Apple

Amazon Takes a Shot at Apple With it’s New Cloud Drive & Cloud Player

March 29, 2011 By Bryan Coe Leave a Comment

Amazon is taking a shot at Apple’s dominance in the online music industry with it’s new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about it.

“Managing a digital music collection can be a bit of a mess. It’s possible to buy music from your phone, but then it might get stuck there. It’s possible to buy music from your work computer, but then you have to remember to transfer it to your home computer…”
“…We’re solving those problems today with tow important new offerings: Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player. Cloud Drive is your personal disk drive in the cloud. Anything you put in Cloud Drive is robustly stored in Amazon’s datacenters. You can upload your music collection to Cloud Drive, as well as any other digital documents.”
“Cloud Player comes in two varieties: Web and Android. All you need is a computer with a web browser and you can listen to your music with Cloud Player for Web – no software to install – just a web browser. The Android version is an app that lets you do the same thin from your Android phone or tablet.”

Rumor has it that Apple has something similar in the works, but really I don’t see them giving away the free space on their servers like Amazon.

“To start we’re giving you 5 GB of free Cloud Drive storage. Plus, new purchases from the Amazon MP3 Store are stored for free and do not count against your storage quota.”

In the end you can see how Amazon will get you hooked on using the cloud and want more. You can store what ever you want on the cloud drive. It’s the old give away something for free and people will ask for more, and that’s where you charge.

It will be interesting to see how this fairs. Android based phones continue to grow in sales and with all the new Android based tablets coming out, this could be a very strong market in the future.

iPhone — Industry Breakthrough or Just Another Expensive Gadget?

July 6, 2007 By Bryan Coe Leave a Comment

Do you have your iPhone yet? Is it living up to Steve Jobs’ promises? It seems to be getting some pretty good reviews. So, far the biggest concern that I’ve heard is the speed of the internet connection, but that isn’t really the phone but the network from At&T that it is using. I’ve also had a couple of other reports that the phone seems to freeze up a lot.

Check out what the folks at The Associated Press has to say.

Review: Slick iPhone Suffers on Slow Network
Q&A: Is the iPhone Living Up to the Hype?

iTunes Support to the Rescue!!

June 20, 2007 By Bryan Coe Leave a Comment

About a month and a half ago I posted an entry mentioning that I had a complete system crash, and lost my hard drive. Well, silly me has never backed up my music and videos from iTunes. Last night I emailed their support and today they responded. It was actually from a real person too, not just a canned response. So, basically they allowed me to download another copy of all the files I lost with no charge and no hassle. I was actually expecting more trouble. Guess I learned my lesson about backups…

But, there was also something a bit more interesting. They gave me a link showing how to retrieve files from my iPod. This is something that was not originally available and supposedly only available with iTunes 7. I’m not sure when 7 was released. I don’t think it was too long ago.

One of the interesting things is that this “feature” actually came from people being industrious. I’ve seen posts on other blogs going back as far as 2004 where they figured out HOW-TO: Get music OFF your iPod. Anyway, I think it’s great that Apple has finally listened to its customers and has added this option to their software. Even if it is only for media purchased from iTunes.

To all you iPod toting music lovers.

March 7, 2007 By Bryan Coe Leave a Comment

Steve Jobs recently threw down the digital music gauntlet and lashed out at the big four music companies (Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI). (Thoughts on Music Steve Jobs) Jobs states that Apple only locks the music they sell at iTunes because of the DRM(Digital Rights Management) rules the music companies insist on using. He also, says that Apple would gladly support DRM free music. “This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”
Jobs argues that they can not allow other companies to use the DRM that is used on iTunes music called FairPlay, because it would be impossible to keep the technology updated if it is in the hands of another company. Therefor they could no longer guarantee to protect the music licenses they are contractually imposed to protect.

What does all this really mean for us, the consumers? Personally I have an iPod as well, but I don’t purchase much of my digital music from iTunes because that means I can only play the music on my iPod or the iTunes software. Hopefully the music industry will seriously think about the arguments that Jobs puts forth. The “big four” companies are still in a panic as their profits slip further because people continue to find other ways to get the music they want. In fact artist might even be better off selling their music in digital format themselves and bypassing the companies altogether, considering the cut they take. It has taken the music industry a long time to understand the benefits and need to embrace digital music. Now, if they can get over the DRM hurdle we may be on our way to enjoying the music we love, where and how we want to.