[Sussex] The Indie recommends Linux!

[Iain Stevenson]

> In common with the others I've seen they predict that iPod will  start to
> excercise it's market dominance and in turn make iTunes the number one
> online music seller and promote sales of the Mac.  Online music sales will
> be the driving force in the consumer technology market this year and they
> reckon Apple has already one the battle - and by not supporting Microsofts
> media formats they've beaten M$FT at their own game.

I thik this one is complete cobblers.  Apple doesn't make any money out of
iTunes because it passes heaps of money to the RIAA.  In Europe the
complex situation regarding music copyright is also likely to make any
Euro iTunes lose money too.  So Apple will make money from the iPods but
not the service - it will eventually scrap or sell iTunes, I think.  Given
Steve's penchant for scrapping existing online services or varying their
conditions - remember the "free email for life" that became .mac - I
wouldn't take bets on iTunes remaining in its present format.

As far as M$ goes, it has already established dominance for WMF9 in the TV
(set top box) market and on the PC - partially because the MPEG4 lot have
made a complete hash of building DRm into their format - nothing has been
achieved other than Apple's proprietary extensions.  SO I'd take any tilts
at M$ dominance in digiral media with a bit of a pinch of salt -
depressing, but true.

.... I'm still using MacOS 9 which is perfectly good for my need.  Who
wants Unix on a Mac?

  Iain