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All posts tagged "Apple"


Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Apple Threatens iTunes Shutdown if Royalty Increase is Pushed Through

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home News" @ 09:07 AM

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10...days-copyr.html

"Apple has threatened to shut down the iTunes music store if an obscure three-person board appointed by the Librarian of Congress increase the royalties paid to publishers and songwriters by six cents per song. The Copyright Royalty Board is scheduled to hand down its decision on these rates Thursday. As part of their general muscle-flexing of late, music publishers asked the board to increase royalties paid to publishers and songwriters from 9 cents to 15 cents per track. Apple -- which has mightily resisted tampering in any way with its 99 cent price point for tracks -- said that if the rate hike goes through and the labels refuse to absorb the entire resulting increase, the iTunes music store will become unprofitable."

If you put music on your Windows Mobile phone, your MP3 player, or your Zune, and you ever purchase that music from iTunes, this is news you'll want to know about. I'm not personally a big fan of iTunes, but I certainly support their stance in resisting this move. They've sold several billion songs, largely because the 99 cent purchase price of an iTunes song is a reasonable alternative to piracy for most people. If you give people a chance to be honest, they will - iTunes proved that. According to this Wired article, Apple pays artists and labels 65 to 70 cents per song, 9 cents of which the artist or studio is paying to the publishers. It seems to me that if this law were to pass, the increased rates should come from the artist/label end - after all, without the songwriter that created the song in the first place, they'd have nothing in the first place.

It will be interesting to watch how this plays out - the music industry has been undermining Apple and iTunes lately, offering DRM-free MP3s to Amazon while denying them to Apple. Steve Jobs isn't known for compromising (what with that huge ego and all), so this will be interesting to watch. And if this law does pass, what will happen to Amazon's MP3 store? Or Rhapsody's MP3 store? Will we see $1.10 pricing there (you just know they'd round up), or will they too shut down? This could have some dire consequences for online music stores, who all operate at razor-thin profit margins as it is. Could this kill or cripple the entire industry? The music companies would prefer to have us all buying CDs anyway, right?


Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Apple iPhone Ads in UK Declared Misleading

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Pocket PC Talk" @ 08:36 AM

http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=5176

"Apple has come under scrutiny on its iPhone 3G for false advertising, and now the Advertising Standards Authority, a UK ad group, has come forth to declare a specific television ad for the touch-based smartphone to be misleading to consumers."

Above is the ad in question, and while I'm not normally a fan of the Eurocratic system of slapping fines on every company they can find, it's pretty easy to see their point here: Apple makes some very bold claims about having the best browsing experience on a mobile device, but that browsing experience comes to a screeching halt as soon as you hit any Web site that uses Flash - and many of them do. These commercials fail to mention that. They also fail to highlight that nothing happens that quickly on a 3G network, but that might be splitting hairs. Java is also mentioned, but I can count the number of times I see the Sun JVM fire up on my PC on one hand - and it's almost always when I'm uploading photos on Smugmug. Is Java on a phone really needed for Web browsing? I don't think it is. Read more...


Monday, June 9, 2008

Apple's MobileMe Service: Powerful Stuff?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Pocket PC Competition" @ 03:46 PM

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/



Something big happened today: Apple announced what I believe is the first credible consumer-focused Exchange-like service: the ability to sync calendar, contacts, email, files, and photos to multiple devices. Jump over to Apple's Web site and check out their MobileMe service. Watching the guided tour video is probably the best way to understand what the service is capable of. I watched that as well, and the word "compelling" kept swirling around in my head. This is a powerful salvo across the bow of the SS Microsoft - and I have a sneaking suspicion that Microsoft's Live team has been paying so much attention to Google they didn't see this one coming (not in a way they can respond to quickly at least).

Microsoft has had all the pieces for years: Exchange, Foldershare, Windows Mobile, Live Mail, etc...but they never put them together into a compelling service. What about hosted Exchange? The functionality from hosted Exchange isn't that far off (though the photo and file sharing is lacking), but let's face it, hosted Exchange as it is now is in no way consumer friendly - from the name to the features to the marketing to the partners...even the pricing isn't all that friendly when you're talking multiple users. The MobileMe pricing is quite reasonable in comparison to most hosted Exchange accounts: MobileMe is $99/year for 20 GB of storage, or $149 per year for a five-person family account. 20 GB of extra storage costs $49/year extra, and 40 GB of storage is an extra $99/year. Your average hosted Exchange account costs $120 to $180 per year for 2 or 3 GB of storage.

Now I'm sure like all Apple products and services, there are some nasty "gotcha's" under the surface (does this service work with custom domain emails?), and for some people this service might be too simplistic. I know I'm very happy with how hosted Exchange works for me (I use 4smartphone), and it's tough to beat Smugmug for photos. Still, there's no denying that this is a strong initial offering from Apple - that's my take on it at least. What do you think?


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