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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: slacker711 who wrote (44684)	5/14/2005 12:33:48 PM
From: Win-Lose-Draw	Respond to of 213177

...would Apple allow a competitor to synch their MP3 player with iTunes? Does a competitor need their permission? There is nothing Apple can do to stop it. You can either have a helper app that does the actual syncing while reading the iTunes library in the background, or you simply make the device talk like an iPod and go directly to iTunes. The 2-3 generations bit sounds about right. In the handset business, that's about 9 months. :)

To: slacker711 who wrote (44684)	5/14/2005 5:38:47 PM
From: spitsong	Respond to of 213177

slacker711: answers would Apple allow a competitor to synch their MP3 player with iTunes? Does a competitor need their permission? Short term, a competitor need not have Apple's permission. However, it is a fairly simple task for Apple to break any hack that a competitor might implement to defeat Apple's exclusivity (as they have already done to break hacks by RealNetworks: pcworld.com and others: pcworld.com ). To date, Apple hasn't approved any music jukebox except the iPod to work with iTunes' "FairPlay" DRM wrapper around MP4 AAC, though there have been rumors that Apple offered Sony the chance to work together ( pcworld.com ), which Sony apparently rejected in favor of using their own ATRAC players, which later utterly bombed in the marketplace. Assuming these rumors are true, Sony may yet come around, we'll see. There are hacks to strip Apple's FairPlay DRM from tracks downloaded from the iTunes Music Store out there, and these tracks should play on any music jukebox that supports MP4 AAC, but of course the RIAA may actually prosecute anyone caught using them. At a minimum, the handset manufacturers are beginning to close the gap but the question is....will it take 2 or 3 generations of music enabled handsets for them to get these issues right? I think WLD got this much right, at least: it's probably going to take several generations of phones to match what the iPod can do now, and of course Apple will be raising the bar the whole time, so it remains to be seen who will win the portable music jukebox war. All we know is that Apple is certainly winning that war now, and getting farther ahead of the competition with each innovation they release. And, of course, there's nothing to stop Apple from approving a device that's now competing with the iPod, once they get good enough. Rumors are rife that they're on the path to doing so with Motorola's cell phones now, in fact: pcworld.com .

To: slacker711 who wrote (44684)	5/17/2005 9:52:17 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

Xbox 360 Could Be Compatible With Apple's IPod 05.17.05, 9:31 AM ET forbes.com Tear Sheet \| Chart \| News Goldman Sachs said Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) hinted that its upcoming Xbox 360 gaming console may be able to connect with competitor products such as the PSP from Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) and the iPod from Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ). Goldman said, "Microsoft also emphasized that networking and multiplayer interactive capability of Xbox 360, offering a free base layer version of [online gaming] Xbox Live (Silver version) free of charge to all Xbox 360 users." The research firm expects Microsoft will launch the Xbox 360 in North America, Europe and Japan simultaneously in November. Separately, Sony's next-generation console, the PlayStation 3 or PS3, will launch the PS3 in the spring of 2006, "although it is unclear whether this will be just in Japan or a worldwide launch date," Goldman said. Nintendo is expected to ship its newest gaming platform, the Revolution, by mid-calendar 2006. "This would give Microsoft a strong time-to-market advantage, a very important factor in this market (remember, the 18-month time to market Sony had in its PS2 versus the first-generation Xbox helped Sony cement its footing in the console market)," Goldman said.