Apple's 800-pound white gorilla, beware

A number of new music players, on the market or in the works, have the iPod in their sights.
Photos: iPod gets the picture
The New York Times

The story "Apple's 800-pound white gorilla, beware" published December 16, 2004 at 9:46 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[godofbiscuits--2008]

Microsoft is still the 800lb gorilla

In all the DRM discussions and in particular, MS's "overture"
towards Apple and the iPod, it's interesting that MS suggests
that Apple license WM instead of MS offering to license FairPlay.

And if Real is so interested in an 'open market', one wonders
why they aren't licensing Harmony to all takers.

There are still a lot more Macs than iPods out there, yet Real has
no interest in leveling the playing field by offering Rhapsody to
Mac users.

Hypocrites all.

[Jeff Putz]

Endless predictions

Analysts have been predicting a decline in market share for Apple since the iPod was first released. It still hasn't gone anywhere but up.

As an iPod owner, I've yet to see anything that works nearly as well.

[verucabong]

You ever notice...

how even though Apple continually puts out products that
define the industry, they're always on the brink of failure? It
seems that only recently mainstream media and the market itself
is saying, "I guess after 25+ years of creating envelope-pusing
products they're not going to go out of business now" and are
believing that Apple's got something to give and not just a
company full of hippies.

'bout time.

[Jonathan]

In other news 200,000,000th tune D/Led off of iTMS

Yep Apple is really screwed. :o NOT.

[Earl Benser]

Standard business for many companies....

Lacking the courage or interest in developing new
products,many companies sit back on the sidelines and wait for
someone else to make the hot new product. Once the
opportunity has been defined by someone else, these companies
now throw money against the wall to develop their own version.
It's a low risk mode since all the major gambles were taken by
the developing companies.

And if someone complains about the obvious rip-off, the
response is the claim for "freedom to innovate" in one form or
another.

The rest of the story is obvious. And it will keep happening as
long as patents and copyrights can be overcome one way or
another.

Man they are on top of things...

This article is totally lame. Does the author think that
companies JUST started trying to compete with Apple in the
digital music market? I mean, all the companies he mentioned
(Rio, Creative, etc.) have been doing this exact thing ever since
the iPod was released. Their strategy goes something like this,
"Well the iPod has 30 gigs of drive space, so we'll put 40 in ours
and add movie capability, but we'll forget about software
support, asthetics and ergonomics in order to sell it for $50
cheaper than Apple."
You think Apple is worried about having a player that is $50
more expensive than anyone else's? Look at their computer line.
It's consistently more expensive than competitors' but it can be
because of the way they are designed. They sell a total package
and not just a box that can do things if you can figure it out on
your own.
Until someone really makes any progress in the battle of digital
music players, people need to stop publishing crap articles like
this and write the truth, "Rivals attempting to gain on Apple's
iPod dominance, but fall amazingly short."

Yawn.

Wait. Apple has an 800 lb. gorilla? Didn't they go out of
business? Wait. Doesn't Microsoft own Apple? Or was it Sony?
Disney? Steve who...?

What's this iPod thingy again?

yes your shortminded comments make me want to yawn too

Your out of touch response is only typical of a person that's never used an Apple product in their life. It's the same kind of closed minded tech-head opinion as when Microsoft said "The Internet will NEVER take off"....

Case in point, a friend of mine, bought a top-end HP laptop (loaded) less than a month ago, and in that time, from just surfing for news, email and buying Xmas presents online, that PC got nailed by adware/spyware and who knows what else. She reinstalled the Windows OS to try and get it back to normal. Instead of going down the same road again, she returned it, ate the $300 restocking fee, and immediately bought a Powerbook. I had zero influence in this decision.

Another case in point, the iMac G5 has already become a commodity. I was in the Apple store last night hanging around looking for gift ideas, when a pair of women laden down with bags of gifts/clothes wandered into the store and proceded to ask the salesperson if they could "buy a G5".

I've never visited an Apple store yet and not seen an iPod or an iMac leave the shelves within the 10 minutes of being there. So basically I'd advise you to get a more rounded opinion and go check it out. The best reason I can say is you're going to be so behind the technology curve if the Apple iMac/Pod momentum doesn't loose any steam - and I don't see any evidence of this happening any time soon.

And with rumors that Microsoft may charge to help fix Adware/Spyware, it's only another nail in the coffin for home PC users.

Note: I switched in April of this year after my Dell laptop caught fire after 4 solid days installing XP (twice)...

It's not the iPod features that matter, its iTunes

Having previously had a Sony NetMD recorder and suffered the awful software that you have to use to load tracks onto the MD recorder I have to say that everyone misses the point. Its iTunes that makes the iPod such a killer device. The combination of the iPod and iTunes makes for a complete product. Anything else is half baked regardless of how many features they try to stuff onto it.

The saddest thing of all is that now shops are advertising Apple computers as being 'from the makers of the iPod'.