Wednesday, November 28, 2007
My purchase of a new laptop suggests that major changes will be occurring in my computing workflows, and maybe my life.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Everything old is new again. It is all about returning to a simpler time - a time where a cell phone was just a cell phone, camera, and MP3 player.
I first used a wired Mighty Mouse on a friend's MacBook Pro. Excited about the possibility of getting the wireless model (because, let's face it, everyone loves wireless peripherals), I searched the Internet for information about whether anyone had gotten it working on Linux. While I found some long how-tos describing how to get the [...]
Two nights ago, I dreamed that it was Friday (today) and that I was traveling on the Red Line with some of my co-workers. Somehow, I got left behind and was stranded at a newly constructed station, which was named either Douglas or Coupland. The station was sponsored by Apple, so Steve Jobs was on [...]
Thursday, February 8, 2007
My thoughts on Steve Jobs' recent memo, "Thoughts on Music." While widely reported (and hailed) as yet another sign of the end of digital rights management systems as a way to control the use of digital music, it is clearly a public relations stunt aimed squarely at European consumers.
Over at Gadfly, Peter Mulcahy complains about Randall Stross' recent article in the New York Times, which rightly castigates Apple for the limitations of the FairPlay DRM with which it encodes audio and video purchased from the iTunes Store. While I think commenter Markus Kolic is right in noting that Stross seems to be misreading [...]
Friday, November 24, 2006
I have been semi-seriously considering buying one of the new MacBooks with Intel Core 2 Duo processors (I am partially serious because I would like a computer with a Core 2 Duo processor and a SATA hard drive; the seriousness is only partial because it would be hell to get everything properly working in Linux). [...]
An essay on why I am not going to buy another iPod in the near future. First in a series on the state of Linux support (or lack thereof) in the digital audio player market today.
Inspired by Apple's Time Machine, I ruminate on backup.
Since I am not in school anymore (and therefore no longer have homework), I feel that I should be keeping productive by doing more programming. Unfortunately, my move to Linux presents a bit of a conundrum - in order to ensure that the largest possible audience can run my creations on their computers, it is [...]
When I learned about Microsoft's plans to make a digital music player, I was generally underwhelmed. Several other companies including Toshiba, Sony, and Creative have attempted to challenge the iPod's dominance of the digital audio market with little success. But according to Engadget, Microsoft might have an incentive that could tip the scales in their [...]
On July 1, I decided that Windows was just not working for me. Yes, having a plethora of possible applications to install appealed to me, but I feel that no operating system has a monopoly of having things "just work." Here are just of a few of the annoyances I experienced while using Windows:
The standard download of Apple's popular QuickTime software comes bundled with their iTunes application. While a standalone QuickTime download does exist, it is difficult to find.
"Dual-booting? I hate dual-booting."
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
How DrunkenBlog's "Evening at Adler" is symptomatic of our new creator-oriented world.
Friday, September 23, 2005
This open source iTunes plugin adds functionality that I have been looking for a long while - notification of the track currently being played through a small popup window that automatically disappears after a short period of time.
Via Chris Gonyea.
Monday, September 5, 2005
The Electronic Frontier Foundation publishes an excellent roundup of the most popular online music stores, identifying their flaws and explaining how they limit user freedoms. Of the four online music services that the guide suggests that users use instead, I take a look at Bleep and Audio Lunchbox.
Also tagged Audio Lunchbox, Bleep, downloading, EFF, EULA, file formats, FLAC, Free Culture, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, Music, Napster, online music, RealNetworks, Technology
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Since I was already thinking about iTunes, this post on Engadget about slurping tracks from your iTunes library to a PSP through WiFi got me into a pensive mood. While the howto that Engadget linked to is centered around a Mac-only shareware application called Dot Tunes, it occurs to me that the Internet community would [...]
Per Mr. Malik's request, SleepTune now provides the option to "wake up" iTunes after a specified period of time. You can download SleepTune 0.2 (along with source code). Please note that like SleepTune 0.1, it is licensed under the GPL. There may be errors in the code, since sleeping is something that I have not [...]
Robert Cringely complains about Google and has pipe dreams about Apple, suggesting that they will give old versions of the Mac operating system, OS X, for free. This does not seem likely, due to the importance of the "Apple Experience."
I previously wrote about my fruitless search to find the file format of iTunes Music Library files, and how I was able to use the iTunes COM Windows SDK to bypass this lack of knowledge.
If you do a search on Google for "hdfm itunes", my COM story is the first result. The third result, however, [...]
Among the links I came acrosswhile reading about iTunes and COM was a post by Sahil Malik, complaining about the lack of a sleep feature in iTunes similar to that on the iPod. The sleep feature on the iPod saves battery life by turning the player off if no music is playing and the buttons [...]
I sometimes wonder if my audience is divided. To put it simplistically, I imagine there are those who come here to read my complaints about Microsoft, and those who come to read my complaints about Bush. I sort of feel like Clifford Stoll in The Cuckoo's Egg, which tells the story of how a minor [...]
Also tagged C#, COM, Cuckoo's Egg, Delphi, ITL, iTunes, Music, Personal, Programming, Python, SharpDevelop, Visual Studio
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Over at Acts of Volition, Steven Garrity continues his writing about file formats, tackling office suite formats like those used by Microsoft Word and why they are important. As you might recall, I wrote about the first post in the series, which focused on music file formats like OGG and MP3. Again, I am not [...]
I liked this quote from a Register article about how computer manufacturer Dell would have no problems shipping the x86 version of OS X:
It does seem to be the case that Mac OS X is winning grudging respect from the PC world, primarily because of its relative freedom from malware. That's not going to change [...]
After last Friday's confirmation of earlier rumors that Apple would switch its entire Mac lineup to Intel-based processors, many of the Internet's Apple pundits seemed unable to believe the news. Some of them (including Russell Beattie and John Gruber) suggested that Apple might move to Intel-based PowerPC processors. If this was the case, the CNet [...]
The Internet is all abuzz because of a CNet article that claims that Apple computers will stop using IBM's PowerPC processors in favor of standard Intel processors (the standard x86 architecture). The announcement is expected on Monday, at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference. Why is this important? By switching to x86-compatible processors, Apple opens up the [...]
AppleInsider reports that Apple will release a second update to version 10.4 of Mac OS X (popularly known as "Tiger"). Tiger was released a little over a month ago.
Already sources say the current build of Mac OS X 10.4.2 includes well over two-dozen new bug fixes to Tiger, in addition to those delivered in the [...]
From Cringley's May 5 column (link mine):
And 10.4 gives us a peek at another evolution of iTunes, which is the inevitable expansion of the system to carry additional audio file formats. Looking at the unused iTunes icons that shipped with your new version of 10.4, you'll notice icons for currently-not-supported ogg vorbis and Windows Media [...]
Thursday, January 27, 2005
While the iTunes Music Store recognizes that "Big Pimpin'" is not a track on 2003's The Black Album, but is actually from the 1999 album "Vol. 3: Life and Times of S. Carter", one must wonder where the young Apple employee who made the iTunes screenshot found on the Playlists page went wrong. I suspect [...]
For my birthday, I decided to buy a MP3 player. After much consideration (I considered Neuros' strange dual player combination, as well as the Rio Karma), I finally decided on an iPod. The fact that part of my digital music collection is in AAC format was the biggest draw. While I did have fifty of [...]
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
The biggest tech news this morning would have to be the news that Apple will announce a $499 iMac on January 11 (my birthday!) at MacWorld. This would put a Macintosh desktop in competition with the cheapest PCs sold by companies like Dell and HP. Since I have previously complained that Macs were too expensive, [...]
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The Inquirer takes a strange angle in this article (entitled iPods will be free for wealthy kids) on yesterday's news about iPods being delivered for free to Duke University freshmen.
Giving the digital 'Duke box' away to one of the few universities where most of the kids can afford to buy them, is probably one of [...]
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Even though I do not own a Mac (too expensive!), I have to admit that Apple is more forward-looking than many other technology companies. Take the release schedules of their operating systems. Not is there a new release every few months (a page straight out of the open-source playbook), but the codenames are easy to [...]
From Slashdot comes an article from MacWorld UK about a malicious Macintosh program disguised as the not-yet-released Mac Word 2004. From the article:
A Macworld reader alerted the magazine to the malware after he downloaded the file from Limewire. The reader told Macworld: "I downloaded the file in the hope that perhaps Microsoft had released some [...]
Friday, February 27, 2004
This Register article talks about the Apple vs Apple case. I personally love this quote:
And the judge, Mr Justice Edward Mann, surprised the assembly by admitting he is an iPod user. He wondered if this disqualified him from judging the case. Lord Grabiner QC, representing Apple Comp., told him he was not. "I'm delighted [...]
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Perhaps I am still bitter about that Super Bowl commercial, or my bias against people from North Carolina was particularly virulent today. Either way, I found it necessary to respond to this post on the "importance" of Apple.
Robert Cringely has posted his predictions for the world of technology in 2004. As always, he has interesting things to say. Whether or not they will happen, of course, is another story; Cringely is visionary, but he is too optimistic sometimes. Anyway, read on for my take on the individual predictions:
Thursday, January 1, 2004
I think that lawsuits would not necessarily be a bad thing. While Apple computers and iPods do look nice, I am tired of the company is being portrayed as some kind of heroic foil to that other computer company. Apple is not really that much better of a company; they just have good [...]