AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

Source:   Appleinsider . What made iTunes great in the early years and still is that you can buy single songs.  However, that could change some what.  Not by much but you can be sure there are going to be those who will be very critical about what Apple may be pushing with the music labels.  Apple is looking for exclusive content to prop up sagging album sales.  One culprit seems to be the growing streaming services.   Asking for exclusive content is one thing but Apple is also looking at windowing - a period of time between the release of a new album and individual singles for sale.  This would allow for more album sales.  Furthermore, if this deal is accepted by the studios, we can also see less free content on Youtube and streaming services during this window of time for which Apple wants to promote album sales. The thing is that Apple may actually get what it wants.  In what was probably a trial run, Beyonce released a surprised album exc...

I got all excited this morning when I saw in my RSS reader that Apple was giving everyone who buys a current model Apple TV, which was introduced almost two years ago, an iTunes credit of $25.  At the time, the first thought jumped into mind:  Apple is looking to clear out inventory so they can make way to release a newer model with more bells and whistles. Well, it appears that is not the case.  With his famous one word  "nope"   Jim Dalrymple of The Loop Insight dispelled that line of wishful thinking.  I mean "c'mon!", right? Well, the dude has not been wrong as far as I know.  And while I'm not sure if he calls into Apple or someone from Apple calls him about it, Mr. Dalrymple seems pretty tied into some of what's going on in Cupertino.   However, can you blame a guy for thinking this?  It's not unheard of for companies to discount products or to add incentives to move sales to make way for an upgrade product.   Essentially, you're g...

As you may well know by now, Facebook bought Whatsapp for $16 billion in cash, stock, and retention.  A few months ago, some quarters of the Internet was abuzz with Snapchat's rejection of the $3 billion overture from Facebook. I'd would have sold.  Take my billion and move onto something else.  Given the Whatsapp deal, Snapchat was right in not dealing.  It could have asked for two to five times more from Facebook. Still, it's hard to fathom if all of this will pay off or are we in the midst of a social network bubble not unlike when Internet companies in the late 90s and early 2000s were throwing money away left and right. The question now is what's next for Facebook, what it'll do with Whatsapp (supposedly, nothing will change...right), and how will other social networks or competitors like Google arm themselves.  There are plenty of other messaging "giants" out there that could be for sale given the right price. Like Snapchat or Line.

You think the ocean is big enough where humans and sea creatures, both large and small, mammal or otherwise, can co-exist.  Maybe never even bump into one another.  Maybe even safer than say walking on the streets of NY at night with your iPhone hanging out for all to steal. Not so as this diver soon realized.  An giant octopus lashed out and tried to grab his camera away.  Who would have though that you'd get mugged by a sea creature just for going for a swim. And as you'll see, the dude would not none of that and made sure the octopus didn't make off with his gear.  Me?  I'd drop the thing and swim back up to surface.  I'd be like "giant octopus! Screw that!  You can have my camera!"

I like that Sony has bowed out of certain markets and continues down that trend.  More recently, they're shedding the TV and PC businesses.  Bravo!  But it was done because they finally saw the writings on the wall.  See, in reading this Bloomberg post about former Apple excutives.  It really has nothing to do with the subject matter of this post except that I came across a section in it that we already know from Apple's history and its brush with dead before Steve Jobs 2.0 came in and reignited the innovative flame at Apple, enriched our lives with great new technologies, and positively disrupted market after market. Apple had to shed a lot of dead weight before that happened. That was going on before Jobs' return and continued further when he got rid of the Newton, simplified the Mac line, and dropped other less or money losing ventures. Once that was one, all the clutter and noise was gone, Apple got back to work and on track. I believe Sony should use...

I love the world that Nokia has done to prop up Windows Phone.  And it certainly has given Android a run for its money on the low-end but that's about it.  And now, with Microsoft buying out Nokia's mobile biz, which pretty much consisted of Lumia devices running WP and only because Microsoft paid them to, even HTC is looking to move away from investing any more time and money on it ( PC World ). Without the sheer will of the money generated by profits from Windows and Office, it's doubtful anyone, including Samsung, would want to make Windows Phone devices at this point.  And without special deals, it's also doubtful anyone is interested in making Windows RT devices or tablets running the full Windows versions. Most PC guys are interested in doing convertibles because, let's face it, people still will buy Windows laptops that double as tablets but not tablets that double as laptops. As for Windows Phone's future, Microsoft seems content in being a dist...

There's been a lot of talk in the last year about Apple's unicorn iWatch.  First, we don't know that it's a watch.  If anything, based on what's swirling around the Web, it's more of an iLife device.  Not iLife like the suite of Mac and iOS apps but about your life and health in general. Regardless of whatever you want to call it, when Apple does release it, it will attempt to disrupt a whole new market and quite possibly change the way we live with respect to this device. And it's not going to the market we think - not the watch industry.  Not directly.  Devices like the Nike Fuelband or Fitbit's arsenal of pedometers will be impacted but only an ancillary impact or afterthought of this new Apple device. It may well be the whole healthcare system that Apple is going after.  Tackling a whole host of issues and problems all at once. Hypertension, diabetes, and obesity to name a few.  In essence, this iLife device could be a condition-based syste...