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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio candidates - Moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tinkershaw who wrote (1495)	6/10/2005 5:10:24 PM
From: Greg Hull	Respond to of 2955

While most of the discussion on Apple in the last few days has been centered on iPod, the PC side of the business received a little attention this week. Here is an entertaining piece by Robert X. Cringely that is interesting to consider in GG terms. Greg pbs.org June 9, 2005 Going for Broke Apple's Decision to Use Intel Processors Is Nothing Less Than an Attempt to Dethrone Microsoft. Really. By Robert X. Cringely <snip> Enter Apple. This isn't a story about Intel gaining another three percent market share at the expense of IBM, it is about Intel taking back control of the desktop from Microsoft. Intel is fed up with Microsoft. Microsoft has no innovation that drives what Intel must have, which is a use for more processing power. And when they did have one with the Xbox, they went elsewhere. So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market. The OEMs would love to be able to offer a higher margin product with better reliability than Microsoft. Intel/Apple enters the market just as Microsoft announces yet another delay in their next generation OS. By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a compatibility mode with Windows (I'm just guessing on this one). This scenario works well for everyone except Microsoft. If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft. And if they tuned the OS to take advantage of unique features that only Intel had, they would put AMD back in the box, too. Apple could return Intel to its traditional role of being where all the value was in the PC world. And Apple/Intel could easily extend this to the consumer electronics world. How much would it cost Intel to buy Apple? Not much. And if they paid in stock it would cost nothing at all since investors would drive shares through the roof on a huge swell of user enthusiasm. That's the story as I see it unfolding. Steve Jobs finally beats Bill Gates. And with the sale of Apple to Intel, Steve accepts the position of CEO of the Pixar/Disney/Sony Media Company. Remember, you read it here first.

To: tinkershaw who wrote (1495)	6/10/2005 7:45:57 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 2955

iPOD Competition: Rhapsody from Real Hi Tinker, << I knew about the Rhapsody subscription service and attempted to sign up and get going on it to try it out, and I don't recall exactly what happened, but the dang thing simply did not work, it was not intuitive, it was not even counterintuitive, and it frustrated me to the point that I simply went to iTunes and started downloading stuff and there it was, no fuss no muss. >> Thanks for responding on that. I was curious about why or what prompted you to make the comments you did. As you said prior: "Perhaps they have improved the product." That could well be the case which is why I asked. Your experience was totally different than mine, and as for interfaces, they simply don't get more intuitive regardless of what one has used prior or whether they have used prior. In my case I'm not a subscriber, I'm simply a registered user of Rhapsody 25 and the Rhapsody Player, with the capability to purchase albums or tracks individually against a credit card. Possibly some things have changed between the time the new service and new player was released, when you attempted to "subscribe," and when I did one week ago -- or if the difference lies in the fact that I did not attempt to subscribe Rhapsody Radio, Rhapsody Unlimited, or Rhapsody To Go. If you attempted to use the new services and media player before May 1, then I totally understand why you had a problem. The initial April release (2.1) was evidently buggy and problem ridden and it took Real a week or so to straighten that out before the released v. 3.0 (which is probably not totally clean yet as many dot zero releases are, but I've experienced few problems with it). Let me describe my experience. It took me a total of perhaps 15 minutes to sign up and create an account (just requires an e-mail address and password) download and install the Rhapsody v 3.0 player, set preferences, set up my radio stations list, import my music collection maintained separately in a different file location, modify the default file location for Rhapsody and start using it. Ten minutes later, after some browsing I purchased and downloaded my first track by adding billing information and credit card data to bill against, then played the track I'd downloaded. Thirty minutes later after considerable exploring I had totally familiarized myself with the highly intuitive interface, worked through almost every option and changed a few preferences. I find the interface to be exceptional, and that is not to say that I would not prefer this, that, or the other thing, would work slightly differently. It's similar to iTUNES, but I prefer it to iTUNES which I've only explored a few hours worth and haven't used for purchases because I'm not interested in purchasing and downloading AAC format tracks locked with Fairplay. Prior to all of this I've used the MusicMatch store to fill in my collection because Musicmatch Jukebox Plus v10 (MJ+10)is my preferred audio media manager and I like the interface for the purposes I use it for better than anything else out there. As good as iTUNES is, I don't consider it to be as robust as MJ+10. Same with Rhapsody v 3.0 but because Rhapsody improves on MJ+10 that might change. Let me emphasize that I am not using Rhapsody as a subscription service although I am about to try the 14 day trial of the full blown Rhapsody Radio ($3.33/mo.)because the functionality of even the free (25 station rather than 100+ stations) Radio and its integration with the purchase and download service blows the doors off any similar functionality I've seen. I am also not using Rhapsody with an MP3 player so I really can't comment on how well synchronization with an MP3 player works. Reviews of Rhapsody v 3.0 are from CNET and ZDNET here: reviews.cnet.com pcmag.com If you try Rhapsody again, please share with us what you find that is "not intuitive." Best, - Eric -