Apple Inc. suddenly dropped the price of its iPhone today, stating that it was seeking to broaden the market for the popular but expensive phone for the Christmas season.

A new iPod model has touch-screen controls and built-in Wi-Fi.

Apple also introduced a new digital music player modeled after its iPhone and struck a wireless music distribution deal with the Starbucks coffee chain. Apple, which rarely drops the prices on its products, cut the price of its 8-gigabyte iPhone by $200, to $399.

Steve Jobs, said in an interview after the announcement that Apple would have been able to hit its publicly declared target of a million iPhones sold in the United States by the end of this month, even without a price cut.

“We’re a high-volume manufacturer, and we’re pretty good at getting costs down,” Mr. Jobs said. “It’s very clear we have a breakthrough product on our hands, but its also clear that many can afford it, some can’t. We’d like to make it affordable to even more folks going into this holiday season.”

I believe we all saw this one coming.

In a world that’s ever changing it seems we are faced with to many choices. Day in and day out we make decisions that affect how certain situations will turn out. At the end of the day all the choices you made may have provided you with different outcomes if you had chose otherwise. Such is the case with the fate of the HD DVD and Blu-Ray formats. Eventually, one will win and one will lose. The choices of the powers that be will determine this fate.

Yesterday Dreamworks Animation & Paramount pictures announced that they would be releasing their next-generation DVD titles exclusively on HD DVD. Paramount had sold titles in both the new high-definition formats — HD DVD and Blu-Ray — but settled exclusively on HD DVD after deciding it offered better quality, lower priced players and lower manufacturing costs. The timing on this decision is akward as Blu-Ray is currently outselling HD DVD 2 to 1 in the US.

“The decision seems oddly timed given Blu-ray’s tremendous momentum both with consumers and retail,” Blu-Ray’s U.S. promotions chairman, Andy Parsons, said in a statement.

People want quality when it comes to their electronic devices and I believe that HD DVD offers the same quality as Blu-Ray with less cost to the consumer. The average HD DVD player sells for $299 verses the lowest priced Blu-Ray player at $499. This cost difference is hard to justify when you are getting pretty much the same quality picture. Many people I have talked to about the difference say that HD DVD actually has a better picture. But really, unless you have the two formats and do a side by side comparison I wouldn’t think you could tell. Especially with the naked eye.

This choice by Paramount & Dreamworks will surely add weight to the success of HD DVD and this decision changes the whole landscape of the competition, as Blu-Ray was way ahead of the game before yesterday. It will interesting to see how this one plays out.

LESSON OF THE DAY: Small choices can make big changes.

Technorati Tags: Blu-Ray, HD DVD, Paramount, Dreamworks

Not that many years ago having the internet was something many people used as a recreation only, but now with the growth of services offered via the web the need for broadband in the home is greater than ever. I can remember the first time I connected to a BBS system with windows 3.11 on a 14.4 kbps modem thinking that being “online” was the future, I could not have imagined back then what the Internet would become. As time went on and the Internet began to grow dial up service seemed blazing fast because WebPages were built so simple without any bandwidth intensive graphics that surfing around was pretty good. But like everything else the Internet evolved and blew up, becoming a huge business avenue and more bandwidth was needed, but then home users caught on to all the potential of the net and began to require higher and higher bandwidth, which was fine for metropolitan areas but not rural areas of the country. Being out in a rural area myself my only options are satellite internet or wireless, both are pretty good but still only offer around 1 meg of service at a much higher price than DSL or Cable internet. I choose the wireless route because I have heard way to many horror stories about satellite access and I managed to come out a little cheaper with wireless anyway. All of this could change really soon because it seems like people are beginning to catch on to the fact that a lot of America is rural and has the same bandwidth needs as in major cities. Right now Microsoft is in talks with the FCC to allow access to unused TV airwaves for broadband access called “White Space Devices” which as TV stations abandon analog signals to move to digital ones theses white space devices could provide access to many rural areas without interrupting TV signals. Another sign that things are moving in the right direction is that DirecTV has struck a deal with Current Group to be able to offer Broadband and VOIP through power lines, with this deal DirecTV will be able to offer bundled services for Internet, Television and Telephone service. I really hope that BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) development will continue because while not everyone has access to DSL or Cable all home users have electricity. I really hope that efforts will continue to be made to increase the availability of broadband services to all areas because with the direction the internet is taking it is only going to require more and more bandwidth. Below is a chart of how the United States ranks in broadband access.

Technorati Tags: Broadband, White Space, Internet, BPL

Having spent about half a day this past weekend on the phone with HP trying to get XP drivers for my new computer that shipped with Vista it was really nice to kick back with my Macbook and boot right into OS X. I have been using Windows for years and look forward to testing every release, but I can’t remember being more excited about an OS release like I am right now about OS X Leopard. Through the years I have tried out almost every version of Windows, Linux and even BeOS (don’t ask about that last one) looking for the perfect combination of Stability, GUI, Security and features but most times I couldn’t find one that would do it all, until I tried OS X. OS X 10.5 Leopard will ship in just a few months and will be released, as one Universal version meaning all features will be built into it and support for older PowerPC as well as Intel Macs will be included without the need for separate versions. Another thing I really like other than the one version is the cost will be only $129, which for a brand new operating system that is actually pretty cheap. Below are some new features and enhancements that have been developed for Leopard.

1) Time Machine - an automated backup utility that allows the user to restore files that have been deleted or replaced by another version of a file.

2) Front Row and Photobooth - are currently only available with the purchase of a new Mac, but will be included with Leopard. Front Row has been reworked to closely resemble the interface used by the Apple Tv, and Photo Booth includes video recording with real-time filters.

3) Spaces - an implementation of “Virtual Desktops” (individually called “spaces”). It allows multiple desktops per user, with certain applications and windows in each desktop. Users can organize certain Spaces for certain applications (e.g., one for work-related tasks and one for entertainment) and switch between them. Expose will work inside Spaces, allowing the user to see at a glance all desktops on one screen.

4) Spotlight - incorporates additional search capabilities such as the ability to search other computers.

5) New Finder - with features similar to those seen in iTunes 7.

6) Desktop - comprised of a redesigned 3-D dock with a new grouping feature called stacks.

7) Quick Look -a framework allowing documents to be viewed without opening them in an external application.

8 ) Mail - now included is RSS feeds, Stationery, Notes and To-dos.

9) Dashboard - now will include webclips, a feature that allows users to turn a part of any web page into a live Dashboard widget, and Dashcode to help developers code widgets.

10) Parental Controls - now include the ability to place restrictions on use of the Internet and to set parental controls from anywhere using remote setup.

11) Boot Camp - It is a software assistant which has been available as a beta release download for Mac OS X v10.4 from Apple’s website since April 5, 2006. It assists in the installation of Windows XP or Windows Vista to a separate partition (or separate internal drive) on Intel-based Macs.

12) Menu Bar - which is now transparent and it is no longer rounded, which was a design feature since Mac System 1.0.

13) Safari - Now version 3.0 included in new operating system.

14) Back to my Mac - a new feature for .Mac users that allows users to access files on their home computer while away from home via the Internet.

Technorati Tags: Mac, safari, os x leopard, macbook, vista

Less than six years ago Apple Computers was pretty much a non-factor in the computer world except for a hand full of graphics design users and a few old school Mac freaks. Then in October of 2001 Apple released the iPod, which was not the first digital music player, but by far the best on the market and started the climb back to the top. When the iPod was released it was an overnight hit because the thing that made it really stand out from the rest was the software on the device and on the computer that made managing and playing music a simple process. iTunes, which is Apples music managing software and online store continued to grow and really g0t the buying of music online to where it is today.

But the iPod was just Apples first big come-back item, the next thing we saw was the move from PowerPC Chips to Intel Processors which sparked a lot of debate as to why Apple would abandon the same chip they had used for years to go with Intel, but for PowerPC chips to gain anymore speed IBM would have to finance a major redesign and obviously they were not willing to do it, so the only logical choice was to move to Intel. The move to Intel really hasn’t done that much for speed but it guarantees the future of Apple Computers and the ability to develop things like Boot Camp. Boot Camp is a program that allows you to install and run Windows XP or Vista on its own partition on a Mac eliminating the need for emulation software which is great if that’s all you have but still not perfect.

I would have probably never bought a Mac if not for Boot Camp because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get used to OS X so I figured worst-case scenario I would just install XP and have a good story to tell about how I bought a Mac just to use Windows on it. Through all of this Apple continued to update new and improved iPods every so often cementing their 85% market share and managed to sell 3 billion songs through iTunes.

Anyway the next move we saw from Apple was to drop the word Computer from their name and just be Apple Inc. which did seem kind of odd considering they are in fact a computer / software company, but then the big announcement came that Apple would redefine cell phones just as they had done with the iPod by releasing the iPhone. I don’t think I have ever seen more hype about a personal tech item like the iPhone but it is after all a widescreen iPod, cell phone, and internet device all in one. The initial sales show that the iPhone will probably have success similar to the iPod and continue to get better and better with time.

Over the last few years digital media streamers have been attempted by a few companies with little success, but the Apple TV while not perfect does make the process of setting up and sharing media from the pc to the television very easy even for novice users.

The last thing we will talk about today is the upgrades to the iMac. The iMac is Apples all in one desktop computer that has everything built in for very little desktop clutter and massive power for any computer task. This week the new iMac was released with upgrades to the Processor, Video Cards, and the Hard Drive, but the most impressive thing about these new computers is the redesign which will be all aluminum cases with glossy screens and they will be even thinner that the previous all white plastic models. With the new products and upgrades to older products it’s no surprise Apple’s turning record profits and sales of their computers have grown three times faster than the rest of the Pc market.

Before I stop rambling about how much I love Apple products lets recap some things in the last twelve months that have helped Apple Inc. get to this point.

A) Boot Camp

B) Macbook and Macbook Pro

C) Intel Processors

D) Apple TV

E) iPhone

Technorati Tags: Apple, iMac, iPhone, iPod, Intel