Robert X. Cringely on “Dethroning King Gillette” asks the question “Is iPod the Razor or the Blade?? He looks at the margins on the iPod and songs sold at ITunes and concludes that Apple is still in the hardware business, for now, but is doing what King Gillette could never dream to — making money on all parts of the deal.
He also examines the Mac Mini ,again, and sees lots of potential for dominating the micro-server space, plus redefining the Internet video business. Good bye Netflix & BlockBuster.
In his earlier examination of the Mac Mini he concludes that the Mac Mini is a fixed component in a system that will extend iTunes to selling and distributing movies. But this will not have until H.264 (a high compression digital video codec) is support in OS X, which is not due till 10.4 (code-named Tiger) is available, promised for the second quarter of this year.
He also notes strange goings on at iFlicks and iFlix.
All of this also relates to the Exploding TV Meme and the begining of distributed (p2p) mass niche (the long tail) rich content (Digital audio and/or video).
Category:Exploding TV
Good news: They’re now giving away Mac Minis! Details available on my blog.