I just read in the news the following: “LOS ANGELES (AFX) - Technology shares moved higher Tuesday morning, with Apple Computer marking a 52-week high for the second session in a row after Merrill Lynch analysts raised their target price on the stock, saying the computer maker could announce a partnership with Japan’s Sony Corp….” borrowed from MarketWatch.com :!:  :!:  :!:
At first I could not believe my eyes when I read that…. so something exciting might be brewing in the future (whether in PC or Audio market) if the deal goes through.
Interesting…..

Maybe the apple wireless mouse will contain Sony AA batteries

I’m just kidding, this was sort of discussed before here when at MacWorld everything was done with Sony Camera’s and such…and it was constantly mentioned that Sony was involved.

Erik

Or maybe Sony will use Apple headphones with the PSP since they’re already using white colored headphones? 

Sony + Apple = Maybe a new TR!

That would be awesome.

:D

or maybe a hybrid of both like Lindows OS..   
Sony + Apple = Sonypple..  hilarious..

[quote author=“Archival”]Sony + Apple = Sonypple..  hilarious..

Certainly had me rolling there. :|

This sounds like one of those “reasons that Apple will go belly up in x months” stories that comes out of these idiotic analysts every 8 months or so. If I had a dollar for every dumb prediction to come out of these palm readers mouths, whether it’s about 3G being adopoted by 2002, the old economy being outmoded, MMS taking off, the Usenet dying, enterprise IM being the wave of the future, or “ginger”, I’d be a very rich man. Or a tech magazine editor.

Or perhaps Apple wants in on some X-Brite technology of their own since everyone and their dog is sporting some sort of glossy screen technology…

I’m just throwing more speculation on the fire… :wink:

If at all this ever comes through, the sony technology will be integrated with apple design. And i hope for the sake of awe, that’ll be case. Result could be some tremendously fashionable gizmo that might be for a change hugely practical.

Well there had been rumors that the top PC companies have been begging Steve to license OS X on their PCs to give people the choice of Windows or X. I know it might be crazy, but just possibly OS X on a new Vaio?!?

I doubt it just as much as everyone else, but that would be an interesting partnership.

Erik

[quote author=“tifosiv122”]Well there had been rumors that the top PC companies have been begging Steve to license OS X on their PCs to give people the choice of Windows or X. I know it might be crazy, but just possibly OS X on a new Vaio?!?

Jobs himself started that rumor. It makes no business sense whatsoever. Apple is now and always has been a hardware company. In the iPod business model, the iPod itself is the moneymaker and the itunes Music Store is a value-added. It barely breaks even. The wholesale price of those $0.99 tracks is $0.70 and of the remaining $0.29, most of that goes towards operating expenses. I don’t see too many of those music download stores operating in 5 years unless they have backing by a more traditional and profitable business.

When Jobs came back to Apple one of the first things he did was kill the clones. I don’t see him repeating that mistake, or incurring the wrath of the House that Gates Built, anytime soon.

[quote author=“Drachen”]
Jobs himself started that rumor. It makes no business sense whatsoever.

To whom, Apple or the PC Man.?

At one point I thought he might have as well, but there were no reports denying the statement. Apple does make its money on hardware, we all know that, but OSX can be purchased seperately, and if I am not mistaken, there have been apple clones in the past…it’s not too much of a stretch to think that PC companies could begin to offer an alternative.

I also believe it wouldn’t be just $100 or whatever going to apple, I am sure there would be a premium and a fairly large % going to Apple.

Erik

[quote author=“tifosiv122”][quote author=“Drachen”]
Jobs himself started that rumor. It makes no business sense whatsoever.

To whom, Apple or the PC Man.?

At one point I thought he might have as well, but there were no reports denying the statement. Apple does make its money on hardware, we all know that, but OSX can be purchased seperately, and if I am not mistaken, there have been apple clones in the past…it’s not too much of a stretch to think that PC companies could begin to offer an alternative.

I also believe it wouldn’t be just $100 or whatever going to apple, I am sure there would be a premium and a fairly large % going to Apple.

Erik

Jobs hated the clones and killed the market as soon as he was back in power at Apple. As I mentioned before, they make their real money from the hardware. OSX is one of the big hooks to get people to switch, along with software like iLife and Final Cut. They do make money on the software, but if OSX is available for PCs, you lose one of the main reasons to swtich vendors. Once they give up their software uniquness, they become Yet Another Hardware Manufacturer and become the next Sony. I like Sony, but most people wonder why I would buy something more expensive than a Dell even if it’s cool-looking. Why get into the low-margin-cutthroat-PC game if you don’t have to? The Mac Mini is a much better way to do that in terms of being a hardware company.

Then there’s platform fragmentation. Vendors will have to support both the PPC version and x86 versions of OSX. That will annoy vendors that have to be convinced to support OSX in the first place. Then there’s Microsoft. MS plays nice with Apple because they aren’t much of a real threat to Windows. Hell, MS’s biggest cash cow product, Office, is one of the best-selling mac software suites. Once Apple positions OSX against Windows, MS will do what it’s done for 25 years: protect its turf mercilessly.

Then there are driver and support issues, the sorts of things Linux fans are used to dealing with. I don’t see it happening just for an additional revenue stream.

Then again, I didn’t think much about the iPod, iPod mini or iPod Shuffle when they respectively came out…