by Jason Wilk on August 11, 2009
- BGR today reported more news today of what is in store for iTunes 9. First, Apple supposedly “has plans to tie iTunes 9 into a “Social” application that they plan to release in the future. It was said that the application (separate from iTunes) will be similar to Yahoo’s OneConnect offering and consolidate all your social networking services. (iPhone application? Desktop app? Wasn’t clarified to us). The application will also allow you to broadcast what music you’re currently listening to, allow you to share your music with people on your network, connect with your friend’s friends (no clue on that one), and update all of your statuses at the same time. ITunes 9 will let you broadcast music statuses as well”
- This seems like quite a vague rumor, but one that makes sense. The above quote from BGR makes it sound like Apple is going to launch their own version of TweetDeck that ties music playlists/reccomendations/updates directly with iTunes (I guess more of a ’social genius’ hangout). If Apple does decide to go down this route, they need to consider either making some small key acquisitions (Pandora, Last.fm, HypeMachine, etc), or opening up their API’s to let some of these applications interact within iTunes.
- When I first began using iTunes, it was the only place I’d play music. I would upload burned CD’s and download music off of people’s network from my dorm room all day to get the latest and greatest stuff. However, iTunes now has become what my Reel player used to be to me in the 90’s; a real pain in the ass and something I only open if I have to. It’s slow, my owned music has gotten boring and I think the Genius function is no more of a cool feature than Amazon’s reccomendation system that is just trying to get me to spend more money. In my entire existence, I have maybe spent $6 total in the iTunes Store (not including apps, which is somewhere around $60-70 and from my iPhone, not my desktop). Today, my friends and I spend all our time listening to music on HypeMachine, Pandora and even YouTube as opposeed to opening iTunes. This should be a serious concern for Apple as I along with my generation of 18-30 year olds are getting used to the concept of giving up ownership of our music in favor of the cloud (and not paying).
- There is no reason Apple should not be able to strike the kinds of deals that Pandora or MySpace Music have done to enable ad supported streaming to let users play the latest music for free and interact with their Facebook, Twitter, etc groups. As of right now, there is nothing social about my current iTunes catalog. As I said, it’s boring and people have heard of mostly everything in it. If iTunes was a one stop shop for my music streaming, Facebook/Twitter updates, trending music lists and social Jukebox type Kevin Rose reccomendations, I just might think about opening iTunes once again for more than just updating my iPhone (which I’m getting a Blackberry today, so you can kiss that last one goodbye). So, what is really in store for iTunes 9? There’s no saying for sure, but if I were you Apple, I’d be reading this post. Cheers
For those bored with their iTunes library, make sure you start using HypeMachine
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by Jason Wilk on July 15, 2009
- With the release of iTunes 8.2.1, Palm Pre [PALM] syncing with iTunes is discontinued. For those not familiar with the situation, Palm tried to further appeal to the iPhone coomunity by enabling the Pre to sync up directly with iTunes. The move was controversial, however Apple never gave a response. I guess they never needed to, all it took was a little update.
- The news is not that big of an issue for anyone using applications like doubleTwist for Palm Pre Media sync or The Missing Sync for Pre. Although the Palm Pre is not selling well, it’s not to say Apple doesn’t have their eye on them. Disabling the Pre sync was not an easy one according to the developer community. Thanks PreCentral
by Jason Wilk on April 8, 2009
- Yep. That just happened. The labels are getting what they want all across the board now with variable song pricing showing up on Amazon, Walmart, Rhapsody, etc. This comes a day after Apple made their big push to move 90% of songs in the top 100 to $1.29. Notice the top screenshot however, which contains almost all the same songs as the iTunes top list. Only a few of the songs in Amazon’s are selling for $1.29. We polled yesterday if anyone would go to Amazon to pay $0.30 less for a song. 67% said yes, others wouldn’t bother with the inconvenience.
Stay up on your Apple news:
by Jason Wilk on January 21, 2009
As Apple (AAPL) rares up for it’s Wednesday Q4 earnings report, many investors are weary. In the past few weeks, the economy has stayed sluggish, Steve Jobss has left on medical leave and the usually exciting product debuts at MacWorld from Apple showed little to get excited about.What to look at against Wall Street expectations.
- Expect 20 million+ iPods shipped during the December quarter for the holiday season, beating the 18.6 million expectation.
- Expect a standard 2.5-2.6 million Macs shipped or even with the Street’s 2.5 million expectation.
- Wall Street is expecting 5 million iPhones to have shipped. Keep in mind September numbers showed Apple shipped 6.9 million phones, and that wasn’t even the holidays.
- Wall Street expects $9.7 billion in revenue and $1.32 in EPS. I couldn’t find an Apple store that wasn’t overcrowded this holiday season. People are excited about the iPhone, the new Mac computers are light years ahead of the competition and margins are consistently solid through the whole family of products. The 6 month old iTunes App store on the iPhone has already surpassed 500 million downloads, on its way to being the billion dollar marketplace it was projected to be when it debuted this summer. I expect Apple to be north of $10 billion in revenue this quarter, adding to that $20 billion in cash flow the company is sitting on. Why so bullish? Investors looking to the wrong reasons why Apple will slow down. Things like the popularity of netbooks this winter compared to the pricing of Mac, as well as lack of attention to the app store’s success will offset earnings predictions.
Official Numbers Are In: The Company posted record revenue of $10.17 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion, or $1.78 per diluted share. Apple sold 2,524,000 Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing nine percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold a record 22,727,000 iPods during the quarter, representing three percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 4,363,000 representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.
by Jason Wilk on December 10, 2008
- When it comes to downloading movies, both Apple and Netflix come to mind as the leaders in both sales and controversy for Hollywood. The latest quandary coming from the Hollywood Studios is to force iTunes and Netflix’s download store to remove certain movies as they are nearing their launch on network TV. We all know that Hollywood has their chain of events that the life of a production sees; from theatres, DVD’s to TV and more. The Studio’s have united to control their content inside iTunes and Netflix to help time these chain of events to increase profits on their end and please the non-digital third party that is next in line to promote the product.
- Their immediate claim is that TV broadcasters pay too much money for the rights to air films coming to network TV and that having them dually available on the internet will decrease their viewers and concurrently ad sales. Sounds to me that Hollywood had no other choice but to please the TV networks with their decision, otherwise the films coming to TV may have started coming at a bargain rate. Network TV is a big money maker for the studios along with everyone involved with the production of that movie coming to air.
- The joke here is that the movies coming to TV are already available on DVD for rent, in-store for purchase and have already been available for download for months if not longer on iTunes or Netflix. So, what are the studios trying to accomplish here? We have made strides with digital streaming and downloads as a legitimate source for distribution with real revenue. Now the mid-level execs have put their genius together to try and establish control once again? Well, it won’t work. Movies on TV is already a dying breed as in this era. No one is willing to sit through a 90 minute movie with 120 minutes of commercials. Many will either digitally record it, download it illegally or just go to Blockbuster and rent it for a few dollars.
- Maybe when movies come to TV they should just try and control the all the channels of distribution. It will be like in Thailand where they lock up the alcohol from the people for 24 hours on election day. When a movie is coming network TV, they should ban it from being sold, streamed, rented or downloaded anywhere but the television. That will certainly increase profits right you dumbasses? I can’t wait to see the look on a kids face when he goes to Blockbuster to see his favorite Christmas movie locked up because it’s on network TV later. “Sorry honey, we’ll just have to watch it on TV’. ‘But, Mom I don’t want to watch commercials”
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