Apple released five colored socks for the iPod Hi-Fi. Each sock is large enough to hold the entire unit, with a pocket on the side for accessories and three slots on the inside to hold your iPod, iPod mini/nano, and iPod shuffle. They have with a pull-tie cord that doubles as a shoulder sling as well. The socks will retail for $69 for the set of five.
But the fact is that Amazon is now in such a dominant position that their dominance probably wouldn’t be threatened just because they lost some integrity. But, losing some integrity could increase revenues, as long as that dominant position remained. So it is arguable that their underlying financial pressures are now different than they were in earlier times, when they were still rapidly growing. And in fact, it appears that they may be responding to their new situation by having a new policy toward reviews.
I asked a few engineer friends at Apple whether my perception was correct — that Tevanian has had one foot out the door ever since he stepped down from day-to-day management of Apple software engineering in 2003, and that the news that he’s leaving the company completely isn’t really a big deal at all. They all agreed, more or less, that Tevanian has had both feet out the door but just hadn’t yet turned in his keys. No one I spoke to at Apple has any idea what he’s been up to the last three years.
