Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bad Apple!

Since Apple is one of the most closely watched tech companies out there (right up there with Google, who may be rolling out an app similar to Second Life later this year), when they screw up, their rabid fanbase lets them know about it. I think I heard something similar on Future Tense this morning as well...let's check out what they've done:

1. Knocking 200 bucks off the iPhone, sending early adopters into a tizzy. Remedy: give early adopters $100 to spend at Apple Store.

2. Apparently the video quality on the new iPod Touch is not as good as the old-school iPod videos. I think Jobs even came out and said "oops" on this one - some sort of manufacturing error.

3. The new iPhone firmware update will brick unlocked iPhones. So don't even think about tinkering with your new toy!

4. 800Mhz G4 processors will not be able to run Apple's newest OS, Leopard. Personally, I love the iBooks and wish I had one, but apparently there's no real reason for this, other than the classic Apple phase-out of older functional hardware.

5. Selling ringtones separately from songs that you buy at the iTunes Store. So you pay for a song, then you pay for a snippet of the song to play as your ringtone. Weak.

I'm hoping the way to win customers back is the announcement of a new sleek Macbook with an "aggressive price point". But seriously - no optical drive? Remember when people got all upset when they stopped including 3.5" floppy drives? Then again, the addition of some flash memory combined with the lack of optical drive could mean a substantial increase in battery life...

2 comments:

carson said...

Couldn't find the original article, but ringtone companies have been trying to get around paying royalties and therefor just eating up the profits without giving proper compensation to the artists creating said product. I found a bit of legal mumbo jumbo, and I think there's still ways around it. Damn you big business, damn you.


http://www.copyright.gov/docs/ringtone-decision.pdf

A said...

Ringtone companies are mostly shady, fly-by-night companies anyway. Ever see those "text 666 to this number for FREE R1NGTONEZ" things on teevee? Yeah, there's no way they're paying royalties, usually because they can't get sample clearance because they'd have to give up like 95 percent of the revenue, if not more...