More ipads sold per week than all mac models put together

[Ail]

fastyxx said:
The brilliance of Apple is in the content delivery platforms, much like the reason the 360 has succeeded despite its flaws and how Valve exerts such influence on PC gaming through Steam. The App Store is so much of the reason for iPhone and iPad's success, and it grows stronger every day. Yes, you may be paying a bit more upfront, but the abundance of good, quality and CHEAP software and applications for literally every purpose under the sun more than makes up for it in many people's eyes.

As an English teacher, I can download a free app, for example, that has everything Shakespeare ever wrote, downloading it and accessing it in about 30 seconds. Buying that in book form is about $45. And it certainly doesn't fit in the palm of my hand. Of course, I can access the material on the web, but if I am grading essays or even walking around a classroom, the iPad or my iPhone is so much simpler. I would definitely otherwise have bought the book. $40 of my purchase is paid for in my eyes. And that's one app.

It's just an example. People look at the hardware and say it's not worth it, which can be valid. But if you look at the proprietary nature of the platform and factor in these other components, the price becomes much lower.

Think of the PS3 launching and having all the games being $20 instead of $60. Suddenly the seemingly off-putting price tag doesn't seem so bad. That's the App Store for lots of people.

 

I know it's just an example but you can do exactly the same thing for free on the Sony Reader or for a 1$ fee or so on the kindle...

 

The thing I don't like about the Ipad in regard to e-books ( aside from the issue of actually reading on the ipad) is that Apple is singlehandledly responsible for raising the price of e-books by an average 20-30%...

Before launching the Ipad they convinced the biggest publishers to switch to an agency model for e-books.

In the new model e-books prices are set up by the publishers and the retailers gets a 30% cut but can not discount the price of e-books.

So thanks to Apple all e-books published by the 5 major worldwide publishers are now priced everywhere at the same price and can not be discounted ( which is why since January most bestsellers are now 12-13$ a pop on amazon kindle and barnes and noble e-book site while they were 9.99$ before that).

That is hardly a benefit to the customer......

Imagine if suddenly the same thing started to happen for retails and the price of products was fixed everywhere by one entity and no retailer could make any discount.......

 

This is the new customer friendly Apple........

 

This is the same Apple that is currently being suspected by the DOJ for having tried to pressure the major music studios in their dealing with Amazon regarding amazons MP3 daily deals ( where amazon dared to sell songs cheaper than itunes for promotionnal deals...)

Here is the article on the DOJ investigation : http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/biztech/05/27/cnet.itunes.apple/index.html?hpt=Sbin