Storage

A chat with Apple's iPod and iPhone marketing czar

The iPod family. Image: Apple

Greg Joswiak has what you might call a busy job -- he's charged with marketing two of Apple's biggest hit products, the iPod and the iPhone. That might sound easy considering the buzz Apple's product announcements generate, but there's more to the task than promotion; he works with the company's engineering teams to decide what the next iPods and iPhones will look like, what features they'll MORE

iPod: The once and future stocking stuffer

Apple's iPod is the king of holiday gadgets. But can the company deliver another round of blowout sales in its make-or-break season?

iPod nano. Image: Jon Fortt

It's 7 p.m. at an Apple Store less than six miles from the company's Silicon Valley headquarters, and even in early November, it's already a madhouse. Throughout the upscale mall space, customers are busily poking and prodding the latest iPods and Macs, gushing about how MORE

A digital nanny for all those home PCs

New Home Server aims to bring big-business technology to the home -- but it will be a tough sell HP's MediaSmart Server runs Microsoft's new Windows Home Server operating system. Image from Microsoft.

Yes, it has come to this. Now that consumers have multi-PC homes, wireless networks, and thousands of digital files floating around, they need a computer whose sole purpose is to keep an eye on the other computers.

At least, that's MORE

Dell's new mantra: technology that's simple, not just cheap

Founder and CEO Michael Dell. Image: Dell

Michael Dell's old game plan was ruthless and effective: Crush competitors by building products at a lower cost, and using the Internet to pass the savings on to value-conscious customers. That strategy made his namesake company a darling of the first Internet boom and the largest computer maker in the world.

But times have changed. In recent years archrival Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has stolen Dell's (DELL) MORE

Expect Blu-ray/HDTV bundles for the holidays

Samsung P-1400 Blu-ray player. Image: Samsung

It's been quite a busy few days for the high-definition format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD. First, Wal-Mart (WMT) confirmed that it has begun selling the Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player in stores for less than $200. The next day Amazon (AMZN) and Circuit City (CC) began offering the player online for a penny less.

Now there are reports that Wal-Mart today will sell the MORE

Behold Hulu, Hollywood's answer to YouTube

Hulu.com, which launched in private beta today, emulates many features popularized by Google's (GOOG) YouTube. But unlike YouTube, which mostly shows user-generated content, Hulu includes programs from networks, including NBC, Fox, E! Entertainment, FUEL TV, SciFi Network and USA Networks. The site's purpose is to be both a promotional vehicle and a revenue generator; it will make money from ads both on the site and within videos.

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HD DVD vs. Blu-ray: Wal-Mart offers Toshiba player for under $200

Toshiba HD-A2. Image: Toshiba

The battle for the future of the high-definition DVD has taken an intriguing turn: For the first time, mega-retailer Wal-Mart (WMT) has begun selling a player for less than $200.

In various online forums, enthusiasts have reported seeing the Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player available in stores for $198, significantly less than its common price of $230-$280.

HP offers technology to cut the Internet's energy bill

Servers like this one, which put information onto the Internet, let off a lot of heat – and it takes energy to cool them. Photo: HP

The Internet is hot. Not just hot as in popularity. Hot as in heat.

It's so hot, in fact, that data centers – those expensive warehouses full of computers that serve up information – are racking up huge power bills. According to Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) calculations, a MORE

iPod sales now driven by style more than storage

Flash-based models such as the new iPod touch are increasingly upstaging Apple's hard drive-based players. Photo: Jon Fortt

In the iPod's world, storage isn't the selling point it used to be.

That's one clear lesson from the sales rankings at the Apple Store, which posts a regularly updated list of the most popular iPod models. Though the iPod classic, which uses a hard drive to store music and video, offers a whopping MORE

Apple squeezes more profit out of hard drive-based iPods

Apple's cost to build the iPod classic is 11 percent lower than the previous verison, iSuppli estimates. Photo: Apple

Apple's (AAPL) redesign of the iPod classic has allowed the company to make better profits while also offering more storage, an analysis from researcher iSuppli has found.

The iSuppli numbers (below) help shed light on how Apple continues to make money off of its iPod line even as certain versions mature. iSuppli estimates MORE