and Quicktime to the trash, and the OS still works.
Sigh. The issue isn't bundling. Read. Please read! The issue was illegally leveraging their OS monopoly to abuse/obstruct competitors.
Bundling is fine if OEMs, such as HP, Dell, and Compaq, can UNBUNDLE IE and install Firefox, for example. What happened was that Microsoft threatened Compaq with withholding OS licenses if they installed Netscape Navigator as the default web browser. Had they ONLY bundled, nothing would have been brought up against Microsoft.
What are you smoking? Over population hasn't been a problem for years now. The new bogeyman is overconsumption; aka, SUVs, $3 gas, plastic+paper packaging, disposable diapers, etc.
Don't believe me? Look at the CIA factbook for Japan, US, and China:
Japan's birthrate is lower than it's deathrate. It's fertility rate is only 1.4.
China's birthrate is higher than it's deathrate for now, but it has a below 2.1 fertility rate. That means they too will have a smaller population in the future.
The US also has a below 2.1 fertility rate (at 2.09), so it too will be seeing population decline were it not for immigrants.
See Overpopulation.com for more about the fertility rate and population growth.
Maybe because it's not similar treatment. If an artistic style is applied, it does not fall under the guise of "cel shaded" or "similar treatment". There is, for example, impressionist, cubist, super-photorealistic, pointilist, watercolor, oil, sumi-e, woodblock prints, and silkscreen, none of which count as "cel shading".
Ah, well, if you consider that the #1 complaint of the "sweatshop" workers was lack of available overtime (read the article!) followed by lack of transportation from dorms after work hours... And that Apple re-opened the Darwin source after releasing the Mac Pro... and that OSS geeks had ALREADY figured out how to make OS X work on commodity boxes... then your arguments hold no water.
Find some better arguments, such as:
1) They like DRM because it ties the music to the iPod
2) They like high margin, low volume sales because it maximizes their resources
3) They continue to dominate the music player scene with attractive pricing and aggressive marketing
All those actions continue to make money for their stockholders. Your arguments do nothing for their stockholders because they aren't true.