fscklog

Übt euch in Geduld, ihr iPod mini Käufer

Darum bittet zumindest Greg Joswiak laut USA Today:
"On its Web site, Apple tells shoppers to expect a one- to three-week wait. "We're asking people to be patient with us," says Greg Joswiak, Apple marketing vice president.
It's not a component shortage that's causing the backlog. "We're making and shipping them as fast as we can," Joswiak says. He says teens are taking to the cool colors. And the mini is appealing to athletic fans, who like exercising with an ultralight device."

Seit bekannt wurde, dass bereits über 100.000 Vorbestellungen für den iPod mini vorlagen, nehmen die Dauererfolgsmeldungen kein Ende mehr. Fast jeden Tag ist vom iPod, der Apple rettet/ins Paradies führt/das Schicksal ändert/immer ausverkauft ist/etc. zu lesen, inklusive Milchmädchen-Analysten-Vorhersagen zum Umsatz (siehe Gähnmeldung im MacOrama vom vergangenen Dienstag), den Apple damit schaffen kann.

Grandios wäre allerdings eine Randzahl, die im oben zitierten USA Today Artikel auftaucht: Falls es sich nicht um einen Schreibfehler handelt, kann Apple über 70% aller Umsätze mit digitalen Musik-Abspielern für sich verbuchen (zumindest laut NPD Group und ohne Zeitraumangabe).

FreitagsMacOrama (Update)

Update:
Macnews.net.tc meldet gerade 10.3.3 (7F38) für die Entwickler:
"Late yesterday, Apple has seeded the latest build to ADC Select and Premium members. No news in the seed notes (same as 7F34, basically). This build is expected to be released to the public early next week, according to our sources."
Ebenfalls bei Think Secret.
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Update:
CNET's Top 100 Produkte mit reichlich Apple.
Macworld UK hat die gelisteten Produkte zusammengestellt.
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Spekulationen über den geplanten europäischen Napster-pro-Song-Preis. mp3-world.net nennt inoffiziell 0,79 Pfund (ca. 1.20 EUR) als Stückpreis. Wie wird wohl Apple kalkulieren, wenn der Store endlich nach Europa gelangt?
(via Mix, Burn & R.I.P)
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Gut:
Apple stock has highest close since May 2002.
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Industrial Technology & Witchcraft listet aus gegebenem Anlass die Mac-Gurken des Tages:
"Nach den vergangenen aufregenden Monaten passiert im Moment eher wenig im Apple-Land: schlecht für Nachrichtendienste, denen ohne Hypes die klickenden Anzeigenkunden wegbleiben. Also wird mutig drauflos geschwafelt im »Silly Season Network« der faulen Gerüchte."
Meine persönlichen Highlights der letzten Zeit: Die old-school Quad-G4 Gerüchte, die plötzlich zum Quad G5 mutierten und natürlich das unselige '10.4 was übersprungen wird und 10.5 heißt'-Gebrabbel...
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Interessantes Detail bei macsoxhints. Während iTunes beim Benutzer-Wechsel unter X.3 leider das Weiterspielen verweigert, läuft ein direkt im Finder abgespieltes Lied/MP3 auch problemlos im 'nächsten' Benutzer.
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Apples 'Cool'-Faktor ist in Australien angekommen:
"According to global market research group Datamonitor, the big shift in consumer patterns is about people buying products that reflect their aspirations to lead a cool lifestyle and conspicuously present it to other people as part of their self-image.
Apple, for example, has become one of the coolest companies around, thanks to the iPod and the iTunes Music Store. That's the word, at least, from the so-called "cool hunters", the armies of researchers who track buying habits of young people.
The growth of the cool has been helped by forces such as changing lifestyles and the loss of confidence in institutions, including the food industry. Another force is more simple: we are inundated with too much stuff, a proliferation of goods and services."
Also: "Mein PowerBook kaufte ich direkt nach dem Verlust meines Glaubens an die Lebensmittelindustrie..."???
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Apropos Glaubensverlust, die wahrscheinlich dümmste Pressemeldung des Tages:
"Das crossmediale Informations- und Entertainment-Portal Bild.T-Online und der Elektronikfachmarkt Media Markt haben den Toshiba Satellite A30-101 zum Volks-Notebook erkoren."
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The Reg hat einen kleinen Test (mit dem SE P900) zum allseits beliebten Salling Clicker:
"Salling admits he is examining a Windows version but doesn't see consider a version very likely. Clicker is a great reason to buy a phone with Bluetooth, and a great reason to buy a Mac. Let's hope they look after him."
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Google Suchanfrage des Tages: 'Mac im Vormarsch'.
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Außerdem Wissenswertes aus dem Terminal - heute:
03/05 John Belushi dies in Los Angeles, 1982
(Anleitung).

Apples Schlachtplan für den Consumer Markt (+Marktanteil Apple Laptops 2003)

Bester Zeitpunkt für umfassende Strategiedebatten: Der Jahresanfang natürlich. Vor wenigen Tagen erst legten Fred Anderson und Peter Oppenheimer Apple's 10 Milliarden Dollar Strategie vor, heute legt der Mac Observer mit Analystenhilfe nach und spekuliert über Apples Pläne für den Consumer Markt 2004:

i/PowerBooks:
"No one has forsaken the desktop lines, but the reality is notebooks are the real future in terms of serious profits and growth," BusinessWeek online technology editor Alex Salkever told The Mac Observer. "In that sense, Apple is doing okay because they have much more than 2 percent of that market."
According to figures supplied by IDC personal computing analyst Alan Promisel, Apple's portable market share in 2003 was 3.5 percent worldwide and 5.6 percent in the US.  iBooks made up 71.2 percent of Apple's US portable shipments and 64.3 percent of global shipments last year."

e/iMac:
"Whatever they do, they need to remain innovative, above the crowd," Kay said. "If the iMac is too long in tooth, they need to come up with another class act. They cannot revert to business as usual and do any old desktop."
In the meantime, Salkever said that Apple can revitalize the iMac by dropping its price significantly. "All-in-one desktops won't sell well in the $2k neighborhood when value-oriented customers can buy an eMac for far less," he said."

iPod:
"Meanwhile, Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox called the HP deal a huge win for Apple, although he told The Mac Observer that it would have been even bigger if it had come sooner.
"The HP deal doesn't kick in until June, and the real sales benefits would take another couple of quarters, at least. Summer is typically a slower PC sales period, although Apple could see benefit during the back-to-school buying season," Wilcox said."

Obsession:
"Apple and Steve Jobs are the best marketers in the business," Mr. Salkever said. "They create beautiful, eye-catching products. Their advertising campaigns are way cool. Journalists would rather write about Apple and its new products than about some beige box blah factory, even if that beige box maker moves billions more in annual revenues than Apple."
Salkever said that people are Apple-obsessed and with good reason. "Sometimes [Apple is] innovative. Sometimes they are over-hyped; but almost always they are interesting," he said."

DonnerstagsMacOrama

Die NYT lässt es sich etwas verspätet nicht nehmen, über die Eröffnung des San Francisco Apple Store zu berichten. Im Artikel findet sich herzlich wenig neues, nur ein kleiner Jobs-Happen am Ende:

"The stores' design is credited, officially, to Mr. Jobs rather than to an architecture firm. That suggests not his level of architectural training (he has none) but the degree to which the company considers design a priority. When pressed, Apple officials will admit that the firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which worked on the store in New York, had a hand in this one as well.
"We didn't want anything fussy here," Mr. Jobs said, standing just inside the front door on Saturday as fans poured in and swarmed the displays. "Look at this staircase. It's design fused with engineering — glass holding up glass."
Asked if he had been inspired by designers from the Bauhaus, or any other modernist architects whose spare aesthetic seemed to resonate through the store, Mr. Jobs laughed.
"No, no, no," he said, adding three or four more "nos" for good measure. "We're doing our own thing."
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Apple äußerte sich laut CNET zum in den letzten Wochen immer wieder auftauchenden Phänomen der PowerMac G5 Störgeräusche:
"An Apple representative told CNET News.com that a "small number" of customers have experienced the problem, which has been fixed in production. The company said any customers experiencing the issue should contact the company's customer support."
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Gary Allen kommentiert ebenfalls die Apple Retails Stores vs. Apple Händler Geschichte:

"Well, sitting around and denying isn't limited to the music industry. Apple's resellers also had a pretty exclusive deal for a long time. You couldn't buy an Apple product a Wal-Mart or Costco (and still can't!), and even now the number of big chain resellers is relatively small. So what did the resellers do to enhance their position and push the product?
Well, I'm sure they were doing something. But it certainly wasn't anything to brighten up their stores, improve their employees' training or motivation, or make their stores a community center for Mac enthusiasts. I grant you...they're entirely dependent upon Apple for product, and for the financial terms on reselling them. And the independent resellers don't have $4 billion in the bank like Apple.
But I have to raise the question-- were the resellers just sitting back enjoying their exclusive deal, and not spending their money and efforts on improving their position? Or were they surprised and squeezed out by Apple's move into the retail market?"
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Es gibt Leute, die haben Angst vor einem ihnen überlegenen iPod:
"My distaste for these ads stems in part from the fact that, with both the iPod and the diamonds, the marketing gives me a sneaking sense that the product thinks it's better than me. More attractive, far more timeless, and frankly more interesting, too. I feel I'm being told that, without this particular merchandise, I will have no tangible presence in the world. And that hurts. I'm a person, dammit, not a featureless shadow-being! If you prick me, do I not write resentful columns?"
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Office 2004 First Look in der Macworld:
"Although Microsoft's Office 2004 won't be on store shelves until the middle of this year, we got a sneak peek at its new features. And these additions -- from a command center for related correspondence, calendars, and files, to an audio recorder that gives your typing fingers a rest -- made quite an impression. Come take a look at the next version of one of the most important program suites for the Mac."
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Außerdem (Halb-)Wissenswertes aus dem Terminal - heute:
03/04 Antonio Vivaldi born in Venice, Italy, 1678
(Anleitung).

Spekulationen um die aktuellen Verkaufszahlen des iTunes Music Store

Nachdem die Pepsi iTunes Promo mit einem heftig diskutierten Spot erhebliche Anfangs-Aufmerksamkeit erzeugt hatte, war die Enttäuschung vielerorts umso größer, als danach weit und breit kein Pepsi-Produkt mit Gewinn Code aufzufinden war (da half auch der berühmt berüchtigte 'Hack' in keinster Weise weiter). Entsprechend rätseln die Analysten momentan vor sich hin, welche Downloadzahlen der iTunes Music Store inwzischen erreicht haben könnte. USA Today berichtet:

"You can't spike sales in February if the bottles aren't there," says Charles Wolf, an analyst with Wall Street research firm Needham & Co. "My guess is there's going to be a sales increase, but a month later than expected."[...]
Based on the digital downloads that have been sold so far this year, Jobs has a long way to go. Nielsen SoundScan says 14.7 million songs have been sold industrywide since January, when Apple last reported its total download sales at 30 million to date.

Inside Digital Media analyst Phil Leigh figures Apple is selling 1.2 million songs a week, which he says would bring them to slightly more than 52 million total songs sold through the end of April.
Pepsi has said it expects a 10% to 20% redemption rate from the promo. Apple says the free downloads aren't counted in SoundScan's tallies. Adding them could bring Apple's total to around 75 million."

Es bleibt spannend, sind es 50 Millionen, 75 Millionen? Werden die 100 Millionen bis Ende April geknackt, so wie Steve Jobs es sich wünschte? Warten auf die entsprechende Apple-Pressemeldung...

Doch fast ein Intel PowerMac G5?

Der diskutable Inquirer zitiert aus einem angeblichen internen IBM Memo:
"We've handed Intel another defeat. Earlier this year, we kept them out of the Apple G5 and now we've thrown them out of Xbox. (Not bad, considering one Intel executive recently called us "trivial")."
Was mehr als zweifelhaft erscheint, zumindest aber der spekulativen Unterhaltung dient...
Der Inquirer sorgte erst vor wenigen Tagen mit seiner 'Xbox Enticklungsumgebung auf G5' für reichlich Wirbel.

Marktanteil der Apple Displays

TMO berichtet über Apples Monitor-Marktanteil 2003 in Nord-Amerika, leider ohne die Angabe von Stückzahlen. So ist zu erfahren, dass dieser von 1.6% im ersten Quartal '03 auf 0.8% im vierten Quartal gesunken ist. Leider ist der Gesamtmarkt unbekannt, ebenso ob es sich dabei nur um TFTs, oder (wahrscheinlicher) um jeglichen verkauften Monitor handelt.
Interessanter ist dabei wohl eher die Aussage, dass 90% der Apple Displays zusammen mit einem Mac verkauft werden.

Fake-Safari unter Windows

Wer unter Windows (erstaunlicherweise immerhin 39% der fscklog-Besucher) gewitzterweise Firefox verwendet, kann diesen mit ein wenig Bastelarbeit in ein verblüffend gelungenes Safari Abbild verwandeln.
Altbekannt und immer wieder beliebt: iCapture, damit können Safari-deprivierte testen, wie ihre Seite darunter aussehen würde...

MittwochsMacOrama

Die Berichte über den Unmut manch Apple Händlers mit der Konkurrenz durch die Apple eigenen Retail Stores häuften sich, nun beleuchtet Peter Cohen, Redakteur der Macworld, das Problem aus einem weiteren Blickwinkel:

"For the most part, Apple has moved into locations that these mom and pop shops can't get into: Upscale shopping malls, for example, boutique areas and high-visibility urban domains. Apple has now opened up four domestic stores that qualify as "flagship" locations -- New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco -- big, splashy architectural wonders that do as much to raise the visibility of Apple's logo in tony retail locations as they do to actually push Apple products out the door.[...]
While the people who work at the Apple Stores may not always bat 1.000, it's a much less daunting task for a new Mac user or a new computer user to walk in to a clean, well-lit Apple Store and see how Macs work than it is for that same person to walk into some independent resellers and do the same. It's a recurring theme to find dingy stores manned by surly staff pushing obsolete products. But that doesn't mean that Apple should do away with authorized resellers all together."
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'Thank you, Apple, for saving FreeBSD':
"Look at it this way. Only after Apple started modifying FreeBSD 4.x and submitting their modifications, did FreeBSD progress to the 5.x branch. The advanced VM and SMP code that allows Mac OS X to run so efficiently is the very same code that finally put FreeBSD on the level with Linux. I run FreeBSD 5.2 on a four-way Xeon box at work and thank Apple every day. If it weren't for the Mach micokernel from Apple we wouldn't be able to do these nice things with FreeBSD now or probably ever."
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MacDevCenter widmet sich dem Bluetooth-Headset gestützten iChat-Schwätzchen:
"But beyond that, this technology is still not quite there yet. The big benefits, I found, were those available when I gave the headset to others to use instead of me: primarily, the end of the echo issue (on my end), and also that I had access to other sound inputs (internal PowerBook mic, iSight) and the recipient (with a tower) didn't, allowing us to audio chat for the first time."
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Critical flaw in QuickTime:
"A vulnerability in default installations of the affected software... allows malicious code to be executed with little user interaction".
Apple wurde vor 11 Tagen darüber informiert.
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Die MacGuardians berichten von einem AAC-Encoder-Hörtest:
"Fazit: Apples AAC-Encoder dominiert klar über alle anderen, wenn er auch in manchen Disziplinen "nur" zweiter ist."
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'Medal of Honor: Breakthrough'-Preview bei MacGamer:
"Even after just a few hours online with the beta, Breakthrough manages to offer something different and interesting through the implementation of mines as a multiplayer weapon. True, opponents may seem less fearsome when their primary weapons are a handgun, but after they've dropped half a dozen strategically placed mines for you to step on (thus depleting the vast majority of your health points), things become that much scarier with the knowledge that the next bullet or chunk of shrapnel all but guarantees your death. Add in the new Freeze Tag (players divide into teams and are frozen in place instead of dying when shot, the first team to lose all of its members concedes the match) and Liberation (players are teleported to a jail instead of dying, both teams trying to send the other's members to jail while simultaneously freeing their own members) game modes and there are whole new reasons to go online against friends or total strangers. Good ideas, vicious new weapons and a great place to put some twisted new strategies into play should the mood arise."
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Außerdem (Halb-)Wissenswertes aus dem Terminal - heute:
03/03 Throne Day in Morocco
(Anleitung).

Apples Fortschritte im Bildungsmarkt

Alex Salkever wendet sich diesmal in der Business Week Apples Edu-Markt zu und sieht hinter einigen negativen Schlagzeilen sehr positive Ansätze:

"In this case, however, looks are deceiving. Losing a big deal definitely stinks, but it's a single point on the curve. And the curve's slope turned up in the last quarter of 2003, as Apple's overall education market share rose by 2.7%, according to numbers from tech tracker IDC cited by Apple executives at a Mar. 1 analyst briefing.
Better still, Apple's share of the K-12 laptop market climbed by 2%, to 20.2%, in the last calendar quarter of 2003. That's important because laptop sales in the education market will surpass desktops in three years, according to IDC. Clearly, Apple is gaining share in a fast-growing market."