Andrew Schmitt

Microsoft's iPod Killer Emerges -- Should Apple be Scared? You Bet! (AAPL, MSFT)

This is a good discussion. Still, I am amazed at how much attention this issue commands. I would be willing to bet 50% of all comments on the Seeking Alpha site are on Apple, Google, or Microsoft. David?

Here's an opinion - without a subscription music service Apple is putting themselves at a long term competitive disadvantage. Agree or Disagree? (I agree, and believe that Jobs has done this specifically to entrench the Fairplay codec until it no longer is competitively viable)

Microsoft's iPod Killer Emerges -- Should Apple be Scared? You Bet! (AAPL, MSFT)

I agree that a "This time it is different" opinion is not usually correct. Nowhere do I predict overnight success.

MSFT is vastly successful in the consumer space becuase most consumers run windows and office. Would you like me to name all of the consumer software companies that have been put out of business because their products have been incorporated into the Microsoft platform?

FYI I am sure Intuit would love to be rid of Microsoft Money as a competitor, and you've probably missed the fact that Adobe is suing MSFT for giving away the ability to author .pdf documents in their next release. Lotus, Quarterdeck, Visicalc, Wordperfect, Netmanage ... the landscape is littered with companies destroyed by Microsofts ability to swallow their market.

Photoshop is the best exception I can think of that has gone against the grain.

The hardware is irrelevant. MSFT is more likely to release a strict hardware platform than a real product. Don't assume they will kill off their partners. The point is to catalzye a transition from Apple's iTunes platform to their own.

Microsoft will lose money on the hardware in order to ensure the platform supremacy of it's products. Apple can't do this because they have no widely accepted platform outside of iTunes.

Microsoft's iPod Killer Emerges -- Should Apple be Scared? You Bet! (AAPL, MSFT)

If there is one certainty in the world it is this - say something negative about Apple and it's certain to generate plenty of responses.