Talkin' Smack: Wait for It....

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Opinion: Page (2) of 2 - 07/17/02

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Talkin' Smack: Wait for It.... Whatever Apple's got cooking for the pro market, Jobs isn't talking yet Also on the hardware side, Apple cut the prices of existing iPods by $100 and also launched a new 20 GB version for $499. I know Apple views the iPod as a consumer device, but I see it as a professional tool as well, since it can serve not only as a portable jukebox, but also as a portable storage device for not a whole lot more cash than any other portable FireWire drive.

As for the software Apple's software announcements, well, I don't know. Some of the stuff was all right, but nothing incredible. What I can't understand is why we still haven't seen any new developments from Apple's Nothing Real purchase. Is Apple perhaps waiting for next week's Siggraph show to talk about it? I hope so because Nothing Real had some seriously amazing technologies that could bolster the Mac platform tremendously in the pro market. But, once again, we'll just have to wait to see.

Finally we come to the new .Mac initiative, Apple's replacement for iTools and an obvious play on Microsoft's .Net initiative, which, as Jobs pointed out, has come to nothing so far. The new .Mac sounded pretty spectacular as Jobs started talking about it, with some decent new software tools, browser-based e-mail and 100 MB of iDisk storage. And then he dropped the bomb: the free iTools is being replaced by the fee-based .Mac.

Yes, fee-based.

Can anyone say ".Mad?" I mean, do you know how many people have my mac.com e-mail address? And now all of a sudden I'm going to have to pay $49.95 to keep it? And that's just the introductory offer! After that, it's going to cost me $99.95 per year. Look here, I thought iTools was an incentive for people who might feel a bit squeamish about paying $3,200 for a computer that runs at one-third the clock speed of comparably priced peecees.

I guarantee this new fee-based model will bomb like a peecee!

I don't even know what could possibly drive Apple into a move like this. iTools isn't popular enough to justify such a drastic action, and it will certainly curb enthusiasm and possibly even hurt Mac sales. But, then again, maybe Apple has something so incredible coming out in the near future that they can afford to throw away any of the good will that the free version of iTools has generated. But, of course, we'll just have to wait and see.

Contact the author: Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at [email protected].

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Contact the author: David Nagel is the editor and producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Apple DVD Studio Pro, Mac OS, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Corel Painter, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at [email protected].

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Talkin' Smack: Wait for It.... by DMN Editorial at Aug. 03, 2004 11:21 pm gmt

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