The state of denial among the Microsoft faithful regarding Vista is almost enough to make me pity them.
Everyone’s favorite resident Microsoft “expert”, Mary Jo Foley, and her unlinking eye on Microsoft, poses a beauty of a question: Is Windows XP too good for Microsoft’s own good?
Apple released a slew of updates for the iLife apps yesterday. While iDVD, iPhoto, and GarageBand got mostly bug fixes and maybe new themes, iMovie got substantial and welcome improvements.
Amazon opened their MP3 store today, and it’s clear iTunes has legitimate competition since Amazon avoids the pitfalls that made other music sites a joke. However, through it all some curious questions arise, which I’ll get to below. Meanwhile, here’s why this new site is a valid alternative to iTunes:
You’ve had nothing to do with the success Apple enjoys today. For that matter, you practically had to be dragged kicking and screaming from Hewlett-Packard to help start Apple in the first place. You thought the IIc might be the best machine Apple ever made, and were not particularly behind the Mac.
In a previous post about Adobe and Apple, I mentioned that for all the money Adobe makes off the Mac they spend a lot of time ignoring it. Some examples I gave were:
Robert Scoble posts “An ode to great photographers” and what they taught him.
The ode itself is short and sweet, yet says everything that needs to be said because it’s primarily about the pictures. What better way to show what you’ve learned then by showing it? The post includes great shots taken by Scoble — including the one above — taken on an evening walk.
Very nice, Robert. Well done.
The old song reference (and showing my age) aside, John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a comment today about Wil Shipley’s recent post about Apple.
In the previous installment we went through a new Event of photos to delete the bad ones, rate the better ones, hide the questionable ones, and leave the rest alone. Then we assigned keywords to them.Now we’ll move to the more “fun” stuff. That is, we’re going to compare the rated photos and pick out the cream of the crop for further enhancing.
So Universal has teamed up with SpiralFrog on a subscription service with a twist; the service is now out of beta and officially launched. SpiralFrog is unique among subscription services in that it’s subscription-less (at least for now). No monthly fee is required, the site is intended to be funded solely by advertising and your recurring visits:
Adobe had a great quarter. Good for them. Their new CS3 products were very well-received and doing well.
However, the amazing iPhone doesn’t use Flash, so is that any concern? Not if you spin like this:
Those of you who read my review of the latest iPhoto know that I’m very pleased with this product. In my opinion It’s not only the best of the “free” photo organizers/editors on the Mac or PC — especially given its integration with other Apple applications — but it’s also a great program in its own right. While most of the attention to the update was given to Events, in my opinion the better enhancements were in keywords, and borrowing from Aperture for its revised editing tools.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber had a lot to say in his article about ringtones and what he calls the “ringtones racket”. However, I disagree with part of his premise, and ultimately his conclusions. For other views on this subject here’s a great post from Epple, and Roughly Drafted touches on the subject as well.
Today Apple released the latest version of Logic in the form of Logic Studio. This is a huge update from Logic 7, and they’ve followed the “studio” concept of Final Cut Pro and bundled even more apps with it. They also cut the price in half, to $499.
Oil and water. Matter and anti-matter. Sony and Universal. These are apparently combinations that just don’t mix.The brilliant minds at the record labels have come up with a new idea for the holiday season. They’re going to sell “ringles.” Heh. Ringles. I just had to see that name again.
Oh brother. I take a small trip to Vegas (the team I rooted for won the football game, thanks for asking) and look at all the stuff that goes down. I’ll just touch lightly on these because it’s all old news:
On his Internet Nexus site, Paul Thurrott takes Apple to task for dropping the price of the iPhone so much, and then baits current iPhone owners with a question about being ripped off.
“So Apple took the unprecedented step of lowering the price of the iPhone by $200 to $400… My God. It’s kind of insane”
I sifted through the rumors yesterday and come up looking pretty good today now that we know what was actually announced. I’ll talk about all the iPod models here, but what I really like is how they handled their high-end models. We’ll get to that in a minute.
All this speculation and whatnot about the new iPods tomorrow. I’m on record about the 6G iPod here and here. As for the nano, the rumors I’ve seen (wider body, larger screen, video-capable, more capacity) don’t sound too crazy so they wouldn’t surprise me. I also think the Shuffle will gain an extra GB of memory for the same price.
From the US Department of Labor:
“The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.”
A national holiday that celebrates work. Since the average American has less time off than other industrial nations, this seems especially appropriate.
However, I would extend that celebration and respect to all workers across the globe. Far less isolated, we are all contributors to the global economy and well-being of the larger society. That society beyond the borders of my beloved country, the one encompassing a little blue marble known as Earth.
I raise my glass in a toast to workers everywhere!
You know the saying “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”? Well, NBC executives do not.
Today, NBC felt the need to counter Apple’s press release from yesterday, in which Apple claimed NBC wanted to more than double the cost of their TV shows, to $4.99. Apple’s claim was pretty strong; it would have been in NBC’s best interest to simply be “thought a fool” by most while leaving room for people to still have a doubt that Apple was coming clean. Instead, NBC decided to remove that doubt in a statement of their own.
Bob Lefsetz has some interesting thoughts on the NBC/Apple happenings. Among them are these:
“If you haven’t had a hard drive fail, you don’t own a computer. And most people don’t back up. And the formats change. Files get better. Do you really think we’re going to be listening to 128 kbps rips ten years from now? No, we’re going to BUY THE MUSIC ALL OVER AGAIN! Which means it behooves the rights holders to sell it NOW! And to make it so cheap that people don’t CARE that it’s disposable.”
“NBC/Universal is way out of its depth here. It thinks this is an inside job, akin to a battle between studios and agents. But, it’s not. It’s a battle between producers and viewers, and the studio DOESN’T EVEN KNOW IT! You’ve got to make your product available cheaply, in a usable form.”
Pretty good article overall, and worth a read.
On Fridays, Paul Thurrott typically uses his Internet Nexus site to take quick shots (mostly at Apple) without actually having to write much. He does so by tossing snarky comments at headlines, apparently thinking because the word “fun” is in the headline it’s OK. Normally this is no big deal, but this week’s edition is especially egregious:
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