Lots of news this week. By the time you read this, Hewlett-Packard (HP) will have unveiled its long-awaited HP-branded iPod (along with a plethora of new products including a television and a digital storage console as part of an “entertainment hub” concept). The hPod (my name, not theirs) will be based on the fourth-generation iPod. No word as yet as to whether or not it will sport HP’s traditional “mortuary blue” color scheme. It will, however, integrate perfectly with the Windows version of Apple’s iTunes jukebox and music store, which will be pre-loaded on all HP consumer computers. Nice.

Speaking of Windows and music, Microsoft will reportedly enter the online music market on September 2nd, with the launch of a new version of Windows Media Player that will contain a portal to a music store. The store will reportedly open with 600,00 to 700,000 songs (the iTunes Music Store offers over a million), for 99 cents a pop. The new Microsoft store will, of course, only offer music encoded in their proprietary Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, with Digital Rights Management encoding attached.

The software giant is also planning a major advertising campaign similar to their “bing-bing-bing” Intel Inside “warning”. It will be called “Plays for sure”, and is designed to emphasize that just about every personal digital music player made supports the WMA format. Except, of course, for the number-one-selling, highly popular, reaching-icon-status Apple iPod.

So, be prepared for it. All the money, all the muscle of monopoly aimed at the heart of the iPod. Incessant ads for second-rate players, all with some kind of annoying branding tone like the “bing-bing-bing", all trying to convince the generally confused general public that there’s something wrong with the iPod. Why? Because it doesn’t support Big Redmond’s quest for dominating the entertainment media world the same way they dominate the desktops of the generally confused general public with their shoddy operating system. Other than that, I don’t have any strong opinions about it one way or the other.

Finally, next week Apple will debut the new iMac. With their usual penchant for secrecy, nothing has been released about the new iMac other than it will sport the powerful G5 processor, most likely in a single-processor configuration.

By the way, did I mention there’s already a gaping hole in Service Pack 2? Fed up? Try www.apple.com/switch.

© 2004 Peter F. Zimowski