Cesare;
Much of your post comes under the heading of "we'll see."
And since neither of us owns a crystal ball ... we'll see.
>AAPL, on the other hand, can't seem to keep a partnership together if it were running a lemonade stand.<
[Good God, Dorothy I think we're back in the AAPL thread!]
OT, but to respond: Your information might be dated. AAPL has alliances/product linkups/partnerships with IBM, MOT, HWP, COMS, SNE, SUNW, INTU, ORCL, etc. Not to mention the Great Satan MSFT. Add in PIXR/DIS + George Lucas on the content creation side (plus thousands of suppliers/vendors/developers/distributors/resellers) and I think you'll find no shortage of allies. AAPL may just be evolving from the Cuba of the computing industry to its Switzerland.
>Their own developers are constantly pissed at them.<
At January MacWorld, Jobs announced over 1500 new apps created for the Mac since the iMac debuted. [What, and MSFT developers are in a constant state of bliss?]
>The staffing merry-go-round is legendary here in Silicon Valley -- AAPL is a great provider of talent to the industry.<
Again, in January, Jobs mentioned with pride that there there had been virtually no turnover at Apple in the prior 12 months. The reports I'm hearing is that overall morale and productivity are now quite high. [Maybe they didn't want to miss out the opportunity to exercise their options.]
>MSFT has done *everything* they can to try and stamp out RNWK.<
Is that "everything pre-DOJ" or "everything post-DOJ"? [I'd like to hear some specifics on this, if you can post/link.]
To sum up, much of what I see is that RNWK trying to do is *maintain* a de facto monopoly on the seemingly limitless market for streaming video. And, in doing so, create some pricing power with which to generate revenue.
However, I think the stakes are too high for RNWK's competitors, MSFT and AAPL to stay on the sidelines and let this happen. And frankly, I'm not sure which I'd be more worried about. |
