IPods should NOT BE INCLUDED in computers sales. Macs maybe getting a climb and I will not knock that, but IPods are for people that have no idea what they are doing and have to much money on their hands and are willing to sue for stupid reasons. I am thinking about switching to MAC, but I won't give up my Windows and will never give up Linux.

but IPods are for people that have no idea what they are doing?
So is windows.

Your whole post was utterly stupid. If you really need a flaw in the IPod, the largest was the battery life and Apple had to be sued to replace them and then they still only gave people a discount on a new one.

"But it is funny that you cite a failure of IPod because they are for people who "have no idea what they are doing", but you later credit Windows for pandering to the "70-100 IQ range"!

Let's see... its a shortcoming of Apple to have addressed the mass market with the IPod, but their computers are a failure for NOT addressing that same mass market for which MS Should be credited! "

Damn you are stupid. You even forget what you posted yourself.

*lowers head and shakes slowly*

His post was stupid??? Your post was BEYOND stupid, somewhere in the completely lacking a single live brain cell category! You call someone stupid after you say that a certain product should not be counted in a profit report? Your head must be so far up your a$$, I can't imagine how you could see without a glass belly-button

You poor bitter soul. Quit whining, buy some stock , and make some money.

You can't knock Apple for making a good profit. They are highly innovative and responsive. No other company is doing what they are acomplishing.

Besides, Apple has always been the underdog...

Careful! You're not allowed to say that! ;-)

The news come just in time to shut up some rodents talking about market share bla bla. Apple is a healty company and that's great news. I hope they continue that way.
About DRM, that's plain cr*p, I hope we can get rid of it ASAP. A point to correct for Apple, but time to time.

Imagine...profit from a company who, because they basically own the market for downloaded music and the player ya'll play it on, can charge absurd markups on nearly everything they sell.

Not Apple's fault at all, I actually blame RIAA for making the downloadable music market so litigious most companies are scared white about getting into it that they lock it down with so much DRM the users won't use it, or with such a high price the market cannot sustain it.

If someone could enter the US market with lossless audio at decent prices and an intuitive interface for converting that lossless audio to whatever your player supports, they'd literally blow Apple away.

Just try to argue with that. I dare ya. ;)

Even lossless audio would have DRM, which means no conversion. It'd be great if companies just sold non-DRM music, but gotta be realistic :)

Lossless files are too big!
Hence MP3s, where have you been?

So prices are too high for music? Do you not have .99 cents? Kinda non-issues unless your living on the street begging for money. Come on just say it you hate Apple and you love windoze and craprosoft's slopy work. ;) Just kidding bro.

PC_TOOL said:
"If someone could enter the US market with lossless audio at decent prices and an intuitive interface for converting that lossless audio to whatever your player supports, they'd literally blow Apple away."

MANY HAVE TRIED ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!

.99 is way to much for a s***ty song that you MIGHT listen too a few times. I think music is way over rated and everyone of the retarded people (not really the word I wanted to use) needs to grow the heck up (again not my pick of words)and get past the teen years. Music was cool as kids, but you aren't a kid anymore. It's NICE to have once in a while, but grow up, it's freaking music! Not food, water, or shelter!

t"but gotta be realistic "

That people are to damn greedy for their own good and are killing the whole freaking world with their greed? No, it's time people all grow up and get past the stupid s***, and back to what is important. You all are worried about a freaking MP3 player that costs more than it would to feed your family for a month, and you see no problem with that. You All need to grow up, the world is starving, No better yet we are starving here in the US with high cost gas and utilities, but you are worried about a freaking MP3 player. Sad!

Check out "www.allofmp3.com". You can get music for about $0.10 per song in any format you choose whether it's mp3 or Windows Media Lossless.

lmao.

"So prices are too high for music? "

Yep. :)

"Do you not have .99 cents?"

Much more than that, actually. Probably because Idon't waste it on lossy rip-off copies.

"Kinda non-issues unless your living on the street begging for money."

Unless you actually want value for your money...

"Come on just say it you hate Apple and you love windoze and craprosoft's slopy work."

Apple's just dandy. But then againn, so is MS. :)

"MANY HAVE TRIED ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!"

Name one. Just one. Must be: US Based, Offering Lossless, DRM-free, and current/popular music.

So....wanna try again?

The only major caveat is that you can pretty much guarantee you're still screwing the artists, but...

When presented with few legal alternatives, and since it is still legal to import music purchased outside the US, this is as good as it gets.

...sure beats P2P.

They offer the music up in pretty much any format you'd like, and also offer lossless encodes for many tracks(FLAC/WAV).

Yeah, cuz a 300GB drive is sooo expensive nowadays.

Got a problem with folks (other than yourself, of course) posting their opinions, pal?

Nope. I don't. I can choose to be realistic, idealistic, or flat out crazy. :)

I usually reside somewhere in the middle.

They *do* sell non-DRM music. It's called a CD. *grin*

...unless it's from Sony/BMG. ;P

Go preach elsewhere, buddy. This is a tech-news site....

One might assume, in such a setting, we should be allowed to discuss the latest tech.

It's not the latest, it old over priced crap. It's not "preaching" it's pointing out a fact.

Maybe you should donate your computer to a charity.

Huh? An Ipod is only $299.

I spend more than that on groceries every week LOL.

No a fact is not an opinion. Dude get out of your parents' garage and grow the heck up.

You waist a LOT. I spend about $300 a month on food and I grill steaks two or three times a week. I am also feeding four people.

Gee, almost 80% of the market think your opinion is nonsense.

I don't waste much, I buy lots of quality stuff. :-)

I feed 5, but we are pretty serious carnivores.

;-)

Believe me, none of it gets "wasted" haha!

So you missed the part where I said it wasn't Apple's fault?

...and you mis-took a suggested solution as whining.

Apparently anyone suggesting that Apple *isn't* the be-all and end-all is considered whining by you?

Ah....the fan boy. Always entertaining. Who needs logic, when you have fanatic devotion, right?

Did you even notice that my post said nothing bad about Apple at all, but instead decried the RIAA's methods of stomping out iPod and iTunes competition?

And "free market"? You don't really believe that sh1t, do you? If so, you're even more deluded than I thought.

perhaps he should have added, 'pun intended'?

The Nano is old and overpriced? The MacBook is old and overpriced?

Hate to break it to ya, but it's only fact if it's true, pal.

I bet you voted for Bush too. Both times. OH, I am sure you are proud of that too.

As we were talking about the IPod, not any of the others products.

Seeing how you were trying to correct me and you were wrong, I am not the one that needs to look it up, but you are. http://www.tfd.com/allot
http://www.tfd.com/lot
However, if you could read then you would know that a lot is a unit and can be waisted. Thanks for your time as you are here waisting everyone else's.

Yeah, that might work. Otherwise it just sounds like he's been grillin' mad cow.

Oh, that explains it! So you LOST 2 times! Deal with it!

Go Apple! Many though, just a thought to bring the prices down a little. Apple's great, just a bit expensive. :-/

Hence the enormous profit, perhaps?

Actually, if you price out an equivalent Dual Core Intel machine from Dell or any other manufacturer, Apple's prices really are only marginally higher. Considering the quality of the product you are getting, as well as the operating system and applications that come for free, it's a pretty great deal.

When Apple's prices were $1,000+ more than Intel offerings, things were different. Now you're talking about $100 to $200. That's not a huge barrier.

Apple seems to be all over the news. I think its great. I would love to get an apple PDA/Ipod/Phone some day... that would be so cool.

Yeah, the MACs are only a little higher, but do 100% less than any PC out to date. Now explain with facts why anyone would want to spend the extra money for a slower and 100% less compatible unit.

You, really need to stop and read some intel! Sorry that people like you come out of school and will never make it in life with distortions such as yours. I feel for you!

I would love to see Apple/Mac to make anything that is cost effective and that is even 50% as compatible as even Linux is to date. Every game that makes a MAC version, is held up by months for the MAC version and it is still behind the PC* version, If one is ever made. I am not saying Windows is better, just easier. Easier will always win with 96% of the population with 100-70 IQ. You understand that 70 is the border line for metal retardation. Mac will need to come a long way, before it is even 20% of the computers out there.

* PC meaning Windows based computer.

So you think backwards compatibility is unimportant? Maybe Wintel computers should have switched to the Intel Itanium processor instead of going with AMD64 processors. Apple's choice to use EFI, on a 32-bit platform no less, is just plain stupid. EFI is probably not going to see widespread acceptance until 32-bit versions of Windows are discontinued. As for the ExpressCard slot, Apple should be including a standard Cardbus slot as well since there are very few ExpressCard add-ons available.

MAcs imcompatible? With what? PC's are incompatible! Incompatible with the only OS that really matters: OSX.

I guess you never played World of Warcraft? I know it's only 1 game but it came out at the same time for both Windows and MacOS X (PowerPC at the time).. it only took them a month (if even) to get a Universal Binary version out for Intel Macs and when they release a patch it comes out for both Windows and MacOS at the same time. (and if i'm not mistaken they've done this for ALL the games they've ever released!)

Every gaming company should look at Blizzard and take a hint from them. They know how to make good games and they know how to make them for both platforms!

Ah...

Yes, the Intel offerings from Apple are rather decently priced.

One might question how a 4% increase in Mac sales translates to $290mil in profit though...I'd think most of that actually came from iPod and iTunes sales.

Sorry I didn't specify where I figured most of the profits were coming from.

They are so much better than that crappy EA company. I have loved most everything Blizzard has made. I could never say that I even liked 99.99% of EA's crap. They are to worried about graphics where as Blizzard if for the game play.

OSX is the only OS that really matters huh...yea tell that to all the companies I've consulted for...over 50k pc's and 5k servers and I'm yet to run into a mac...yea OSX is the only OS that really matters...:)

You must be new here. I know you are. No, far from it. I live hundreds of miles away from my mom, and own a company with my Beautiful wife and two perfect children.

I don't mind computer companies using the latest technology. I'm just saying that computers also need to support the previous generation of hardware along with the newer hardware.

I have a computer that uses an Asus SK8N motherboard with an AMD Opteron Model 240 CPU (socket 940). I'm also using a AGP 8x nVidia GeForce 6800GT graphics card that cost me $300. Now that AMD is beginning to switch to newer DDR2 memory this means my entire computer has become obsolete almost overnight.

Basically to run Windows Vista's Aero Glass interface I have to upgrade my graphics card just because Microsoft says so even though an AGP 8x nVidia GeForce 6800GT could easily run Aero Glass. Since a newer equivalent graphics card probably only uses PCI Express this means I have to get a new motherboard, CPU, and possibly new DDR2 memory in addition to a $300 or more graphics card. You can see why backwards compatibility might be important at least in the short term.

LMAO You are so freaking retarded! LMAO Where do you come up with this crap? Damn distortions.

Can you even read? Now I have asked many times for a fan boy like yourself to answer me this one question; What can a MAC do better than a good AMD that is still cheaper than almost all of the MACs out there? Not one person has ever been able to prove anything at all. Every time I ask this question it goes unanswered.

You have YET to have a point about anything! You have only proven that you don't know how to read.

"Now, YOU tell me why Microsoft uses Macs for ALL of their internal graphics development? YOU tell me why Apple owns the digital audio workstation workstation market? "
OMG do you truely believe this bulls***? LMAO You are the stupidest person I have ever see post on BN, yet.

Try looking at some meta tags once in a while. Or do you even know what that is?

BTW, you have yet to say anything that a MAC can do better. No one has yet.

You have made some really off the wall crap posts, but the blatant lies about the use of MACs to produce Microsofts graphics was the worst, yet.

Lets see; MACs hold a smaller percentage the market, than either Windows or Linux, yet Linux take more work to do even the simplest task. Now Windows holds the top slot, being a point and click system, where as MAC and Linux aren't. Macs have little to no compatibility to anything, even the larger companies are more inclined to include Linux than they are MACs. Most of us had MACs in school, but 90% of us now use Windows and Linux, now tell why that is, if MACs are so great. Companies support Windows and Linux, because a of a "lot" of reasons, that I can't answer, but they do for two that I can. One, MACs are over priced for what you get (slowly changing). Two, they aren't any better despite the hype.

Still after at least 50+ posts asking the same question, still no answer. Are there any people out there that aren't f** fan boys that can truly post a response as to how MACs are better?

Basic tenet of business: charge what the market will bear. If the price were too high, the profits would go down.

Actually, he made an excellent point in direct response to your rant. I think we're all starting to to think you need to take a pill and lay down for a while.

What makes you think you have to upgrade anything. My computer has a very similar configuration to yours and I plan on running Vista on it. I haven't seen anything that says it won't work. If you have, please point me to it. Thanks.