A Bunch Of Little Things You Didn’t Know About Apple.

Here’s something you haven’t heard much about. Apple doesn’t have a PDA; a personal digital assistant; a hand held like the Palm Pilot, or the Newton.

Oh, you knew that already? And you were upset because Apple doesn’t have one? Tens of thousands of Apple customers sent nasty-grams to the company when Steve killed the diminutive Newton.

Guess what? That was, as jailbird Martha Stewart says, “a good thing.” Sony just announced that they’ve killed the popular Clie’ handheld.

Apple’s execs always maintained that a PDA would roll up into cell phones anyway, so why bother competing with Palm, Sony, and the PocketPC PDA handhelds, and lose a ton of money in the process?

Steve said PDAs was “not the funnest business to be in,” or something like that. With Palm struggling to figure out what kind of company it is, Sony ditching the Clie’, and the PocketPCs not showing up anywhere anymore, maybe Apple got it right.

Discipline, Grasshopper. Discipline.

Here’s another. Is Firewire dead? Will USB reign as king? Why do you ask, Grasshopper? Because Apple’s new iPods do NOT ship with a Firewire cable. They did before. They don’t now. Why?

It’s probably a cost issue. Apple created the Firewire technology. It’s an Apple baby, so to speak. There’s 11 or 12 or 13-million iPods out there that CAN use Firewire, though most are for Windows users and they probably stick with USB.

So, why is Apple dropping the Firewire cable from the new iPods?

Cost.

Apple is a very disciplined company these days. Yes, those of us who know and care, realize that even Firewire 400 is better and actually faster than USB 2.0. However, it’s probably not an issue with the rest of the Mac and Windows world, so why bother? Jack Miller says the cable only costs about 14-cents to make. Now we’ll have to pay $20 to put Firewire connectivity into our new iPods.

I’ll pay it.

That brings up another point. Apple knows how far they can stretch the customer. Windows PC users put up with a tremendous amount of abuse from PC makers and Microsoft. So do Apple customers put up with a bit of abuse from Apple.

We all want Apple to be profitable and prosper so they can continue to make the toys we love to buy. Apple’s long been known to have the highest margins of any major computer maker, somewhere around 25-percent or more, on average.

How much profit is there on those little bitty iPod shuffles? Upwards of 40-percent say the hip and usually accurate analysts at IDC. Apple might increase that even more as flash memory prices drop. Don’t expect an immediate corresponding drop in the shuffle’s price.

How about the idea of plugging a digital camera directly into your iPod photo to offload the camera’s digital pictures? Can’t do it on an iPod, right? Unless you fork over another $30 for the new, soon-to-be-released Camera-to-iPod cable.

I’ll pay it.

Apple says is should be able to take photos on my Canon digital camera, connect directly to the iPod, offload the camera’s digital photos, and have it all synchronize back to iPhoto the next time I plug my iPod into my Mac.

That works for me.

The Mac is 21. Steve Jobs is 50. My Mac is sleek, slick, efficient, and downright beautiful. Steve Jobs looks about 50.

Do you have a digital video recorder (DVR, PVR, TiVO, whatever)? Do you use TiVo? Got any TiVo stock? It went up yesterday about 20-percent based on rumors of an Apple buyout. It’s up again today, probably because Apple hasn’t denied they’re talking with TiVo.

What could an Apple-Sony-TiVo alliance do for the PVR/DVR Media PC market? iMovies Movie Store, perhaps? Imagine a box about the same size as a Mac mini (the Mac mini sits on top). The new TiVO mini, only $299.

I’ll pay it.

TiVo’s market cap is only about $370-million so Steve could afford to buy it on his own, give it to Apple, and take a tax deduction of some kind (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

How about downloading Sony movies from the iMovie Movie Store into my Mac mini or TiVo mini? Only $9.99 each.

I’ll pay it.

Speaking of stock price and market cap; guess what? Those Sony-buying-Apple rumors are probably not based on any facts. From what I can tell by reading all the financial yeeha on Yahoo, Apple’s stock price is higher, market cap is higher, and Apple has more cash in the bank and less debt than Sony.

Have you heard that Apple’s Macs cost more than PCs? Even the $499 Mac mini, while raising eyebrows and creating smiles, has the mainstream, MIC-dominated** media constantly touting the availability of cheaper Dell PCs. Well, maybe those Dells were not so cheap after all.

Dell is being sued for “bait and switch” tactics. Click Here for the gory details. With Apple products, there’s not bait and switch. Bait and wait, maybe.

Apple announces something new, we’re hooked, we wait three months for delivery. Or something like that.

My Favorite Mac Application got updated, upgraded. Again. And again. And still again. All in just one week.

Transmit, the coolest of cool FTP applications, which sat on version 2.6.2 for about 17 years, finally went to 3.0 last week. Many nifty features for file uploading and manipulation (for the web site building folks among us). Then Transmit went to version 3.0.1, and then to 3.0.2. In less than a week.

At this rate, by summer, Transmit will be hauling $199 PCs from China to the US. Of course, they’ll have Dell logos attached.

**MIC. The Microsoft Industrial Complex.

Off Topic Note: I’ve updated the Mac360 Store with over 100 new categories-- More Macs, more iPods, more Mac books, more software. Click Here and select any category for more detail, or use the handy search function. Whenever you buy from Amazon through the Mac360 Store you help support Mac360. The Store has discounts and special pricing on Microsoft Office for Mac ($125), Apple’s iWork ‘08 suite ($62), and Adobe Photoshop Elements ($70). Where? At the newly remodeled Mac360 Store. Now with more fiber.