Awesome article. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Why Apple is more expensive than Amazon
Buy what you like, where you like. But remember why things are the way they are. Apple is more expensive than Amazon because the labels want you listening to music on a Zune.
I prefer buying from iTunes rather than Amazon, but also prefer the higher bit rate, DRM-free tracks that Amazon now has more of.
I think iTunes does have to worry about Amazon catching up, but it would also be a better world if the recording labels had to worry about collusion charges for conspiring to manipulate the market by only providing the 256k, DRM-free option to Amazon.
Overall, however, a healthy, competitive market benefits the consumer with more choice, and benefits Apple, Amazon, et al by forcing them to keep innovating on price and features.
Apple: Apple Second Only To Wal-Mart in Music Sales, But For How Long?
More and more people will soon discover Amazons download store, with higher-res, lower-priced non-DRM MP3s, plus automatic loading into iTunes. Many iPod owners will also be drawn to Wal-Marts own increasingly busy download department, though in our Battlemodo we decided Amazon was the better bet.
Microsoft has frequently said that it sees a world powered by software, and that it (Microsoft) wants to be the source of that software, be it for corporate servers, office workstations, home entertainment, robots, etc. Microsoft is all about software.
In the beginning, licensing that software drove Microsoft’s revenues beyond the stratosphere and into the heavenly glories. It didn’t always (or ever, for some) make the best software, and certainly placed innovation second to pushing Microsoft versions of existing technologies, but for many years it did make some of the most widely adopted technologies (Windows and Office).
That, along the way, it came under fire (and even under anti-trust) for the methods in which it sought to expand, control, and preserve it’s markets (GUI desktop, browsers, media players), will no doubt haunt them in the history books. But what they accomplished is undeniable.
And writing about it, consciously, as something that seems in the past tense seems odd. As Google and Amazon consume the cloud, as Apple takes consumer mindshare, as Microsoft comes to be perceived as too little, too late (Vista, Zune, Windows Mobile, Windows Live) or as money-bleeding (Xbox), as Allen left long ago and Gates is poised now to leave as well, and as they (perhaps smartly) seek out Danger and try to find a way into the 21st century with Yahoo, it seems not only odd, but equally undeniable.
Is it Karma as Roughly Drafted details, with unabashed bias, below? A reaping of what was sewn? Or is it all just business, and the same natural flow that saw IBM tumble and Microsoft rise during the last paradigm shift?
Lessons from the Death of HD-DVD — RoughlyDrafted Magazine
The death of HD-DVD says more about Microsoft and its future than the general media seems to recognize. It’s not a format war, its a culture war between industry players working to advance the state of the art collectively in partnerships, and one company working to own everything while contributing very little. It’s not hard to see why Microsoft’s bruised and abused former partners are working to align themselves with open solutions rather than buy into more pain with technology tied to Microsoft. That’s very bad news for a company that exists solely as a licensee of third rate product ideas.
Apple promises, and has come closest so far in delivering the “real internet” on a mobile device. The whole point of MobileSafari is that you don’t need a crummy, crippled version (WAP-like), and yet another different format to maintain — just the “real internet”.
Personally, I find it very annoying when Amazon and Facebook hijack my iPhone browser and force it to show the (very poor) iPhone version, when I’d much rather have the same, fully functional page I use on my desktop (and use just as easily on my iPhone).
Apple understands this and gives us the real, standards compliant, Apple store on the PC and on the iPhone, ditto the Apple WebApp directory.
Now, if what you consider Amazon iPhone and Facebook iPhone to be WebApps, then I suppose that’s fine, but I would rather get the real page on the page, and if I want the WebApp, let me pick and webclip that myself, thanks.
Dear Apple… | The Macalope: An Apple blog - CNET Blogs
The online Apple Store really should have a spiffy iPhone interface like Facebook and Amazon.
Much love,
The Macalope
Proving once again that “no one ever lost money overestimating the stupidity of the public”
This has nothing to do with iTunes. They would sell DRM free music in a heartbeat if Sony, Universal, and WB let them. But the Big (3 out of) 4 won’t because Apple keeps a hard line on pricing. Amazon has more DRM-free content now and cheaper prices only because the Big 4 want to hurt iTunes. Why?
Not to benefit consumers.
To fracture the market in hopes other vendors (who don’t have Apple’s hardware focus) won’t hold the 0.99 cent line on pricing but give in to the “variable” pricing model.
Remember, these are the same people who charged outrageous prices for CDs saying they were “new technology” and would come down in price eventually, and then continued to raise their price over time. And we won’t even get into ring tones.
The Big-4 want to maximize profits by gouging based on popularity, bundling, etc. and they don’t care a fig about consumers.
Example:
Many iTunes users are not tech savvy. They use iTunes because it’s dead easy. Many of us probably have family members like this, and trying to explain shopping around to places like Amazon to get music for their iPod is an exercise in frustration. They just want a fast, easy, comfortable way to buy music. And because of the Big 4 and their machinations, they’re still getting lower bit-rate DRM (and probably don’t even notice or know what it is).
(Which probably also shows that the DRM issue itself is loud on the ‘net but perhaps not even noticed by many in the larger population - hence some leverage lost to the Big (3 out of) 4.
Amazon MP3 store to spread DRM-free love global in 2008 - Engadget
In perhaps the biggest threat to Apples global dominance of digital music, Amazon just announced the international rollout of Amazon MP3. Right, the on-line storefront offering DRM-free music from all four major labels. Thats 3.3 million songs priced at $0.99 or less from over 270k artists encoded in 256kbps MP3 files for playback on any PC, any Mac, and pretty much any portable device you might own. Sure, its beta but so is that gMail account youve been using for the past 4 years. Unfortunately, the best that Amazon can commit to is “this year” which leaves plenty of time for the house of Apple to get their DRM shiznit together.
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