"I'm trying to compare it to the number of CDs actually sold. I couldn't get real numbers for that, but even counting the number of CD (any Format) sold, and then assuming that the CDAudio is at least counting for 10% of those sales. Apple would like you to believe that everyone is buying their music via iTunes, and it's the way the world is headed, but really not that many people are buying music off iTunes or any other online retailer. Most people still buy their music on physical media, and that isn't changing in the near future."
That's just it. You don't have to assume anything. SoundScan, the company that has been tracking this stuff for years, has hard, published numbers. Apple outsells all music retailers in the United States online and offline except for Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. Apple outsells Amazon in music and is on a trajectory to overtake Target soon.
"iTunes isn't really as popular as they would have you believe. As of January 2007, they've sold over 2 billion songs. Britney spears on the other hand has probably sold 100 million songs just as a single artist. However sales of CDS including CDRs,Audio, and other formats are around 30 billion annually. Now, i'm not sure how much of that is accounted for by Audio CDs, but even if it's 1/10 of the sales, and there's 10 tracks on a CD, then you got about 30 billion songs sold per year."
You are making a faulty comparison. There are only two valid ways to compare the iTunes Music Store. Either compare it to all of the other online music stores where iTMS has 80% of the market for legal downloads or compare it as SoundScan does to other music retailers (their methodology is an album = 10 individual songs) where Apple is still the #4 music retailer in the US behind Walmart, Target, and Best Buy and ahead of Amazon. It is silly to compare the songs Apple sells to the amount of blank CDs.
"Yeah, right. Tell that to the vast majority of non-tech savvy iTunes users, who don't understand why they can't make an MP3 CD of their purchased music. I have a friend who likes to make "Mix" CD's for other friends, and they keep getting frustrated when iTunes tells them some of their tracks can't be converted to MP3. I've tried explaining DRM to them, but for the typical layperson, it goes right over their heads."
You're not exactly making an argument against DRM there. It has always been illegal to distribute music you paid for to someone else and it should be. If your friend wanted to make copies for "personal use" he could on up to five computers and an unlimited number of iPods. He can even burn a regular audio CD of the music an unlimited number of times or up to seven times with the same playlist.
"Why doesn't Steve open up the iTunes store to indies"
Apple does open the store up to indies. Anyone can sign up to sell their music through CDBaby and CDBaby will distribute their music through iTunes for a very small transaction fee. The artist still maintains all of their rights to their music. The artist gets around 55-60 cents for each song sold.
"Yeah, but they want to sell the songs. Apple could probably make more money by selling you 20-30 DRM-less songs than by selling you an iPod. Maybe it would take 100 songs, I dunno. But using a proprietary store to leverage iPod sales is a losing strategy."
It is very public knowledge by now that iTunes operates at barely above break even. Let's take what we know. For every 99 cents song the record label gets 65c. Standard credit card merchant agreements calls for around 20 cents per transaction plus at least 2% of each sale. That leaves Apple at most 12 cents per song on average. Let's even be generous since Apple bundles purchases made over a short period of time to save money and they sell whole albums and say they make 14 cents per song not including marketing, development, and support.
It's also popularly believed that Apple makes about 40% profit margins on average on each iPod sold (search Google). If the average selling price of all iPods is around $200 (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&r efer=us&sid=a2Skp1Y.djTA) that means Apple makes $80 off of each iPod sold. Apple would have to sell 1429 songs to equal the profit of one iPod.
"no, i don't buy his argument one bit. his keys would not be anymore loose than they are by keeping it on the ipod. sure, there's a chance, but the likelihood is pretty slim assuming he's not licensing it to vendors such as "joe schmoe's media players". have the playsforsure keys gotten loose because of all the devices that's licensed for? this would be similar."
And we all know that the CSS keys for DVD's never got out....
"Exactly. And if you have average joe blow consumer with 30 gigs of files in WMA format, and suddenly he can play them on an Ipod...don't you think that might just increase the chance that he::gasp:: BUYS ONE?"
If you use the Windows version of iTunes and import the WMA files into it then the files are automatically converted.
"The computer I originally downloaded them on no longer exists, so I have no way to deauthorize it. This means that I am down one of the 5 computers that I can authorize my songs to play on. When I realized this, I decided that I will never again purchase any music files that have any DRM on them whatsoever."
If you have authorized five computers, a button labeled "Deauthorize All" will appear in your Account Information screen. This button will deauthorize all computers associated with your account. You can then reauthorize up to 5 computers. Note: You can only use this feature once a year.
"Here is my problem: I want to play my itunes music and videos on my TV using a remote control. As far as I know, I can't do that - e.g. Windows Media Center. Now AppleTV would do it, but I don't need that - my freaking PC is hooked to my TV. I just need the software and remote."
If your PC is hooked up to your TV what's stopping you from using iTunes on your PC?
"It could just be that iTunes customers are getting sick of the problems that a DRM system as "lite" as Fairplay causes"
So where is the evidence that people are fed up with the iTunes Music Store? Sells are increasing and Apple sells more music in the US than every other retailer besides Walmart, Target, and Best Buy.
"And whether Apple is in the music business to sell iPods or the iPod business to sell music isn't clear, and is actually irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The fact of the matter is that in the trailing 9 months ending on July 1, 2006, Apple received nearly $1.5 billion in net sales from its iTunes-related business. Yes, that's only a 1/4 of what it got from iPod sales, but I'm willing to bet the profit margins are much better on iTunes sales than they are on iPods."
It's been estimated that Apple's profit margin from each iPod sold is around 30 - 40%. It's well known what the profit margin of each iTunes song sold is. For each 99 cents song, the record label gets 69 cents, the credit card company gets 20 cents per transaction (songs purchases are sometimes bundled into one transaction) + 2% of each sale. Apple makes about 10 cents on each song before considering bandwidth, servers, customer support, affiliate marketing, software development etc. They comment that iTunes is "barely above break even".
"They've got too much invested in their format to abandon it now."
AAC is not "Apple's format" any more than MP3 is. AAC is "specified both as Part 7 of the MPEG-2 standard, and Part 3 of the MPEG-4 standard." It is licensed by the same people who license MP3.
" Voice Dialing? My old phone had voice dialing, and it was the most worthless piece of crap technology I have ever used. Rarely worked correctly, so I never used it anyway. "
When did you use it? Did you use the old style voice dialing where you had to actually say the name twice and then put the corresponding number in or did you use the more modern speaker independant voice dialing that can match your voice to any number in your phone book? The last two Samsung phones I have had work pretty well with voice dialing. Especially my A900 (Blade). It's really convenient (and safer) while I'm driving to be able to press the button on my Bluetooth headset and just say "Call John Doe" and then "Home" , "Mobile", or "Work". It works flawlessly for me most of the time. Other times I have to think like the phone and pronounce the name like I think the phone would -- i.e. Where-In for Warin. Not having voice dialing would be a deal breaker for me.
"So lemme get this right, Sony and other music companies that force Microsoft do implement DRM.. but Microsoft is still at fault? Its not as if Microsoft has a choice in this matter."
Why is it that back in 2003, Apple was able to get the very relaxed DRM from the major labels -- up to three computers (now five), burn an unlimited number of copies to CD's that can easily be re-ripped withou protection, an playback on and unlimited number of iPods, and Microsoft can't negotiate any better with the labels?
Even more recently, when the labels said they wanted variable pricing, Apple said No. Who won? When Sony refused to license content in Japan unless Apple did allow variable prices, Apple launched without Sony and six months later Sony came on board.
When the movie studios wanted tighter restrictions before they would allow Apple to sell movies, did Apple tighten the restrictions? No, Apple launched with just Disney and still outsold Movielink and CinemaNow and Amazon's Unbox,
So Microsoft does have a choice. Imagine if Microsoft had told the labels that the only way they can gain leverage over Apple is by having another strong competitor in the market and if they would allow more flexibility Microsoft could eventually be the one to do it. I'm convinced that Microsoft has absolutely no one with any talent to negotiate.
"For any significant music collection, you want to organize by the ubiquitous artist/album/track metadata."
When you burn a CD with iTunes. It stores the information for that CD into its database. When you put the disc back in the songs are still properly labeled...When you rip the songs from the CD they still have their metadata. There is a program at least for the Mac that automates this process using a CD-RW and scripting iTunes.
"1. Acquire satellite radio: This would allow apple to sell iTunes over wireless without a computer. Also, satellite radio use digital transmission. iPod can either do built-in transmitter or make it as an accessory. This would allow user to play their iPod on car radio (satellite radio) without wire and without loss of signal quality. I can think of tons of other benefits of Apple-satellite radio merger, but not enough space here. This will also allow wireless song sharing like Zune."
Satellite radio has a high capital cost, high licensing costs, and still not profitable. It would make more sense for Apple to use cellular technology for wireless such as EVDO and Bluetooth for sharing files like Zune. My cell phone already does a better job at wireless transfers to other phones and to my computer using Bluetooth than Zune.
"2. Acquire TiVO or offer similar service. Allow TiVO to download iTunes song and synch with iPod. Agains this will allow people to buy iTunes over broadband without using computer. Also, people can play their iTune songs on home stereo via DVR easily. This would fit in ther iTV or MacMini strategy quite well."
Tivo is dead...It's been on the market for years and still has less than 5 million subscribers and declining especially since DirecTV is no longer using Tivo. There is hope with Comcast though. Besides, iTunes is not a money center for Apple. More likely is iTV/iTunes integration.
"3. iPod remote: Make an iPod remote which looks like iPod nano. It can be synched with real iPod using a computer. Now user can truly do full control of their iPod using this remote control. My biggest problem of current generation of remotes is that I can't select a song, photo, video. I can only do play and then skip it if I don't like it. With a wheel and display, I can exactly select the song and then play. Such a remote should not cost more than 50/60 dollars."
"4. External memory/battery module for iPod nano: Make an external memory/battery module for iPod which will connect to docking connector. That way, I can expand my iPod nano. How about 8 GB module for $99? Or a 48 hour battery module."
The whole purpose of the Nano is the small size. If you want something larger with a larger capacity, the 30GB iPod is the same price as the 8GB Nano. As far as battery packs there are plenty of them out there....
"He has shown a distinct willingness to be less than truthful when marketing his products. The most notorious case that comes to mind was the "twice as fast" debacle, which was a complete lie. But there's a long history of things like that."
Are you trying to say that when companies market a product they only choose to advertise facts that put their product in a positive light? I'm shocked!
Do you remember the old Intel ads where they claimed that thier new chips made browsing the Internet faster when almost everyone was using dialup?
Less Proprietary -- while on the surface it seems like iPod/iTunes is just as proprietary as Zune/Zune software, the iPod mounts on any OS as a standard USB Mass Storage device, the database and directory structure is well known and has been for years and there are a number of utilities that let you manage the iPod.
OS Compatibility -- the iPod is compatible with Macs, Windows, and with free third party software Linux
File type compatibility -- the iPod is compatible with AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless, H.264,mpeg, Audible, Protected AAC, Protected MP4. The Zune is currently not compatible with Audible or natively compatible with any video format except for WMV everything else has to be converted to WMV format (done by the Zune software but still slower than just copying the file)
Podcast support -- sure a podcast is just an MP3 file but having podcast support means that between iPod and iTunes you can automatically sync podcasts, track which ones you've listed to either via iTunes or the iPod, and start listening to the podcast on your computer, sync your iPod and finish where you left off.
"Killing Mac IE the day Safari was introduced even though Mac IE 6 was well underway and had been in development for over a year and was about to hit beta."
What's the big deal about continuing to support IE for the Mac? Most sites that were "IE Only" were actually IE for Windows only because of an ActiveX object. Most sites these days support at least IE and FireFox.
"I agree with Apple that flat rates for music makes sense (though not for TV shows -- especially when paying $2 for *each* episode of the Daily Show)."
" I really have to wonder does iTunes allow you to manually "drag and drop" music and podcast files to the proper folders on the iPod and sort the files on the player to create the right playback sequence."
Yes -- Manually manage music or something like that. It's been an option for the longest.
"However, you can bet your MP3 player (whatever it is) that there are a bunch of someones at Microsoft reading every public comment about the Zune that they can get their eyeballs on. It's just as important to know what customers think is stupid or otherwise dislike as it is to know what they do like (they need only look at the iPod for that information.) That's Marketing 101, and if nothing else Microsoft does know how to market. "
Unlike Apple, Microsoft is not entering an immature market. When the iPod was released, MP3 players were far from mainstream. First. Microsoft could have looked at what people's complaints were about the iPod and improved on them, copied what Apple got right, and add on other features to differentiate the Zune. Look at what MS actually did....
The major complaints I've seen about the iPod are lack of codec supports, non-replaceable batteries, batteries that don't hold a charge after 18 months, not being able to sync songs from your iPod using iTunes, and being forced to used iTunes. The Zune supports only one video codec natively -- WMV. Everything else is transcoded making syncing slower. The Zune uses the same battery as the iPod and the battery life is actually lower than the iPod. Since the iPod is just a Mass Storage device and doesn't use a proprietary protocal to transfer music it was trivial for third parties to reverse engineer the directory structure and produce apps for using it on Windows and Linux shortly after it came out.
Why would Microsoft introduce a product without podcast support or audible support? The Zune not only doesn't work with PlaysForSure it doesn't even accept video recorded using Windows XP Media Center edition. Also, even if MS couldn't secure rights for videos at launch why not partner with Amazon and get the UnBox service working with the Zune? Amazon already uses Microsoft DRM. Even videos downloaded from XBOX live don't work with the Zune.
I can transfer music, video, and pictures wirelessly right now from my Bluetooth enabled phone to and from my Mac or to another Bluetooth phone. Why not include Bluetooth on the Zune and utomatically be compatible with other devices?
"Sure they do. If they could purchase an MP3 directly from a store online and stick it on whatever MP3 player they care to have purchased, then that's a much bigger market and that would be much more sales."
Apple has 78% of the market. If it could market to the other 22% it would only increase its market by 28%. But Napster only has 500,000 subscribers (and dropping) and Real only has 1.4 Million.
Apple barely breaks even on iTunes. If it increase volume it would still barely be a drop in the bucket.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm trying to compare it to the number of CDs actually sold. I couldn't get real numbers for that, but even counting the number of CD (any Format) sold, and then assuming that the CDAudio is at least counting for 10% of those sales. Apple would like you to believe that everyone is buying their music via iTunes, and it's the way the world is headed, but really not that many people are buying music off iTunes or any other online retailer. Most people still buy their music on physical media, and that isn't changing in the near future."
That's just it. You don't have to assume anything. SoundScan, the company that has been tracking this stuff for years, has hard, published numbers. Apple outsells all music retailers in the United States online and offline except for Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. Apple outsells Amazon in music and is on a trajectory to overtake Target soon.
"iTunes isn't really as popular as they would have you believe. As of January 2007, they've sold over 2 billion songs. Britney spears on the other hand has probably sold 100 million songs just as a single artist. However sales of CDS including CDRs,Audio, and other formats are around 30 billion annually. Now, i'm not sure how much of that is accounted for by Audio CDs, but even if it's 1/10 of the sales, and there's 10 tracks on a CD, then you got about 30 billion songs sold per year."
You are making a faulty comparison. There are only two valid ways to compare the iTunes Music Store. Either compare it to all of the other online music stores where iTMS has 80% of the market for legal downloads or compare it as SoundScan does to other music retailers (their methodology is an album = 10 individual songs) where Apple is still the #4 music retailer in the US behind Walmart, Target, and Best Buy and ahead of Amazon. It is silly to compare the songs Apple sells to the amount of blank CDs.
"Yeah, right. Tell that to the vast majority of non-tech savvy iTunes users, who don't understand why they can't make an MP3 CD of their purchased music. I have a friend who likes to make "Mix" CD's for other friends, and they keep getting frustrated when iTunes tells them some of their tracks can't be converted to MP3. I've tried explaining DRM to them, but for the typical layperson, it goes right over their heads."
You're not exactly making an argument against DRM there. It has always been illegal to distribute music you paid for to someone else and it should be. If your friend wanted to make copies for "personal use" he could on up to five computers and an unlimited number of iPods. He can even burn a regular audio CD of the music an unlimited number of times or up to seven times with the same playlist.
"Why doesn't Steve open up the iTunes store to indies"
Apple does open the store up to indies. Anyone can sign up to sell their music through CDBaby and CDBaby will distribute their music through iTunes for a very small transaction fee. The artist still maintains all of their rights to their music. The artist gets around 55-60 cents for each song sold.
"Yeah, but they want to sell the songs. Apple could probably make more money by selling you 20-30 DRM-less songs than by selling you an iPod. Maybe it would take 100 songs, I dunno. But using a proprietary store to leverage iPod sales is a losing strategy."
r efer=us&sid=a2Skp1Y.djTA) that means Apple makes $80 off of each iPod sold. Apple would have to sell 1429 songs to equal the profit of one iPod.
It is very public knowledge by now that iTunes operates at barely above break even. Let's take what we know. For every 99 cents song the record label gets 65c. Standard credit card merchant agreements calls for around 20 cents per transaction plus at least 2% of each sale. That leaves Apple at most 12 cents per song on average. Let's even be generous since Apple bundles purchases made over a short period of time to save money and they sell whole albums and say they make 14 cents per song not including marketing, development, and support.
It's also popularly believed that Apple makes about 40% profit margins on average on each iPod sold (search Google). If the average selling price of all iPods is around $200 (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&
"no, i don't buy his argument one bit. his keys would not be anymore loose than they are by keeping it on the ipod. sure, there's a chance, but the likelihood is pretty slim assuming he's not licensing it to vendors such as "joe schmoe's media players". have the playsforsure keys gotten loose because of all the devices that's licensed for? this would be similar."
And we all know that the CSS keys for DVD's never got out....
"Exactly. And if you have average joe blow consumer with 30 gigs of files in WMA format, and suddenly he can play them on an Ipod...don't you think that might just increase the chance that he ::gasp:: BUYS ONE?"
If you use the Windows version of iTunes and import the WMA files into it then the files are automatically converted.
"The computer I originally downloaded them on no longer exists, so I have no way to deauthorize it. This means that I am down one of the 5 computers that I can authorize my songs to play on. When I realized this, I decided that I will never again purchase any music files that have any DRM on them whatsoever."
t horization/
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/musicstore/au
How do I deauthorize all of my computers?
If you have authorized five computers, a button labeled "Deauthorize All" will appear in your Account Information screen. This button will deauthorize all computers associated with your account. You can then reauthorize up to 5 computers. Note: You can only use this feature once a year.
"Here is my problem: I want to play my itunes music and videos on my TV using a remote control. As far as I know, I can't do that - e.g. Windows Media Center. Now AppleTV would do it, but I don't need that - my freaking PC is hooked to my TV. I just need the software and remote."
If your PC is hooked up to your TV what's stopping you from using iTunes on your PC?
"It could just be that iTunes customers are getting sick of the problems that a DRM system as "lite" as Fairplay causes"
So where is the evidence that people are fed up with the iTunes Music Store? Sells are increasing and Apple sells more music in the US than every other retailer besides Walmart, Target, and Best Buy.
"And whether Apple is in the music business to sell iPods or the iPod business to sell music isn't clear, and is actually irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The fact of the matter is that in the trailing 9 months ending on July 1, 2006, Apple received nearly $1.5 billion in net sales from its iTunes-related business. Yes, that's only a 1/4 of what it got from iPod sales, but I'm willing to bet the profit margins are much better on iTunes sales than they are on iPods."
It's been estimated that Apple's profit margin from each iPod sold is around 30 - 40%. It's well known what the profit margin of each iTunes song sold is. For each 99 cents song, the record label gets 69 cents, the credit card company gets 20 cents per transaction (songs purchases are sometimes bundled into one transaction) + 2% of each sale. Apple makes about 10 cents on each song before considering bandwidth, servers, customer support, affiliate marketing, software development etc. They comment that iTunes is "barely above break even".
"They've got too much invested in their format to abandon it now."
AAC is not "Apple's format" any more than MP3 is. AAC is "specified both as Part 7 of the MPEG-2 standard, and Part 3 of the MPEG-4 standard." It is licensed by the same people who license MP3.
" Voice Dialing? My old phone had voice dialing, and it was the most worthless piece of crap technology I have ever used. Rarely worked correctly, so I never used it anyway. "
When did you use it? Did you use the old style voice dialing where you had to actually say the name twice and then put the corresponding number in or did you use the more modern speaker independant voice dialing that can match your voice to any number in your phone book? The last two Samsung phones I have had work pretty well with voice dialing. Especially my A900 (Blade). It's really convenient (and safer) while I'm driving to be able to press the button on my Bluetooth headset and just say "Call John Doe" and then "Home" , "Mobile", or "Work". It works flawlessly for me most of the time. Other times I have to think like the phone and pronounce the name like I think the phone would -- i.e. Where-In for Warin. Not having voice dialing would be a deal breaker for me.
"So lemme get this right, Sony and other music companies that force Microsoft do implement DRM.. but Microsoft is still at fault? Its not as if Microsoft has a choice in this matter."
Why is it that back in 2003, Apple was able to get the very relaxed DRM from the major labels -- up to three computers (now five), burn an unlimited number of copies to CD's that can easily be re-ripped withou protection, an playback on and unlimited number of iPods, and Microsoft can't negotiate any better with the labels?
Even more recently, when the labels said they wanted variable pricing, Apple said No. Who won? When Sony refused to license content in Japan unless Apple did allow variable prices, Apple launched without Sony and six months later Sony came on board.
When the movie studios wanted tighter restrictions before they would allow Apple to sell movies, did Apple tighten the restrictions? No, Apple launched with just Disney and still outsold Movielink and CinemaNow and Amazon's Unbox,
So Microsoft does have a choice. Imagine if Microsoft had told the labels that the only way they can gain leverage over Apple is by having another strong competitor in the market and if they would allow more flexibility Microsoft could eventually be the one to do it. I'm convinced that Microsoft has absolutely no one with any talent to negotiate.
"For any significant music collection, you want to organize by the ubiquitous artist/album/track metadata."
When you burn a CD with iTunes. It stores the information for that CD into its database. When you put the disc back in the songs are still properly labeled...When you rip the songs from the CD they still have their metadata. There is a program at least for the Mac that automates this process using a CD-RW and scripting iTunes.
"All you need to do is spend $$$$$ to buy an "iTV" and then your problems are solved."
Or you could buy a $10 cable and plug the iPod directly up to your tv....
"1. Acquire satellite radio: This would allow apple to sell iTunes over wireless without a computer. Also, satellite radio use digital transmission. iPod can either do built-in transmitter or make it as an accessory. This would allow user to play their iPod on car radio (satellite radio) without wire and without loss of signal quality. I can think of tons of other benefits of Apple-satellite radio merger, but not enough space here. This will also allow wireless song sharing like Zune."
Q Search&ls=CH#
s ?Product_Id=282059
p _cp_ob_title_1/002-0578485-3817628
Satellite radio has a high capital cost, high licensing costs, and still not profitable. It would make more sense for Apple to use cellular technology for wireless such as EVDO and Bluetooth for sharing files like Zune. My cell phone already does a better job at wireless transfers to other phones and to my computer using Bluetooth than Zune.
"2. Acquire TiVO or offer similar service. Allow TiVO to download iTunes song and synch with iPod. Agains this will allow people to buy iTunes over broadband without using computer. Also, people can play their iTune songs on home stereo via DVR easily. This would fit in ther iTV or MacMini strategy quite well."
Tivo is dead...It's been on the market for years and still has less than 5 million subscribers and declining especially since DirecTV is no longer using Tivo. There is hope with Comcast though. Besides, iTunes is not a money center for Apple. More likely is iTV/iTunes integration.
"3. iPod remote: Make an iPod remote which looks like iPod nano. It can be synched with real iPod using a computer. Now user can truly do full control of their iPod using this remote control. My biggest problem of current generation of remotes is that I can't select a song, photo, video. I can only do play and then skip it if I don't like it. With a wheel and display, I can exactly select the song and then play. Such a remote should not cost more than 50/60 dollars."
Already available. Not quite the size of the Nano. But what is there to sync on a remote?
http://www.hammacher.com/publish/73001.asp?promo=
"4. External memory/battery module for iPod nano: Make an external memory/battery module for iPod which will connect to docking connector. That way, I can expand my iPod nano. How about 8 GB module for $99? Or a 48 hour battery module."
The whole purpose of the Nano is the small size. If you want something larger with a larger capacity, the 30GB iPod is the same price as the 8GB Nano. As far as battery packs there are plenty of them out there....
Rechargeable battery pack that adds 6 hours of video or 10 hours of audio:
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.proces
Battery pack that uses standard 9V batteries. $29.00 (not a referral link)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007NZQ2W/ref=d
"5. A camera module expansion."
Do you mean something that allows you to transfer photos from your camera to your ipod? Apple sells the iPod Camera connector.
"He has shown a distinct willingness to be less than truthful when marketing his products. The most notorious case that comes to mind was the "twice as fast" debacle, which was a complete lie. But there's a long history of things like that."
Are you trying to say that when companies market a product they only choose to advertise facts that put their product in a positive light? I'm shocked!
Do you remember the old Intel ads where they claimed that thier new chips made browsing the Internet faster when almost everyone was using dialup?
Less Proprietary -- while on the surface it seems like iPod/iTunes is just as proprietary as Zune/Zune software, the iPod mounts on any OS as a standard USB Mass Storage device, the database and directory structure is well known and has been for years and there are a number of utilities that let you manage the iPod.
OS Compatibility -- the iPod is compatible with Macs, Windows, and with free third party software Linux
File type compatibility -- the iPod is compatible with AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless, H.264,mpeg, Audible, Protected AAC, Protected MP4. The Zune is currently not compatible with Audible or natively compatible with any video format except for WMV everything else has to be converted to WMV format (done by the Zune software but still slower than just copying the file)
Podcast support -- sure a podcast is just an MP3 file but having podcast support means that between iPod and iTunes you can automatically sync podcasts, track which ones you've listed to either via iTunes or the iPod, and start listening to the podcast on your computer, sync your iPod and finish where you left off.
"Killing Mac IE the day Safari was introduced even though Mac IE 6 was well underway and had been in development for over a year and was about to hit beta."
What's the big deal about continuing to support IE for the Mac? Most sites that were "IE Only" were actually IE for Windows only because of an ActiveX object. Most sites these days support at least IE and FireFox.
"I agree with Apple that flat rates for music makes sense (though not for TV shows -- especially when paying $2 for *each* episode of the Daily Show)."
Season Pass -- 16 episodes/9.99 == $0.62/episode.
" I really have to wonder does iTunes allow you to manually "drag and drop" music and podcast files to the proper folders on the iPod and sort the files on the player to create the right playback sequence."
Yes -- Manually manage music or something like that. It's been an option for the longest.
"However, you can bet your MP3 player (whatever it is) that there are a bunch of someones at Microsoft reading every public comment about the Zune that they can get their eyeballs on. It's just as important to know what customers think is stupid or otherwise dislike as it is to know what they do like (they need only look at the iPod for that information.) That's Marketing 101, and if nothing else Microsoft does know how to market. "
Unlike Apple, Microsoft is not entering an immature market. When the iPod was released, MP3 players were far from mainstream. First. Microsoft could have looked at what people's complaints were about the iPod and improved on them, copied what Apple got right, and add on other features to differentiate the Zune. Look at what MS actually did....
The major complaints I've seen about the iPod are lack of codec supports, non-replaceable batteries, batteries that don't hold a charge after 18 months, not being able to sync songs from your iPod using iTunes, and being forced to used iTunes. The Zune supports only one video codec natively -- WMV. Everything else is transcoded making syncing slower. The Zune uses the same battery as the iPod and the battery life is actually lower than the iPod. Since the iPod is just a Mass Storage device and doesn't use a proprietary protocal to transfer music it was trivial for third parties to reverse engineer the directory structure and produce apps for using it on Windows and Linux shortly after it came out.
Why would Microsoft introduce a product without podcast support or audible support? The Zune not only doesn't work with PlaysForSure it doesn't even accept video recorded using Windows XP Media Center edition. Also, even if MS couldn't secure rights for videos at launch why not partner with Amazon and get the UnBox service working with the Zune? Amazon already uses Microsoft DRM. Even videos downloaded from XBOX live don't work with the Zune.
I can transfer music, video, and pictures wirelessly right now from my Bluetooth enabled phone to and from my Mac or to another Bluetooth phone. Why not include Bluetooth on the Zune and utomatically be compatible with other devices?
iTunes ranks 5th in the number of songs sold in the United States -- not just online.
1. Walmart
2. Target
3. Best Buy
4. Amazon
5. iTunes
This is of course normalized to factor in single sells versus entire CDs.
"Sure they do. If they could purchase an MP3 directly from a store online and stick it on whatever MP3 player they care to have purchased, then that's a much bigger market and that would be much more sales."
Apple has 78% of the market. If it could market to the other 22% it would only increase its market by 28%. But Napster only has 500,000 subscribers (and dropping) and Real only has 1.4 Million.
Apple barely breaks even on iTunes. If it increase volume it would still barely be a drop in the bucket.