Apple goes back to school
p2pnet.net News:- “Apple’s trendy iPod digital music player, which has revitalized the company, is giving laptop sales a boost during back-to-school season,” says a USA Today story here, going on:
“Many students, after falling in love with the iPod, are packing for college with new Apple Macintosh computers.”
It also quotes says Jason Thorpe, a sales associate at the University of Oregon’s computer store, as saying, “When I started, people wouldn’t even look at Macs. Everyone came in wanting a PC. This year, two-thirds of them want Macs.”
Apple’s focus on educational institutions, school kids and administrators to bolster its bottom line isn’t surprising. It’s been using them for years.
And it recently pilloried 16 teenagers criminalised by the Big Four record labels as ‘copyright violators’ in a grotesque Super Bowl campaign. Its partners were Pepsi-Cola and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Nor are mp3s or mp3 players in schools new for either Apple or the RIAA.
The latter used Penn State and Napster II to establish US universities as direct sales outlets for ‘product’ turned out by its owners, the members of the record label cartel; and, Apple was able to talk Duke University into marketing iPods and iTunes.
Duke moreover paid Apple for the privilege with, “strategic planning funds that it has set aside for one-time innovative technology purposes” and is using a site modelled on the commercial Apple iTunes page.
“Unlike Mac desktops, which tend to cost more than comparable Windows machines, entry-level iBook laptops are competitively priced, at about $949 with Apple’s education discount,” [our emphasis] says USA Today, quoting Apple vp Greg Joswiak as saying, “Students love their iPod, so now they’re considering using an Apple computer.
“We love that.”
No kidding.
August 23rd, 2004 at 6:09 pm
what have yu got against apple?
August 24th, 2004 at 12:25 am
Average product for exorbitant prices. Anti-innovative and borderline monopolistic proprietary policies. Suspect deal-making, business practices and partnerings. All that rolled up in a sleak design with its virtues extolled by a disturbingly and violently enthusiastic core following that borders on frothing irrationality, what exactly is there to be enthusiastic about?
August 24th, 2004 at 2:51 am
HeHe. I think I’ll go with that answer. Starling, I agree. O_o