Friday, January 20, 2006

This one's for the logo

I doubt anyone really comes here for Apple news, but some happenings:

Apple's holiday quarter earnings were higher than ever with 14M iPods sold and over 1.25M Macs sold. Unfortunately, they saw a drop in Mac orders before their announcements at MacWorld so they're lowering their forecast. We saw this type of language after they announced their transition to Intel, but it was to little surprise that it made no dent in sales. If anything, shouldn't sales increase because Intel-based computers represent a really large jump in performance for the average consumer? Their forecast is a little below what it was for the holiday quarter, which they of course blew out of the water.

Even though the iTunes mini store (recommendations based on the currently playing song) could be turned off, Apple now has turned it off by default to appease those with privacy concerns, even after Apple claimed that it didn't store what songs users were playing.

Speaking of privacy, Google was actually the only major search engine not to open its search data to the federal government. It refused to do so since October and now the administration is asking a federal court to force it to comply with a law concerning access to pornography by minors. As if we needed another reason to like Google. By the way, if anyone missed it, Google, Inc. now has a lobbying presence at the Capitol. See 'Google Goes to Washington'. I knew there was a reason why Mr. Smith Goes to Washington caught my eye.

Back to Apple, the mini-controversy over Apple's Intel commercial went from Intel distancing itself from Apple's claim in it that PCs were boring to the video's obvious resemblance to a music video produced for Postal Service. Their[The band's] publisher later revealed that the producers were the same for both videos. [+]
[-]

Leeched straight from Apple because, hey, it's a commercial. Requires Quicktime.



SOURCE: Mac Rumors
  1. Intel: Our other customers aren't boring [via Digg]
  2. Another Apple Ad Ripoff? See Such Great Heights [use IE, via TUAW]
  3. False Alarm: Same Directors Behind Apple Intel Ad/Music Video

5 comments:

Ed said...

listen, will, this has nothing to do with your blog but i wanted to ask you regardless

i'm trying to write an oppchoice case: open source or closed source, from an enduser perspective. i've written out the whole open source side, but i have trouble doing so for closed source. i have 1. security, 2. trust/reliability, and can't think of a third reason why closed source is better. can you help me out?

Will said...

(responded to via email, but posted for the sake of responding to the comment)

Maybe newer, more competitive features? think MS Office vs. OpenOffice.

Anonymous said...

Yes

Will said...

No, but you can probably still see the trailer.

Will said...

BTW, funny trailer for Brokeback to the Future.