Science Addiction

Far from being a regular software announcement, this feels like a watershed moment.

A tipster—a very reliable one—tells me that Skype is almost ready to launch that iPhone version, perhaps as soon as next week. CTIA Wireless, a large mobile industry trade event, kicks off in Las Vegas next Wednesday, so perhaps the announcement will be made there. I am working on getting more details, as well as screenshots of the service.

[via Om Malik]

When millions of people have handheld devices that can be publicized for use as VOIP phones, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers (and replacing them with a new one), it feels like we’ve crossed a significant threshold. There already is a Windows Mobile version, but that doesn’t get quite the press and mindshare as an iPhone app does.

The new MacBook from Apple comes with the new digital video output connector. Great news, you say. What Apple has avoided mentioning is that these connectors allow movie studios to force the computer to authenticate any monitor or display you have connected. That is to say that if the movie studios haven’t approved your monitor, it won’t display HD content from iTunes.

Says Fred von Lohmann:

This is a remarkably short-sighted move for both Apple and Hollywood. This punishes existing iTunes customers: several have reported that iTunes purchases that played on external monitors on their old Macbooks no longer will play on their new Macbooks. In other words, thanks to the Macbook “upgrade,” Apple just “downgraded” everyone’s previous investment in iTunes content.

I’ve written about this many times before- but any DRM’ed content—like iTunes movies—is at the mercy of the vendor, a board room somewhere in California, back room deals or the crashing financial market. Basically, forces outside your control can snatch your investment from you at any time. And this is not some dystopian future- it has happened to many people already. Walmart, MSN Music, Yahoo! Music and Google Video have all decided to stop supporting the content of paying customers, rendering their videos and music in to junk bits.

The band Radiohead is at it again. In a novel move earlier this year, they put their album In Rainbows on their site for download on a “pay what you want” basis.

They’re not done shaking up the way music is delivered to the people. From TUAW, we have this:

This week, they’ve done the same thing with the song “Reckoner” [iTunes link]. The six-track, DRM-free album costs $0.99US. Tracks cannot be purchased individually.

If you purchase the stems within the first two weeks of availability, you’ll receive an access code to a full GarageBand version of the song. When you’re done, you can upload your masterpiece here.

This is a fantastic idea to keep the fans involved and to keep the marketing buzz going. They already did something similar in the past with their song Nude, as did the band Nine Inch Nails earlier this year.

I would just like to say that I love doodling on my iPhone.

Oh, and the WordPress blogging app rocks.

A long time ago, Chris Seibold, one of my co-writers at Apple Matters, asked if I had any ideas for a book he was writing for O’Reilly publishers called “The Big Book of Apple Hacks“. That email turned in to a little brainstorming which led to five chapters that I have in the book.

• MacFuse
• SSH Tunnels
• ImageMagick
• Tivo + Mac
• Fink & MacPorts

Of course, those chapters have much better names in the book. Unfortunately, a publishing error left my name off the acknowledgments at the end of the book (seriously!), but my name is at the end of each chapter I wrote. Hopefully the book will have many reprints in the future which will include my name!

SciFi writer, activist, BoingBoing editor, EFF evangelist and now US-Canada Fulbright Chair at the University of Southern California recently gave a talk to people at USC that covers many topics ranging from digital freedoms to science fiction that is truly worth listening to [MP3]. Of course, the greatest Cory Doctorow speech of them all is his talk at Microsoft about why DRM is bad for business, bad for people, bad for artists and bad technology (streaming video). The text of that talk is also available online.

Back in May, I published an article here that highlighted how MSN AdCenter kept non-IE users out of their service. As a Mac user, it is a mild irritation whenever a major online player keeps non-IE customers out, but this one took the cake. Their customer service rep asked me to buy Windows. Think about that for a second- a major corporation asking a potential advertiser to drastically change their computer usage behavior for the privilege of advertising with them. I’m sorry, but Yahoo and Google will gladly take my business.

In any case, earlier this month- about 3 months after the service launched- Firefox support has been introduced in MSN AdCenter. They listened. I doubt building a standards compliant web site actually took 3 months, but I am glad that it happened. Also glad to see it works in Safari on my Mac.

A few days ago, a Janet Meyer article on Apple Matters sparked a phenomenal discussion for and against Apple’s DRM policies. If you are not aware, Apple has a Digital Rights Management [DRM] system that “protects” the music it sells from the iTunes music store: it determines where you can play it, how you can play it, how many machines you can play it on and so on. It is proprietary, so if Apple controls the online music market, Apple also automatically controls how, where, why, when we listen to music we buy from them.

To cut a long story short, Janet was making the point that Apple may have a closed music format but as long as consumers have no trouble with it, consumers have a choice to buy CDs instead, the market will decide what is best.

Ah yes, the market. That all-knowing, all-seeing, all-singing, all-dancing market. It knows. In a perfect society with fully informed consumers who have true choices, the market knows. Elections would be marvellous with fully informed voters with true choices as well Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has chosen the growth of IE over every other division in the company for 10 years now. Windows versions from 95 onwards have suffered enough. Now, the company’s IE-centric view of its business is hurting younger divisions of the company that have a chance of becoming a major force as the company looks to take on Google. Read the rest of this entry »

One more month has passed at Apple Matters (that makes three) and that means three more articles since I last wrote. This is what I’ve been up to there: Read the rest of this entry »

ThinkSecret is reporting, only a week after my article on Apple’s mea culpa on Aperture, that a good portion of the Aperture team is being axed. This is a good news/bad news kind of situation, because it probably means that Apple will have to do a lot of soul searching and rebuilding of the product. The good news is that it may actually help v2.0 be the kind of application Apple was hoping for in the first place- one that would help sell Macs.

In my second month at Apple Matters it has been much tougher coming up with things to write on a weekly basis- but such is life as a part-time freelance writer (I use that phrase when I can- it evokes more mystique than it should).

Here is what I put out in March/April: Read the rest of this entry »

Apple has released a public beta of Boot Camp, that allows you to install and run Windows XP on your Mac. It provides a GUI for the entire process and will be integrated in to the next major release of OS X, Leopard.

This is a major development and we will be hearing more about it soon. An interesting piece from the Bootcamp page:

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

It has been one month since I started writing for Apple Matters and it has been quite a revelation. I now know what it feels like to have a weekly deadline- and however much I love Apple products, 7 days are not always enough to come up with something new!

Having said that, it’s been a blast and I’ve tried my hand at most types of articles so far. Here is what I’ve put out so far: Read the rest of this entry »

Starting this week, I am a contributing writer on the popular Apple website Apple Matters. My first article, Fink: The Power of Open Source is up for you to read, enjoy, comment on. I will be writing for them once a week, on Thursdays.