New Apple Lust Objects for 2010 and onward

i think you're making a mistake thinking in terms of apple as something that responds to/thinks relative to PC market price brackets/hardware paradigms.

― caek, Monday, 6 June 2011 08:58 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

uh I didn't. btw I can't find that comment about Apple intending to take the edge off its reputation for making exclusive products, which is weird because tech blogs made a big deal of it. I'm probably searching for the wrong keywords.

(iirc it came out of the q&a following the most recent earnings call)

I think the deal used to be (and still is) that all PCs used to be really expensive, and now commodity hardware is cheap as hell, but they still would prefer to sell you a laptop for a few hundred more and possibly a service plan than the race to the bottom the entire PC market became. People will complain about lack of expansion, modifiability or customization, but when it comes down to it, Apple jettisons that stuff in lieu of a solid market position.

So yeah, they may have some lower price things, but they'd still rather sell you a $1k laptop that has vetted parts and their own OS than crank out netbooks at $500

Yeah. I don't think Apple dude (jeezus I wish I could find the quote now) was saying they would compete with netbooks or anything, just that they want to bring Apple's perceived price aloofness down a peg. I assume that could well mean – perhaps as soon as this year – an underpowered ipad-a-like (let's call it an iPissweak) that integrates heavily with the icloud (c.f. chromebook, but nowhere near as reliant on connectivity) with no true multitasking support, a keyboard and a 10-hour battery for US$600. Cheap as chips to produce and wouldn't necessarily poke a big hole in the existing product categories. You know, so the MBPs remain in place for ~real~ computing tasks but yer average nanna could pick up an iPissweak to check emails and play solitaire. I'm just thinking aloud here.

they want to bring Apple's perceived price aloofness down a peg

i'd be very surprised if that was the stated/actual goal, and there is no way they will release the computer you're talking about when they have ipads for sale.

1) it's a bad idea in an absolute sense for any big company (there's no mass market for it and profit margins would be terrible) 2) it's a bad idea for a company making ipads (which are clearly where it sees its future) and MBAs

1) not necessarily terrible if (a) it's megacheap to produce and (b) they sell
2) MBPs will most likely shrink to the size of the current MBAs over time

1) it's not megacheap to produce and they wouldn't sell. there is no mass market for netbooks.
2) so? why does that mean apple should make a netbook?

what part of "I'm just thinking aloud here" are you struggling with

i'm just thinking out loud that your thinking is lol

http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/iOS-5-home-screen-leak.jpg

Doing the rounds, probably made-up, potentially not, potentially nice.

(also potentially like three years too late)

tweetstreams? in MY statusbar? hahaha HOW'S THE WEATHER IN 2010, CAVEMAN

i'm facebooking my tumblr reblogs SO HARD IN YOUR FACE, iOS

i want to COMMENT on the CLOCK

I suspect it's more notifications being up and out of the way than tweets being in the status bar. That's if the screenshot is even real.

Ha, it's like a crap Android notification tray.

https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/status/76618122366431232

Oops, wrong link (that one above was to the original Tweet)
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/03/more-claims-of-deep-twitter-integration-in-ios-5/

Is it just me or is deep Twitter integration the most boring rumour ever?

i don't know, it sounds a bit erotic

there have been more boring rumours, but that's up there. depressing if true.

i'm intrigued by the nonexistent concept of "deep Twitter"

afaict (if true) it means you get an "Open in Twitter..." button above the "Open in iBooks..." one, plus those notifications with a birdy logo

etc

i'd prefer more Instapaper integration but to each giant technology company his own

Gruber's noises about icloud being an itunes replacement is enticing if only because it would mean the death of fucking itunes

what are the rumours for icloud?

full cloud storage and streaming of music collection?

at least that

songs available in the iTunes store would NOT need to be uploaded to the cloud, but any songs in your collection that don't appear in the store WOULD need to be uploaded. i think. for me this is going to mean.. i dunno, a fuck of a lot of uploading. on a regular basis.

cloud storage for computers makes sense but why would i want to stream songs to my iphone? wont that rack up data bills, kill battery life, wont be able to listen on subway, etc?

i guess this is going to be optional for a few years yet

i think quite a lot of uk/euro people already stream their music to iphone via spotify and it seems to work for them?

^^^ does not OWN IPHONE

I do sometimes stream music through Spotify when out and about, but mainly I use it to listen to things that I have added to my Spotify library at home and selected for offline listening. So, they're cached on the phone (in some encrypted Ogg Vorbis format, I think).

My wonder is when they say songs included in the store...does that include stuff you didn't purchase from iTunes but is in the store? It'd be easy to see them do what Amazon did and basically say "access to everything you purchased from us", but that's no fun. However, there would be a great reason to allow access to stuff you didn't buy. Let's say you ripped a CD, or even illegally downloaded the record. Apple sees it on your hard drive and let's you stream it from the cloud. Now suddenly the labels are getting a cut of the music they own via licensing the streaming rights from apple to you, which you're paying for in your fees to apple. All legit online radio stations are already paying fees to publishing companies. Now suddenly where you got the music is irrelevant, all that matters is that you're playing it and it's been logged.

Now I don't think that will happen, I think it's more likely iTunes will only recognize what you've officially purchased from iTunes, which will be a big pain for those of us with sizeable CD collections (or voracious illegal downloading habits), but it could work that way and it would be win-win for the record labels and apple.

I guess we'll know in a few hours.

mp3.com (lol) tried to do what you suggested Dan, ie unlocking music to you that you proved you had the redbook hash to, but they got sued out of existence iirc

does Spotify exist in the US yet? I just noticed the other day I am getting royalties from it from my album on CDbaby through digital distribution. Thusly do I hope SPotify is the new craze

i expect they will start with only music you purchased via itunes being in the cloud. the legal/financial/contractual problems with throwing it open to other sources of music seem almost insurmountable, and given the long term trends in music buying, hardly worth bothering with.

its kind of obvious anyway that the ipod was always meant for pirated music. I mean, who would fill one with 30,000$ or purchased music - maybe there will soon be a pirate cloud too

How will it cope with the hundreds of DJ mixes I (and many others) have?

well theoretically anything that doesn't exist in the iTunes store you'd upload to the cloud, then it would be there for you

but as has just been mentioned it's hard to see Apple letting people do that since their own servers would be in the business of hosting possibly illegally obtained material

hosting possibly definitely illegally obtained material

well, yes.

just like the amazon cloud

the rumor I'd seen was that it would do exactly what dan suggested, for the reasons dan suggested (letting labels get money from things that came from nefarious sources). but we'll see.

just make apple pay a 2$ pirate tax on their iphones, give that to ted turner and get on with the looting

fuck an icloud i want a mecloud im starting my own cloud

i, cloudius