Burn, burn, burn...

the fire is ready for the marshmellows! A Macnight thank you and farewell to Al Lewis who no doubt gave us many childhood memories and laughs. I know I'm late with this but the end of the year is typically when we review all those that have passed over the last year. A little known fact about him is that he ran for Governor of New York in 1998 as a green party candidate. Have a marshmellow for Al. Happy New Year.

That's more like it!

On this Friday, December 22 2006, the iPod shuffle is number 1, 30 Gb iPod with video number 2, silver iPod nano number 3, and 80 Gb iPod with video number 4 on the Amazon Electronic bestseller list! Order is restored in the universe!

Interesting look at the Zune

There's an interesting interview with Bob Cringely (who used to work at Apple) regarding the Zune. In his case, he thinks the Zune is actually a decoy to its exploits with the XBox. Fascinating.

Interview

Amazon Best Seller List

For the first time in like a month, the iPod Shuffle rose to the top of the Amazon best seller list for electronics. The last several weeks it has hovered around number 21, and today (this morning) it's on top! I find it so interesting to watch online shopping preferences fluctuate. In fact, right now the MP3 players are totally dominating electronics, whereas the last few weeks a couple oc camera models have been going crazy! Why is the shuffle on top right now and not before? Any theories?

Cisco beats Apple to the punch

A recent article describes Cisco's latest gadget. It is called "The iPhone". Yes Cisco has the trademark for the name iPhone so Apple is out of luck using that name for there supposed new phone. Cisco released the phone under there Linksys division. So now what should Apple call there phone. My suggestion is "iCon" as in connection. It keeps you connected to the rest of the world and the silly pun can't be missed. For better or worse.

Link to story.

Zune is on clearance

You knew it had to come down to this. Amazon has a clearance type section for I believe is products they want to clear out of inventory. For a short time you were able to buy a white Zune for only $90! This was far below the asking price of $250. And Microsoft even said that the $250 price was a loss for them. I hope Amazon did not take the loss for this inventory. If they did, then they might think twice about stocking the next version of Zune Microsoft is hyping. This probably goes for other merchants too. I saw a big Zune display in Sears. Of course Sears has not been a trend setter for quite some time.

Apple stock still shooting for the moon

Apple stock continues to soar lately. A major investment firm ( name escapes me ) just raised it's projected price for Apple from $90 / share to $110 / share. I am not sure what is driving this directly. Is it mostly based on projected holiday iPod sales? Is it in anticipation of future products at MacWorld in January? Such as the iPhone or iTV? One other article I read said that the Macintosh side of the business is growing very well too. Much faster than the PC market as a whole. All in all, it's all good.

SanDisk is Apple's real competition!

I have been checking the Amazon bestseller list for electronics, and although the black 30 Gb iPod is consistently the top MP3 player, SanDisk occupies the second and third slots! Right now the Zune is a non issue, but the SanDisk player is a serious competitor at the low end. I heard SanDisk is selling these things for huge discounts, and when you look at them, they really are cheap! It's a little disconcerting!