some perspective on the iPhone launch
This isn’t like getting tickets to a Fugazi reunion at the Black Cat; there will be plenty of iPhones to go around.
Rob Pegoraro says Don’t Run Out To Buy An iPhone Today
July 11, 2008
October 31, 2007
iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc.
October 22, 2007
cmon cmon cmon cmon now touch me baby
People don’t understand that we’ve invented a new class of interface.
As Apple Gains PC Market Share, Jobs Talks of a Decade of Upgrades - New York Times
August 13, 2007
iPhone photograhy
July 20, 2007
it's a revolutionary new mobile phone, a widescreen ipod with touch controls, and...
July 19, 2007
technology, sufficiently advanced, resembles magic
Macintouch Reader Reports: iPhone
With the earbuds in, using the phone function, the caller’s voice is now comfortably in the middle of my head, in the center of my aural space. This makes talking on the phone SO much easier, since I don’t have to automatically shift my attention to one ear, and exclude the other. It feels like telepathy, really.
What a dramatic change in how I talk, done so simply, and found so unexpectedly…
June 15, 2007
Christian Kent on Leopard's Time Machine
Last year’s launch of Leopard’s Time Machine featured a video that contained files and contents from a user named “Rose”, which was a notable coincidence as Rose Tyler was the name of a time-travelling companion who had just been “lost” by the world’s most famous fictional time traveller, Doctor Who.
This year’s WWDC has an updated video of the Time Machine feature, and shows a backup being created on “Sam’s Disk”. Coincidentally or not, Sam Tyler is the lead character in the ’70s cop show “Life on Mars”, which features a young 21st-century detective who wakes up from a coma in 1973, and has to work with the people and practices he finds at his old police station 30 years ago.
By the way, Sam Tyler is not related to Rose Tyler, either officially or as an in-joke; however, one of the writers of “Life on Mars” asked his daughter for a suggestion to help him decide a surname for Sam. Later on, she admitted that she chose the name “Tyler” because she was a fan of “Doctor Who” and liked Rose’s surname.
April 2, 2007
List of artists signed to EMI
March 19, 2007
advice on upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4.9
I just did the 10.4.9 upgrade on my 15″MacBook Pro (Core Duo, 2GHz), with no unusual behavior or problems. I downloaded the Combo updater and used it for the upgrade, even though I was already running 10.4.8. I made full clones to two different external drives with SuperDuper! beforehand, and I also ran OnyX’s automated housekeeping functions. The RAM in this machine is Apple factory-installed, and I chose good music for the update: Copland’s Appalachian Spring. I think a lot of upgrade problems result from playing inappropriate music during the process.
March 6, 2007
Not No Art
iTunes 7.1 lets you browse your music with Cover Flow in a new full screen view. This is really great, but I’ve got so many tracks without cover art that it’s a let down to try to browse my library visually. To the rescue comes a great script by Doug Adams called ‘Tracks Without Artwork to Playlist’. Run this script on your library (on about 2000 tracks at a time if you’ve got a big one) and you’ll now have a new playlist called ‘No Art.’ Now create a smart playlist to include all tracks which are not listed in ‘No Art.’ I named mine Cover Flow, and now flipping through my album art is lots more fun.
November 9, 2006
take iT(unes) to the limit
This Macintouch Reader Report on Music Servers offers some deep and dirty real-world hacks involving network storage, multiple iPods, and other edge cases.
As home networks get more sophisticated, the shortcomings of iTunes’ single-user model become clear. The time I spend on dumb repetetive tasks, such as copying music to my wife’s computer, will soon be double as my children discover iTunes (it’s already my son’s number one “place to go on the computer” — he has a favorite podcast, you see).
I hope the famous it-just-works ease and elegance we expect from Apple are brought to bear on this issue. In the meantime, here’s what the pioneers of family music management are cobbling together with their bare hands.
August 14, 2006
01101111 01101011 00111111
April 12, 2006
switch
Prediction: XP Is The "New Classic" Under 10.5
Your grandma doesn't want the Mac if she has to give up her favorite solitaire game.
In this piece from January (!) Gavin Shearer explains why even in the face of crippling malware lots of people haven't yet switched away from Windows — and why they will. (via Daring Fireball)
March 28, 2006
music's defeat?
Sitting at home with the window open, listening to the tree branches brush against each other outside and the occasional horn-honks of Flatbush Ave, bark of dog and squeal of child... this uncomposed ambience is my creativity engine lately.
From a comment on Click opera - Ubiquity is the abyss.
January 14, 2006
Jonathan Greene, November 04, 2005
I’d love to pull my photos from Flickr right to my iPod.
notes from a teacher, Dec. 30, 2005
A thought: photocasts should be possible.
November 21, 2005
Orchestra Pit
Want to play with Apple's Front Row without buying a new iMac? Check out the hack I'm calling 'Orchestra Pit'. (Disclaimer: randomWalks did not originate any of the technologies or techniques known as 'Orchestra Pit' -- we just gave it a fancy name.) Just download:
- Apple's Front Row 1.0.1 Update (contains the Front Row application)
- Pacifist (needed to install Front Row on your Mac)
- Front Row Enabler 1.0.1 (magic?)
Then follow the directions that come with Front Row Enabler. What's it good for? Well, it's a nice way to show off a photo album, and it's good for watching movie trailers. For much else, you'd really want a remote control.
November 15, 2005
Open Source Mac software
Open Source Mac "is a simple list of the best free and open source software for Mac OS X."
November 5, 2005
Apple designs differently
Apple's Front Row Comes Closer to Couch-Driven Computing
Where most of the computer industry trudges on under a banner of "more" -- more processor speed, more expansion ports, more stickers on the front of the computer -- Apple's mission statement amounts to "less." It is one of the few companies in the business that understands editing -- how the discipline imposed by having to remove yet another button, menu and toolbar can yield simpler, easier and more useful products.
The iPod’s interface could be even better
Playlist: The iPod’s interface could be even better
iTunes has those lovely little Arrow icons next to a track’s name that, if Option- or Alt-clicked, take you to the entry and its surrounding album tracks if you’ve sorted tracks by album. I’d be thrilled if there was some way to open an album or artist entry from within a track’s Now Playing screen on an iPod.
This is the outstanding feature iPod needs most.
May 2, 2005
modify the modifier keys
Daring Fireball: Tiger Details
Modify the Modifier Keys: In the Keyboard section of the Keyboard & Mouse panel in System Preferences, there’s a new "Modifier Keys" button. Click it and you get a dialog box where you can change the meaning of any of the modifier keys, including the Caps Lock key.
April 1, 2005
Is the Web 2.0 passing Apple by?
A revolution is happening based on web standards, it can either help or hurt the Mac, a lot depends on Apple and right now a lot of us don't have a lot of confidence in the decisions Apple is making so it can go either way.
Applepeels: Switching from Apple. I agree. The painful truth is that signs of cluefulness from Cupertino are few and far between these days.
February 3, 2005
mac mini review
When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware — none of which are available for the Mac platform — it doesn't make sense for me to "switch" to a Mac at this time.
December 26, 2004
anticorporate granola
As Apple keeps innovating, its challengers keep competing like engineers, thinking that advantages in storage capacity or battery life can make silk purses out of ugly, hard-to-use sows' ears of machines.
November 24, 2004
Apple student blog
Dave Morin is Apple's first public weblogger. They launched a "student weblog" on their education site yesterday, "for students to hear from other students about their observations and Mac-related stuff." (That's the sharp focus and clarity of purpose I like to see in a new weblog.) Lacking any external links or the ability to accept comments, the most interesting thing about the blog so far may be the disclaimer: "Any information in the blogs is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Apple. Apple is not responsible for the content." I hope Dave does something interesting with the site so it doesn't remain the token brand-positioning corporate weblog it appears to be.
August 26, 2004
intelligence iPods on intelligence
The iPod "knows somehow when I am reaching the end of my reserves, when my motivation is flagging," Mr. Greist insisted. "It hits me up with 'In Da Club,' and then all of a sudden I am in da club."
You're not alone if you believe your iPod has its own musical taste and inflicts it upon you, as if by an occult hand, through the Shuffle function. I'm convinced mine is fond of Modest Mouse, the Magnetic Fields, the Rolling Stones and Prefuse 73.
UPDATE: I just noticed this quote:
This logical explanation doesn't always jibe with users' experiences. Dan Cedarholm, a Web designer in Salem, Mass., insists that his iPod has a predilection for the indie punk band Fugazi. Even though he only has two of the band's albums stored on his "vintage" 5-gigabyte device, the band seems to dominate his iPod to a degree wildly disproportionate to the amount of space it occupies on his player's memory, he said.
Compare with this.
July 26, 2004
iTMS: Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay Mix
iTMS: Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay Mix because I am such a tool.
There was no surer way for me to get into the spirit of the time (primarily the early to mid 1940s) and the feel of the place (primarily New York City) that gave birth to the comic book than to put on some Ellington or Goodman.
July 20, 2004
iPod unbundling offsets price reductions
[Brian Shaw] Unmentioned on any Mac/Apple web site that I can find is the fact that neither of the new iPods includes the remote control or case. They are both options with both units (see iPod specs). Furthermore, only the 40GB includes a dock.
Since all three of these options have a $39 price tag, it is not correct to state that the new units reflect a $100 price reduction from current models. For example, a 20GB 3rd-generation unit, which included a dock, case and remote, listed for $399. The 20GB 4th-generation lists at $299, but add the optional remote, case and dock, and it costs $416, a $17 price increase!
Put another way, I now can get a 40G iPod without paying for an iPod sleeve and a featureless remote.
July 15, 2004
the value of a 17,000-square-foot masterwork by a great California architect
The New York Times: In Silicon Valley, Tear-Down Interrupted in which Preservationists dispute Steve Jobs' Impeccable Taste.
In this affluent community west of Palo Alto — where bridle paths wend their way to hitching posts at grocery stores stocked with $800 bottles of burgundy — the woodsy rural life, or a semblance of one, is valued above all. The debate over the Jackling estate has pitted preservationists from Woodside and beyond against those, like Mr. Jobs and many property owners here, who argue that a man's home is his castle and if the castle happens to be an outdated white elephant its fate should be his to determine. Historians say the house qualifies for the California Register of Historic Resources and therefore merits protection under the state's Environmental Quality Act. "It's a significant house and it can continue to serve the community," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "It's symptomatic of a discard society. He ought to buy another lot."
"It was never really a very interesting house to start with," Mr. Jobs, who lived in the house for ten years, explained to the commissioners. "So I think I could build something far, far nicer and far more historically interesting down the road."
At a Web site, Folklore.org, Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, describes visiting Mr. Jobs in the house in June 1985: "We knocked on the door and waited a few minutes before Steve appeared and led us inside. The massive house was almost completely unfurnished, and our footsteps echoed eerily as he led us to a larger room near the kitchen, with a long table, one of the few rooms that had any furniture."
June 28, 2004
Tiger Server runs blojsom
Apple - Mac OS X - Mac OS X Server v10.4 Tiger Preview
A new Weblog server in Tiger Server makes it easy to publish, distribute and syndicate web-based content. The Weblog server provides users with calendar-based navigation and customizable themes, is fully compatible with Safari RSS and enables posting entries using built-in web-based functionality or with weblog clients that support XML-RPC or the ATOM API. The Weblog Server, based on the popular open source project "Blojsom," works with Open Directory for user accounts and authentication.
June 17, 2004
Did you mean King Cruisin?
Erudite Mac community members lament the shortcomings of the iTunes Music Stores France, Germany, and UK.
June 10, 2004
open source; closed fruition
It's not bothering any consumers really at the moment, but Apple is tying more and more things into iTunes, and they should be careful not to become an island again, like the Apple of yesteryear. If Microsoft released a wireless-to-stereo adapter that only talked to Windows Media Player on XP, and played only from an encrypted WMA stream, everyone would have cried "monopoly". Just sayin'.
May 26, 2004
an ounce of prevention
Daring Fireball: An Ounce of Prevention is the definitive resource for the recently discovered OS X security concerns.
self-silencing cooling fan/speaker assemblies
Dr. Sommerfeldt's system has four miniature speakers and four even tinier microphones set in a ring around the computer fan. The microphones and other sensors detect the noise of the fan blades and, with the help of digital signal processing and algorithms, radiate opposing tones from the speakers. The whole system can be tucked into the same space that a conventional computer cooling fan would occupy.
Wild prediction: Someone named in this story is getting a phone call from Steve Jobs tomorrow.
May 8, 2004
Party Shuffle
The Search field is disabled in iTunes 4.5's Party Shuffle list. This could be improved: the Party Shuffle display should have a third horizontal pane for search results.
May 5, 2004
the grand ol' stinking pile of dung
An excercise to find the worst songs on the iTunes Music Store and compile them all together in one handy playlist. Those with a strong stomach can now preview all the songs together through the Dumpster Diving iMix.
May 4, 2004
Apple Lossless Encoder
Macworld's Jonathan Seff reports that, according to Apple, the big difference between ALC and FLAC is speed -- Apple says ALC is faster. Apple says ALC is not based on FLAC, but was created by Apple itself.
I've not seen anything else about the Apple Lossless Encoder yet.
April 28, 2004
iTunes 4.5 best features are unannounced
The Slashdot: Apple Releases Major iTunes Update discussion includes the following gems (unattributed, because I'm lazy):
Lastly, and this is a feature of the entire music library, not just playlists or Party Shuffle, the same "arrow" icons that show up in the iTMS when you search for a song are present in iTunes. This means you can click an arrow for a song name, album, or artist and it will launch a search on iTMS. But say you don't like that feature? Well you can of course turn it off in preferences, but you may also hodl down "option" and click it. The result? it searches only YOUR library, not the iTMS.
You can now use other playlists as criteria for a Smart Playlist. Create one playlist that is a combination of several other playlists.
April 25, 2004
what Apple engineering and Apple design can really do
With roots both in Silicon Valley's digital culture and the 1960's counterculture, Mr. Jobs has long been an arbiter of what is cool in technology, much like a real-world version of a trend-spotting character from "Pattern Recognition," one of the cyberpunk novels by William Gibson.
AND, helped by his growing prominence in Hollywood through his second company, Pixar Animation Studios, Mr. Jobs has attained a level of influence over how life is lived in the digital age that is unmatched by even his most powerful computer industry rivals. "He is the Henry J. Kaiser or Walt Disney of this era," said Kevin Starr, a culture historian and the California state librarian.
April 7, 2004
weaponizing the ipod
Leif's friend, Alex Payne, said the mugger was lucky Leif wasn't armed with the 40-Gbyte iPod, which is a lot bulkier than the mini.
"Phil's the last guy in the world I'd imagine getting into a fight, but it figures that it would involve a slickly-designed gadget in some way," said Payne.
Weapon of Choice: iPod Mini. This wasn't posted April 1.
February 4, 2004
pod heads
January 15, 2004
unix
Setting environment variables for user processes - isn't the command line MUCH easier?
January 7, 2004
iGarage
It's been said that this year's "Worst. Macworld. Ever." was really about GarageBand, and I agree, although personally I'm most pleased that iPhoto will finally be able to handle my photos as one library rather than seven. The only reason I'll continue using iPhoto Library Manager will be to sequester certain photos from those intended for a general audience.
Mellel update
Mellel 1.7 updates the $30 multi-lingual word processor for Mac OS X. This release offers a new and innovative auto-numbering, table of contents, number flow editing, unlimited captions, and improved support for RTF as well as several new/updated localizations.via macnn.
stupid sexy apple
The obligatory mini iPod link. Awwwwwwww.
December 3, 2003
inside the ipod
The iPod's history is comparatively free of lightning-bolt moments. Apple was not ahead of the curve in recognizing the power of music in digital form. It was practically the last computer maker to equip its machines with CD burners. It trailed others in creating jukebox software for storing and organizing music collections on computers. And various portable digital music players were already on the market before the iPod was even an idea. Back when Napster was inspiring a million self-styled visionaries to predict the end of music as we know it, Apple was focused on the relationship between computers and video. The company had, back in the 1990's, invented a technology called FireWire, which is basically a tool for moving data between digital devices -- in large quantities, very quickly. Apple licensed this technology to various Japanese consumer electronics companies (which used it in digital camcorders and players) and eventually started adding FireWire ports to iMacs and creating video editing software. This led to programs called iMovie, then iPhoto and then a conceptual view of the home computer as a ''digital hub'' that would complement a range of devices. Finally, in January 2001, iTunes was added to the mix.
And although the next step sounds prosaic -- we make software that lets you organize the music on your computer, so maybe we should make one of those things that lets you take it with you -- it was also something new. There were companies that made jukebox software, and companies that made portable players, but nobody made both. What this meant is not that the iPod could do more, but that it would do less. This is what led to what Jonathan Ive, Apple's vice president of industrial design, calls the iPod's ''overt simplicity.'' And this, perversely, is the most exciting thing about it.
New York Times Magazine: The Guts of a New Machine. (So much porn for iPod lovers.)
October 30, 2003
all of my systems are down, down down down
MacSlash and Rael Dornfest offer notes from the O'Reilly OS X Conference on a digital home session.
October 17, 2003
Cross Platform DRM
Tristan Louis says yesterday's big news is about Apple's cross-platform DRM and some logical progressions.
As predicted, Apple introduced a version of Itunes for windows today. A lot will be written about how this solidifies Apple's lead in the digital music player market but what many may be overlooking is how Apple is pushing its own version of Digital Rights Management into a wider market. I suspect this is a strategy similar to the one they used in the early 1990s to make quicktime a strong contender for digital video.
While companies from Intel to Microsoft are talking about how they plan to implement digital rights in the future and are taking tentative steps in that direction, Apple is working on a strategy that covers multiple platforms beginning today. The ITunes music store may be an interesting story in terms of the consumer market but it seems to me that there is also an interesting play at hand for a business to business model. If Apple succeeds in its implementation of the music store (and there is little doubt that they will), they could turn around and start offering a set of products and services to organizations dealing in digital goods. (...)
changing the world one pop at a time
I am Looking for the code numbers in the yellow cap game that were to be postmarked by Dec. 31,2003. Where do I obtain a list of numbers? Can you E-mail me a list of winning codes.
Thank you
Jay Heath
October 13, 2003
Apple: Hip Hop
In conjunction with the release of the third generation of the iPod, Apple and TBWA/Chiat/Day/Los Angeles have unveiled an eye-popping new campaign for the iconic MP3 player. In both print and television executions, the effort shows figures silhouetted against brightly colored backgrounds, getting their grooves on with the help of what -- even in three colors -- is obviously the Apple iPod.For the television campaign, Chiat/Day turned to @radical.media director Dave Meyers, who is fresh off winning the Video of the Year award at this year's MTV Video Music Awards for his clip for Missy Elliott's "Work It." Meyers previously worked with Chiat/Day on the production number "Jimmy & Jenny" for former client Kmart. In the new iPod spot, titled "Hip Hop," the shadowy dancers shake it to the track "Hey Mama" by The Black Eyed Peas.
October 6, 2003
Buddy, spre some 'a's?
So, friend of mine is running pre-relese version of Mc OS X 10.3 ("Pnther") nd is hving some inexplicble trouble with his keybord in which he cn produce cpitl 'A' but not the lowercse version of the populr vowel. Neither he nor I hve clue how to begin troubleshooting this isse, so ny dvice would be extremely welcome. Thnk you.
September 27, 2003
Birth of an Industry 1976-77
The very first ad for the Apple II.
When this ad ran, Jobs got a letter from a woman in Oregon, who felt it was sexist, so the ad was revised for subsequent insertions to show a woman using a sophisticated display and a man (me) with a low-resolution display. We got no further complaints.
September 16, 2003
halfway to 'blog all tabs'?
September 4, 2003
another fluffy auction
As of this writing, an unplayable iTunes Music Store-encoded AAC file of Double Dutch Bus by Devin Vasquez is at auction for $15,099. I don't think I've ever heard this song; have you?
September 2, 2003
new releases
If you want to know what Apple's releasing next, check out Small Dog Electronics. Without fail, "new" items that are back ordered are soon to be replaced. So my prediction is that we'll have new iPods and PowerBooks within the next two weeks.
August 27, 2003
you say you want a revolution
iTunes iSbogus
Steve Jobs says the Music Store is "revolutionizing music." What an impoverished imagination he has. An expensive jukebox and a long-playing walkman aren't revolutionary. A revolution in music will be when people stop buying music and start living it: when 25 cent donations support more musicians than CDs ever did, when payola's dead and radio is commercial-free all day long, when every American highschool has a recording studio just cause they're that cheap to set up. This can all happen right now."If you want to support the musicians you love, the best way to begin is by downloading the song for free on a filesharing network."
July 15, 2003
clicking and dragging not included
Build a web browser in one line of code, via the excellent Cocoa Dev Central.
July 8, 2003
macbytes.com
The new MacBytes.com looks like nothing so much as our dear Fark -- just an observation.
July 7, 2003
MT "post this" bookmarklet for Safari
I've been using Jen's "post this" Movable Type bookmarklet for Safari for a couple weeks now and it's quite refreshing. It's been a long time since I've had a working bookmarklet and getting it back reminds me just how quick and easy it makes things. I have a slight improvement to share -- this version puts any text you have selected into the 'Entry Body' field of the pop up window. (Be sure to check out the link above for good instructions on customizing the code to suit your needs.)
[post this]
[post this]
June 24, 2003
macfilter is coming soon we promise
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. In reality, the Mac is a computer for developers, geeks, power users, risk takers, visionaries, lunatics, scientists, musicians, photographers, educators, and entrepreneurs. When you consider that half of the PC world is still running Windows 95 and 98, you understand why Mac OS X is often overlooked. Many of these people think that an operating system is some type of medical procedure.From Mac OS X Dev Center: Developer Notes from WWDC 2003 and programming with ODBC.
June 6, 2003
Apple iTunes independent music pitch
I got an invitation to go to Apple's office for a presentation/meeting today (June 5, 2003) about how to get independent artists into the iTunes Music Store. There were about 150 people there, representatives from the best independent record labels and music services, in this invitation-only conference room. Steve Jobs came out and started a two and a half hour presentation/seminar/Q&A about iTunes and the benefits of independent labels making their music available there. I type fast and had my laptop, so I wrote down all the major points of their presentation as they went.Just in case you, like me, are rabidly curious.
May 26, 2003
new toys
The PowerMate (input device) and Synergy (iTunes software controller) are a sublime pair, mating this luminescent dial to my own heavenly radio.
May 14, 2003
use an old idea
This freeware application is a handy little utility meant for creative types. It spits out a random oblique strategy from one of the hundred included in the Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt third edition (the 1979 edition). These little anecdotes are meant to assist you when you're having a tough time with the creative process. The original card set describes them as "Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas".Oblique Strategies for OS X, via little red book, a top site.
May 11, 2003
unbidden, by chance, driven by love
Steve, don't take it entirely personally. Your arse, up which I gleefully would shove every bit of your music service, was a trope.Steve, your arse was a synecdoche.
April 28, 2003
iTunes 4
Streaming iTunes over Rendezvous is like breathing again. No more NFS mounted MP3 servers, no more weird iTunes library shortcuts, no more throwing burned CDs of MP3s across the office, or hacked modules that barely worked. It is perfect and seamless - I'm ecstatic.
As for the music store, what's really exciting is the delivery engine, not necessarily the music itself. It uses Safari's XHTML/Web Core display engine - in less than a month, someone will have hacked a way to plug a new store front into any install of iTunes. Sniff the packets to figure out the XML protocols, implement it and then an HTTP redirect should do the trick. Even though it's far from trivial, Apple should anticipate this and allow people to list their own works easily.
Users who register for Creative Commons licenses should be able to have their music distributed automatically, for free. What about a special store front for music.metafilter.com? Will this work for filmmakers as well as musicians? What about software?
Rob Glaser is wrong, 10$ a month is too much. If I use this four times a month this year ($24), that's probably $12 in Apple's pocket, and a great value for me. There is a chance I could use it much more. Next time an Eric B & Rakim song is in my head but not in my iTunes, it's always a buck away. This is extremely dangerous.
As for the music store, what's really exciting is the delivery engine, not necessarily the music itself. It uses Safari's XHTML/Web Core display engine - in less than a month, someone will have hacked a way to plug a new store front into any install of iTunes. Sniff the packets to figure out the XML protocols, implement it and then an HTTP redirect should do the trick. Even though it's far from trivial, Apple should anticipate this and allow people to list their own works easily.
Users who register for Creative Commons licenses should be able to have their music distributed automatically, for free. What about a special store front for music.metafilter.com? Will this work for filmmakers as well as musicians? What about software?
However, some people think that the Apple service is too expensive, though songs are 99 cents each. "If you make a really cool playlist of 200 songs on Rhapsody, you pay only $9.95 a month," RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser tells Fortune. "If you use Apple, it's $200. Maybe guys like Steve and me can afford that, but I'm trying to run a service for everyone else too."
Rob Glaser is wrong, 10$ a month is too much. If I use this four times a month this year ($24), that's probably $12 in Apple's pocket, and a great value for me. There is a chance I could use it much more. Next time an Eric B & Rakim song is in my head but not in my iTunes, it's always a buck away. This is extremely dangerous.
April 19, 2003
How the Ambient Light Sensor Works
April 15, 2003
Using OmniGraffle as MySQL browser
I would like a script that could transform a MySQL table dump as an OmniGraffle chart.
Red Stapler has made a set of templates available (and there are many others.)
The RSS reader application for OmniGraffle could be a useful template, but I think the parsing of a MYSQL dump would be a little more difficult.
It would be great if it works both ways, but the table display is what would be most useful immediately. Eventually, of course, we need something as powerful as TOAD for Oracle, but open source.
March 27, 2003
iBush special wartime edition
iBush - special wartime editionDownload the new beggarware iBush application.
An artificially unintelligent Oval Office Occupant simulator
New in version 2.0:
- iBush now talks openly about the need to control US oil supplies;
- Some minor tweaks.
March 19, 2003
al gore joins apple
‘Al brings an incredible wealth of knowledge and wisdom to Apple from having helped run the largest organization in the world—the United States government—as a Congressman, Senator and our 45th Vice President. Al is also an avid Mac user and does his own video editing in Final Cut Pro,’ said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.Former Vice President Al Gore Joins Apple’s Board of Directors.
originally posted by xowie
November 22, 2002
"this kid is whatever whatever, this ad is pretty funny"
It was about Chinatown, and the formation of Chinatowns in America. I lost like three pages of it; it was terrible. It was a really, really good paper.
June 24, 2001
Late-80s stoner fave Jam Session
Late-80s stoner fave Jam Session is now a free download. (It's not unlike le piano graphique.)
Mac-nostalgists can also grab M.O.R.E., a still-great outliner of similar vintage.
originally posted by xowie
June 17, 2001
An astronaut will open several
An astronaut will open several mid-deck lockers, pull out some parts, assemble the Power Mac G4 and a small satellite, float out of an airlock, and deliberately throw the satellite overboard.It says so right here.
May 19, 2001
Obligatory post from the new
Obligatory post from the new Apple Store in Tyson's Corner... I'm having too much fun to write more. (The new iBook is incredible.)
May 1, 2001
What's the word? New iBook.
What's the word? New iBook.
45 minutes until Apple's just-announced,
45 minutes until Apple's just-announced, invite-only "press event" (promising "exciting announcements," of course). Everybody expects a new iBook, since the old ones have disappeared from retail channels & the Apple Store alike, but beyond that it's anybody's guess. ZDNet rounds up the rumors that seem grounded in reality, and if that's not enough reading for you then keep an eye on MacSurfer for the latest headlines from the best of the Mac news sites.
I'd really love to know who gets invited to these things -- I wonder how Apple treats sites like MacCentral and Macintouch which have all but replaced the mainstream media as the papers of record -- so to speak -- in terms of Apple news.
"I still wish we had
"I still wish we had been able to buy [Palm]," he says. Okay, then, how about making a run at Handspring, a maker of Palm-compatible handheld computers? Or co-branding with a maker of portable MP3 players or digital cameras or camcorders? After all, wouldn't Jobs like to have Apple profit more broadly and directly from this new digital lifestyle? And wouldn't that strategy work best if Apple's own stores were stocked with a wide array of Apple-branded digital gadgets? "I don't know what you're talking about," Jobs replies, looking at the ceiling. Then he smiles and changes the subject.Fortune.com - Steve Jobs: The Graying Prince of a Shrinking Kindgom (What a lousy headline.)
April 29, 2001
The Guardian Weblog is carrying
The Guardian Weblog is carrying a special May Day edition offering "analysis from the corporate and alternative media around the web" on expected May 1 "anti-capitalist" protests and on the broader protest movement. Meanwhile, across town... Apple is expected to announce everything from world peace to OS X on X86 at the May 1 "Apple event", so keep your eyes on randomWalks (or any of a dozen better Mac news sources) to see what the big deal was.