Analyst: Apple and Sony, best friends forever?
Yeah well, my best friend who doesn’t know it yet
Cringely and I have been
raving about this for weeks now, but some Merrill
Lynch analyst has said it now so maybe it will take
off: Steven Milunovich has the peculiar notion that Apple and Sony could be working together on an “iTunes-like iMovies
Store.” Yeah, what he said.
Milunovich has a couple of other ideas about what the “intriguing” appearance of Sony President Kunitake Ando at the
Macworld SF keynote might mean: a high-performance workstation using the
Cell processor, or a “network-centric TV with
computing for handling the next-generation of entertainment feeds.” Uh, some might call that a
home media center. And some others who haven’t been
living under rocks might note that everybody and their third cousins once-removed have been talking about this since,
oh, about January 11. But thanks for the idea! ;)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Neil Fiertel said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Cell will inevitably become either the G6 or G7 evolution for the Mac. First it will be a serious workstation at the high end only but will trickle down in some kind of iteration as the future PPC...
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AD said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Microsoft are out to get Sony and take over consumer electronics, so a tie up would make sense.
Windows Media, I believe, will take over the planet unless Apple, Real, Nokia, Sony, etc, etc get together to stop them.
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Zoidberg said 8:40PM on 7-01-2005
You're kidding about Real, right? If they are relying on Real to help them combat MS, then they might as well surrender now. Real hasn't done anything in the past 5 years except annoy media developers.
Also, Apple has much invested in the G5 IBM processors, they're not going to switch to Cell (mainly because Cell isn't exactually a 'step-up' for them). Beides, they already said the next evolution (the G6) is a G5 variant.
Finally, it wouldn't be an 'iMovie Store' it would be a Quicktime store. iMovie is the equivalent to Garageband, not iTunes.
So why was the Sony pres there? It could be nothing more than he's a Mac fan. Just because Sony and Apple team up on one product, doesn't mean that the doors are open and they are doing to start shareing everything. Apple and MS colaborate on projects, but they are still rivals.
As far as all this video stuff? It might be, but we'll have to wait and see. Steve has been very close-minded (at least as far as the public is concerned).
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AD said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Re: Zoidberg
For sure, Real are annoying. I agree 100%, but there are many Internet sites who support Real technology (like the BBC) or give you the option of only Real or Microsoft (like Zdnet) - no Quicktime choice sadly.
Yeah, I agree with you about a wider Apple-Sony link up being most unlikely, but unless the competition work together Microsoft will dominate the AV codec like they did the wordporcessor file format - and we don't want that again do we?
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