Distractions. Distractions. Seems like I can’t get a series of articles together in a row without being interrupted by some late-breaking Apple news. Guess that’s what happens when you’re covering a company that’s moving an industry (or, actually, a couple of industries) forward. Yep. The 300-millionth iTunes Music Store (iTMS) song purchased this week, running now at a daily rate of around 1.3 million. Despite all the hoopla surrounding Microsoft and Napster’s “pay forever” music renting scheme, maybe we are an “ownership society” after all.

In fact, the growth of the iTMS and other online stores spurred music industry executives this week to begin talks with some online retailers about raising wholesale music prices to capitalize on the increased demand. The wholesale price that online stores like the iTMS pay now for music is said to be 65 cents per song. There are concerns that upping the current 99-cent-per-song (sometimes less if purchased as part of an album) retail price will stunt demand and push music lovers back to their old peer-to-peer downloading ways. No one knows exactly how much music executives would like to raise prices, but it’s interesting to note that (those annoying) ring tones for cell phones are selling for roughly 10 percent more than digital music. The real question is whether the market is mature enough to support a price hike. Time will tell.

Also this week, internet statistics gurus OneStat reported that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) web browser is losing market share. IE is still king with an 87% share, but this number is down almost 2% from four months ago. Mozilla’s Firefox browser is the runner-up with 8.5% (a 1% gain in share for the same time period). The Mac’s Safari browser is still a distant third with 1.2%, but this is an increase from the 0.91% share reported last November. Mac-only Safari nudged ahead of Netscape and Opera, two browsers that are available on both the Mac and Windows platforms.

Finally, some sad news. Jef Raskin, a human-computer interface expert and modern-day Renaissance man, who some dubbed “the father of the Macintosh”, succumbed to cancer last week at the age of 61. Raskin actually named the Macintosh after his favorite fruit – he changed the spelling to avoid a conflict with the McIntosh audio equipment manufacturer. He was currently working on a new open-source computer interface.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski