Terra Velha

Here is a response to Jean-Paul’s article on Apple’s support for Windows on it’s new MacBooks.

One thing though, it’s going to be easy to give something but to take it back, it will be harder. In this case I mean support for Windows. I don’t they’ll [Apple] ever discontinue support for Windows.

I mean JP is right, it will certainly increase Apple’s share of the market with the most difference being made to those who are switchers by giving them the flexibility to choose what OS to run.

I think what we really want to see in this industry is a reasonable division of the market share. I’m not saying (at least for the time being) that Microsoft will totally die like in the next 10 years, but instead that a good 35-40% market share be achieved and maintained because let’s face it, competition encourages growth and increases the quality of the service or product.

All along we’ve been seeing Microsoft dominating the market and as a result the company has had some awful business practices in the past few years, blame greed if you will, it’s only saviour being it’s $50 billion cash in the bank to get it past all those lawsuits.

So, like many things I believe this is part of the same strategy that spawned the Ipod and the Mac Mini. Let me elaborate the Ipod certainly got Apple the attention it deserved by combining new music technology with the legendary Apple brand. The same with the Mac Mini, many people (including myself, after only just having bought another computer 2 months prior ( to join the band because it was a) cheaper b) a small package that plays with the psychology of humans and easily convinces us and c) if you’re kind of into computers you would see this Apple tidal wave coming in and you’d want be there.

Let me summarize: The new system is good for swtichers.
It will encourage people to compare side-by-side Windows and Mac OS X.
The new system will seduce people in using Mac OS X but will it really foster growth, such as in the area of games, i.e. people will still run Windows for games?
You can’t support Windows today (do you think Apple really wants to) and not support it the next year – you will have some very angry customers.

Well anyway even those points are subject to change and everything is in fact a matter of time and what happens in the next 6 months.

When iTunes was first opened in April of 2003 there was a lot to be happy about and Apple had certainly fired off something that it knew would catch on because it represented the company’s main values of convenience and simplicity. It was easy for just about anybody to open an iTMS account and begin downloading songs for only 99c. Once the tracks had been downloaded a simple synchronisation feature on the iTunes software would copy all the files to an Ipod.

As a result of these factors, the iTMS became very successful. But here is another view of this service that I have been pondering over lately.

99c buys 1 track

This is a significantly cheaper price than on a per-track basis if you consider how much you’d spend if you bought a CD at a store. But then purchasing a full-album on iTMS doesn’t give you the added benefit of an album cover, jewel box or CD (Uncompressed files). No, instead you get a DRM protected, compressed file which you could just very easily lose if not backed up. Most people would agree that there is a higher chance of losing your music on your PC than if it was on a CD in your lounge. You also don’t have the possibility of playing that file across multiple devices or other equipment. Say for instance you wanted to play the file in your car (for the CD player), you would only be able to do that a certain number of times, that means less freedom to do what you feel like with your own stuff.