01.16.08 - 11:35am
Four years ago iTunes was just a fledgling set to rise to unparalleled heights. At the time the Super Bowl was a huge booster for iTunes which combined with Pepsi launched a commercial set to Greenbay’s version of the song “I Fought the Law” encouraging buyers to buy legally online from iTunes rather than illegally downloading tunes from various sources.
Over 1,000,000 songs from iTunes were given away free in the Pepsi promotion and iTunes has then grown expeditiously year after year, becoming the extreme dominant in the download market and helping to propel iPods to explicit dominion.
Today however, a new era is emerging and rather than Apple being the underdog to Microsoft, with an almost cult like following, Apple is now the one on top and as the new “King of the Hill” is the one everyone wants to overcome.
Category: MP3 Players, apple, itunes | Tags: amazon, apple, drm, itunes, justin-timberlake, pepsi | Be the First to Comment »
01.08.08 - 11:35am
Apple usually reserves their new products for the MacWorld Exposition coming up next week, but this year they let two products out a week early releasing them instead during the famed CES convention in Las Vegas.
The new Xserve server and a new Mac Pro computer were both announced yesterday with shipping of the products beginning today, Tuesday.
Apple says the new 1U rachmount Xserve is twice the speed of the previous Xserve. It features a high-bandwidth hardware, dual independent 1600 MHz front side buses and expanded memory up to 32GB of 800MHz memory. This increases the memory over the Xserve’s predecessor by 64 percent. The bandwidth is four times the old and also supports the latest high-bandwidth expansion cards. Included as well is built-in accelerated graphics compilable with a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display. Pricing for the new Xserve begins at $2,999.
Category: apple | Tags: apple, mac-pro, xserve | Be the First to Comment »
12.28.07 - 04:13pm
Just on the heels of Apple’s announcement that it will be renting downloadable movies though iTunes comes the closure of WalMart’s highly touted DVD movie download buying service.
Wal-Mart only opened its video download store 11 short months ago and has already called it quits due to less than expected performance. Wal-Mart was the first to have movie contracts with all the major studios, something Apple had been trying to due but was unable to pull off due to Apple’s insistence on offering the movies for $9.99. Wal-mart offered the movies for $12.88 to $19.88, but was not able to sell them at the higher price. After all why buy a movie to download that you can only play on one computer when you can buy the DVD for the same price or just a couple dollars more and play it anywhere, anytime? Apple in spite of not having all the new movies was still able to stay ahead with their $9.99 price tag.
Category: apple | Tags: itunes, movie-downloads, walmart | Be the First to Comment »
12.27.07 - 03:05pm
Apple has just filed a new patent that may reveal what the iPhone could become - much more than just a mobile computer, but also a new way of getting through life. The iPhone could also become a purchaser of products at McDonads, Starbucks and more.
The patent says “A processing system is described that includes a wireless communication interface that wirelessly communicates with one or more wireless client devices in the vicinity of an establishment. The wireless communication interface receives a remote order corresponding to an item selected by at least one of the wireless client devices. A local server computer located in proximity to the establishment generates instructions for processing the remote order received from the wireless communication interface. The local server computer then passes the processing instructions to an order processing queue in preparation for processing of the remote order.”
Category: apple | Tags: apple, iPhone, patent, starbucks | Be the First to Comment »
12.27.07 - 01:28pm
Apple has made its first deal in online movie rentals through iTunes with News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox.
The record breaking deal should boost lagging sales of movies from iTunes and Apple TV, as well as set the precedent for more deals should it prove successful.
Users will be able to rent a film from Fox with a limited amount of time to watch it before the DRM encoding makes it void.
Apple has been trying to make the landmark deal with movie studios for some time now and has finally succeeded. The full details involved in the deal are expected to be announced at MacWorld on January 14th.
Category: apple | Tags: apple, fox, itunes, movies | Be the First to Comment »
12.26.07 - 01:19pm
Apple has done it! They have reached the $200 dollar mark accomplished today, one day after Christmas.
Apple has always shown a performance jump as it heads into the new year, fresh off the holiday sale of iPods, iPhones, Macs and the anticipation of new announcements at MacWorld. This year has proven to be exceptional with the stock jumping 140 percent in 2007 and with Apple finally reaching the coveted $200 mark.
A huge increase in Mac sales have accounted for the majority of Apples increase in revenue for the year. The computer sales have been boosted by the high publicity of the iPhone and the new iPods. 2007 has brought Mac shipments up 36 percent over last year generating half the of Apple’s total revenue. iPod sales are up as well, but due to the proliferation of the market sales have only increased 4 percent with over a 100 million iPods being sold.
Category: apple | Tags: apple-stock, iPod, mac, new-highs | Be the First to Comment »
12.19.07 - 12:24pm
Apple is looking to cross the continents and traverse into Asian waters seeking deals in China, South Korea and now in Japan.
Japans market, like China’s and South Korea’s is proving to be a hard one for Apple to cinch a deal with the incredible revenue sharing of iPhone subscriptions that Apple wants. The fact that South Korean talks have been ongoing since August and no deal has been made yet in China, where Apple has been under negotiations since November, can’t help matters. In Japan, however Apple is using free commerce to its advantage and pitting two rival Japanese companies against each other in an effort to get the deal Apple wants.
NTT DoCoMo would be the obvious choice for Apple as they control the market with half the overall share. They are known for being the first to market the hottest high end phones. Softband is the other mobile network Apple is in talks with. Softband is known for being behind on their phones and technology. Getting the iPhone would be a huge push for them. Most likely though, Apple is just trying to use them to force NTT DoCoMO into a deal.
Category: apple, iPhone | Tags: apple, iPhone, japan | Be the First to Comment »
12.18.07 - 02:05pm
Apple has introduced new iPods for the holiday quarter since the iPod revolution first began in 2001. This year, however was especially significant as Apple brought video to the nano and added touch to the Touch introducing “radically different” iPods.
Due to the complexity of the new iPods and the insurgent high demand analyst Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray says that he believes Apple may have sold 24 to 25 million iPods in the first two months of the December quarter, beating Wall Street’s consensus of approximately 23 million.
“While it is too early to make a definitive call on December quarter iPod results, we have analyzed the first two months of NPD data (October and November) for the quarter and found that it suggests iPod units of 24m-25m,” said Munster.
“Apple has announced new iPods in September for the last three years, but this year’s models are significantly more innovative than the past upgrades,” Munster said. “As such, we believe the new iPods are driving sales earlier in the December quarter (in October and November) to a greater degree than in the past.”
Category: apple, iPod | Tags: apple, ipods, piper-jaffray, quarter-sales | Be the First to Comment »
12.14.07 - 02:17pm
Every year Apple blogs are flooded with speculation as to what will be released at the Apple MacWorld exposition in January. Apple, who keeps absolutely mum on anything up and coming, creates so much rampant speculation that they generate approximately 700 million in free advertising each year. MacWorld is one of the most talked about events as this is where Apple usually showcases any new products.
Expected for MacWorld this year is a new skinny, skinny, laptop. Fifty percent thinner than the current model the laptop is expected to have a 12-13 inch screen, optional flash memory, LED backlighting and no optical drive. The price is expected to run around $1500, more expensive than average, but you will get all the great normal Mac software such as iMovie already included. Programs that would cost you hundreds of dollars a piece to buy and put on a regular computer. Whether or not it will support a touch sensitive screen similar to the Touch is up in the air and most likely just a “please we want that.”
Category: apple | Tags: apple, iPhone, macworld | Be the First to Comment »
12.11.07 - 04:33pm
Apple is surely hard at work to prevent any malicious malware attacks predicted for the upcoming 2008 season. According to Arbor Networks Security and Engineering Response Team (ASERT) the iPhone will be “the victim of a serious attack” this next year.
ASERT says this is due to the high public scrutiny the iPhone has received over it being “locked”. Hackers love a challenge and many will want to be the first to hack the iPhone says ASERT.
The iPhone will more than likely fall victim to viscous webpages or in messages sent, similar to attacks on PCs. “Assaults are likely to be in the form of … malware embedded into seemingly harmless information, images or other media that actually perform dangerous actions when rendered on the iPhone’s Web browser,” ASERT said.
“2007 was the year of the browser exploit, the data breach, spyware and the storm worm. We expect 2008 to be the year of the iPhone attack, the Chinese Hacker, P2P network spammers and the hijacking of the Storm botnet,” said Jose Nazario, senior security engineer at Arbor Networks.
Category: apple, iPhone | Tags: apple, iPhone, malware-attacks, target | Be the First to Comment »
