In any case, the iPod shuffle has proved the product's vaunted "halo effect" in that, when Apple introduced its new iPod in January, everybody stopped talking about how many copies of Halo 2 Microsoft shipped during December.

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The product proved to be a needless insurance policy in what became a seven-year bull run for stocks.

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Even so, the iPad proved to be another ground-breaking product with sales topping billions of dollars in the first couple of months, bringing new life to a segment of the computer market that had until then been essentially moribund.

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"You've just seen the ad, you bought the product, nothing else has to be proved, " says Michael Greve, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Harm-Less Lawsuits?

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This proved to be potentially problematic if a consumer found a product online but chose to purchase it in the store or from the contact center.

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Trying to manage two incompatible product lines -- Digitals and Quantums -- proved to be disastrous.

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By contrast, Apple proved in the past that it could reap huge hardware profits by attacking a big market with a new product for which customers would pay a price premium.

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She said there is little chance that the Buitoni products might be tainted, because -- even if the cookie dough is proved to be the source of the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 -- it is a kosher product, meaning it is made from a segregated stream of ingredients.

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