Comments on: MTV, Microsoft a powerful combination, say some

Analysts expect MTV's marketing might to help Microsoft reach important demographic as it tries to take on Apple's iTunes and iPod.

[Stalin Hornsby]

"The Incredibles" are on DVD. And this is 'Awsome' for everyone.

Be shure to engage the needed features in the Media Eleven subpanel to enjoy full value entertainment. Enjoy.

[Musica360.com]

It's Pretty Good...

As an Apple Fanatic (ok.. at least I admit it).. and the owner of a
20 gig third generation ipod and an ipod nano...

After playing around with Urge in Virtual PC on my Mac, I must
say Urge is not bad at all. Actually it's the best subscription
based service there is now.. and it does a few things iTunes
doesn't do.

I don't really see Amazons upcoming offering as upseating
Apple, but I think that MTV and Microsofts new service have a
definite chance of given Apple a run for it's money.

[Joe Blow]

This Will Not Be Successful ...

unless it's not just dirt-easier to use than the iPod/iTunes system (an extremely high-synergy combination that is best done by a unified development team - precisely what Apple did long ago), but even easier, which is going to be a tall order. Given the historical intentional disconnect between Microsloth and its hardware partners, and the resulting myriad of glitches that continue through today, there is little evidence that this is going to be as seamless as Apple's system, much less significantly better.

Microsloth's old model of coming from behind over an extended period of time (Windoze wasn't really usable until 3.1, over five years after they had started work on Windoze 1.0 around 1983) isn't likely to work in the consumer music market. This is precisely because it's not only too late for Microsloth to hijack the majority of the market, but it doesn't have the highly cooperative leverage it did with business customers through their complicit IT departments, and executives who could mandate what would be bought from the top down, via typical slimy corporate "relationships" that are greased on golf courses, in country clubs, in fancy "steam 'n cream" establishments, and all of the other smoke-filled back rooms frequented by high-velocity/pressure business sales types exactly like Ballmer. After talking with Gates on a number of occasions and hearing him babble on at trade show keynote addresses, I'm thoroughly convinced that he has never been calling the shots outside the technical realm at Microsloth, and the company didn't start getting ugly until well after Ballmer arrived on the scene, following Gates from Harvard. It's always been Ballmer that has been the 800 pound gorilla at their internal and outside partner sales and marketing bashes - he is uniformly hated by a significant fraction of Microsloth employees, many of whom squarely blame him for the continuing slide in the value of their already insignificant fraction of stock options over the past half-dozen years. If you weren't one of the first few hundred employees there, you got there too late to make big money from stock options.

There are no IT departments or executives whom Microsloth can leverage through sweetheart deals, three-martooni lunches, and steam 'n cream sessions with "strategic partners", not to mention illegal, arm-and-kneecap-breaking, exclusivity-based corporate software sales licenses.

All the Best,
Joe Blow