“The iPod and its related software and online music store iTunes have clearly been the star of Apple’s universe of late. Much of that success has come from opening the party up to Windows users, first with the iPod, and then iTunes. When CEO Steve Jobs first announced a Windows version of iTunes, he said the company was doing so after ‘hell froze over,'” Arik Hesseldahl writes for Forbes.
“That has led to some speculation that hell might freeze over again, and that Apple may have plans to develop still more software for the Windows platform, the most likely candidate being iPhoto, the digital photography component of iLife, a consumer creativity suite of applicatons. But Apple executives, who routinely refuse to comment on future product plans, have dismissed the suggestion,” Hesseldahl writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hell froze over long before iTunes for Windows, Mr. Hesseldahl, with Apple software for Windows like QuickTime, FileMaker, and AppleWorks. iPhoto will be released for Windows – when Apple markets a camera (either standalone or as an add-on to/wrap-around for iPod mini) that works only with iPhoto. Unfortunately, nothing like music is as seductive a product for something like an Apple iPhoto Store – unless Apple plans to market porn – which is another way to state that the chances of iPhoto for Windows are pretty much nil.
david vesey: I completely agree with you. I saw a story about a guy who bought some 4GB music device (not the iPod mini) for $250 just so he could extract the Hitachi microdrive for his camera. The same microdrive on its own is over $400. Weird.
Apple shouldn’t come out with a digital camera…they did great with the ipod, to be sure. there were other mp3 players on the market, but they weren’t small enough, nor did they have good quality headphones and great upload software (don’t get me started on creative’s shit software)
Cameras are a different story. They have some great manufacturers out there like Canon, Nikkon, Sony, and to some extent olympus, fugi, etc… But the concept of a camera is already solidified. I don’t see how anyone could improve upon the camera idea…if you had built in storage, you can’t use the media elsewhere, a big draw for me. Canon makes almost all the high quality glass for lenses, and even owns it’s own flourite mines, so for a good quality lens, apple is going to pay a premium. Unless they have a way to hook it up to your brain and perfectly compose/expose your shot almost every time, they would have a hard time convincing me to buy thier product (the camera world is full of great design, so thier #1 trump card isn’t as strong in this market)
An iPod improvement with almost zero incremental cost — as it would
consist mainly of software — would be to add FireWire DV capture
capability to the iPod. The captured DV files should just be wrapped in a QuickTime layer. That would be one additional feature distinguishing the iPod from the rest of the portable music player market that Apple could deliver without increasing their hardware costs. If the FireWire port and hard disk are already available, why not use them?
Why not? Their money is green.
Oh, and why not OS X for X 86. Free at last! Free at last! Free of the tyrany of Apple’s hardware!
Yup, iChat and iSight makes a LOT more sense. I imagine, there is too much work and future support costs involved in porting iPhoto to Windows. Apple’d be sentecing themselves to Windows driver hell. They could never keep ontop of muti-camera support in a Windows environment, not without making a crap product… And certainly not while making a profit, unless they came out with “iDigitalStillCamera”. With a port of iChat and iSight, they’d have just one set of drivers to maintain, just like iTunes and the iPod. Write once (so to speak), sell many. The product works and its good PR for Apple as a company. Plus it ads value to Mac user’s experience… Mac user’s would actually have somone to iChat with!
Dean, as far as iPhoto for Windows is concerned, doesn’t the iPod already work with digital cameras through the Belkin Media Reader accessory? Are drivers required for this? I don’t know because I’m not into digital photography yet. How does this work? Thanks
I think a lot of us are missing the point. What iPhoto would do as iTunes did for music is make things a hell of A LOT SIMPLER. As a professional photographer, one of the most laughable things I see in the realm of digital photography is how hard it is to organize and get your digital photos printed. If Apple can make digital photo printing as easy as click and drag, we have another winner.
Who cares if another Windows program can do most of that, the point is, can it do it easier and better than the others?
Raph, yes, you theoretically could use the Belkin device to transfer photos, but why would a windows user want to go through that extra step when they can just plugin their camera or get a card reader? Also the Belkin reader is slow (I have one). As Chomper sort of alludes to… simplicity is the hallmark of Apple products. A windows version of iPhoto just doesn’t seem like that good of an idea (at least to me). I think ultimately Apple wants to sell hardware, be it desktops or iPods. What’s the best way to do that? Port one of your best apps to a platform your trying to compete with? As lots of folks here have stated, iTunes made sense.. it sells iPods. What is iPhoto for Windows gonna sell besides itself? I don’t think the photo album service is very profitable for Apple. Now iChat could sell iSights (sorta). iCal could allow Mac users to more seemlessly share calendars with Windows users. More collaboration opportunities with Windows users seems like a better move for Apple. Video conferencing via iChat? shared calendars and address books? LDAP implementation in address book currently stinks, and calendar sharing should not be dependent on 100 dollar per year subscriptions, or thirdparty websites, and it should be two way communication. If there were more viable collaboration iApps, I could then more easily justify letting the administrative staff here use macs… am I rambling? sorry … (-;
Thanks for the info dean.
Of course Apple would prefer iTunes Windows users to switch platforms completely so they may hold off on the other iLife programs indefinitely. My concern is about the Windows user who wants to use their iTMS music for their movies and slide shows but cannot because of the DRM.
If Apple doesn’t provide a complete digital hub solution someone else, perhaps by the name of Bill, will. This could seriously challenge Apple’s wonderful lead in the digital music arena. Not sure how all this will play itself out but we should have some interesting numbers by MWSF ’05.
Chow.