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Apple’s shopping basket full of good news comes just a day after other good news that was treated as really bad news.
The company announced record sales, record profits, record unit shipments of nearly everything for the 4th quarter and for the fiscal year.
The numbers didn’t meet analysts expectations so the stock tanked about 10-percent.
The next day, Steve Jobs and company announce a hat trick of new goodies to further extend the iPod monopoly, venture into video with a defacto ‘media center’ and the stock rebounds. Mostly.
It’s a whole new line of iPods ready for the brisk holiday selling season. Music videos and TV shows. What’s not to like? Plenty. Here’s my list (not in order of importance; in order of what I can remember):
No Firewire in the iPods. Thin is in. USB is thin. Firewire is not. That bothers me a bit because Firewire is often considered the better technology.
No remote jack in the new black and white video iPods. The only ports are the Dock connector and the headphone jack. Everything else must connect to the Dock connector.
Apple wants a 10-percent ‘docking fee’ from the accessory makers.
The two new iPods are only 30gig and 60gig. Expect that to change. Why? Videos take up a lot of space. Lots.
The music video selection on the iTunes Music Store is horrible. 2,000 music videos sounds like a lot, but it’s less than paltry, it’s anorexic.
Is Apple having trouble getting record labels to provide music videos? I think so. However, that said, had there been 50,000 music videos available, Apple’s iTunes Music Store would have crashed and burned under the weight of users buying.
When Jack can buy Robert Palmer’s music videos and Shania Twain’s ‘Man, I Feel Like A Woman’ for $1.99 each, then I’ll feel more comfortable.
As it is now, 2,000 isn’t 2-percent of enough.
TV shows? I’m impressed that Apple got Disney to part with day-old versions of Lost and Desperate Housewives. I’m not impressed that there’s not much more (Raven? Get real).
I’m utterly disappointed that the encoded music videos and TV shows are 320x240 pixels. Do you know how small that is?
QuickTime 7.0.3 is needed to playback the music videos and TV shows and using H.264 as the standard, the quality is good. But not when stretched full screen.
Somehow I just can’t see many people gathered around in the living room and watching movies and music videos and TV re-runs on an iMac.
I won’t. I think that’s exactly what the record industry and entertainment industry wants. Not that we’ll watch it on a Mac, but that we won’t. We’ll stick with 32 inch LCD and plasma TV screens.
320x240 pixels? That’s a baby step. 2,000 music videos? That’s a baby step. A few dozen TV shows? That’s a baby step.
Does Apple have a ‘revolution’ left in its’ DNA? Nope. It’s all ‘evolutionary’ from here forward.
As you can see, I’m under impressed and overly disappointed.
But wait. There’s more. And there’s hope. More on Page 3…
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By Bambi Brannan | I work in public relations in San Francisco, California. I truly love Macs, my husband, both of my pet fish, high heels, dinner out, and chocolate. Not always in that order. Follow me on Twitter.
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