Apple

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

iTMS Exclusive: LXG Soundtrack

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Looks like Apple’s iTunes Music Store is catching on (or, at the very least, getting enough interest to warrant an interesting experiment): in the US market, the soundtrack for the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will only be available through the iTMS — no CD’s will be pressed.

I’ve got mixed feelings on this, personally. One of the things that has kept me from jumping full-bore into the iTMS for my music is the paucity of full ID3 tags in the purchased files. As I’ve been importing my CD collection, I’ve been working on being very thorough with the metadata included with each song: Artist, Title, Album, Year of release, and Composer are all information that I want available in my collection. Unfortunately, with the tracks I’ve purchased from the iTMS so far, Artist, Title, and Album seem to be all you get.

With a soundtrack release that (at least in the US market) has no physical media, how easy is it going to be for me to track down the rest of the metadata that I want included for search and organizational purposes? Not very, would be my guess, which concerns me. I like the idea, concept, and execution of the iTMS a lot, and I do support this experiment — just gimme my metadata!

(via MacRumors)

Declaration of Independence from OS 9

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Seeing as how I honestly can’t remember the last time I had to run a Classic (pre-OS X) application on my box, the Declaration of Indepence from OS 9 is right up my alley.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that Classic and OSX are not created equal, that they are drastically different in so many ways, that among these are file sharing, system crashes, software compatibility, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, we should banish Classic from our computers.

(via Brent Simmons)

Red wine

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Regardless of how Apple corporate wants to portray its products, the Mac isn’t a machine for the masses any more than red wine is the preferred beverage at baseball games. To be honest, the masses don’t have the capability to appreciate the elegance and depth of this platform.

— Derrick Story

(via The Book of FSCK)

Thankfully

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I finally got a new digital camera last week…. It’s pretty nice. I wish I could download pictures to my PC. Thankfully, I have a Mac now. (I hated when annoying people said things like that before I had a Mac. ;)

— Evan Williams, Back Behind the Lens

Drool

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Everyone else on the ‘net has reported this already, but hey, I’ve got visitors — I’m allowed to be a bit slow.

Steve Jobs announced the usual slew of goodies during his WWDC keynote speech. To sum up:

  • A ‘sneak preview’ of Panther, the next major update to Mac OS X, due to be released before the end of the year. Some parts look brilliant (Exposé), some I’m not sold on yet (the new Finder).
  • Safari updates to v1.0. All the previous Safari goodness, plus it finally renders Kirsten’s site correctly. Yay!
  • iChat becomes iChat AV, with audio and video conferencing in addition to text chat. Looks nifty, I just don’t have a camera for my mac.
  • Good thing Apple also introduced the iSight camera! Again, looks nifty, but I don’t have the \$150 to drop on that at the moment.
  • PowerMac G5: God, I need more money. 1.6Ghz G5 at the low end, 1.8Ghz G5 for the midrange, and dual 2.0Ghz G5 for the high end.

Apple woos indie labels for iTMS

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After the iTunes Music Store opened, there were two recurring comments from much of the Mac world: why was it US only, and what about independent labels? It’s commonly accepted that the intricacies of international copyright law are most likely what’s restricting the iTMS to the US for now, but aside from a few rumors, the question of whether the store would open up to more than just the major labels was still unanswered.

Yesterday, however, Apple hosted a special invitation only event for independent and smaller music labels, giving them information on how they could join with the iTMS. A representative from CDBaby was at the event, and has posted an extremely interesting rundown of Apple’s offer to indy labels, mixed in with a lot of information about the iTMS system.

Interesting reading, even just for the peeks into how Apple is handling all the behind-the-scenes details of the iTMS. From what I can see, I think this is just going to keep getting better and better.

Fact-checking Reuters re: iTunes

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There’s an article from the Reuters news service covering the iTunes ruckus that has some rather surprising errors in it, not to mention being amazingly clumsily written. And, since I can’t leave well enough alone…

Earlier this week, Apple released an update to its iTunes music software for its Macintosh computers, which allows subscribers to download songs for 99 cents each.

Minor nitpick: iTunes does a whole lot more than that.

One feature of iTunes, called Rendezvous music sharing, allows users to share downloaded songs between three Macintosh computers and also allows users to share songs copied from CDs to be shared over the Internet.

Minor nitpick: Rendevouz is a system-level networking technology that allows computers to auto-sense their network environment, configure themselves, and automatically discover available services. iTunes takes advantage of Rendevouz, but is not tied to it.

The update eliminates users’ ability to swap songs copied from CDs, but doesn’t disable the Rendezvous feature, itself.

Minor nitpick: See above, regarding Rendevouz.

Minor nitpick: Songs ripped from a private CD library were available for streaming before the update, and still are (just not over the ‘net at large). They were never officially open for swapping.

The new service has been a hit, with more than three million songs downloaded since the service was released a month ago, according to Apple.

Bad writing: The facts in this paragraph are about the iTunes Music Store. However, with its placement in the story and unclear subject (“The service…” — iTunes? The iTunes Music Store? The Rendevouz-based streaming?), it seems to say that over three million songs have been illegally downloaded over the Rendevouz streaming feature.

Subscribers to the iTunes service, who paid \$10 to join…

Major error: I haven’t got a clue what this might be referring to. Neither iTunes nor any of its features require a \$10 fee of any sort. iTunes is free, all of its features are built-in, and the only charges from the iTunes Music Store are those accrued when purchasing music.

…started receiving notices on their computers from Monday urging them to update their iTunes software. While the upgrade is not mandatory, it shows up on a daily basis, forcing users to reject it until it is downloaded.

Error: I’ve been using iTunes for years, and have purchased a few tracks from the iTunes Music Store, and yet I never got any notice from Apple urging me to do anything. What this probably refers to is the Software Update feature of Mac OS X, which is simply an automated agent that checks Apple’s servers at a regular user-specified schedule to see if there are any available software updates.

If someone had their Software Update scheduled to check in with Apple daily, then they could conceivably get a daily alert about the iTunes update — but then, they’d get a daily alert about any software update that was available and uninstalled. If you choose not to install an update, and don’t want to be notified every time that Software Update runs, you can simply select it and disable any further alerts for that particular upgrade. Nothing is forced or urged upon the customer.

Normally I don’t have much problem with the stories I see on Reuters — but then, I’m not nearly as well-versed in many of the subjects I read from them. If the rest of their news reporting is as solid as this story was, I should just stop paying attention.