Soon to be part of the standard corporate dress code!
Posted on 12/05/2008 9:33:10 PM PST by Swordmaker
You may have seen the Apple advertisement in the New York Times this morning (back page of the Business section) extolling the virtues of the iPhone. Nothing new there.
If you made it through the fine print, you may have noticed that there are now 10,000 applications available for iPhone and the iPod Touch available on the App Store. Nothing new there, either.
What is new, and absolutely stunning, is the small print at the bottom of today's ad. Apple now says that iPhone users have "downloaded over 300 million" applications from the App Store, from games to business programs. Why is that stunning? Consider that on the company's conference call on October 21, Apple disclosed that the following day, Apple expected users to download their 200 millionth app. Which means, as of today, users have downloaded a staggering 100 million apps in just the past 6 weeks.
So all that talk of a "bubble" in apps demand was just that, talk! Experts expected an initial big shot in the arm, and that demand would trail off as the weeks passed by. These figures suggest that the app store is only gaining momentum, and it's another big reason for users to choose iPhone over Research in Motion's [RIMM 39.49 2.29 (+6.16%) ] BlackBerry, which has a nascent app store of its own, but is nowhere near as robust as Apple's. The iPhone/iPod/iTunes/App Store eco-system just makes it that much easier to stay inside the Apple world, rather than having to search high and low on the net for music, movies and apps from one site to the next. And when it comes to new technology, "easy" is the name of the game.
"It's unbelievable," says Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster. "It's a differentiator. We think in '09, it's going to be a $1 billion market place and Apple will probably take about 30 percent of that. There's virtually no operating expense for them. They just approve the apps. It increases our confidence that" Apple can make these numbers.
Hell Freezes: Piper Lowers Apple Target I have written extensively about the importance of the Apple App Store to the iPhone; that iPhone is more a platform than merely another Apple device. The App Store could someday (maybe sooner than we thought?) match, or even supplant iTunes as a top profit center, and something that likely hasn't been figured into many earnings models. At least not to the extent that the store is growing today.
IPhone's momentum only stands to gain traction as more and more developers come up with new programs for customers to buy. It's a device that doesn't need conventional, hardware upgrading from Apple if there's a massive, grassroots movement to update the device by offering new programs. Thousands of them. And once again, the Apple model is working. Big time.
I am talking about real life experience, not some contrived, totally against what most people experience hypothesis, that you are coming up with.
My kids have a couple of generic MP4 players. They work fine, nice sound, screens just as big as iPod or Zune, not DRM capable, and cheap. They download music videos from youtube and are quite happy.
People will still have keyboards and large monitors at home that these pocket devices can plug into. In fact, you will soon be able to use your television as a monitor so for example when you stay in a hotel or are visiting somebody, you can just hit a button and show a movie or get some email or web surfing done on pretty much any TV (which are all digital these days).
The iPhone and iPod products will eventually merge into one powerful product that does it all and will render those big computer cases and laptops obsolete. They are even designing trousers that have keyboards embedded in them where you can type on an airplane or in other tight spaces as if you had a full-size keyboard in your lap. You will essentially have the left side of the keyboard on your left leg trousers and the right side of the keyboard on the right side of the trousers. They need to be careful where to put the mouse however, lest others think you are playing with yourself.
Soon to be part of the standard corporate dress code!
As a veteran complete with the arrows in the back, of the OS/2 wars, I can attest to the fact that M$ is capable of a multitude of sins. Now that I am a Mac user, I smile at the Mac-PC commercials, grimace at Algore being on Apple's Board and use Parallel Software to run those Widoze products I can't do without.
Pardon my stupidity, but what’s DRM?
I haven’t moved into the iPhone generation yet, but would like to at some point.
Oh man, does that ever open up some texting possibilities!
DRM is "Digital Rights Management", though I and many others call it "Digital Restrictions Management".
It's software codes, keys, or encryption, built into the data you buy (programs, data, media, CDs, DVDs, downloaded songs, videos, etc.), which restrict and constrain your ability to use that product as you please.
For example, "copy protection", which makes it impossible to backup your purchase in case of damage to the original. Or special codes that only allow it to be used with certain players.
Ostensibly used to protect copyrights, DRM in fact is a means to force consumers to purchase products associated with certain other products (which have the proper DRM "unlocking" mechanism). Also, to force consumers to pay for the same product multiple times (e.g. buy one copy for your living room stereo, and another for your car, and another for your portable player; instead of one item you can copy yourself, you pay three times over for the same thing).
Thus it restricts your ability to use what you bought. Imagine, for example, that you bought a car, and then discovered that due to the manufacturer having arranged a business deal with the states of Nevada, Minnesota, and Maine, you could only drive your car in those states! DRM is like that -- you buy a certain music player, and then discover that it only plays music sold by a few selected outlets, and they don't have what you want to hear!
DRM also has an aspect of "time-out", wherein you don't actually "buy" the product, you "license" it, and the license has an expiration date, and after that date your music, or data, or programs, become unusable. And of course you have to pony up more money to be able to keep using the product you thought you bought outright.
If all these restrictions were made plain and clear in large print by the manufacturers on their products, I would say, "Caveat empetor - let the buyer beware", and encourage everyone to read before they buy.
But in fact they put the DRM restrictions in the fine print, or not on the box but in fine print on the manual you only see once you've opened the box. Or not at all -- surprise!!
Thus DRM is evil.
It is not limited to the products mentioned above -- a host of players and formats carry DRM. IMO, the wise consumer studies before buying, and selects products and media that do not have DRM. They exist, and they are worth the search.
What is amazing are the idiots that come on these Mac threads like Terpfen that give tech advice and have no friggen idea what they are talking about.
Worse that the billy gates sycophants.
How can you tell if the user is playing with his computer or with himself???
It's not stupidity. You are merely suffering from acronymitis. It stands for Digital Rights Management and has to do with preventing copying or unlicensed use of copyrighted materials.
Well, assuming that you already have the iPhone and the PDF documents you wish to view, get something like the free “Files lite” app from the App Store:
There are others, of course, but they all let you load up files on your iPhone or iTouch.
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