Want!

My wife doesn't understand how I can think a pile of electronics is sexy. I'm afraid she never will.

Apple has a strange definition of "third party apps"

One of the "big" announcements to come out of Apple's 2007 WWDC is that it has released the latest version of its web browser Safari for both Windows and the Mac.

One of the main reasons for this is that Apple won't be releasing a Software Developers Kit (SDK) for the iPhone, which will have Safari3 embedded. Apple is promoting the use of AJAX as the way for third parties to get applications onto the iPhone instead of providing an SDK that would allow developers to hook into the OS X guts of the device.

It would appear that Apple is hoping that by porting Safari3 to Windows, more developers will be encouraged to create Safari-friendly web apps. As I understand it, the current state of Web 2.0 is somewhat hit and miss when it comes to compatibility with Safari.

Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) said at his keynote at WWDC that no SDK was required as anyone who could develop AJAX apps would be able to develop for the iPhone. While it's a good move from Apple to release Safari on Windows to increase the size of the potential developer pool, it's drawing a long bow to call AJAX web sites "third party apps". Gizmodo has an excellent piece on why AJAX isn't quite good enough including:

• limited integration with iPhone OS X internals (possibly a good thing from a security point of view)
• little or no capacity for local data storage
  capacity for data heavy apps to work over the slower-than-broadband EDGE mobile technology that the iPhone will launch with

I have to adopt a wait-and-see attitude anyway, given that the iPhone won't be launching in Australia until 2008 at the earliest. Also unanswered is how well the iPhone will synch with a Windows machine as I don't have a Mac. Finally, concerns about local price and chosen network provider in Australia mean that I won't have to struggle with the absence of quality third party apps for quite some time.

Edit 18/6/07 13:59: Photos are courtesy of Apple, Inc.

On Apple and DRM

Steve Jobs, in his recent "low key" posting on the Apple site "Thoughts on music", set the cat amongst the pigeons. After hinting that DRM doesn't work because "there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music", he outlined three alternatives for the future:

1. status quo (everyone develops their own vertically integrated solution like the iTunes Store or the Zune Marketplace);
2. Apple could license FairPlay to other manufacturers so that songs bought through iTunes could be played on other players; or
3. abolish DRM and sell all music DRM-free and encoded in open and licensable formats.

The above is not exactly earth shattering. In my opinion, they are stating the obvious. However, Jobs then goes on to say that Apple would "embrace in a heartbeat" the DRM-free option if only the Big 4 record labels would let them (that's SongBMG, Universal, EMI and Warner). In other words, Jobs is saying "Don't blame me, blame them. We would gladly give you all what you want if they would just let us".

An important question to ask however is, why now? As has been reported on Ars Technica amongst many other places, Canada's Nettwerk Records and one of their major artists, Barenaked Ladies have been trying to convince Apple to let them sell their products through the iTunes Store as a DRM-free product, only to be told no. Of course, there are some side issues to this, including offering consumers a consistent experience (how many confused customers would complain that they could share some songs and not others, and why is the store broken?) but the fact remains that the opportunity has been there. Similarly, I'm sure many indie artists have tried to sell their songs DRM-free with the same result.

As these stories from ZDNet and CNet highlight, Apple is currently facing a number of anti-trust style lawsuits in Norway, Germany and France as European governments seek to "open up" the market currently dominated by Apple and iTunes. One of Apple's arguments against these sort of lawsuits is that, on average, each iPod has only 22 songs bought from the iTunes Store, meaning that the rest of the songs on an iPod have been obtained from other sources anyway (most likely ripped from CDs they already own - CDs being the major way music is distributed and is by and large DRM-free, excluding some reprehensible attempts from Sony with their root kits and EMI's abysmal Copy Control technology).

Similarly, another ZDNet editorial makes note that now is a good time for Apple. No DRM means no lawsuits in Europe. Even if DRM remains, Apple still owns the market. In fact, Apple is so dominant that it is probably the only company that could get away with taking a stance. The record industry is ripe for change, eager to break down Apple's stranglehold and take back some of the power they have ceded to Jobs and of course, DRM-free music is already available. The aforementioned Nettwerk already sells high bit-rate MP3s (192 kbps, as compared to 128kpbs AAC files from iTunes) from their website and eMusic has sold DRM-free tracks for many years with some success.

Not surprisingly, the RIAA appears to have missed the point. This LA Times article quotes the RIAA as saying:

Apple’s offer to license Fairplay to other technology companies is a welcome breakthrough and would be a real victory for fans, artists and labels. There have been many services seeking a license to the Apple DRM. This would enable the interoperability that we have been urging for a very long time.

I don't think anyone else in the world seriously thought that Jobs was offering to open up FairPlay (in fact, Jobs argues the opposite when he highlights that opening up FairPlay just increases opportunities for enterprising individuals to hack away at the DRM system). Whether the RIAA is making a point of its own or is just plain stupid remains to be seen.

The Economist sums it up best:

Mr Jobs’s argument, in short, is transparently self-serving. It also happens to be right.

I'll tell you who is watching IPTV

Me, it turns out.

I have struggled to find a website that had a decent, central coverage of the recent CES. My solution? Download episodes of DL.TV and the latest InDigital episode because I just know these guys are going to be into the same sort of gadgets that I want to hear about.

I'm also tired of hearing about the iPhone, which seems to have stolen a lot of the CES thunder this year. Yeah, I want one too but I think I'll just manager to contain my enthusiasm until I know what I'm buying, and being in Australia I've got much longer wait than most of you chumps. If I, shameless luster after of gadgets, can exercise some self-control, surely you lot can.

Geek News - Macworld 2007

I picked a good week to return from holidays it would seem.

Anyone even vaguely jacked in would know that the big hype over the last few days has been the Apple iPhone (not to be confused with the pre-emptive Linksys iPhone – but more on that later). Sexy, sleek, shiny, just begging to be touched, the long-rumoured iPhone has finally arrived (subject to US FCC approval which is not likely to be forthcoming before June 2007).

Picture courtesy of Apple, Inc

The tech specs are readily available and have been repeated ad infinitum so I don’t need to repeat them in detail here. Notable features though are its iPod-in-a-phone nature (with Nano-like capacities of 4 and 8 gigs), a honking big “multi-touch” widescreen, a single hardware button, runs on a fully featured OSX, Wi-Fi (although it apparently doesn’t sync via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth but through plain ol’ USB – however, running on OSX should lead to delicious opportunities for VOIP usage in wireless hotspots) and as it is a GSM phone, no 3G (yet).

There have been the usual round of complaints including capacity (4 and 8 GB seems at least equal to, if not more than, anything else on the market), battery life (5 hours talk time seems about right to me, as does 16 hours music playback – both figures would appear to dump all over the appalling battery life of my Motorola V3x which is admittedly a 3G phone), only a 2 MP camera and the fact that it’s an Apple product.

To me, the biggest attraction of an iPhone is interoperability. If my iPod is anything to go by, the iPhone should integrate very smoothly with iTunes, making it easy to sync contacts, calendar, music, video (that multi-touch widescreen looks tasty) and, if you’re bored, be fun to make phone calls on, too. For what it’s worth, if Apple nails the sync, I think everything else will become secondary. I wish my Moto would sync properly :( My no-brainer prediction is that when the iPhone handsets actually hit the shelves, an iTunes 8 will be launched, complete with beefed up productivity components. You read it here first…

Anyway, launch dates for the iPhone are likely to be June/July 2007 for the US with a scheduled Q4 2007 release for Europe and a 2008 release for Asia. Apparently by this time, the iPhone will also have 3G but I have only seen this information coming from unnamed “Apple sources” (hmm, apple sauces *drool*), I’ll take that with a grain of salt. I’ll wait and see if Australia is included with the technically similar European networks or the geographically similar Asian region.

The other big news from Macworld was the launch of the AppleTV, formerly known as iTV. With an Intel processor, 40GB hard drive, “draft n” wireless and HDMI, it looks smooth. In the event I ever own a Mac and a widescreen TV (the tech specs only state that it supports a 16:9 ratio), I’m right on the AppleTV train. For the less geeky, “draft n” is the proposed next standard in wireless – it’s fast enough to be able to stream HD video content, but the standard has yet to be ratified. It might seem that Apple is taking a bit of a punt on this, but all the new Intel Macs have 802.11n wireless. Unlikely as it might be, if the draft n standard is changed, AppleTV will still work with Macs so they’re still pretty much ahead of the game.

Picture courtesy of Apple, Inc





Something else that isn’t gaining much attention is that Apple have officially changed their name from Apple Computers, Inc to just plain old Apple, Inc, in recognition of the fact that these days “pure” computers forms only one part of their growing business. Time will tell if this will lead to further difficulties in the already strained relationship between Apple, Inc and Apple Records.

Finally, as something of an aside, Cisco (owners of the Linksys brand) is suing Apple for use of their trademark. As (in)famously reported on Gizmodo, Cisco launched their iPhone under the Linksys brand in late December 2006, which is their right given they’ve owned the rights to that name in the US since 2000 (although it’s been reported that Apple own the rights to iPhone in Australia and the UK and have done so since 2002). Hours after Apple’s launch, Cisco issued a press release saying they had been in talks with Apple for quite a while about the usage of the name and that an agreement would be forthcoming as soon as some final details could be agreed to. The following day Cisco announced they were suing Apple.

I wonder who lied to whom?

ArsTechnica pull apart the iPod Nano (2G)

Reading this ArsTechnica review as they stress test an iPod Nano, I'm reminded once more about why I so love to embrace the geek side of me. Normal people don't think "Hey, I've got a shiny new piece of electronic gadgetry. I wonder how much punishment it will take before it dies a horrible death and I get to disembowel it".

Normal people have less fun.

(oh, and the verdict is the second generation of the iPod Nano is tough, but maybe not quite as tough as the first generation. That, and Apple's new "black tax" is alive and well as the 8GB top of the range Nano is the only model available in black)

Apple no longer offering education discounts on iPods

This is something that completely slipped under my radar, but the Apple Education Store has updated its Education Apple Store Terms and Conditions. It's a lot simpler now in that you can order one (1) desktop and (1) laptop in any academic year and obtain a 10% discount.

Strangely enough, it looks like while you can't get a student discount for your iPod, you can still get one for your iPod Apple Care plan.

Apple announce new iPods, movies and other toys

Edit 13/9, 19:22: Turns out the games I thought were included with the software update are actually part of the new game download feature that appears to only be available to the 5G and new "5.5G" iPods. It seems that 1G Nanos are SOL on this one.

It was business as usual for an upcoming Apple showcase - lots of hype (largely fueled by cryptic media invites from Apple), piles of speculation on the blogosphere, hoaxes galore followed by announcements that are kinda cool but not certainly not earth shattering.

For general hype and hoopla try:
MacRumors
Think Secret
Engadget

For Australian-based hype try:
AppleTalk

Out of all the hype (and transcripts and video are available), it's the small things that interest me.

There were iPod updates that didn't provide the full-screen video iPod everyone appears to be dreaming about, but did herald a return to the iPod mini days with brushed aluminium Nanos. Oh, and the screens are now "60% brighter! with longer battery life! Woo!". Something like that anyway.

But what interested me was that the new iPods have software updates. The 6 generation (or 6G) iPods and 2G Nanos now have:

• more games, including Texas Hold 'em poker
• gapless playback of AAC provided via iTunes 7 (which also introduces Apple's movie download service).

As a side point, at this stage the iTunes movie service is Disney affiliated studios only, which is not surprising given that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and former CEO of Pixar before Disney bought it, is also a major shareholder of Disney and sits on their board. iTunes movies don't interest me yet though - I can't afford to buy discount DVDs, yet alone download movies that won't include any of the DVD extras I love so much.

Questions I haven't been able to find definitive answers for yet:

• will the new software updates provide the games and gapless playback for 1G Nanos
• does iTunes7 break QTFairUse6, which finally broke the FairPlay DRM in iTunes6?

I want gapless playback so I can transfer some CDs with mixed tracks. I want to strip the DRM so that I'm not a victim of vendor lock-in further down the track. While I think the FairPlay DRM is the best option available, it's still only the lesser evil. The best option is no DRM at all, as provided by eMusic (where you subscribe monthly but can still play your downloads if your subscription expires) or Magnatune. Magnatune have the best solution where you name your price between $5 and $18 and can download in any number of formats including wav, high quality mp3, AAC, Flac and ogg. In fact, Magnatune rock even more in that you can stream entire albums to "try before you buy" and you can freely give away up to 3 copies of any purchase to friends. Magnatune - we're not evil.

The only other announcement that is vaguely interesting (to me anyway) is a "pre-announcement" of something tentatively called iTV. This is a set-top box that will allow video to be streamed wireless from your computer to your TV via iTunes. Because it's a pre-announcement, Apple don't appear to have any information up on their website, so I'm going to reserve judgement on what could be a cool product, but I can't tell for sure until I can see properly how they plan to implement it. There are photos floating around, and it's possible that Steve Jobs went through in detail but since I haven't watched the Keynote yet, I don't know.

Edit 13 Sept 12:55 to fix some formatting glitches in the links and a couple of typos.

Apple Releases New iMacs

Apple have quietly announced that they have updated their iMac line. All iMacs now have Core2 Duos. More exciting is that Apple have also announced a 24-inch iMac, which apparently has full HD support. For A$3,000 you can get a 24" LCD screen, built in Bluetooth and wireless, SuperDrive, Firewire 800 and USB2 with a 2.16 GHz Core Duo chip. I was going to spec up an equivalent Dell but the website confused the hell out of me. How do you pick and choose parts on Dell's website? I don't get that at all...

I'm a bit slow, but I was home looking after the boy today to give my wife a rest, so I haven't really had a chance to check this out.

I've had my eyes on a MacBook for a while, which is even more attractive as I can salary sacrifice a laptop and not attract Fringe Benefits Tax. That 24" iMac sure is tempting though.

So much tech. So little money to spend on it. *sigh*