Launch of iPod Hi-Fi in UAE

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Still no ‘diallers’ on Mac OS X

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Some time ago we published a piece on diallers and how there weren’t any for Mac OS X. Today there’s an article in Khaleej Times on this very topc:

More and more Etisalat customers claim that they are losing thousands of dirhams to telephone calls that they haven’t actually made and to destinations they never heard of. An Etisalat official declined to comment when contacted by Khaleej Times yesterday.

Irked customers alleged they feel duped when their telephone bills shoot up to thousands when they have in reality hardly made any international calls.

And the dismaying fact is that the bills show that calls have been made to destinations that one has not even heard about…

A technical expert who requested anonymity opined that the numerous pop ups that appear on the computer screens could be getting downloaded into the system allowing some distant source to access your internet or telephone lines.

Some Etisalat customers blame the service provider for not taking effective action to protect the interest of their customers. “Etisalat should do something as regards blocking the so-called pop-ups and cookies that create such a problem,” said one angry customer.

“There is no point in washing their hands off this problem as more and more of their customers are falling prey to this scam. They are the service providers and they have the responsibility,” he added.

As far as I know there is no such software for Mac OS X. So the advice stands – buy a Mac.

iMac at Carrefour

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We visited the Carrefour at Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi this afternoon to see if they had the iMac in store that they started advertising some days ago. They did!

It certainly wasn’t set up in the most advantageous position but it was in a setup around some Linksys networking stuff, with Kodak digital camera and printer on one side, and a Windows PC on the other.

We took some pictures with out cell phone and you can see them attached.

When we arrived the iMac wasn’t plugged in so we couldn’t start it. After speaking to one sales person, who didn’t know what an iMac was, we finally got to the section supervisor (or at least that’s what we assume he was). He said “give me two minutes” and ran off. After probably ten minutes he came back with someone else and they plugged the iMac in and booted it up.

They clearly didn’t know much about Macs and Mac OS X. After heated discussions in Arabic, which we understood none of, the two guys finally got passed all the initial setup stuff (this iMac had clearly never been booted before). We then showed them some things like Photobooth, Garageband, iPhoto and more, and they seemed impressed.

During the short time we were in the store around the iMac at least five different people (mostly couples) stopped and looked at it, touched the mouse, keyboard, looked at the sign, etc. There clearly is some interest for Macs but there needs to be more done to get information out to consumers.

The sign was interesting. I pointed out a few things to the manager (that’ll probably go nowhere but I felt I did a good deed):
- There’s no need to mention “Level 2 cache”. Most people don’t know what it is anyway.
- Airport and Bluetooth should be mentioned.
- Frontrow and the remote control should be mentioned.
- iLife 06 should be mentioned, or it should at least say “comes loaded with software”, or similar.
- People don’t know what a “superdrive” is. It’d be better to say “Dual-layer DVD RW”, or something like that.

All in all, it was a bit of good and bad. It’s good that the iMac was on display and that Carrefour sells one now. It was bad that it wasn’t set up and that the staff didn’t know much of anything about it.

‘Buying a notebook online’

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In the Weekend insert in Khaleej Times there’s a story entitled “Buying a notebook online” by Jay Dougherty. It’s not available on their web site but it seems to be another syndicated article and there are other copies on the web:

Buying a notebook computer online today is a great idea. Thanks to intense competition among manufacturers, you can find deals online that represent a true bargain – unless you start adding options at the time of purchase. Know which options to pass up, though, and you could walk away with a perfectly capable notebook for considerably less than you would pay in a traditional store.

Win an iPod

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If you hurry to your local grocery store you may be able to enter a draw to win an iPod among other stuff. We found this at our local Cooperative in a big stand of Kinder chocolates.

‘Renovate before you innovate’

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Khaleej Times:

Zyman, the first speaker on day two of the three-day IAA Congress underway in the Dubai International Convention Centre, is chairman and founder of marketing strategy firm The Zyman Group and former Chief Marketing Officer of The Coca-Cola Company.

He was named one of Time magazine’s three key pitchmen of the 20th century.

Innovation says “Start with what you can manufacture and see if you can sell it,” Zyman said. Renovation says “Start with you can sell and see how you can make it.” Innovation is too often seen as a cure-all, and we forget that the thing that made us successful is not fully developed.’

“The better way of doing things is to trace what put you in business, your core essence – which is too often confused with core competence,” Zyman said. Renovation is grounded in a company’s core essence, and combined with research provides a context for growth and defines what consumers will buy and provides it for them, he added.

The runaway success of Apple iPods, Zyman explained, is a perfect example of this strategy. “Steve Jobs created a significant new paradigm by taking a good look at his business, and realising that Dell had taken much of it,” he said.

“Jobs brought back the idea of graphic user interface (GUI), Apple’s core essence, and combined it with the new trends in music sharing, downloads and mobility to create a new culture with all of us walking around with this sticking out of our ears.”

‘Apple’s core problem with France’

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Adam Livingstone writes for BBS Newsnight:

Because if you’re Apple computers, you’ll make more money by selling the iPods expensive and the music cheap. But if you’re (say) Vivendi Universal, you don’t get a slice of Apple’s hardware sales. So you want the iPod to be cheap enough that the punter buys into the technology but then spends the bulk of his money on downloading the music itself at a decent price.

The poor music execs have had to cut down on the white powder deliveries by some margin – and for that they have the Internet and themselves to blame. Now if you make either hardware or software you have the same two choices here. In a small controllable market you can sit down with your opposite number and work out a system that lets both of you make a profit. That might be illegal sometimes, but I’m sorry to say it has been known to happen anyway. Or you can let capitalism, red in tooth and claw, find a winner out in the jungle.

Which brings us back to iTunes. Apple’s fantastically successful music download service has been selling tracks by the billion to the public for three years now at low prices. The chaps from Silicon Valley have been making a pile of cash selling their iPods off the back of this while the poor music execs have had to cut down on the white powder deliveries by some margin. And for that they have the Internet and themselves to blame.

So far so good…. but futher down in the article he writes:

So how do Apple keep their competitive advantage? Their best answer is something called Digital Rights Management. They sell music online, but it isn’t sold in that universal MP3 format so beloved of pirates.

iTunes music is only playable on an iPod, and then only by the person who pays for it. In other words iTunes is 80 per cent of the legal download market but you need an iPod to use it.

But iPods don’t play the digitally protected formats used by other legal download services, so if you have an iPod and you’re law abiding then you’re locked into iTunes. It’s a virtuous circle for them, but a vicious one for their competitors.

Sure, Apple’s DRM is a part of their strategy, but I think there’s more to it than that. Did you kill the iPod mini so soon after launching it by introducing the nano because of DRM? No, I don’t think so. It’s also about style, culture, usability, and being cool.

And he also gets it wrong when he writes “iTunes music is only playable on an iPod”. You can play iTMS-purchased music on your Mac, on your Windows PC, as well as your iPod.

And finally, does the other (Windows-based) online music stores’ jukeboxes play iTMS-purchased music? I don’t think so.

Update: There was a little notice in Khaleej Times (it was not online, see attached picture).

‘A byte off Apple’

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Gulf News has an article entitled ‘A byte off Apple’ in their Friday-insert but I can’t find it online at their site or elsewhere so atteched are the three article-pages. In brief, the article is about the guy running www.writersblocklive.com.

MacBook Pro absent in UAE media?

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Did you notice that the MacBook Pro was officially launched in the UAE a few days ago, on the 21st of March? Did you see anything in a paper about it? I didn’t, and I did look hard. There was only a little note in AME Info, but that was it as far as I can tell.

Did you find anything?

Apple cell phone rumors

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Smarthouse:

Insiders at Taiwanese phone maker BenQ say that Apple procurement executives have been talking to various Taiwanese phone makers during the past few months in an effort to cut a manufacturing deal on an iPod Phone

They say that Apple will launch an iPod with phone functions within the next few months. “An iPod phone is definitely coming. BenQ will not be making it as we are in competition with Apple however several of our suppliers have been approached to manufacture parts. Among manufacturers in Taiwan it is common knowledge. The issue for many is the availabilty of parts if the phone takes off” said the BenQ executive.

Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision to tipped build the device, says Johnny Chan, a J.P. Morgan analyst based in Hong Kong. “Apple still hasn’t decided whether to give the contract for what’s being referred to as an ‘iPhone’ to Hon Hai or to another manufacturer, says Ellen Tseng, a Morgan Stanley analyst in Taipei. One analyst in Taipei who declined to be identified said Taiwan Green Point Enterprises, which makes plastic cases for the iPod, is in talks with Apple for a role in the phone.”

The rumors have of course been around for a long time, but if they’re true and the phone ever makes it to the UAE (it would have to be GSM) it could be a big hit with cell-phone-crazy Emirate-customers.