Recent reports are stating that a company named Mediafour is producing a software package that will allow Windows users to use an ipod with windows products, most notably windows media player. One cannot imagine the mess this will cause. From itunes to ipod does not translate to media player to ipod. We here at the office feel dirty after thinking about the stylish ipod being in the hands of the untrained hands of the common widows user. Oh the humanity.!
Anyways, lets look at the bright side of this. This should allow sales of the ipod to skyrocket, as the only thing holding them back was the windows compatibility issue. Although Steve's idea of massive sales of Mac products to new Mac users may now be blurring, at least he will be comforted will all that extra cash that the windows market sales will produce.

IDVD2BOX

ZDnet screwed up, enough said. However if you look at the bottom of this page you will notice that ZDnet has replaced the Apple name with idvdbox's name. Guess they got one too many letters. Who is idvdbox again?

Hardware

Just to pump the ratings let talk about hardware for a second. Reports tell of a January release of the infamous flat-panel imac. The rumors on this mystic machine change weekly. There was a report that we produced on AppleGossip that the imac was to be changed from an all-in-one machine to a modular machine with a choice in LCD screens being available for consumers to choose from. When you buy your imac you will be allowed to choose either a 15 or 17 inch specially made LCD screen that will fit on the module. These rumors have never been substantiated but there was talk of sightings in a ware house of crates that were thought to contain the new imac modules. If Apple is looking at a January release for this long needed update to the imac, then maybe the G5 is not slated for release at this time also. If we are wrong, then January will be a very crazy month for all of us.

The G5 seems to be causing quite a large tremor in the community since we have been down. With all the rumors about super giga-hertz machines being released that will crush the Intel regime, there has been a lot to choose from. The best story is the story about the 2.8 GHz G5 chip. This chip has just recently been reported at MOSR. If you havenÕt already noticed, this is a fast chip. Regardless of the instruction capability of this processor, anything running at 2.8 GHz will smoke the processor market regardless of platform. Since IntelÕs itanium is only clocking in at 800MHz, Apple has nothing to worry about with prototypes clocking in at 1.6 GHz. What we think will happen may not be what everyone wants to happen. We here at AG believe that Intel is more than a producer of crappy chips with inflated clock speeds. We believe they are much more capable than that. We believe that they have the power to sway the entire computing worlds thought patterns. Once the itanium chip is released, a mass marketing scheme will already be well into the works spreading false information about clock speed and what the itanium will do for your ebusiness. Regardless of what AMD is planning, Intel will still dominate the market once the itanium is released. Clock speed will mean everything until the day the itanium is released, then and only then will Intel suddenly have an insight ( we see a commercial with a Buddhist or some other robed holy-man speaking the truth about clock speed) into what clock speed really means to a machine and that it is the actual makeup of the chip that governs its power. Expect a massive information campaign to explain that the itanium is the fastest chip regardless of its clock speed. With all this said, we are still stoked for the release of the G5 and its inflated clock speed. Market share is what Apple should be going for right now and not bottom line performance (quit snarling at us, it is the truth). Once Apple increases its market share beyond the 5% it has now maybe it will have the cash to produce more information and advertisements about its products and how great they really are.

What do you think?
AG