Week in review: Reading Apple's crystal ball
Tech community looks at Apple projects, while telephone companies measure outcome of FCC spectrum auction. Also: Redmond's rocky roads. (By CNET News.com's Steven Musil)
According to various sources,
As part of the deal, Apple would have to
The deal being discussed by the labels and Apple calls for the company to license the music and also "kick in a piece of the device sales," the source said.
The Apple device, which hasn't been determined yet, would come preprogrammed with a certain amount of music that, after a period of time--perhaps six months or a year--would roll into a subscription type of service plan, the source said.
Apple would be
"It smells like classic Sherman Antitrust Act to me," Pakman said. "I only know what I've read, but the plan sounds very similar to the tying practices Microsoft used with Windows (and) Explorer. And Microsoft is still paying the penalties for that one."
An Apple representative said the company does not comment on "rumor and speculation." The talks were first reported by the Financial Times.
The debate among CNET News.com readers on this topic was varied, with many baffled by the possible deal.
"This type of device is counter-culture to why people enjoy any music player, let alone an iPod,"
Sometimes it's more advantageous to be able to read lips rather than a crystal ball, as those following recent comments by Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen have learned. During a conference call to announce Adobe's first-quarter earnings, Narayen said Adobe "
"We can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves, and we think it benefits our joint customers," Narayen said. "So we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device."
However, apparently people read too much into that statement, and
Narayen's comments weren't exactly definitive, but they were judged by several media outlets to be a confirmation of Adobe and Apple's plans to put a Flash Player on the iPhone.
But Narayen also seems to have misunderstood the terms of the SDK. Flash isn't a mere third-party application, like a game or an instant-messaging client. It's a plug-in that would have to work very closely with Safari on the iPhone, and that's something Apple has declared off-limits to third-party developers at this time.
One of the U.S. government's most significant sales of wireless airwaves concluded,
The 700MHz spectrum, which is currently being used to air analog TV broadcasts, was put on the auction block by the Federal Communications Commission in January. It's scheduled to be freed up by February 2009 to make way for all-digital broadcasts.
Google had lobbied the FCC last summer to include several rules in the 700MHz spectrum auction that mandated open access. The FCC adopted only one of Google's proposed rules, which requires the winner to allow any device or application to connect to a network that uses this spectrum.
However, there's a
Why would Google bid if it didn't intend to win? By bluffing its way through the bid, Google was able to drive the price high enough to get the FCC to adopt open-access rules it pushed for that require the network operator to allow any device or application to connect to it.
Meanwhile, consumer watchdog groups and some lawmakers want to know
Despite the obvious financial success of the auction, it will be a long time before it's clear
Rocky in Redmond
Amazon.com may have accidentally stolen some of Microsoft's thunder--or it may have just helped clear up some confusion. Microsoft was unclear earlier in the week regarding when it would release its Vista Service Pack 1 to consumers. But the e-tailer put the matter to rest when it listed the release date as Wednesday
CNET News.com's Ina Fried has been
The main features expected in SP1 are fixes to avoid incompatibilities with some applications, as well as better reliability, security, and performance.
A new ranking of global brands shows
"The effect of Apple's 'Hi, I'm a Mac' advertising campaign may have taken its toll on Microsoft," CoreBrand CEO James Gregory said in a statement. "The launch of a series of new products, following a long, relatively dormant period, will be closely watched to see if it will have a positive impact on the Microsoft brand."
On the search front, the latest monthly market share numbers from ComScore
It's not clear that Yahoo is the answer to all that ails Microsoft's online business, but it is the biggest option out there, when it comes to boosting Microsoft's presence.
Yahoo is painting its financial projections as rosy to bolster its case with shareholders in a
Yahoo executives began a series of meetings with the company's largest institutional investors and showed them a presentation detailing the company's three-year financial projections that illustrates "the broader picture of all the assets," a source familiar with the matter says.
Also of note
The FBI has recently