Aehso’s Output

Sometimes I can be a little impatient. When I got my 40g iPod I though to myself “Apple is on a bit of a winner here, I wonder if their stock is cheap”. Over a year later, AAPL stock has nearly tripled in price (he notes, kicking himself selling out 4 months ago - doh!).

Way back, when the original iPod was released, folks didn’t think there was much of a market for that type of thing. A posting to SlashDot at the time is worth quoting:

Raise your hand if you have iTunes …

Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port …

Raise your hand if you have both …

Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device …

There is Apple’s market. Pretty slim, eh? I don’t see many sales in the future of iPod.

I can remember reading that way back then and thinking that was a reasonable observation - the technical requirements of the 1G iPods did limit it to a narrow target market. The strategy Apple took from there was so correct it’s scary - don’t refactor the iPod itself (beyond capacity and form changes) but adapt it’s interface and software to expand the target market. In retrospect, it is quite spectacular how Apple’s simple decisions to sell 99c songs, release iTunes on Windows and to a lesser extent add USB support, catapulted the iPod into a product that would double their earnings.

Analysts are now projecting that Apple will sell around 23.5 million iPod’s by 2006.

That said, I wouldn’t recommend buying AAPL stock in the new year for a number of reasons - I have a feeling Apple may well become a victim of their own success. Apple are at a fairly critical juncture at the moment and I can’t help thinkin they will suffer a significant popularity backlash when all these new iPod users realise the battery life of their new toys just gets worse and worse. I think my iPod is one of the coolest toys I’ve ever bought, but I will not buy another - my 40gig unit lasts for less than two hours on an overnight charge. I’m waiting for Sony to enter with a decent Network Walkman (but only if they get it working with iTunes). Of course, if Apple fix the battery life issue then I may stay loyal

It would seem the irrational exuberance has affected Apple’s stock price which must be unusal for them. Apple were always very good at making noise in their own space and are famous for having incredibly loyal customers but mainstream popularity is a difficult beast to manage.

HP must be scratching their heads (or their arses) but Big Blue have just trebled their best score in the TPC-C benchmark.

Kudos to IBM’s Power 5 group who I’m sure are delighted, but I think the devil may be in the detail - the Price/tpmC ratio of $5.19 is still very high - whatever happened to economies of scale?

This is quite cool - the EyeTV is a simple DVR and Video Encoder that consists mostly of a tuner (digital satellite/cable and/or analogue) and a firewire port, to be connected to a Mac. Quite an elagent solution - the Mac provides the UI and storage for the EyeTV.

In contrast, most other DVRs (TiVO, ReplayTV) have everything they need built in but consequently getting anything off those boxes (i.e. mpeg-2 files) to archive them is difficult if not impossible. With the EyeTV, you can take recorded programs and watch them on your Mac (or back onto your TV?) whenever you want. I like that, record onto a Powerbook and when you go away for the weekend, you can bring missed programs from the week with you.

A review in What Satellite and Digital TV magazine seems to approve but the picture of the remote control has ruined it for me - that’s the same unit that controls an NT Digital STB. If there was ever a price for digital STBs with slow reactions, that NTL box would win hands down - consequently, I can’t stand handling that remote! Lets hope the EyeTV doesn’t act the same way.

Oh, and their Electronic Program Guide, run by tvtv covers Irish terrestrial channels. I just wonder how well it integrates with a NTL Digital STB?

It is a bit pricey though!

Do you worry about your poor little iPod in the cold winter months? Well, then Apple have just the accessory for you - socks for your iPod, I kid you not…

If Apple spent a little bit more time working on the iPod’s Dirty Little Secret I might in the future invest in a whizz bang X-generation iPod to replace my 40gig that currently has a battery life of around 1 hour. Until then, I’m looking at alternatives.

For what it’s worth, a little insight to the iPod-less after over a year using said 40G iPod - despite white Apple’s marketing dept and whatever inflated opinion you have of your music collection, no average person needs to carry 10,000+ songs around in their pocket all the time. Plan to keep all your songs on your Mac/PC, buy an iPod mini and synchronize it with an iTunes playlist (a subset of all your music) rather than the whole iTunes library. Trust me, you’ll actually be able to see the wood for the trees if you do this, and your battery will last a lot longer.

Oh, and don’t leave your iPod in your jacket pocket when you get home - you know it will end up in the washing machine at some stage if you do.

I’ve never seen Yahoo or Google do this:

Yeah, yeah I know it’s a beta but what a debut!

I’m a big fan of getting away from it all by sticking a big set of cans on, especially at work when working close to an office with sales people in it, so this review of headphones (from ($15 to $500!) by PlaylistMag is one I’m bookmarking for when my current buds have gone past their best.

Unfortunately, the bad part of having great fones is that the background interference generated by the average laptop becomes more prominent, but for home theatre use, there are plenty of options there!

So Firefox 1.0 has been released, but why is there a Google Firefox Start Page on Google’s website (not the Mozilla site)?

A Google branded Firefox build, distributed via Google’s homepage(s) would certainly help the Firefox project’s goal of gaining 5% of the browser market a lot quicker than even they’d imagined…

Word is NTL have started broadcasting Sky Sports Extra on channel 405, for those that already subscribe to their Sky Sports package, about time, given Sky regularly schedule Champions League games on that channel.

They wouldn’t dare use this as an excuse to increase their charges now would they?

Wow, I’m still in shock - it would seem that there are over 59million morons and millionares in the US and a man with both attributes no less is in charge for another four years. Exactly how scared are ye over there?

The term ‘only in America’ seems strangely appropriate.

Gizmodo has just pointed out that BMW have introduced a dog seatbelt extra for their cars sold in Japan. Aw, how cute, you might say but spare a thought for the poor Japanese drivers who have to drive around risking the possibility that a Saint Bernard may at any minute “shoot out like a missile” from any car that crashes nearby with an unbelted beast. Hate that.