News for Monday, 27 November 2006

Beside September's sales for College and University starts, Christmas is the most important period for Apple. Cupertino is heavily promoting iPods, expecting to bit all records, the recently introduced iPod Shuffle being already close to "out of stock" status due to higher than expected sales.
Of course this year, Apple will have to compete with Microsoft Zune, but this competitor seems to be following the same way than previous iPod-killers, probably due to its introduction date, much too close to the long-awaited PS3 from Sony. As a result most analyst and consumers were following first test, benchmarks and reports about the new version of the famous game console.
In addition to the iPod, on the hardware side, all Intel-based Macs will be available, most of them being freshly updated or introduced, so no risk of buying a soon outdated models. All hardware models are in line with their specifications, aggressively priced when compared to their equivalent PCs.
Last but not least, as usual around Christmas time (but also true for the rest of the year), the team is ready to advise you concerning hardware to choose for a present, simply ask your question in the dedicated topic of this news in our forum (click "Comments" from the news title, or follow the link: here).

A new version of aMSN is available, aka 0.96.
It fixes several bugs while bringing support for an increasing number of webcam as well as file transfer with Windows Live Messenger users.
Direct link to the official webpage: http://www.amsn-project.net/

The iPhone is generating such a “buzz” on the net that it becomes impossible not to hear about it wherever you go online.
In all likelihood, Apple's marketing group and Steve Jobs have controlled the game by releasing pieces of information about the iPhone in order to generate such news coverage, much larger than the most expensive ad campaign could have generated. In other words, how to have high-impact ads for free.
In comparison, the iTV device, officially introduced couple of weeks ago, doesn't really generate such enthusiasm or expectations. While we know the iTV will be introduced in January, nothing is really known about the iPhone.
To illustrate it, you can use search engines with "iPhone" as keywords or, more interesting maybe, look at the number of hits when searching "YouTube" with "iPhone" as a search criteria.
Of course, it is all about the money and market analysts as well as online betting sites are trying to make money with this rumour (http://www.bodog.com/sports-betting/business-financial-props.jsp). Apple managers might not like it, but it might be the price to pay for having such "free" marketing campaign around a potential product not officially announced yet.

A Report from Fabricius

One of the building in Paris' business area "La Defense" displays a huge ads campaign, entitled: "Apple and Microsoft fighting for the online music market"

This campaign, using a well-known painting featuring a naval battle, has been launched by a Business Newspaper "La Tribune", to illustrate the current manoeuvres around the online music market.