Hampster's Profile

<<<Windows XP is a blatant rip off of Mac OS X>> Absolutely correct here too. But then again, Gates got a job building software for Apple for the sole purpose of getting a prototype of the first Mac, in order to rip off the interface. It's the way Bill succeeds. Nonetheless, Gates and Jobs have different ideas about success. Gates gauges success by money and dominance, whereas Jobs gauges success on how cool he makes technology and remains a pop-star to the tech world. To each his own. Will Microsoft sit still and not challenge this iTunes Music Service? That's unlikely, unless the sales drop dramatically once the shock of spending a couple of hundred bucks a month on singles wears off. Initial success means very little, witness the demand for the flat-panel iMac. At first they couldn't build them fast enough, then when the sales literally died off Jobs hurriedly built a 17" version to goose sales. Which was the right thing to do, the 17" iMac is a killer machine for the consumer. But sales are not brisk any longer, even the 1ghz at $1799 isn't selling all that well. But I love mine :-) Ken is right, MS has the resources to do it, Gates won't allow Jobs to take that market for himself if it turns out to be a real market. So we'll see. Gates is far from stupid, but it takes him a long time (like Jobs) to realize he's made a mistake. He just might back away from his outrageous ideas for DRM, especially if Apple's more relaxed DRM works. I won't go as far as Manzione goes in thinking that Apple will eventually fold up their tent, but Apple will never rise above 10-15% of market share no matter what they do, then again, I don't Jobs care much about winning that war anymore. But, like Manzione, I think Apple shouldn't be focusing so many resources on something that brings in a gross revenue of 34 cents a song when there are other, more important matters to tend to, like desktop sales. Apple's marketing has always been too clever by half, always has to be something "out there" instead of head on marketing like comparing typical tasks on both platforms and showing people just how much better the Mac experience is. Why does Apple have to deliver it's message in a way that a 1980's yuppie would understand? Show the potential switchers how easy it is to use, and how stable OS X really is. I always imagined a commercial where a split screen shows two people working on each platform with a clock in the lower part of the screen showing how long it's been since the computers crashed, and then showing the "blue screen of death" happening at the end of the commercial and the PC clock resetting itself. Now that would be effective, don't you think?

hmurchison, if, for a moment I were to believe you about the server farm issue, then perhaps Apple should have had iTunes for Windows waiting in the wings, ready to release at a time of THIER choosing, not hiring the team NOW. You can only pretend so long and make excuses so long, but in the end it's still a major mistake by Apple not to have iTunes ready now. And people think Jobs was such a master with those record executives, what rubbish! Show the record exec how to make money and he's there, Jobs didn't sell the idea, the idea sold itself, and now Gates and simply this to the presentation: "We have 20x the users base, we have 40 billion dollars in the bank, and we can push this in front of 300,000 million users 10 times a day" The record exec response "Where do I sign" Just watch. Remember, when Jobs had NeXt all the PC makers came to him to license his OS instead of MS. The only proviso was to kill his "cube", which wasn't selling anyway. He said "no" and the world adopted MS. Since coming to Apple he's had one hit, the fruity iMac, and many flops, the "cube" comes to mind and the 15" flat-panel iMac, so where's the next hit? Music? Hardly. Let's all see what the sells figures are in 4 weeks, when credit card statements are delivered to all the first week users, then we'll talk.