NEWS: Does Apple Want Kids To Starve?

let me see if I understand this, we are bitching about Apple because they want to sell the single for half the price the record company is requesting. The Label is at loggerheads with Apple, but we want to spend more money on it?? Maybe I am just a capitalist pig, but I would have to place the blame here on the Label not Apple. And if you are so damned concerned there are much better ways to contribute to charity (I don't know but I think straight donations sans free gift cut the NPO overhead a lot).

TKS

I found this on MacNN.Com. It seemed to sum up my view.

Article wrong, misleading
154748
11/25/04, 1:52 am EST

This article is terrible.

1) The opening sentence is false on its face, "THE Apple iTunes music store has refused to sell the charity Band Aid song Do They Know It’s Christmas? because it would damage the company’s dominance of the download market." They dominate the market & they're not selling it, but not selling it is certainly not a ploy to continue their dominance. The write makes it sound as if Apple is in favor of beating puppies, essentially.

2)"Millions of iPod owners will not be able to play the track over the Christmas period." Wrong again. They can still buy it via CD and rip it to iTunes. This one demonstrates bias & ignorance.

3)"The song cannot be made available for 79p because Band Aid must maximise the cash raised from each sale." This is just stupid. Of course it can be sold for 79p. And they don't have to do anything-- they seek to maximize the total amount of cash raised, and raising the per-sale price won't necessarily do that. They think 149p is the ideal price, but maybe not. And Band Aid CAN make it available for 79p, they have CHOSEN not to. This one is pure stupidity.

4) "Five million iPod players have now been sold." Well, more like 8 million according to this, http://forbes.com/personaltech/2004/10/15/cx_ah_1015tentech.html . Chalk this one up to laziness.

It's obvious that the writer here has an ulterior motive (pressuring Apple), but this is such a poorly written article that it's hard to believe it got published in a major newspaper.
Comment posted by: jrome

Additionally, it's all profit for the record companies. They don't have to physically make anything to sell. All they have to do is give their "OK", and the song will start making money. The only costs to Apple are incurred for bandwidth and credit card micropayments.

yeah, i guess it is too much to ask for the built-in commentary to be based on anything other than a quick reaction to spurious information.

From what I have gleaned, the information itself isn't spurious - Apple indeed refuses to sell the song. I'm not going to complain about the commentary. As I said, the point is to have a discussion. That discussion could easily be "Your commentary is stupid". It's happened that the same news item has been discussed in several threads. The commentary does have the tendency to set the tone for discussion, but that's ok. As the lady said, if you don't like it, don't read it.
I still think the headline, or thread title, is ridiculous, but perhaps it's intended to be overblown sensationalism? I don't know that the headline itself actually got people talking - I mean, I clicked on it. Not because I thought "Oh my God, they do?!?" but because I thought "Oh lord, what are people freaking out about now?" but whatever. I was certainly unnecessarily snarky.

didnt mean to imply that the info in this article was spurious, just that seems to be the case many times. and 'snarky' is a great word.

Grinch.

So... Steve Jobs, do you enjoy beating your wife?

"But I don't beat--"

It's a simple yes or no question, Steve.

Point Blanks Internet Truism 1845:

You make fun of Apple, you get angry nerds.

I suppose it's kind of irrational to measure how much people care about an issue by the number of comments in the threads on a discussion board, but compare the number of comments in this thread to the number of comments in the threads about the Darfur conflict.

Steve Job's ego, the great humanitarian crisis of our time.

you see the problem there is, they didn't think of a sensationalist enough headline

I dunno, does they?

has it occured to anyone that had they decided to sell the song for 149p, this thread would be about how outraged everyone is that apple dared to deviate from their standard 79p price?

My thoughts exactly.

Ahh... the old Loaded Question. I love em.

There is nothing stopping you from writing and submitting news stories. I look forward to reading your articles.

i wouldn't give a fuck, people do out of the ordinary things for charity all the time.

These people said everything I came in here to say.

Make fun of PCs and you get legions of angry nerds.

No. PC's are the punching bag of all the hipsters out there. You mess with Apple, you mess with the hipsters


Asshole #1: "Dude, I'm like so fucking creative. What computer should I get that will tell the world, 'I'm fucking awesome'."
Asshole #2: "Fucking apple man, the look fucking awesome when you're in starbucks surfing the net and drinking your grande nonfat sugar-free vanilla caramel macchiatto."

Edited to say that I do think that Apple does make a strong product that does do a good job and in some ways are better than PC's. However, I'd just like to point out how I think it's ridiculous that Apple has become a status symbol and how a lot of people who know nothing about computers will defend apple cause all their other asshole friends love apple too.



[Edited on Nov 30, 2004 by One_Pure_Thought]

I thought this article would be about how Neslte bought Apple, in which case the answer to the headline would be "yes."