Friday, July 7, 2006
News
Opinion
Is Four Mac OS Launches In 5 Years Really A Good Thing?
Can Apple's Consumer MacBook Really Repalce Two PowerBooks And A ThinkPad?
Apples Are Not The Only Fruit
The market is young and customers' commitment may not yet be deep. Just as CDs prompted record-lovers to abandon their vast collections of vinyl, a rival to the iPod, were it good enough, could tempt audiophiles to abandon their iTunes collections — with or without help from France.
Did Apple Re-Invent The Anti-Virus?
What worries me is that we have, basically, re-invented anti-virus systems: provide "signatures" for rogue applications, perform a check against a known database and raise a red flag when the check returns positive. That, essentially, means one thing: there is no way to prevent damage.
Review
MacBook Excels At Windows, OS X
DropTeam
DropTeam gives seasoned strategy veterans some realistic battlefield gaming — set on the surface of other planets.
iCorrect EditLab Pro 5.0: Photoshop Plug-In Makes Color Correction A Breeze
Its logically ordered, easy-to-use tools and integrated SmartColor technology give you multiple parts to the best color possible for your images.
Sidetrack
Summer Reruns: What Will The Next Version Of Windows Media Player Be Named?
Remember the whole Macintosh licensing fiasco? Bascially, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he killed the Macintosh cloning scheme by changing the name of the OS, buying off Power Computing, made enemies out of partners, and created a lot of bad press.
Now, Microsoft is facing the same problem. All its partners — Creative, iRiver, Napster, MTV, etc — are not able to put any real dent to Apple's iPod+iTunes ecosystem, and Microsoft might well be making a big U-turn. Rumors are speculating that Microsoft will push for an iPod+iTunes clone, with the Redmond company providing "an end-to-end solution."
It will be interesting to see if Steve Ballmer is following the script laid out by Steve Jobs line by line. Will we see a brand new application that is not called Windows Media Player? Will we see Microsoft buying SanDisk or iRiver? Will we see Creative stop writing drivers for Windows, and move all their products to Mac? (Ha!)
One thing for sure is that we won't be seeing a lot of bad press. Why? Because the current strategy is obviously not working, and the new strategy is obviously working for Apple and Xbox. This is a very different situation with Apple's cloning business, where uncertainly loomed in all directions.
And let's all pray that the marketing team has seen the if-Microsoft-designed-the-iPod-box video.
Wintel
Strategy Shift By Microsoft To Fight iPod
Music and video may be so crucial to how computers are used in the future that Microsoft cannot strategically afford to let Apple continue to hold the upper hand.
Microsoft Planning WiFi-Enabled Portable Media Player, Working On MVNO For Next Year
To attract current iPod users, Microsoft is going to let you download for free any songs you've already bought from the iTunes Music Store.
