Baffled. Utterly baffled.
How much did you pay the music industry for the record player you bought 30 years ago? What percentage of your 15-year-old tape deck’s cost went to the music companies? And how much did the RIAA get when you bought your new Bose speakers?A big fat zero, obviously.Which is why I’m so utterly baffled by comments like this:
Zucker also revealed his company had asked for a cut of iPod sales - though the company receives no dividend from sales of record or CD players.”Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money,” he said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.”
Almost. Literally. Unbelievable.What can you expect, I guess, from an industry that sues its customers, cheats its stars, eats its young talent for lunch, and is generally a disgusting, manipulative, and corrupting influence on popular culture.What a zero.
Leopard fun
Saw this surprisingly accurate and funny description of a common Mac OS X problem that is now fixed in Leopard:
Another noticeable reason for everything being slightly faster is Leopard is that a lot of secondary tasks are delegated to their own thread, allowing more to be done in parallel rather than having the interface held up until a task is completed. One example is network servers in the Finder. If you’ve ever disconnected the network before ejecting a file share, you’ve no doubt felt the pain of having your entire Finder grind to a halt while the system sends out a search party looking for the missing disk. Normality doesn’t resume until all hope is lost, and the rescuers don’t seem to give up easy, even though they never have any chance in finding anything.All that’s gone in Leopard. Disconnect a file share, and the Finder remains responsive while it tries in vain to reconnect in a separate thread. It then simply pops up a disconnect notice. If you have your Mac on a network, that’s reason to buy Leopard in itself. The new Mail similarly benefits from multicore optimization.
Great description … glad it’s now fixed!
More music industry madness
So, Universal wants to invent a new model for music sales:
Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest record label, is looking to mobile hardware makers to foot the bill for a free music subscription service for buyers of a certain mobile phone or music player, The Telegraph reported Saturday.
Think. What does a model where you buy a piece of music-playing equipment and then the music itself is free remind you of? Oh yes, radio!Hmm … so they’re trying to reinvent radio here? Nice “new” model here.I wonder what other parts of the radio experince they’ll try to replicate? The lousy music choice? The annoying DJs? Maybe. But there’s another piece of the radio universe that I predict will come along with the “free” music, if this model actually makes it out the door.Advertising.That’s the only way there could possibly be enough revenue in this ridiculous model to support a continual flow of new music. But isn’t the 20 minutes an hour of radio advertising one of the reasons we bought iPods in the first place?No worries. As Dr Phil would say: this dog won’t hunt.PS:Why are the labels so fixated on hardware revenues? They are constantly complaining about the money Apple makes on the iPod … but they never complained before about not getting revenue from radios and stereo equipment. If only they would fixate on being best at what they’re supposed to do: find and promote great music.
1-year old using iPhone
This is bloody amazing:
(Saw it here.)
What really is the iPhone?
There’s a great column at Strominator that explains exactly what it is:
The iPhone is not a phone, its the first generation of a new type of computing device. One that will change how we view computing. One that will make our lives simpler. We won’t have to learn how to use applications, we’ll just use them. We won’t worry about launching applications, saving files, quitting — just using. Every other smartphone is still based on an archaic, cumbersome, paradigm taken straight from desktop computers. Drop-down/pop-up menus, programs, files — ugh. Look how bad Windows Mobile is, and most of us are used to the real Windows on our desktops. Why should a phone take minutes to just turn on? The alternatives are not much better. Mobile OSX, what runs inside the iPhone however, is a whole new beast. Intuitive, responsive, and an extension of the beautiful hardware that it runs on.
Which is not to say there aren’t issues … as the article also talks discusses.
iPhone in Canada, Please
MacSurfer update: grand old dame gets a facelift
Count me shocked.MacSurfer, the grand-daddy and still king of Mac news sites, has unveiled a new look, now in beta.Times have changed, mullets have gone out of fashion, Michael is no longer the king of pop, and tie-dye is out … but MacSurfer, the essense of web 1.0, has stubbornly remained completely and utterly static.So any update is a bonus.Major changes:
- 1-column to 3-column
- Font size for article titles is smaller
- Tabbed navigation (as opposed to no navigation at all)
- More add space (in the afore-mentioned 2 extra columns)
- Integrated search (not just a link)
- Archives
- Archives!
- Let’s say it one more time: finally, finally, archives! Now that great article you saw on MacSurfer but forgot where it was is findable.
- Translations (don’t get too excited, they’re via Google … “El Maco updating system blue muy excellent sofa” is a likely translation)
- Times when articles added
That’s a lot of change for a grand old dame … but there could be more.Social features like commenting, submissions, and voting might make MacSurfer less of a jumping-off site and more of a social hub … which I think would translate into significant value for its owners.At any rate: wow - great to see the change.
Brand protection, marketing, and responsiveness in a new media world
Consumer-generated Media has a nice breakdown of Steve Jobs open letter to early iPhone adopters who hit the roof when Apple recently announced the $200 price break.Excerpt:
What an incredible year to watch and learn from CEO-level behavior in times of crisis and difficulty. First we had Jet Blue, faced with an impossibly difficult situation, take to the airwaves on YouTube, apologize profusely, and announce a new passenger bill of rights. While Menu Foods practically hid their CEO during the pet recall issue, Mattel put their CEO, Bob Eckert, on the website video airwaves to nurture trust and confidence in the wake of the toy recall (a still-in-progress case study). Now we have Steve Jobs, who just wrote and posted the most remarkable letter in response to concerns about iPhone’s recent price decrease. He coupled an apology with a $100 Apple credit for all early-buyers of the iPhone. This is classic Defensive Branding. I predict it will be one of the most discussed, debated, and linked-to letters of the year, and so far I’ve already counted over 800 unique blog postings referencing his letter since 6 PM last night.
A full breakdown of the letter follows …
The iPhone comes to Canada … well, sorta
Well, I just made my first iPhone call.That’s no biggie to hundreds of thousands of people in the US, of course, but the iPhone has not yet been released in Canada.Mike Skovgaard, a buddy at work, has been buying them in the US and taking them up to Canada to unlock them to work with the Rogers and Fido cell networks. He’s already done it with a few, and showed me his latest. Apparently, Mike was only the third person in Canada to unlock the iPhone.So, review in one paragraph or less? Awesome. Cover flow is great, voice quality is excellent, phone usability is amazing, photos are really cool, Google Maps is incredible, etc. etc. Everything just works, and everything just works the way you think it ought to work.Love it, can’t wait for it to “officially” come to Canada.
Running list: Apple iPhone lawsuits
Apple is getting its ass sued off over the iPhone.I’d like to write a scathing critique of modern idiots who buy things they haven’t researched and then blame others for their idiocy, and an equally damning tirade against companies that produce nothing, add nothing, and do nothing but think up obvious ideas, patent them, and then suck blood out of other companies … but I just can’t sum up the energy.Instead, I’m going to list all the Apple iPhone lawsuits I can think of … and ask you to add any others in the comments.
- Battery lawsuitsApparently, there’s three of them now.
- Roaming feesI agree, roaming fees suck …
- Keyboard patentSome guy dreamed up something, and now he owns it forever? Interesting. Even more interesting, because he’s currently in jail for fraud!
- CiscoOK, this one’s over … but Cisco did file a lawsuit over the iPhone name
- Any more? I’m sure it’s just a matter of time …
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Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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