"lesser known fact* is that Microsoft almost had to launch the product without the music library from Universal Music Group (U2 for one example) because Universal also wanted a cut of each Zune sold ($1 for every $250 Zune sold). Don't you think that will affect any future negotiations that Apple will have Universal?"
No it won't have any affect on Apple. Let's look at the facts.
The labels already tried to put pressure on Apple to allow variable rate pricing. Apple said no. Guess who won?
Sony refused to license its catalog to Apple in Japan because of its refusal to allow variable rate pricing. Apple launched iTunes without Sony. The artists complained. Sony is now on iTunes Japan.
Apple only makes about $0.10 per song sold on iTunes after paying licensing fees. The label makes $0.65. If Apple sells 40 million iPods next year. That's $40 million it will have to give to Universal. Apple will have to sell 400 million songs from Universal to break even. Not very likely to happen.
If Apple gives Universal $1.00 per song it will also have to give the other labels $1.00 that brings the total up to $160 Million even less likely to happen.
Apple is the #5 retailer of music. Period. Not just online. The only companies to sell more are Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Amazon. Apple will probably overtake Amazon next year. Do you really think any label is going to give up the iTunes cash cow?
The average iPod user only has 21 songs from the store. They could care less whether Universal is on iTunes
What is more likely to happen if someone can't find music on iTunes: a) they will give up their iPod and buy a Zune b) they will go to a record store and buy the CD to get the one song they want or c) Download it using their favorite p2p client?
"You forgot the part where people are locked into iPod/iTunes/iTMS because of DRM-encumbered tracks which are only Apple compatible"
You mean for 1. All 21 songs the average iPod user has bought from iTunes 2. which can easily be turned into regular MP3's by burning them to a CD and reripping 3. and which can be redownloaded anyway using the subscription services that every other DAP maker is hawking?
The earliest version of Excel was for the Mac and it was a lot better than Lotus at the time on DOS or the Mac. In fact Excel for Windows 3.x was much better than Lotus. The Windows version of Lotus got horrible reviews.
The huge difference between the XBox introduction and the the Zune introduction was that the XBox was at least considered as good as the Playstation and never got the negative reviews that the Zune has been getting. But don't forget that the playstation 2 is still outselling the XBox and the XBox 360 according to Joystiq.com.
Re:I've noticed that this round of MS products...
on
The Zune Cometh
·
· Score: 1
All music shared has a 3 day 3 play limit. This has been well known for a while. Do you really think the labels would let someone share mp3 willy-nilly without putting up a stink?
"Apple's BOM costs aren't meaningfully higher than any of their competitors. I'm guessing their vig to the media conglomerates is about the same. "
Apple's cost is in fact meaningfully lower than everyone elses because it is able to buy in a quantity that no one else can. The only company with lower cost is Sandisk since they make thier own memory.
The network/production company makes $1.44 cents per $1.99 download for a tv show. This compares to an "estimated 57 cents in advertising revenue per user generated under the current model." They make over 2.5x as much per download as they do from television.
"The "added convenience" of DRM-encumbered files that I can't backup or watch on my other computers?! *cough, splutter*"
There is nothing stopping you from backing up the file or copying it and playing it on up to 5 different Macs or Windows machines and an unlimited number of iPods.
"MP3 players on cellphones are useless for this reason: you have to buy all the MP3s from the cellphone provider, instead of just loading your own."
I have a Samsung A900 from Sprint. You can transfer music (MP3,AAC, and I believe WMA) via either Bluetooth or using the included USB cable (works as a standard Mass storage device)
"Even with the camera phones, you're not allowed to copy any pictures using a USB cable because the provider has locked that out, and wants to force you to use airtime to email them to yourself."
With the A900 you can also transfer JPG's -- up to 1.3 Megapixels and video (standard 3gpp format) over Bluetooth and USB. The phone also supports PictBridge.
"For some reason, it slowly starts falling apart( don't know about XP with this regard )."
XP has been out for five years and you haven't even used it? I have never had to reinstall XP or 2000. I can clean up the typical Windows PC by running AVG (free antivirus), spybot, uninstalling programs, and running msconfig to disable startup items and unneeded services.
"Not sure how the Mac running on x86 magically enabled all x86 software to run on it but I guess it'll make virtual Windows running faster and makes porting OSS slightly easier."
It's not "virtul Windows". Apple released Boot Camp (free) months ago which allows Intel based Macs to dual boot into Windows. Bootcamp also comes with Windows XP drivers for Mac hardware. MacMall will even sell you a Mac with both Mac OSX and Windows XP installed and configured for dual boot. Alternatively, you can buy Parallls Desktop for $69.00 (like VMWare)
Moving to Intel has nothing to do with making porting OSS easier. Most OSS has already been ported. What makes portong OSS easier is the BSD underpinnings of the Mac and the included X11 support.
So your idea of "troubleshooting" a problem is reinstalling the entire OS? Would you have just reinstalled Linux or would you have actually tried to see what the problem was? Did you try rebooting into safe mode? Did you try to use msconfig? You didn't even think about doing an ounce of research? I just went on google and the very first article I found was from Microsoft "Creating a New System.ini without third-party drivers" Article ID: 85560.
Yeah let's just tell everyone to switch to Linux instead of
1. educating them not to install untrusted software. 2. Install a free anti-virus/anti-spyware package 3. Tell them not to double click on attachments sent via email 4. Install Firefox and tell them to use that instead of IE.
I'm sure people wil be real happy when the software they use won't work.
It amazes me that there are so many self proclaimed Linux experts who can't seem to run Windows without getting spyware and viruses.
I love my Mac Mini but I have never tried to convert anyone to the Mac because I don't want them coming back later and not being able to run the software they need. Now that Macs are on Intel I will tell them the advantage of buying a Mac. You get all of the advantages of commercial applications, the bundled suite of easy to use apps -- ITunes, IPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie, no viruses or spyware (yet), and you can run the best OSS -- Firefox, NeoOffice/J (Open Office), VLC, MPlayer, etc. On top of that you get much more polish than Linux.
"I became so fed up with troubleshooting my daughters xp box "
I seriously doubt anyone's competence who can't troubleshoot XP. It's not exactly rocket science. Give your daughter a non-admin account and install Firefox. What exactly did you find so hard about troubleshooting XP?
Out of every $0.99 song, $0.65 does go to record companies. But out of that $0.34 Apple still has to pay credit card transaction fees. Everything that I have read says that Apple makes $.10 per song after paying the record companies and credit card processing fees. That does not include any other overhead.
I've seen the same at other sites. Apple makes about $0.10 after paying licensing fees, credit card processing fees, and paying for bandwidth. iTunes sells iPods pure and simple.
"Other complaints are that iTunes [Apple's online music store] is overpriced"
Overpriced compared to what? Free pirated music? All of the music stores that sell non-Indie music is seling for 99c accept for Walmart and Walmart is behind ITunes, Rhapsody, and Napster.
"In our ethnography interviews, some long-time iPod-users told us that they have stopped updating their iPods because it's too much work"
Using both Macs and Windows XP you just plug it in. Why couldn't they give a specific percentage of people?
" while other consumers who had bought iPods more recently had not even taken theirs out of the package to set it up.'"
Again no real numbers
"Analysts warn that the iPod has passed its peak. From its launch five years ago its sales graph showed a consistent upward curve, culminating in a period around last Christmas that saw a record 14 million sold."
During the fourth calendar quarter sells of consumer items peak --- news at 11. That's why economist compare on a "seasonally adjusted basis".
"He cited new mobile phones with improved MP3 players as the cause of the iPod's dwindling appeal"
10% -- users who buy ringtones for mobile phones 0.4% -- users who paid for video 28% -- 15 million subscribers downloaded some type of content
So who are all of these people buying music from their cellphone?
I have a Samsung a900 that plays MP3 and AAC formatted music as well as Sprint's music store music. I can transfer music from my Mac using either Bluetooth or the included usb cable. The interface is decent but music drains the battery life. On top of that I have only 80MB to store music on. Even on Sprint's other phones that do accept a MicroSD card you can only get up to 2GB. I'll keep my Nano.
Actually, Apple's iPod accounts for around 50% of the DAP market, which is certainly substantial and more than any other product (or company), but not the "80%+" you mention.
These are the things I expect from a phone: - Appears as a USB mass storage device.
- Data like contacts, messages, and so on should be stored as CSV files or some similar sort of text files. I want them editable in a text editor.n
- Photos and videos stored in/photos and/videos, respectively.
- Photos and videos in common (and preferably patent-free) formats. PNG and Ogg Theora would suit me fine.
- Bluetooth.
- A C or C++ cross compiler
The Samsung A900 does most of this well.
-It does appear as a USB mass storage device and works with Mac OS X with no drivers Contact data can be imported/exported as a standard vcard over Bluetooth, works fine with the Mac -Photos and videos are stored in the DCIM folder just like any other digital camera. I plug the phone up and pictures are automatically synced with iPhoto. It also supports PictBridge so the phone can be connected directly to the printer. -Patent free format, not gonna happen. Photos are stored as JPEGS and video is stored as Mpeg's that work with Quicktime without any additional codecs. -It does have Bluetooth which is completely uncrippled. You can transfer files to and from the phone easily. -The A900 uses Java. You are able to add Java programs to it -- I haven't played with this yet and you might have to setup a website and transfer it via http
How did Apple lock customer in? The iPod was already the leading mp3 player before iTunes Music Store came out for Windows in October 2003. Any song files that people had on their mp3 player could have easily been moved to another player.
Slashdot Mirror
"You forgot the part where people are locked into iPod/iTunes/iTMS because of DRM-encumbered tracks which are only Apple compatible"
You mean for
1. All 21 songs the average iPod user has bought from iTunes
2. which can easily be turned into regular MP3's by burning them to a CD and reripping
3. and which can be redownloaded anyway using the subscription services that every other DAP maker is hawking?
(Brown being the least popular color for the Zune).
Strangely enough, brown is not the least popular color according to Amazon's sell rankings
As of this posting...
#26 Black
#85 Brown
#254 White
The earliest version of Excel was for the Mac and it was a lot better than Lotus at the time on DOS or the Mac. In fact Excel for Windows 3.x was much better than Lotus. The Windows version of Lotus got horrible reviews.
The huge difference between the XBox introduction and the the Zune introduction was that the XBox was at least considered as good as the Playstation and never got the negative reviews that the Zune has been getting. But don't forget that the playstation 2 is still outselling the XBox and the XBox 360 according to Joystiq.com.
All music shared has a 3 day 3 play limit. This has been well known for a while. Do you really think the labels would let someone share mp3 willy-nilly without putting up a stink?
a ined.html
http://www.zunester.com/2006/09/zune-sharing-expl
"Apple's BOM costs aren't meaningfully higher than any of their competitors. I'm guessing their vig to the media conglomerates is about the same. "
Apple's cost is in fact meaningfully lower than everyone elses because it is able to buy in a quantity that no one else can. The only company with lower cost is Sandisk since they make thier own memory.
According to this site:
2 0060124Apple55CentsAndAdvertising.html
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-
The network/production company makes $1.44 cents per $1.99 download for a tv show. This compares to an "estimated 57 cents in advertising revenue per user generated under the current model." They make over 2.5x as much per download as they do from television.
"The "added convenience" of DRM-encumbered files that I can't backup or watch on my other computers?! *cough, splutter*"
There is nothing stopping you from backing up the file or copying it and playing it on up to 5 different Macs or Windows machines and an unlimited number of iPods.
"MP3 players on cellphones are useless for this reason: you have to buy all the MP3s from the cellphone provider, instead of just loading your own."
I have a Samsung A900 from Sprint. You can transfer music (MP3,AAC, and I believe WMA) via either Bluetooth or using the included USB cable (works as a standard Mass storage device)
"Even with the camera phones, you're not allowed to copy any pictures using a USB cable because the provider has locked that out, and wants to force you to use airtime to email them to yourself."
With the A900 you can also transfer JPG's -- up to 1.3 Megapixels and video (standard 3gpp format) over Bluetooth and USB. The phone also supports PictBridge.
UltraMon gives you everything you asked for:
1. A Maximize across all screen buttons
2. Task bars on each monitor
3. A "move window to the other monitor button"
"For some reason, it slowly starts falling apart( don't know about XP with this regard )."
XP has been out for five years and you haven't even used it? I have never had to reinstall XP or 2000. I can clean up the typical Windows PC by running AVG (free antivirus), spybot, uninstalling programs, and running msconfig to disable startup items and unneeded services.
"Not sure how the Mac running on x86 magically enabled all x86 software to run on it but I guess it'll make virtual Windows running faster and makes porting OSS slightly easier."
It's not "virtul Windows". Apple released Boot Camp (free) months ago which allows Intel based Macs to dual boot into Windows. Bootcamp also comes with Windows XP drivers for Mac hardware. MacMall will even sell you a Mac with both Mac OSX and Windows XP installed and configured for dual boot. Alternatively, you can buy Parallls Desktop for $69.00 (like VMWare)
Moving to Intel has nothing to do with making porting OSS easier. Most OSS has already been ported. What makes portong OSS easier is the BSD underpinnings of the Mac and the included X11 support.
So your idea of "troubleshooting" a problem is reinstalling the entire OS? Would you have just reinstalled Linux or would you have actually tried to see what the problem was? Did you try rebooting into safe mode? Did you try to use msconfig? You didn't even think about doing an ounce of research? I just went on google and the very first article I found was from Microsoft "Creating a New System.ini without third-party drivers" Article ID: 85560.
Yeah let's just tell everyone to switch to Linux instead of
1. educating them not to install untrusted software.
2. Install a free anti-virus/anti-spyware package
3. Tell them not to double click on attachments sent via email
4. Install Firefox and tell them to use that instead of IE.
I'm sure people wil be real happy when the software they use won't work.
It amazes me that there are so many self proclaimed Linux experts who can't seem to run Windows without getting spyware and viruses.
I love my Mac Mini but I have never tried to convert anyone to the Mac because I don't want them coming back later and not being able to run the software they need. Now that Macs are on Intel I will tell them the advantage of buying a Mac. You get all of the advantages of commercial applications, the bundled suite of easy to use apps -- ITunes, IPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie, no viruses or spyware (yet), and you can run the best OSS -- Firefox, NeoOffice/J (Open Office), VLC, MPlayer, etc. On top of that you get much more polish than Linux.
"I became so fed up with troubleshooting my daughters xp box "
I seriously doubt anyone's competence who can't troubleshoot XP. It's not exactly rocket science. Give your daughter a non-admin account and install Firefox. What exactly did you find so hard about troubleshooting XP?
Out of every $0.99 song, $0.65 does go to record companies. But out of that $0.34 Apple still has to pay credit card transaction fees. Everything that I have read says that Apple makes $.10 per song after paying the record companies and credit card processing fees. That does not include any other overhead.
A quick search on Google yields the following link:
t -27959.html
http://forums.appleinsider.com/archive/index.php/
I've seen the same at other sites. Apple makes about $0.10 after paying licensing fees, credit card processing fees, and paying for bandwidth. iTunes sells iPods pure and simple.
For proof look no further.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjvpX3pt9Q
The whole idea is that many people don't want to buy the whole album....But what is the value of a CD and a CD case?
"Other complaints are that iTunes [Apple's online music store] is overpriced"
i th+consumers/2100-1026_3-6113998.html?tag=nefd.top
Overpriced compared to what? Free pirated music? All of the music stores that sell non-Indie music is seling for 99c accept for Walmart and Walmart is behind ITunes, Rhapsody, and Napster.
"In our ethnography interviews, some long-time iPod-users told us that they have stopped updating their iPods because it's too much work"
Using both Macs and Windows XP you just plug it in. Why couldn't they give a specific percentage of people?
" while other consumers who had bought iPods more recently had not even taken theirs out of the package to set it up.'"
Again no real numbers
"Analysts warn that the iPod has passed its peak. From its launch five years ago its sales graph showed a consistent upward curve, culminating in a period around last Christmas that saw a record 14 million sold."
During the fourth calendar quarter sells of consumer items peak --- news at 11. That's why economist compare on a "seasonally adjusted basis".
"He cited new mobile phones with improved MP3 players as the cause of the iPod's dwindling appeal"
http://news.com.com/Mobile+content+not+clicking+w
10% -- users who buy ringtones for mobile phones
0.4% -- users who paid for video
28% -- 15 million subscribers downloaded some type of content
So who are all of these people buying music from their cellphone?
I have a Samsung a900 that plays MP3 and AAC formatted music as well as Sprint's music store music. I can transfer music from my Mac using either Bluetooth or the included usb cable. The interface is decent but music drains the battery life. On top of that I have only 80MB to store music on. Even on Sprint's other phones that do accept a MicroSD card you can only get up to 2GB. I'll keep my Nano.
"In Japan most people don't bother with iPods"
h tml/
Interesting.....
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/nov/16japan.
"Comcast makes it almost impossible to record HD with anything other than their own rent-a-
e _your_own_home_theatre_mac_htmac/
DVR, which is relatively sucktastic"
If by almost impossible you mean connect a firewire cable from the Motorola digital box to a Mac using free software....
http://macteens.com/features/fullstory/how_to_mak
The Samsung A900 does most of this well.
-It does appear as a USB mass storage device and works with Mac OS X with no drivers
Contact data can be imported/exported as a standard vcard over Bluetooth, works fine with the Mac
-Photos and videos are stored in the DCIM folder just like any other digital camera. I plug the phone up and pictures are automatically synced with iPhoto. It also supports PictBridge so the phone can be connected directly to the printer.
-Patent free format, not gonna happen. Photos are stored as JPEGS and video is stored as Mpeg's that work with Quicktime without any additional codecs.
-It does have Bluetooth which is completely uncrippled. You can transfer files to and from the phone easily.
-The A900 uses Java. You are able to add Java programs to it -- I haven't played with this yet and you might have to setup a website and transfer it via http
How did Apple lock customer in? The iPod was already the leading mp3 player before iTunes Music Store came out for Windows in October 2003. Any song files that people had on their mp3 player could have easily been moved to another player.