I am certainly not the first person to notice the peculiar “race to the bottom†that happens when products are commoditized. But it is been much in my thoughts recently as I observed the annual tragedy of holiday price wars. How can a company economically produce a DVD player, tablet computer, or even a string of Christmas lights at the prices we see today?
Apple
How to Legitimize and Upgrade Your Music Library Using iTunes Match
Although delivered a month late, Apple has finally shipped the complete cloud integrated version of iTunes. This includes iTunes Match, a much awaited feature allowing both online streaming of music and “upgrading†library content from the iTunes Store. Here’s how to upgrade your old low bit rate MP3 files with high quality 256 bit AAC replacements from Apple’s server.
How To Update iPhone and iPad iOS Software Without a Computer
Among the many new features in Apple’s iOS version 5 is the ability to update the operating system “over the air†without attaching it to a computer. An added bonus of updating in this manner is a smaller (and thus much quicker) differential or delta download. Today, Apple released the first over the air update to iOS, 5.0.1. Here’s how to trigger an automatic over the air update.
Sonnet Adds ExpressCard Support to Thunderbolt—Equipped Macs
The Sonnet Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter demonstrates the power of Thunderbolt to bring flexible, high-performance connectivity to compact computers. But we are still in the first generation of devices like this, and it will be a while before prices drop out of the stratosphere.
Apple’s Thunderbolt Display Shows the Future
Thunderbolt is important not because it is fast but because it extends the PCI bus outside the computer chassis. The next iteration of the Mac Pro could be as tiny as the Mac Mini, as long as it has two or more Thunderbolt ports and an expansion chassis for video and I/O cards.
