Sony Walkman outsells iPod?

Bloomberg.com: News

<sarcasm>

OMG! Apple is dying! What more evidence do you need? The Zune can’t be far behind!

Before anyone sells all their Apple shares, let me point out that this ’survey’ conveniently leaves out iPhone sales.

Ah, you say – the iPhone isn’t an iPod? Well all you naysayers, take a look at the iPhone default home screen.

See that little orange icon? It says ‘iPod’.

I.P.O.D.

What’s next? When Apple on September 9th, announces that the iPod loses it’s click wheel and goes all ‘touch’, by this articles rules, there won’t be any more iPods.

Hooray! The Zune outsells the iPod at last!

</sarcasm>

Posted using ShareThis

Still they don’t get it…

I’ve recently subscribed to a new podcast, ‘MacNotables‘ hosted by Chuck Joiner (a great name and a great podcast).

Episode #824 caught my attention, because it discussed in the main, the new Napster music store, and then the topic of the Amazon music store and why the music labels have given more favourable terms to other music stores at the expense of giving them to Apple.

Now I’ve discussed this before here, and I feel I make a valid arguement that the reason why this is happening is nothing to do with consumer choice, but is mainly about the music companies getting their industry back from Apple, so that they can control it again, and raise prices, re-introduce DRM, and make even more money for themselves.

But after listening to this podcast, I can see that even the most intelligent and insightful Mac-pundits simply cannot see the wood for the trees (or the music for the albums as it were).

Andy Inakto Innhakto Ihnatko, (who joking aside, have enormous respect for), is totally wrong here.

In listening to the quite heated discussion amongst the protagonists in MacNotables #824 episode, the conclusion I can draw from Andy is that he feels that Amazon’s music store is a good thing, and iTunes could do with the competition.

He uses iTunes to search for music and listen to the samples, but then goes to Amazon to buy it.

To save what amounts to a few bucks.

Every buck he saves erodes Apple’s dominance, and further entrenches Amazon’s.

Now I’ve nothing against Amazon, I use it all the time to buy stuff, it’s the way in which Andy, and others like him have been totally suckered by the recording industry to effectively allow them to, sooner or later, completely ignore Apple when they argue with them over pricing.

And when that happens, all those little bucks that Andy has been saving, will be won back when the recording industry is allowed to raise prices, because they can safely ignore Apple again.

Well done Andy.

The Zune…

Well. The Zune. What can be said that hasn’t already been said a thousand times?

It’s not very good.

It’s too big. It’s too brown. It’s too restrictive in its DRM. It’s too confusing to use (Microsoft points?). It’s too difficult to install. It’s just too, well, Microsoft.
To Mac users, this isn’t surprising. We all know that, given a level playing field, (not one where they can leverage their monopoly), Microsoft just cannot do anything well.

Everything they have ever produced has always stank to high heaven. Now, in the business world, this doesn’t matter. Geeks are very forgiving.

They will put up with the workarounds, hacks and make-do’s to get Microsoft products working, because a) their jobs depend on it, b) they actually enjoy being knee-deep in this shit, and c) because the alternative (using another OS), is just too frightening to bear.
But in the consumer world, Microsoft cannot get away with it. When, (as one reviewer was forced to do) you have to manually create and install a .DLL file, just to get the Zune software working, you realise that there is something deeply, deeply wrong at Microsoft.

In principal, they are still a computer company, and by computer company, I mean a company that sells to geeks, first and foremost.

They see, and treat your average joe consumer with contempt, just in the same way as the Windows IT tech support at the company you, dear reader, work at, do also.

Everything Microsoft does is soiled with this central, rotten core. “Our software doesn’t work perfectly, but don’t worry, the geek in the family/IT department will sort it out”.

Well, this central premise doesn’t seem to be working anymore for Microsoft. The Zune’s sales are not only disappointing, they’re terrible. It’s funny to see all the so-called independent blogs that Microsoft secretly set up, clamouring for any good news. Several of them are no longer being updated.

Apple, on the other hand, have always been the ‘company for the rest of us,” and their time has now come.

Time to buy Apple shares again.

Illogical arguements…

A recent posting at ‘The Motley Fool” has irked my logic alarm. It’s an aspect of the iPod & iTS arguement that I still don’t understand. The article is here:

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06101016.htm

It centres around Apple and Intel, but leaving that aside, I was peturbed by this statement:

“I’m a big fan of open standards myself, and would be happy to see Apple’s closed platform opened up so I could buy songs through iTunes and play them on my Creative Zen media player. “

I really don’t understand the logic here. If you have a Creative Zen media player, why would you want to buy a song from the iTunes store, when:

1: It’s not compatible with your player, and:

2: THE EXACT SAME SONG IS AVAILABLE ON COUNTLESS OTHER MUSIC STORES THAT ARE COMPATIBLE WITH THE ZEN.

Why would you demand of Apple to open up the iTS? Are the songs different in any way?

No, they’re not, so what’s his problem?

Aah, I see – his problem is DRM.

OK, so why pick on Apple?

DRM is present in every digital music store because the record labels want it this way – get over it, DRM exists and will exist whether you like it or not.

Your only solace is that you must choose the DRM with the weakest DRM – Apple.

This article is a coded attack against Apple’s dominance. He’s discouraging his readers from buying Apple, so that every geeks favourite company – Microsoft – can overrule us all with the Zune, with much more draconian DRM that will enslave us all.