Apple uses iPod marketing muscle to delay Vista

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 06 February 2007 15:50

Your IT - Home IT

In an intriguing display of the growing influence of killer applications over the desktop, Apple could succeed in putting the brakes on a large proportion of upgrades to Windows Vista because if incompatibilities with the iPod music player and iTunes music store.

If five years ago, Apple had advised PC users not to upgrade from Windows 2000 to XP, most users would probably have smirked, shrugged their shoulders and wondered why Apple thought it had the right to proffer advice on the subject.

Today, however, with nearly 100 million iPods in the marketplace, iTunes has become one of the most popular consumer applications on the Windows platform. Thus, when Apple says be careful about upgrading to Vista tens of millions of concerned consumers who own both PCs and iPods are bound to listen.

Apple has issued an iTunes Repair Tool for Vista. However, according to Apple, there are more serious compatibility issues between Vista, the iPod and iTunes that still need to be addressed.

Of course, Apple is by no means the only hardware vendor to have compatibility issues with Vista but an iPod is the sort of device that users are not likely to want to replace just so they can get access to a new operating system.

The iPod compatibility issue with Vista also opens a door with regard to Apple's desire to grow its Macintosh marketshare. Now that the Mac is capable of running both Mac OS X and Windows, Apple has an excuse to market its box to iPod users as a 100% worry free way to get the best of both worlds.

As an interesting aside, Apple has been reticent to entertain talk of allowing iTunes to reside on its upcoming iPhone device, insisting that "the music should live on the computer." Having a killer app like the iTunes/iPod combo residing only on a computer gives Apple enormous leverage in the desktop space and Apple knows it all too well.