WhiteDog's Profile

Here’s some news for the fellow who doesn’t believe in the halo affect of the iPod, from MacFixIt: “CBS MarketWatch reports that Apple's stock was upgraded to "overweight" by Morgan Stanley, which believes the conversion rate to Mac computers within the company's iPod customer base is roughly double what the market expects. Analyst Rebecca Runkle introduced a $60 price target, raised her 2005 earnings estimate to $1.31 a share from $1.07 and her 2005 revenue forecast to $16.9 billion from $13.9 billion.”

Well, Apple sells the new iPod photo with an adaptor to download pics from your camera and, so the ads say, it can now display those pics, as the first Ipod photo could not. So, if you don’t edit your photos when you take them, which requires your laptop, then the iPod photo would make for a lighter load. Of course, for a little more money you can get the highly rated Epson P2000 which has a superior screen and photo handling capability, plays video and MP3s. I suspect that, as is usually the case, if you get a new iPod, your needs will expand to include what it can do for you, including digital photos and access to all those cool iPod add-ons. In the end, it comes down to what you need now and what you may need in the near future and, of course, how much money you can afford to spend.

The reason I recommend Firefox to friends using Windows PCs is security. Sure, it has a better, more modern feature set and runs faster than Internet Explorer, but most people aren’t into bells and whistles that generally just make a program more complex and harder to use. If you tell an IE user about tabbed browsing or feature enhancing plug-ins they mostly look at you with a dull-eyed “huh?” But if you say pop-up blocker, their eyes light up, “Tell me more!” In respect to the question of Apple’s market share potentially threatening Microsoft, I think the folks in Redmond are far more worried about the spread of Linux in the enterprise market, where the competition, and the big bucks, really are. There is absolutely nothing Bill Gates hates more than Open Source. That’s why Microsoft has tried to prop up SCO in its pathetic attempt to stop Linux from overtaking Unix - and, by extension, Windows. An example of how anxious M$ is to expand software sales on the Mac is the current steep discount for students and teachers on Office X 2004. And you may have noticed that WordPerfect is making a comeback as a part of the OEM software bundle on Dell computers. Under cover of all this chaff and clutter I think Apple has plenty of room to grow before Microsoft takes notice, or takes offense; at least they make some money in the Mac market. They make zilch from Linux. Microsoft is working up a new version of Internet Explorer (by the way, there’s no mention yet of a Mac update) because they made a strategic blunder in dropping development for XP too soon in favor of Longhorn. In effect, they underestimated the vitality of the marketplace, both in exploiting M$ security vulnerabilities and in the development of better and more secure alternative browsers. Whether IE7 will be good enough to alter these trends is an open question.

I don’t think podcasting will fail, outright. It may evolve into something grander when increased bandwidth makes quality media downloads possible. But as it now exists, it is definitely a niche market in a niche market (streaming internet media). The latest edition of Wired Magazine makes a big deal out of what emerging technologies, like satellite radio and podcasting, mean to the future of broadcast radio. But taking NPR as an example, much like the print media have added web versions of their content, I suspect that podcasting radio programs will simply be one more option in our multi-modal, multi-media future.