Microsoft will be shut out.
If the above comes to pass (man, what a day that would be!), Microsoft will not have *that* good of a friend in AMD, its next obvious choice.
Sun is in bed with AMD right now, and Sun is giving away its Solaris operating system optimized for AMD chips now. Also, AMD is a big name amongst the Linux weenies, no friends of Microsoft, either.
In a twist of irony, Microsoft stops selling operating system software (they will still make Office for Mac) and the XBox-360 becomes their compute platform, as well as game machine, toaster, dishwasher, whatever. And that is running IBM as we all know.
Interesting times we live in.
The iPod shuffle is a very nice little unit that does fill that void. Heck, I'm thinking of picking one up because it doubles as a great portable storage unit, as Gregory points out.
Yeah, it sucks. I was into buying music from iTMS, but I stopped. I like the flexibility of owning the CD more than the convenience of downloading it instantly.
Take It With A Grain of Salt
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iPod Shuffle: First Impressions
Not Good: Jobs Changes The iTunes Rules
Not Good: Jobs Changes The iTunes Rules
Three Pieces of Good News from Cupertino