BusinessWeek says Apple's failure to license its proprietary FairPlay DRM is a repeat of the brilliant decision not to licenses the Mac OS.

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2004/tc20041014_9962_tc056.htm

Watch Apple's music market share take the same road as the Mac.

Except this time Apple has the bigger market. So actually it's the opposite.

You're right, Microsoft better license their Windows Media DRM standard to the iPod or they'll be repeating the brilliant decision not to license the Mac OS.

EDIT:

From the article:

Will [other players] ever match Apple in ease of use and elegance? No -- but who cares, really? Many consumers are more than happy with something that's good enough, and cheap.

Damn, he's got us there, doesn't he? If you're gonna argue that people PREFER to buy inferior products...well I can't really argue with that. I've seen it happen many times before.

Go [edit by DT] yourself, and while at it, try to read

http://daringfireball.net/2004/08/parlay

and

http://daringfireball.net/2004/08/2004_wont_be_like_1984

as hard as it might be.

Nice timeline TMO

...if you can read, Salkever uses the phrase, "It may repeat". The operative word is MAY. He did NOT make the declarative statement, "is a repeat", that's your twist on his words. The only RDF here is yours. If you can't be truthful, then where's the REALITY?

Besides, where did anyone make Salkever the authority on what happened in the past? He barely gets his facts straight, as the Daring Fireball articles clarify.

And, did you even read Salkever's last three paragraphs? Apparently not.

Quote

RealityCheck wrote:
BusinessWeek says Apple's failure to license its proprietary FairPlay DRM is a repeat of the brilliant decision not to licenses the Mac OS.

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2004/tc20041014_9962_tc056.htm

Watch Apple's music market share take the same road as the Mac.

The weekly sales rate is similar to an online music store selling 400,000 full-length CDs each week (4,000,000 divided by 10).

As we head into the crucual Christmas season I suspect the weekly rate will rise to well above 5,000,000 songs per week before year-end.

Further, gift cards as holiday gifts should spike sales in the first two weeks of the new year. Remember, Pepsi is coming back with a new promotion next year as well.

Hopefully, though, they'll work out the kinks in their inventory channel, and actually get the bottles out there before the promo runs out this time!

7

normally, i would agree with that but... i would say 92% of hard-drive based mp3 players care.

To keep up their momentum they need to countinue to come out with new updates. The ipod mini needs an update with a larger harddrive, smaller form factor or smaller price tag.