Adding Understanding

With Apple's announcement of the iPhone today it seems we will soon have not just a weak web client in every cell phone, but a full web browser and even the ability to have full blown web servers in every pocket. Sure makes some of Dave Winer's ideas about desktop servers get extremely interesting. Now how soon can I get one!

The MacWorld keynote is less than a day away. I thought it interesting to compare Bill Gates' CES keynote with what we expect from Steve Jobs. Dave Winer was at the Gates event and says it was boring. I wish he was going to be at MacWorld to comment. Perhaps it too would be boring but the Jobs reality distortion field will prevent anyone from knowing and will keep us all mesmerized.

Shares of Apple Computer rebounded on Friday with news that CEO Steve Jobs knew of options back dating at the company but did not benefit from the practice. According to a New York Times article "Mr. Jobs did not benefit financially from any questionable stock awards."

My reaction to this is mixed. Certainly as a long-time user of Apple hardware and someone who hopes to continue using the best hardware on the market I'm glad to hear it. On a personal note I have some stock I was planning to sell next week and buy Apple shares so I'm disappointed the price rebounded today.

According to this article Universal music may be looking for royalties on each iPod sale. Let's rewind a bit and see how funny this request really is. Two weeks ago Universal said that iPod owners were thieves. This came at the time when they were announcing their support of the Zune which seems to be under performing the weakest of expectations.

Going back further one sees that Universal, and their traditional music label comrades, didn't have much use for the iPod. When it came to be five years ago they seemed to think it was just another crappy MP3 player and who would care. Since then Apple Computer has managed to set the music distribution business on it's ear. Not only is it not a crappy player but with increasing ease we, the consumers, don't need the labels, or want the labels, to filter music for us. Instead we can go directly to the source and get music. Best of all our dollars go to supporting the artists not the same executives who think we're all a bunch of thieves.