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- Leopard 10.5.3
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- Mac market share up to 66-percent (PCs over $1,000)
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- Microsoft: We’ll have 40% of smart phone market by 2012
- Can Dell rebound from the brink like Apple?
- The new rules for buying a Mac
- How Microsoft could kill Google on the Web
- AOL Desktop for Mac
- The iMac is a 10
- A Tale of Two Steves
The evolution of Apple’s quiet revolutions
Friday, June 13, 2008
To say that Apple is doing well these days is to state the obvious. What is there about Apple, Inc. that is not going well? Mac sales are up. Market share is up. The iPod rules portable music. iTunes Store rules online music, TV shows, movies. iPhone is changing the cell phone business. Still, the Apple revolution has become more of an evolution.
Reader Comments
Jonathan Dandar said:
Apple is doing what it has done before. Same as the iPhone only in a much more quiet way. No real legal action on jailbroken phones. Benefit? How many countries will iPhone 3G debut in? How many apps had already been written and even evolved before the SDK was even announced?
The AppleTV has been hacked in similar ways to provide a Mac W/ Front Row interface and the ability to interface w/ third party tuners. Some of the software for these tuner devices will work w/ front row and the apple remote. Video ripping? Why does that have to take place in any particular room? As long as it’s stored were Front Row can find it? ( I have six networked computers around my property. ) I myself don’t voluntarily watch traditional broadcast media anyway. Too much content control by owners and advertisers! I use my home net and the iNet instead!
Apple has it’s hardware and software foot in the living/media room door and it’s treading lightly w/ it’s legal teams. With it’s online iTunes successes and the iPhone’s open ended potential ( I hear you can use it as a remote via wifi! ) indirectly supporting that “foot in the door”, Apple may already be doing more in the living and other rooms than is showing up on the main Mac media radars. It is at my house.
Al said:
If the associated software in iTunes could legally rip DVDs for Apple TV just like it legally rips CDs for iPods, then Apple would have a viable product.
It was ripping CDs, not the iTunes Music Store, that made the iPod the success it is today. A movie collection ripped from your DVDs makes Apple TV a very valuable addition to a HDTV. It works like a Movie Jukebox. Very cool. I have 350 movies and almost as many TV shows just a couple of clicks away.
Alas, DRM is in the way. Fair use is lost forever. There is no legal way to make Apple TV a hit.
David Dugan said:
To answer your question about how Apple can accelerate its entry into the living room, I think they should offer an AppleTV product as just exactly what it sounds like: an actual TV (or more accurately, a flat-screen HD monitor) with the AppleTV guts built right into it. That way, people can get their minds around it, without the negative image of adding yet another box to your cabinet. Now it just sounds like a new flat-screen TV that right out of the box lets you rent movies, listen to all of your music, watch and listen to podcasts, view all of your friends’ Flickr photos, watch your home movies, etc.
I’d buy one in a second.
Rus said:
First thing would be to build an HDTV Tuner into all Macs. Second would be to partner with AT&T;(or Sprint) on a WiMax TV venture, sell a box that hook up to a TV or stream a TV signal to a computer wirelessly.
But I think the real REVOLUTION that’s next for Apple is the auto industry.