A humorous parody of Microsoft’s “Laptop hunters” series of television commercials has been built around “Homeless Frank,” who’s been tasked with finding the portable of his dreams for less than $1,000. Like a lot regular folks, however, Frank would rather fail up and take the cash rather than the piece of crap Windows notebook he can get for that much money.
A lineup of three new displays meant specifically for Mini DisplayPort-equipped Macs has been announced by Collins America, carrying a much lower cost than similar Apple displays, and perhaps slightly lower specs as well.
It’s not so much that Apple’s current one-and-only wireless partner is more or less evil than Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile or whomever. It’s more the case that they’re all evil. Wireless carrier loyalty? At $70 a month plus taxes and fees, and all the dropped calls you can eat, beyond geographic predetermination, who cares whose logo is at the top of the statement?
If the words “better late than never” mean anything, then this release has arrived precisely on time. Then again, with the lock Redmond has on the office productivity suite market, there really wasn’t any reason for them to hurry in the first place.
Apple is not the sort of company to compete on price, and price is what the netbook marketplace is all about. So what could Apple do to build a successful netbook-like product?
While others retrench staff and cut back on research (for companies like Dell there was very little to begin with), Apple is succeeding in this downturn in the same way it thrived through the last one — by investing, inventing and innovating its way forward. Sounds like a textbook response, but how many companies are actually putting their investment in the future first?
The last time Apple tried offering a low-cost, all-in-one Mac exclusively for educational buyers, it was eventually sold to all comers and became one of the company’s best loved if not best selling products ever. Will the invisible hand of the market force Cupertino to open distribution once again?
For me at least, the world of file transport protocol (FTP) clients has always had one consistent outcome over the years. Although I’ve tried and paid for more than a few applications designed to move, manage and monitor files using this venerable and still eminently useful protocol, somehow one client keeps drawing me back.
There would be a lot of advantages, both for Apple and the user, for an iPhone with a seamless, one-piece case. Apple has the technology in place to build that iPhone today.
From the “everybody said this was a bad idea” department comes data showing what should have been obvious from the moment this idea was proposed—increasing prices on legal music downloads has led to a decline in sales. In the midst of the worst economic downturn in generations, this move by EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal to radically increase prices is at best ill timed.
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