NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) – When Apple sits for contract negotiations with the major record companies over the next month, it will probably seek further concessions from them on selling music without copy-protection software.
Big-box retailer Target is poised to become just the second third-party retailer to market Apple Inc.’s new Apple TV device at its brick-and-mortar retail stores, AppleInsider has learned.
While MP3 players are everywhere, and imitations of an Apple iPod Nano go for about $50 (a two gigabyte model with a larger screen than Apple (Charts, Fortune 500) offers), if you want the genuine article you’ll get fleeced. For an 80 gigabyte black iPod like one Amazon sells for $330, one salesman quotes me a price of about $700. As for PCs, Apple’s presence here is minimal.
Signs you’ve ready made it, No. 2,789,879 of a 3 million-part series: McDonald’s teams up with “American Idol” and makes a toy based on you. Yes, iPod, you’re on top. Starting tomorrow, little kids across the land (and probably a few Mac geeks) will dig into Happy Meals filled with “American Idol” toys, including a fake mp3 player that looks, shockingly, exactly like an iPod with the Idol logo on it.
It can’t be loaded with music, but it seems to have at least contain a tiny amount of music. Anyway, it beats a Dell Digital Jukebox.
Gartner pegs Apple’s current U.S. market share at 5 percent — a whopping 30 percent increase of the 4 percent figure estimated for the first quarter of 2006. According to the research firm, this makes Apple’s market share the fastest growing among PC vendors in the U.S, with Toshiba following closely at 26.8 percent growth. Dell, meanwhile, saw a 15.5 percent decrease in market share, though it retained its spot as top PC vendor in the U.S.
Yep, you knew it was going to happen. News about Monday’s Virginia Tech shooting has officially leaked into every other domain. How do I know? Well, the blogger at Habla Mierda has begun speculation that killer Cho Seung-Hui… might be a Mac user:
I was reading the article and found this line pretty interesting.
Among the materials are 23 QuickTime video files showing Cho talking directly to the camera, Capus said. He does not name anyone specifically, but he talks at length about religion and his hatred of the wealthy.
Quicktime Video? Talking directly to camera?
Let’s check Apple’s site real quick.
<snip>
<sigh>
I don’t even know what to make of this. The guy over at Mierda is pretty juvenile about all this — he wouldn’t throw ethnic terms around casually otherwise — but I don’t think he’s suggesting Mac use as playing a role in Cho’s attack. Give it a rest, everyone. Sometimes, people just do horrible things, and we can’t blame an external forces. A few dozen people are dead right now not because of gun control (or lack of it), video games, terrorism, video games, illegal immigration, conservatism or liberalism. They lost their lives because one very mentally ill individual chose to do something incredibly destructive. Habla Mierda. VT Killer probably a Mac User
Activists have been working for a few years now to try to convince Mac fans that we should be extremely upset about Apple’s environmental record. Most people, however, haven’t been that bothered. The cause actually has real proof now, however, as Apple has been ordered to pay a $43,200 fine to the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District for a violation a year ago, reported the Sacramento Business Journal.
The fine is a pittance, obviously, and I don’t think this is the kind of issue Greenpeace had in mind when they set up Green My Apple (the source of our delightful image)…
The violation occurred over several days as Apple operated its emergency standby generator for a purpose other than maintenance or emergency power. Apple was notified that it violated its permit requirements April 21, 2006.
I imagine they want Apple to stop using toxic metals in its products or something, right? Yeah, this doesn’t even make a dent.
As ever, Ars Technica has the best technical coverage of Intel’s Developer Forum. For those of us who care less about the details of things like systems-on-a-chip and pinball grid arrays, they always manage to cut to what really matters. Here’s what you need to know: The upcoming Penryn chip, the mooted successor to the Intel Core2 Extreme line, is going to absolutely scream at video encoding.
The developmental iron came through with a 221 percent speed improvement on DiVX encoding. That’s unheard of in this era. Most of the performance improvements are more linear, but this chip is coming to rock. I’ll take four quads, please. Intel details Penryn performance, new SSE4 extensions:
Apple’s executives raked it in last year, and Steve Jobs took his customary $1 in salary.
According to an SEC filing reported by Marketwatch:
“¢ Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer realized $56 million in value from the exercise of options during 2006. Oppenheimer also received a $615,000 salary, a $450,000 bonus and restricted stock valued at $14 million.
“¢ Chief Operating Officer Timothy D. Cook received restricted stock valued at $22 million, a salary of $697,000 and a $525,000 bonus for 2006.
“¢ Jobs has received the majority of his compensation through an equity grant and isn’t eligible for a bonus, according to Monday’s filing. He doesn’t receive any other compensation, the company said.
On the off chance that the Coen Bros. talking up the virtues of Final Cut Studio 2 doesn’t have you reaching for your charge card yet, you could try out this testimonial from director Miranda July, who made the truly wonderful “Me and You and Everyone We Know” last year.
If nothing else, this NAB keynote is bringing us plenty of insight into the creative process for a wide range of directors.
Despite rumors of its demise, Apple’s Get a Mac ad campaign rolls on. Introduced this week are Stuffed (above) Computer Cart and Flashback, both after the jump. Of the three, the journey back to the childhood of Mac and PC is my favorite, but this series is really starting to feel tired. There’s only so much more that Apple can do here, and I’m ready to see them, you know, actually show the goods with OS X instead of just going abstract.
Just my 2 cents. Click through to see the others.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple’s much-analyzed decision to delay the release of Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, until October. Ultimately, it’s not that big a deal. If you read between the lines, the diversion of software development resources to finish the iPhone could have long-term benefits for the platform.
As a refresher, here’s what Apple had to say for themselves:
iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones.
I have to agree. After all, many of the best innovations — or at least great new products, are created by mixing the DNA of one successful platform with another. OS X and the iPhone OS share a hell of a lot of code. Apple should have no trouble at all adding multi-touch support to Macs. I’m hoping to see the world’s greatest tablet laptop — and the first one worth owning — emerge from this delay in the first place.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball has an interesting view of just why Apple fell behind in the first place, too. Check it out.
Don’t you just love when mainstream business media try to use technology code names? For the future record, guys, Apple is working on Leopard. Jaguar came out almost five years, under the unsexy name “Mac OS X v10.2.” But hey, it’s all big cats, right?
There’s several new screenshots lighting up the internet that are purportedly taken from a new Leopard build (9A410).
Posted to Hackintosh, MacRumors, Flickr and elsewhere, the screenshots show a new, simple UI that’s darker and sharper than the current — note the corners of windows are no longer rounded. There’s less brushed metal, more soothing grey.
The screenshots on Flickr look much more like the current UI (Tiger) ,except Mail now has a metallic look.
But there’s something fishy about them. The interface is too plain and stripped back.
Many on the MacRumors’ forums think the screens are fake, and one poster on Flickr is sure about it.:
“Fake! Fake! Fake!
I write themes for OSX. And, I can tell you how this was most probably done:
The file Extras.rsrc still kinda works in the betas for 10.5 although, I hope that it will be removed before release.
Anyway, Installer based themes (though out of favor in 10.4) still work by replacing Extras.rsrc among other files.
Someone swapped out the normal Extras.rsrc and took some screen shots. Since most of the guts of 10.5 do not depend upon Extras.rsrc anymore, I am confident that 10.5 would run with a 10.4 Extras file for now.
Note that you do not see any signs of resolution independence! That is what would break this fake theme (since res independence calls to images not stored in Extras.rsrc).”
Filings discovered today by AppleInsider and noted on April 5th at the US Patent and Trademark Office show that Apple Corps has given up more of the trademarks associated with The Beatles’ own company than was expected as part of the landmark settlement in February… (Steve Jobs’ Apple Inc.) received the rights to use imagery virtually inseparable from Apple Corps’ music business, including the centerpiece green apple and two variants with the fruit cut in half.
The world’s biggest music companies are expected to ask Apple to introduce a music subscription service to its iTunes digital media store as part of negotiations to renew their agreements with the computer company.
There are at least five problems the Apple TV alone cannot solve for the iTunes Store:
3. Access: At present, there is no option to rent movies on the iTunes Store, and, unlike music purchases versus subscription services, renting movies is a preferred method of consuming content. Further, purchasing movies through the iTunes Store still requires a computer, rather than direct shopping using the touted Apple TV.
If Apple is even remotely thinking about offering iTunes Store subscriptions for its music, I really hope they don’t – and instead apply the subscription model to iTunes Movies instead.
MGM flicks arrive on Apple’s iTunes Store By AppleInsider Staff Published: 09:00 AM EST Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) and Apple announced Wednesday that MGM is now offering titles from its catalog of feature films for purchase and download on the iTunes Store.
Apple TV Commercial Follow-Up by Erica Sadun, The Unofficial Apple Weblog Eagle-eyed TUAW reader Klemens noticed that the Apple TV in the commercial had only a power-cord and no connections to a TV. Here are a few other things you may (or may not) have noticed.
So Apple’s had one HELL of a first quarter, haven’t they? With tax day nearly upon us, I thought it might be a good idea to look back at how well Apple is answering the issues that I thought were important late in December of last year, especially now that the AppleTV is out in the market and the iPhone has set the world on fire with its hype flames. Or something. So click through — we’ll laugh, we’ll cry, and we’ll learn something about forecasting. Here, again, are the 10 Questions Apple Must Answer in 2007 — and how well they’re responding.
Anyone check out the new AppleTV ad yet? It’s narrated by none other than John Krasinski, better known as Jim “Fat” Halpert on NBC’s “The Office.” Interestingly enough, HP has a huge promotional concern on the series, and its displays are everywhere on the show. Apple always wins, don’t they?
AppleTV just got one step closer to being a full-fledged replacement for a stand-alone Web-browsing device thanks to AppleTV RSS Plugin from twenty08 software. The fun little app adds a new channel to Apple’s hackable box, and then you can make it display your favorite RSS feed. <cough>US, for example.</cough>
The little application will soon support ATOM feeds and video RSS. Can’t wait. This is all nice, but it still can’t compete with what’s officially supported on the Nintendo Wii, which has a headline news reader, weather and even a complete browser. Isn’t that crazy?
Via Digg.
We’re entering a new phase of iPhone speculation. Last fall was Phase I: Ludicrous predictions from people who have never seen one. January until now has been Phase II: Potshots and Idol Worship. And now on to Phase III: Summaries of the obvious.
I submit as the beachhead indicator of Phase III these comments from UBS Specialist Tony Andersson, who concludes that, brace yourself, iPhone sales could have a negative impact on iPod sales. Phew! Are you breathing again yet?
Everyone is loving the story of the iPod that allegedly saved the life of U.S. Infantryman Kevin Garrad in Tikrit (read more at Gadget Lab). Though it seems like the perfect story, there is actually more to this tale than you might assume. First of all, the iPod didn’t save his life. His body armor did. And it isn’t even an Apple model. Click through for the rest of the story.
The true focus of a new European Union complaint alleging unfair online-sales practices by Apple Inc. isn’t the company’s iTunes Store, but the recording industry, an EU spokesman said. The European Commission on Friday sent Apple and four record companies “statements of objections,” accusing them of harming consumers in the United Kingdom and Denmark by charging them more to download songs than residents in other parts of the 27-nation bloc. Regulators want Europeans to be able to shop for better prices and obtain a more varied selection by going to iTunes Web sites outside their home country. (Paid subscription required)
Feel the love, people! MaxGizmo, a band based in Toronto (where I happen to be right now — and I’m a little drunk), has just released a fairly awesome song about the glories of the Mac 512k, the first Mac that was capable of, well, doing stuff. It loses points for casual use of a slur, but the beat’s catchy enough. Dig it!
So, I might or might not be interviewed by On the Media soon regarding my thoughts about the Apple/EMI deal that will soon bring us DRM-free iTunes music downloads. It’ll basically depend on if they can find me a studio in Toronto or not — I’ll keep you posted. In collecting these thoughts, the following thing occurred to me: I have no idea if it’s a good thing or not. After giving it some more thought, it’s definitely good, bad and ugly…I mean, unclear. This is the most theoretical I’ve gotten in awhile, so definitely click through to see what it’s all about.
