Briefly: flash iPods, iTMVS?, Jobs' N2N, Hon Hai, more...
Flash-memory production increasing over seas
Several reports indicate that flash-memory production is increasing in the far east, with prices falling slightly for chips of 2GB and higher capacities. Meanwhile, continued demand for consumer products has created a price surge for lower capacity 256MB and 512MB chips.
It's believed that Apple is feverishly working on a more advanced and feature-rich flash-based iPod that will make use of the higher capacity flash chips sometime this year.
iTunes Music Video Store ahead of iTunes Video Store?
Columnist Charles Arthur believes Apple's recent iTunes 4.8 release is the first step towards the creation of an Apple online music video store where consumers will be able to buy any of the music videos ever shown on MTV.
"For those looking to sell video, music videos are the easy way to go," he says. "They're self-contained, tell a story, appeal to a young audience which will remain faithful, they're memorable, you can return to them repeatedly and enjoy them, they're short (and so easily transported) and they offer fantastic branding for an artist."
Arthur speculates that such a service would stand to strengthen musicians branding while providing record labels a slight return on the investment made while producing the often costly videos.
"With that huge back catalogue of music videos out there, which otherwise just get aired by MTV or VH1 but don't generate much money, there's a strong incentive for the record companies to dust off the videos and deliver them to Apple."
Apple manufacturer to buy two plants from HP
Hon Hai the world?s second-largest electronics manufacturing service provider, plans to buy two desktop PC manufacturing plants from Hewlett-Packard. As part of the deal, the company, which does business in the United States under the trade name Foxconn, will take over design and manufacturing management at the two plants located in Australia and India, according to China's Commercial Times.
Foxconn currently serves as the overseas manufacturer of several popular Apple products, including the Mac mini, Power Mac G5, and AirPort Express wireless base station.
Photos of Steve Jobs' Gulfstream V Jet
A tipster point out this Airlines.net website, which features photos of the Gulfstream V Jet given to Steve Jobs, by Apple, after returning to the company in 2000.
The Turbo-Jet engine aircraft, named N2N, initially set the company back a cool $43.5 million. However, it continues to rack up usage charges, most recently costing the company $419,000 during its first fiscal quarter of 2005.
Apple recalls 128,000 laptop batteries
Apple and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission today disclosed a voluntary recall of rechargeable batteries for Apple's iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 computers.
The recall covers roughly 128,000 units in the U.S. and was prompted by six reports worldwide -- two in the U.S. -- of the batteries overheating. The recalled lithium ion batteries were used in Apple's 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch PowerBook G4.
The recalled batteries include those with model numbers A1061, A1078 and A1079 and serial numbers that begin with HQ441 through HQ507 or 3X446 through 3X510.
Consumers are advised to stop using the recalled batteries immediately and contact Apple to arrange for a replacement battery, free of charge.
Several reports indicate that flash-memory production is increasing in the far east, with prices falling slightly for chips of 2GB and higher capacities. Meanwhile, continued demand for consumer products has created a price surge for lower capacity 256MB and 512MB chips.
It's believed that Apple is feverishly working on a more advanced and feature-rich flash-based iPod that will make use of the higher capacity flash chips sometime this year.
iTunes Music Video Store ahead of iTunes Video Store?
Columnist Charles Arthur believes Apple's recent iTunes 4.8 release is the first step towards the creation of an Apple online music video store where consumers will be able to buy any of the music videos ever shown on MTV.
"For those looking to sell video, music videos are the easy way to go," he says. "They're self-contained, tell a story, appeal to a young audience which will remain faithful, they're memorable, you can return to them repeatedly and enjoy them, they're short (and so easily transported) and they offer fantastic branding for an artist."
Arthur speculates that such a service would stand to strengthen musicians branding while providing record labels a slight return on the investment made while producing the often costly videos.
"With that huge back catalogue of music videos out there, which otherwise just get aired by MTV or VH1 but don't generate much money, there's a strong incentive for the record companies to dust off the videos and deliver them to Apple."
Apple manufacturer to buy two plants from HP
Hon Hai the world?s second-largest electronics manufacturing service provider, plans to buy two desktop PC manufacturing plants from Hewlett-Packard. As part of the deal, the company, which does business in the United States under the trade name Foxconn, will take over design and manufacturing management at the two plants located in Australia and India, according to China's Commercial Times.
Foxconn currently serves as the overseas manufacturer of several popular Apple products, including the Mac mini, Power Mac G5, and AirPort Express wireless base station.
Photos of Steve Jobs' Gulfstream V Jet
A tipster point out this Airlines.net website, which features photos of the Gulfstream V Jet given to Steve Jobs, by Apple, after returning to the company in 2000.
The Turbo-Jet engine aircraft, named N2N, initially set the company back a cool $43.5 million. However, it continues to rack up usage charges, most recently costing the company $419,000 during its first fiscal quarter of 2005.
Apple recalls 128,000 laptop batteries
Apple and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission today disclosed a voluntary recall of rechargeable batteries for Apple's iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 computers.
The recall covers roughly 128,000 units in the U.S. and was prompted by six reports worldwide -- two in the U.S. -- of the batteries overheating. The recalled lithium ion batteries were used in Apple's 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch PowerBook G4.
The recalled batteries include those with model numbers A1061, A1078 and A1079 and serial numbers that begin with HQ441 through HQ507 or 3X446 through 3X510.
Consumers are advised to stop using the recalled batteries immediately and contact Apple to arrange for a replacement battery, free of charge.
Comments
rather boring. I would've expected something a bit... cooler. Maybe even an iridescent white/ivory or something.
lets start a photoshop competition
Originally posted by Mike Moscow
the entire article is boring - nothing new
Better than another tedious 'Analyst say...' though, I'm sick of the dang analysts and their boring predictions. At least know I know I need to check my iBook battery - wonder if it's safe to pull it out whilst the beast is running...
Originally posted by ZO
lets start a photoshop competition
Oh it's on now...
Originally posted by ZO
hmmm... all white plane.
rather boring. I would've expected something a bit... cooler. Maybe even an iridescent white/ivory or something.
lets start a photoshop competition
I think Larry Ellison got a MiG-29 for less than 40 mil. That is much cooler.
◊ Hope the new plants start producing quad core PM G5's or miniG5.
◊ Please, ditch the plain Steve no need for the cooperate excess.
Originally posted by AquaMac
◊Please, ditch the plain Steve no need for the cooperate excess.
Plain Steve? That's not a nice thing to say!
Originally posted by AquaMac
◊ Please, ditch the plain Steve no need for the cooperate excess.
You probably need to slow down a bit. I'm sure you meant:
◊ Please, ditch the plane Steve no need for the corporate excess.
Also, it may or may not be "corporate excess"...depends on what the company thinks Steve's time is worth. Working around commercial airline schedules may be a great waste of time for a major corporate CEO.
But if you want to start calculating the time WASTED for standing in line, waiting for delays, and whatnot... when you're someone of Jobs' status, every minute of your time is calculated in tens of thousands of dollars.
almost half a mil is more than fine for this situation
Now then, if they REALLY wanted to be efficient, they couldve simply gotten a Net Jets subscription or something, but, whatever...
Originally posted by AquaMac
◊ Would a 4Gig shuffle kill the miniPod?
◊ Hope the new plants start producing quad core PM G5's or miniG5.
◊ Please, ditch the plain Steve no need for the cooperate excess.
Not if the iPodMini went to 10gig.
Me too
Me too
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
The plane is named "N2N"?
"N2N" is the Civil Aviation Registry number of the aircraft. The prefix letter N indicates a standard U.S. registration. The registration suffix (2N in this case) consists of a combination of letters and/or numbers unique to each aircraft.
Originally posted by hugodrax
who cares, they gave him a jet and it costs half a million to run. we all pay the jet tax with every apple product.
Apple sells about million Macs a year...so the "tax" you seems annoyed with is only about 50 cents a Mac...but it is really much less than than if you amortize it over iPods and software as well.