Sorry - Apple’s my fixation. Some interesting things have popped up recently and they bear on the iPhone, my current pet peeve. First, the Chinese company Meizu is showing a device that looks remarkably like something we’ve seen before. I’m certainly not surprised. How long will Apple be able to retain its brand coolness when everybody has something that looks the same? Are the white earbuds going to be enough? Though FIC wasn’t able to get the look down, they’ve got a full-screen device on the way in March. Linux based, it’s not going to rule the world but it’s another leak in the dike. This list shows that the full screen mobile device market isn’t quite an empty field that Apple wants people to believe it is - remember what I said about the vicious nature of cell phone market? (Look specifically at the section entitled “Awakening the Sleeping Giant”) For my money, this device by Samsung looks really nice - I wonder what the candid response by Jobs would be to it? Is it worthless because it actually includes a keyboard? Somehow I don’t see that as a liability.

Enough doom and gloom - it appears that Apple is still doing well, despite the critics. Their recent earnings set a new record. What is really interesting here is that for the first time in a while the most popular item on their web store was not the iPod, but rather was the Apple TV box. This is profound. Apple is now going to see a surge in sales of media through the iTunes store as people are able to share their movies and TV shows with the family. These media sales have got to have a pretty good margin for Apple. After all, selling more episodes of the office from their web store isn’t going to require Apple to open up new research offices in Berkley or outsource anything to China or India. They’ll pretty much just make more money.

So, Apple as the media giant - is anybody nervous or do we all welcome our new overlords?

Robert X Cringely has an interesting take on Apple TV. He thinks that Apple TV is expensive if all it is is a media hub, in the vein of a slingbox. Cringely’s thought is that a 40GB hard drive is overkill and that means that Apple is trying to “trojan horse” some sort of other functions or features into customers houses. He thinks that this means that Apple TV is really just a fancy Bittorrent machine which will give Apple control of the most powerful distribution channel in the whole of the media industry.

Interesting thoughts, but I’m not buying it. Apple would have to make customer participation in such a network “opt in” if they wanted to maintain good relations with their customers. Given that, how many people would agree to let their Internet connections be used in such a manner, with space on the 40GB hard drive that they (the customer) bought and own fair and square be used by Apple to increase Apple’s profit margin? I’d guess not many.

Rather, I think that the hard disk is there so that I don’t have to have a powered computer running in order to watch TV. Seems logical to me. Occam’s razor.