Mac Potpourri
Giants acting peevishly: Target has now joined Wal-Mart in opposing Apple’s entry into the movie-selling market. Their lament:
U.S. retail giant Target has joined rival Wal-Mart in expressing concern regarding the adverse effect digital movie sales could have on the DVD business. Like Wal-Mart, Target is less than pleased that Apple’s wholesale price for new movies from Disney is several dollars less than the wholesale price charged to Target for DVDs, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Let’s see. When Apple sells a movie, they do not need to have a physical DVD, the packaging that wraps it, the physical plant to create the DVD and the packaging, nor the distribution network to deliver the physical package. Plus, there is less content (no extras, like director’s commentary or other features). That’s why Apple gets the movies for less.
Maybe the giants saw this story about Tower Records going under and started sweating a bit. Still, it’s time for the retail giants to stop whining like children, and accept that someone else can take a tiny bite out of them, like they destroyed giant swaths of small businesses. It’s called “competition.” I know they don’t like it, but they might actually have to deal with it.
Apple has released three new “Get a Mac” ads. Cute, as usual.
I’m certainly not the only one who sees Vista’s “spyware” (anti-piracy measures) as a disadvantage. The question is, how severely will this hurt Windows, and how well will it play to the Mac? Stan Baer reports:
It’s a pity that I feel compelled to write an article like this. However, the thought of being forced to pay through the nose to upgrade to a highly configured PC running Vista, only to face the prospect of constant check-ups from some server in Redmond about the validity of my software has me a little spooked not to mention outraged.No doubt there are plenty who disagree and believe that SPP is necessary to stamp out software piracy. To them and Microsoft, I say don’t try to fool yourselves. The vast majority of software pirates are in second and third world countries. Many will find a way around SPP and those that can’t will probably turn to Linux.
In fact, Microsoft’s decision to try to nab Vista software pirates using spyware may be the best thing that ever happened to Linux and Mac OS X.
The more we see PC users talking about stuff like this (Baer also explains how you can run Windows on a Mac easily), the more chance there is that the Mac market will expand. It is certainly possible that Vista will be the best “Get a Mac” ad ever.
A couple of new Mac blogs out there to pay attention to: Google now has a Mac blog to go with their regular blog. A good way to get tidbits of general info in addition to keeping on top of what Google can offer your Mac.
And an Apple worker writes anonymously in the new blog, “The Masked Blogger.” Not a hit piece nor necessarily a love letter, it could be interesting.
Not really Mac news, but big nonetheless: Google (video) just bought a big competitor, YouTube. YouTube will continue on as-is for the time being; no hint of what Google plans to do with it. In the meantime, the owners of YouTube now can enjoy a cool $1.65 billion for their past few years’ work.
Finally, this is really not Mac-related… but I figured I’d tack it on. From the people at FG, a report on the new Star Trek… Pachinko game.
Your head may now explode.