Apple

I’ve been a Mac user since 1991, so it’s inevitable that I’d have this as a category.

Tori Amos: Tales of a Librarian

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Tori Amos has a new “greatest hits” collection available at the iTunes Music Store called ‘A Tori Amos Collection — Tales of a Librarian‘. Normally, this wouldn’t be terribly interesting to me, as I already have a very large Tori collection, and therefore wouldn’t have much need for a compilation album. However, this one caught my eye for two reasons.

Firstly, there are two exclusive tracks included only if you purchase the full album through the iTMS: Putting the Damage On (Reconditioned) and Pretty Good Year (Live from Sound Check). Secondly, all of the songs have been ‘reworked’ or ‘reconditioned’, which made me curious.

So far, I’m fairly impressed with what I’ve heard. None of the new versions are entirely new — in fact, on some of them, the changes are so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable, and I was initially starting to wonder if they had simply used ‘reworked’ rather than ‘remastered’ as a term and had just re-issued the original tracks. However, there are some definite changes to the tracks, usually in the form of a few extra instruments here and there, an extra vocal track or harmony line…slight edits and additions that flesh out the tracks a bit more.

One noticeable exception to the rule is the ‘reworked’ version of Professional Widow, which actually appears to be an edit of Armand van Helden’s dance remix of the track!

Overall, it’s not a must-buy for most people, but for a collector or for someone (like me) who gets a kick out of listening to a track’s production, trying to identify how it was all assembled, the collection is definitely worth the download.

iTunes: “Professional Widow (Reworked)” by Amos, Tori from the album A Tori Amos Collection – Tales of a Librarian (2003, 3:47).

FedEx making The Switch?

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Interesting rumor via MacRumors:

According to one unconfirmed source, Federal Express may be looking to make a significant purchase of Macs to replace their current PCs.

Reportedly, the move is under consideration due to the recent wave of viruses that have swept the PC world.

While Macs are not inherently immune to virus attacks, most viruses have been written on the Windows/PC platform.

Now, this is “one unnamed source”, so it could easily be entirely fictitious, but it’s interesting to think about, at the very least.

As an added bonus, the MacRumors discussion thread for this item has a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than what I’m used to seeing in their forums, and I found this wonderful little point buried within, from MisterMe:

…there is more evidence for ghosts, UFOs, and Big Foot than there is for MacOS X viruses. People have actually reported seeing ghosts, UFOs, and Big Foot.

iTunes: “Thunder Kiss ’65 (Swinging Lovers)” by White Zombie from the album Nightcrawlers: The K.M.F.D.M. Remixes (1992, 4:46).

Apple out of debt

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Impressive, really — even with the economy in the shape it’s been lately, Apple has been doing so well that they were just able to pull themselves out of debt, according to this internal Apple memo:

Team,

Today is a historic day of sorts for our company. When I arrived back at Apple in mid-1997, the company was burdened with \$1 billion of debt. Through everyone’s hard work we turned Apple around, paid off the majority of our debt and began to amass a war chest of cash in the bank which has grown to about \$4.8 billion! But there was still \$300 million of remaining debt, which we decided to hold to maturity.

Today we used \$300 million of our cash to pay off this remaining debt.

Apple is now a debt-free company — for the first time in over a decade!

It sure feels good.

Steve

(via /.)

iTunes: “The Moon, Part 1” by Speakeasy from the album Common Ground (1995, 3:33).

iPhotoToGallery

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Adding photos to my family photo gallery, the old way:

  1. Choose the photos I want to send to the gallery in iPhoto.
  2. Export the photos to a folder on my hard drive.
  3. Copy the photos to a folder on the webserver.
  4. Log into the Gallery software on the website.
  5. Navigate to the album I want to add the photos to.
  6. Choose Add photos….
  7. Enter the URL of the directory I just copied the photos into.
  8. Upload.
  9. Done.

Adding photos to my family photo gallery with iPhotoToGallery:

  1. Choose the photos I want to send to the gallery in iPhoto.
  2. In iPhoto, choose File > Export…, then click on the Gallery tab.
  3. Choose the album I want to upload the photos to (or create a new album).
  4. Click Export.
  5. Done.

Very, very nice.

(via Forwarding Address: OS X)

iTunes: “New Style Baby, A (’91)” by Pink Stanly Ford from the album Technomancer (1996, 6:47).

Heaven and Hell

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From Neil Gaiman, after admitting that while he is equally at home on Macs or Windows computers, he is still primarily a PC user…

When I tell Mac people this, they smile their secret smile. They know that after we die, we go to a special place, and that those who used Macs will be raised on high, where they can sip their cappucinos and look down and see the virus-infected writhings and screamings of those who used PCs, as the damned Windows users are forever bombarded with boiling projectile vomit from the thousand-foot high screaming thing that used to be Bill Gates.

But I’m sure even the damned people down in the mud will be laughing up whatever’s left of their sleeves at those of us who secretly like fountain pens best.

iTunes: “They’re Coming to Take Me Away” by Lard from the album Last Temptation of Reid, The (1990, 8:28).

GarageBand is evil

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I’ve poked around with GarageBand a bit since I got it, but haven’t created anything major yet. However, it is way too much fun.

It’s also far too easy for me to put together something really, really stupid with it. This is dangerous. Fun — but dangerous.

And here’s the evidence: countrybounce — 71 seconds of banjo and drum loops.

I’m sure I can come up with something better than that given time. But for the moment, this stupid little ditty is it.

Enjoy.

Or don’t.

;)

iTunes: “Must I” by Lizette & from the album This Is (2003, 3:32).

Marcel Marceau’s Greatest Hits!

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As The Apple Turns points out some of the amusing things that happen on the iTunes Music Store:

Yesterday we mentioned in passing that faithful viewer djsteve had purchased a track that cost him the “best 99 cents [he’d] ever spent.” The joke, of course, was that it was the second track from The Whitey Album by Ciccone Youth, which consists of a minute and three seconds’ worth of silence. To tell you the truth, while we’re amused by the fact that Apple is charging 99 cents for a song full o’ nothing, we’re even more amused by the fact that said track contains the usual digital rights management code to prevent you from playing it on any unauthorized systems. And the most amusing thing of all, of course, is that the song has a thirty-second preview.

Well, as it turns out, the Ciccone Youth track is by no means the only all-silent untune for sale at the iTMS; faithful viewers ben, Scott Levin, and Michael Wyszomierski contributed their own suggestions, too. And you know how Apple recently added a bunch of “iTunes Essentials” playlists to the store, such as “Cover Songs” and “’70s AM Radio Classics”? Well, we’ve compiled all the silent tracks we managed to scrape together into the first AtAT Essentials playlist, “To Be Played At Maximum Volume.”

Turn it up! Turn it up!!!!!

iTunes: “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by Kickshaw from the album Superstar (1999, 6:45).

The MS Mac BU

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Last Friday, the Seattle P-I ran a nice story on the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft, which included a photo of some of the Mac BU staffers seated in front of racks of Mac computers. I read it and appreciated it, but at the time, I didn’t give it much more thought.

Today, Todd Bishop points out that a few other readers drew some amusingly suspicious conclusions based on the fact that the computers in the photo were older model G3’s, and not new G5’s…

One person who e-mailed raised the issue of the Microsoft contract worker who was fired after posting a photo of new PowerMac G5s arriving on campus. The e-mailer put that situation together with the newspaper photo and theorized that Microsoft was trying to hide the fact that it had bought new G5s. He asked if the company prevented the P-I from taking the photo in front of any G5s.

Amusing as this is…sorry, folks, nothing so dastardly!

I hate to dispel a good conspiracy theory, but in fact, we were given a full tour of the test lab — which includes PowerMac G5s and basically every other Mac ever made, as I described in this post last week. P-I photographer Phil Webber could have taken the photo wherever he wanted, but the G3s provided a more colorful background than the metallic G5s would have.

I was always a little bummed that I never did find a way to wander my way through the Mac BU during my time on the MS campus. Microsoft or no Microsoft, just being around that much Mac history (both computers and software — remember, much as we love to hate them, Microsoft has been a major Mac supporter and software supplier since the Mac’s introduction) and Mac fans could have been a lot of fun, even if it were just for a tour or walkthrough.

It may be a bit late for me to peek in their doors now, though. ;)

Todd also mentioned something else that gave me a laugh — when Slashdot posted a link to the Seattle P-I’s article, a couple commenters decided to exercise their funny…

Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit: An anonymous reader writes “Today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an interesting piece on the folks who work at the Mac Business Unit for Microsoft.”

andih8u: They make software for macs and have a mac business unit. I hope someone can get some shots of macs being unloaded from a truck.

wed128: Nah…that might reveal the location of one of microsoft’s unloading platforms…any employee would be fired for an offense so great…

iSight issues

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Mike recently posted about some of the pros and cons to being the owner of an iSight — pros including the simple fact that the iSight is simply a damn good camera; cons including the Mac-only nature of iChat and the somewhat less-than-satisfactory mounting options that come stock out of the box.

Cross-platform video conferencing may be coming down the pike (we hope) with a future release of AIM on the Windows and Mac platforms, as Apple has a pre-existing partnership with AIM (iChat ties into the AIM network, allowing both iChat and AIM users to IM each other). Nobody seems to know for certain if or when this may happen, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed. As far as mounting options go, Mike pointed to the SightFlex, which looks perfect, and is getting added to my birthday wish list.

I’ve noticed some other cons to the iSight, chiefly being that as of late, it’s been notoriously instable, appearing and disappearing from my system more or less at random, and at times apparently interfering with the mounting of my iPod. Apparently I’m not the only person being bit by this bug, but on the bright side, there are a few possible solutions mentioned recently on MacFixIt, including simply remembering to turn the iSight off (twist the front of the camera to close its iris) when it’s not in use. I’ll give that a shot for a while, and see if it helps.

iTunes: “Chicken In A Biscuit” by Black Happy from the album Peghead (1993, 2:55).