Front Row Cover Flow?

It is often true that the simplest reason for something is often the correct one, but that is not going to stop me from speculating wildly about the reason for the delay in shipping the tv.

Reports are starting to surface that credit card authorizations for pre-orders of the device are starting to be processed. This is normally an indicator that the merchandise in question is close to shipping. It looks like we are not too far from the first un-boxing and disassembly photo-sets being posted online.

There is a disturbing incomplete, unrefined and un-Apple feel to the new full-screen Cover Flow in iTunes and the lack of integration of those features into Front Row. At the same time the interface features demonstrated during the tv unveiling are not found in either.

So I think that the delay in shipping the tv is because the interface is being updated with Cover Flow type features, including better song selection features when sorting by album and nifty little features like scrolling for long song titles and the index letter indicator when scrolling at speed.

I'm hoping that there will be an announcement of updates to Front Row and iTunes co-incident with when the tv starts reaching consumers. After all this is going to be like having an ipod next to your tv, and it should be just as easy to use.

Well, blow me down

Last month I was sceptical that we would ever see the promised second part to Seb Janacek's 10 worst things about Apple. Well Seb has finally got around to telling us what he thinks are the 10 best things about Apple.

He need not have bothered. He has written a half-arsed article that barely scratches the surface of the good things about a great and complex company such as Apple.

Seb, please, no more of this luke warm praise. And don't come round my Apple Orchard anytime soon, I'm keeping an empty cider cask nearby with the express purpose of marrying it with your head if I catch sight of you.

Get Dam a green card

It seems that the hot blood of the Khans still flows strong in the young men of Central Asia. If the reports are to be believed, a prospective member of the modern Mongol Horde going by the name of Dam Enkhbayar was so frustrated with the performance of his hand-me-down Dell computer that he threw it out of the window when it froze while he was downloading video files online.

Apparently there had been some provocation because Dam had been expecting to get a Mac for Christmas, but instead had to make do with his fathers' old Dell.

His dad Tsolomon is quoted as saying that:

“I knew he was passionate about getting a Macintosh computer, but I never thought it was that passionate.”

Needless to say Dam is just the type of person that I would welcome to keep an eye on those pesky crows hanging round the south paddock fence.

via Insignificant Thoughts

Jonh Ingham has his stuffing on the inside

This just goes to show that years of listening to loud rock music doesn't scramble all of your brain cells. Jonh Ingham sums up his thoughts on some of the responses to Steve's call for DRM-free online music by asking:

"How many young people want to be like Steve Jobs and think that Apple is cool? How many want to be like Edgar Bronfman and dig Warners?"

Pretty succinct words with an obvious answer, I'd say.

In a related post Jonh goes over some of the numbers showing how only 3% of the music on iPods is bought from the iTunes Store, and alludes to something that must be giving Bronfman and the heads of the other big music studios sleepless nights. Despite being the undeniable giant of online music sales, Apple would probably sell near as dammit the same number of iPods if they shutdown the iTunes Store, as they do now.

The fact that iPods sells strongly in countries outside of the handful of North American, European and Australasian countries with access to the iTunes Store graphically illustrate that the labels need Steve (pbuh), Apple and the iPod a whole heap more than they are willing to acknowledge.

An uncomfortable truth

Music sales are declining, and growth in online music sales is not growing quickly enough to offset the contraction in sales of physical media. And predictably the heavies of the music industry still believe that beating up on the people who actually still buy music is somehow magically going to reverse this trend.

So I wasn't too surprised to read the dismissive and downright insulting responses to Steve's (pbuh) suggestion that getting rid of DRM on online music for sale would be good for business.

Making it easy for music buyers to download the songs they want, in the format they want and being able to load it onto the portable music player of their choice will lead to increased sales, not only online, but also from the local music store.
I don't think that it is a coincidence that Norah Jones and Lily Allen have had stellar performances in the online sales charts. I think that EMI releasing DRM-free singles from both artists did a lot to popularize their music. OK, maybe having catchy tunes and being drop-dead gorgeous may also have played a part, but not nearly as much as hassle free and cheap access to their music.

All those commentators ranting about how Steve (pbuh), and Apple, have some sort of ulterior motive for suggesting that DRM for online music be abandoned need only consider that a world with DRM-free online music exposes Apple to increased competition for both the iPod and the iTunes Store. Now why would Apple do that if it didn't see this as an opportunity for growth for the entire online music industry?

I think that John Gruber over at Daring Fireball sums it up nicely when he says that:

"People who are already buying from iTunes would continue to. People who refused to buy from iTunes because of DRM might start. And people who bootleg would continue to bootleg. This situation would be better for the music industry, not worse. The problem from the music industry’s perspective is their technically ludicrous pipe dream of devising a scheme that forces everyone to pay for every single song they play. They obsess over pirates while taking their honest customers for granted."

Wouldn't it be great if the music industry concentrated on delivering great content in the formats consumers want instead of dragging their customers off to court all the time?

UPDATE: Citing unnamed sources USA Today is reporting that EMI is engaged in talks with online music stores about selling its music without DRM. I hope that this is an accurate report because it could signal a new era for online music sales.
via The Apple Blog

Where is Part Two?

Seb Janacek has 10 pretty lame things to say about Apple. I mean, really! Everyone knows that the lunatic fringe is the hair that keeps falling over the Moabite pwnies eyes whenever they have to deal with Lyn Fox.

Being great at what you do means you're allowed to be a little, ok a lot, arrogant. And Seb seems to have forgotten that Apple has the iPhone trademark outside of the US.

As for the Reality Distortion Field, that's just a pretty ordinary paddock next door to Artie MacStrawman's Apple Orchard. Nothing much out of the ordinary ever happens there, unless you've had one too many warm apple ciders while basking in the reflected glow of Steve's (pbuh) personality.

There's a response to the article here, but I'm interested to see what's due to be said if the second part detailing the good things about Apple ever comes out. I'm not holding my breath.