They’ll Get Over It…
It’s been interesting watching Kiwi’s get all excited about the arrival of iTunes. Much like I was when it first arrived. Today though. it’s a different story. iTunes still does the syncing and I love using it to get at all those podcasts. But that’s it. Seems I’m not the only one as iTunes remain flat in the US market:
“IPods are not sitting around generating dozens and dozens of transactions every quarter,” said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst for Forrester Research. “People buy a certain number of songs, and then they stop.”
I’m also one of the few people that watch video on their iPod – the downloading is just painful but on planes or treadmills, nothing beats watching TED speeches or Blade…
Why? Maybe they get frustrated with the DRM as I did. OK, buying songs one at a time seems cool until you realize how many you’ve bought and how unportable, limited in use and incompatible (e.g. with Sonos) they are.
Then you get a Sonos with Raphsody at home and it’s pretty much game over inside the house as I simply pay a small monthly fee for all the music we can eat. Just love it. I use Raphsody for sampling and then buy CDs on Amazon.
iTunes has become a terrific music storage and management platform for me. But its no longer a place I shop.
That Internet Explorer Thing
As Microsoft looks to force everyone onto Internet Explorer 7 – which is stunning BTW – let me share a couple of experiences.
First, it is a terrific browser. Arguably the best out there. With integrated RSS and apps like Onfolio it is a big leap forward over past Microsoft browsers and rivals anything on the market. I’ve got my delicious plug-ins installed and Google notebook.
As Steve suggests, it ushers in a new world for RSS. With a hook. I’m also running the new version of Office (beta). So, I collect all my feeds in Explorer – so far so good. Then it syncs those feeds with Outlook. Good at first. Then my Outlook inbox fills with feeds and bingo, my mailbox exceeds its limit. I’ve got feeds but no mail. Not good. And no clear way to stop the feeds syncing other that to manually delete them in Outlook. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this in the next betas of Office. Also, the feeds in Onfolio seemed not to sync with the feeds in Explorer or Outlook.
So, Microsoft is 100% of the way there in terms of competing with other browsers but 30% of the way there in terms of its own product suite when it comes to RSS. Maybe. I’m sure I’m missing something.
Either way, it’s a great browser.
Want Some Free Wine?
I’m back dabbling with my Powerbook after a catastrophic hard disk failure. Having been stuck in the world of I.E. 7 and Firefox it is really apparent now how far Safari has fallen behind. Can’t seem to find delicious plug-ins or an imbeded blog posting tool. No bookmark syncing to other browsers on other OSs. And so much more.
But that isn’t my big problem. I built our family’s site and photo album using iWeb. It seems though that should your instance of iWeb get nuked you can’t import your existing site and keep going. The site is sitting there on my iDisk but how do you get it back into iWeb and keep using it? So, if anyone can tell me how to restore my .Mac hosted site created in iWeb back into iWeb I will send you some stunning wine.
iWeb was Ok to begin with but without an import feature that enables you to import and edit your existing iWeb sites it is really a bit of a joke. Am I missing something here?
Apple Retails Stats…
Some stunning stats on Apple’s retail stores:
- Apple will open 40 new stores this year, an average of one every nine days.
- The stores conduct approximately 3,500 special events, such as classes on software, every week.
- On average, 10,876 visitors come to an Apple Store each week, up from 9,316 per week last fiscal year.
- Average revenue per store is $441,000 per week.
- Employee turnover is 20 percent a year, compared to 50 percent on average for the retail industry.
- The average Apple Stores outsells all its neighbors, stores like Ann Taylor, Pottery Barn, Sharper Image, combined.
- The average Apple Store, with its 6,000 square feet of space, generates two-thirds of the revenue of a Best Buy, which averages 38,000 square feet.
- There are over 100,000 ProCare members, each ProCare membership generating $99 per year, plus the irritation of those waiting in line at the Genius Bar without ProCare membership.
- 20,000 children
were indoctrinatedparticipated in the Summer Camp program this year.
Everytime I go into a store I’m stunned at how alive they are. For a contrast, visit a Sony store. Each Apple store is in effect one of the community epicenters. A place to learn, meet, swap ideas and get support. They really are remarkable.
An aside: expect the next version of Office for Mac mid 2007…
