The Apple TV has been a modest success, it just wasn't another iPhone or iPod. The estimates I've seen suggest that over the last 2.5 years Apple has sold about 7.5 million Apple TVs which isn't bad considering that most were probably sold in the U.S. By contrast, the XBox 360 sold just under 12 million units in the U.S. during its first three years. Moreover, the XBox actually lost money during most of its lifetime while the Apple TV has always been profitable (on a hardware cost basis).TV
They can still save the
Lala would certainly be coming to the
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Apple Acquires Streaming Music Service Lala Media
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I came to Lala back when it was still a trading service and lamented it's move to streaming music. As the trading started drying up, I discovered Music Boomerang and have been happy with that. Sometimes it's nice to acquire a physical CD for $1.00 and get help other music listeners by sending off CD's I don't listen to anymore.
Good riddance Lala; Good luck Apple.
Good riddance Lala; Good luck Apple.
I get what you're saying about Microsoft losing money on the Xbox in the early years, but I think that can be taken the wrong way. That's how console systems work, and they recoup their costs from game companies. Again, your point is valid, but could be misleading.
Well, both the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3 are now sold above their hardware cost (apparently), but during the early years both Microsoft and Sony lost billions of dollars on these systems and not all of that was made up in subsidizes from the game companies. It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft was reporting quarterly losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars in their XBox/gaming division. In fact, below is an article that claims that the XBox division is still losing money (partly because of the XBox's high failure rate).
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/05/03/microsoft-xbox-failure-departure/
It also says that Microsoft has lost about 7 billion dollars on the XBox alone.
Regarding Microsoft, however, the XBox has lost more than twenty five billion dollars over nearly a decade, not to mention countless amounts of management’s time and “talent”, for what?
If it weren’t for creative accounting in past fiscals, XBox would still be unprofitable for some 6-7 additional years and $6B-$7B in losses later.
Speaking of the warranty charge that was retroactively buried into a previous fiscal, here’s a report on what was really to blame -
Short form: to save perhaps $10M, MSFT designed the graphics chip in-house rather than using an outside expert – eventually resulting in the $1B+ warranty/recall charge. Oh well.
Is it turning a small profit now? No, nor will any unlikely future profits be nearly enough of a trickle to fill the unsurmountable deficit which its solely responsible for.
What remains misleading, is the notion that the XBox will eventually recoup even 3% of its losses - not in our lifetimes.
looks like Apple is confirming that they want to take iTunes "to the next level", according to 9to5Mac.
that's a broad-based statement, but obviously they are planning to do something with this service they just acquired.
that's a broad-based statement, but obviously they are planning to do something with this service they just acquired.
iPod Hi-Fi, and before you say it doesn't count because it was an accessory, it was a main focal point at an media event where the only other thing was the mini getting Intel processors, so it was pretty big, at least in Apple's point of view, it didn't fail because of it's quality though, most Apple products aren't flawed in that regard, it was it's price, and Apple's refusal to drop it.
I'm only pointing this out to prove that Apple's not a company with a halo over it's head (nor is Google or Microsoft or any other company), their goal, is to make money, that's the point of a business. I think though not just on MacRumors but the tech community as a whole, we need to stop bashing something just because [fill in the blank] makes it, or it's not made by [fill in the blank]. Companies make good products that some like and others don't, and even the companies that make a lot of good ones, sometimes make a blunder here and there. So maybe instead of getting condescending when someone uses another products than we do, we should consider the pluses it may have.
As Steve himself put it "We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose." You could easily fill Microsoft or Apple with any other company.
/Rant
Technically....
Doesn't matter. Like the dollar value menu at McDonalds, LALA offers convenience and an adequate bitrate for average listeners.
Besides, they'll probably add an audiophile section to one of these services eventually, charge a premium, etc...
Doesn't matter. Like the dollar value menu at McDonalds, LALA offers convenience and an adequate bitrate for average listeners.
Besides, they'll probably add an audiophile section to one of these services eventually, charge a premium, etc...
Wait...
I dunno about that...I'm streaming someone else's playlist right now. It's 38 songs, and would easily last my commute to and from.
I can play other playlists too. So I don't see the difference between Pandora accumulating a Music Genome based playlist, or me picking a playlist that looks interesting on Lala...
I dunno about that...I'm streaming someone else's playlist right now. It's 38 songs, and would easily last my commute to and from.
I can play other playlists too. So I don't see the difference between Pandora accumulating a Music Genome based playlist, or me picking a playlist that looks interesting on Lala...
And it isn't any different to any other company.
How do you think iTunes began? Apple didn't create iTunes, they bought Soundjam and built what people now know as iTunes on top of their software.
Even OSX was built with the technology they acquired when Apple bought NeXT OS.
It requires flash
Looks like the LALA service requires flash in order to use it on the iPhone. WTC!
Looks like the LALA service requires flash in order to use it on the iPhone. WTC!
Bingo
I joined the forums right now just to make this comment.
I've been a Lala user since early 2007, so Apple's interest is very exciting to me. It really is a testament to Lala's unique business model, which I'm surprised hasn't been done by any competitors yet. It's not internet radio--there are tons of those. It's not a subscription-based service, either! It's YOUR ENTIRE DIGITAL MUSIC COLLECTION, NO MATTER WHERE IT CAME FROM (CD, online store, anywhere) IN THE CLOUD! Apple has done well to snatch up this one... As long as they don't put an end to it!
wow 0.10 cents to stream a track whenever and forever seems awesome, and i haven't checked LaLa out but no monthly fee as well? and it adds all your itunes songs (the ones it can find) to your Cloud library free of charge.. beyond awesome... it is like having music anywhere (sort of like MobileMe for music) that is AWESOME, hope Apple doesn't mess this up... wonder if we will see a LaLa app supporting streaming over WiFi
I joined the forums right now just to make this comment.
I've been a Lala user since early 2007, so Apple's interest is very exciting to me. It really is a testament to Lala's unique business model, which I'm surprised hasn't been done by any competitors yet. It's not internet radio--there are tons of those. It's not a subscription-based service, either! It's YOUR ENTIRE DIGITAL MUSIC COLLECTION, NO MATTER WHERE IT CAME FROM (CD, online store, anywhere) IN THE CLOUD! Apple has done well to snatch up this one... As long as they don't put an end to it!
Well, anyway, Merry Christmas to Lala's founders. Stupid name, really smart people running it. Someone will have a nice Christmas this year!
Not infinity, but millions.
Anyway, I like the tagline, but technically Apple could have used it when it launched the iTunes App for iPhone and iPod Touch.
Yeah Apple is evil, go look up the definition of evil in the dictionary genius.
Um, riiiiight. Apparently you weren't around in the pre-Apple days when you had to pay $15 for a CD full of filler garbage just to legally get that one good song you liked.
Evil indeed.
Or like water in bottles. Oh, wait...
Needless to say - when company B does wind up losing, company A, more often than not, finds themselves in the win column.
Basically streaming rich PDF's?
Interesting thought but Apple isn't really in to streaming models, they can hardly handle the current load on there servers. Imagine a streaming model with x10 or x100 the current server load. I know Apple has been investing in server capacity but this is no small feat.
NeXT is an Odd case... Steve Jobs created NeXT, NeXT got sold to Apple and Steve Jobs became CEO of Apple.
So was this actually innovations on Apple's part?
Don't forget the Apple TV. Sure, it's still available, but it really can't be considered to be a succes.
ATI designed the GPU in the 360, I believe it's faulty motherboards which cause the high failure rate of 360's known to us all (personally in my case) as the RRoD.