Frank Zappa in iTunes and a low, low price for the Surface RT from Microsoft

Frank Zappa on iTunes! Oh, we’ve had covers of his songs (I have a cover of Valley Girl) in iTunes, but not the man himself. It’s a crying shame that Frank died too soon to see the possibility of direct digital distribution to his fans. Maybe Frank would have written a song about Steve Jobs…but I digress.

Anyway, in other news, the possibility that Microsoft may adopt Amazon’s strategy of selling the hardware at a loss, making it up on music, video, and games. According to this report in Engadget, Microsoft will sell the Surface RT tablet with 32 Gb of memory for $199. That’s with Windows RT, the version for the ARM processor.

The full-blown Windows 8 for Intel/AMD processors comes out later. I would presume tablets running Windows 8 will cost more. How much, I dunno. Probably at least as much as an iPad.

I’ll let PC Magazine and PC World do the heavy lifting here. Can M$ beat the iPad? Is Steve Ballmer shiny and a little bit crazy?

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, Macvalley UG