One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com
Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Back-up your data and, when you bike,
always wear white.
The rest of [iTunes 9, aside from better sync'ing features for iPods/phones] is about lock-in, mostly, but of course, Apple's most fanatical fans relish corporate micromanagement of their lives, and they'll embrace iTunes 9 blindly like the lemmings they are.
Minorly more interesting is how I found that post, which is Frank Fox's column at Low End Mac, which I think means to say that Windows users are finally getting a good dose of what Mac users often get -- bad ports of apps whose interfaces are more familiar to Windows users than the users of the machines on which they're running. Word 6, was it?, or perhaps the next version was so Windows-like, I believe Mac users somewhat famously rejected it. A number of Java apps, back when there were lots of Java apps with UIs on both, did something similar. Mac users were always second classers.
iTunes is specifically an app to get folks used to the Mac OS. It's a pretty good move, overall, by Apple. Get over your initial disorientation on iTunes for Windows, and once you use a Mac, you'll have even less to relearn.
posted by ruffin
at 9/24/2009 06:42:00 PM
This software may be used to reproduce materials. It is licensed to you only for reproduction of non-copyrighted materials, materials for which you own the copyright, or materials you are authorized or legally permitted to reproduce. If you are uncertain about your right to copy any material, contact your legal advisor.
Corporate society in the United States assumes that the standard citizen has, in theory, access to resources that most don't. In fact, they assume that real entities (people) have the same sorts of resources the collective, ficticious, legal entities (corporations) have and utilize on a day to day basis. When these assumptions are made, the individual is hurt.
Who is my legal advisor? If we hadn't built a house, I'm betting I wouldn't even be able to say "my lawyer" with any confidence. Even then, I'm not calling to ask about CD ripping. He's nice enough in this case that he'd probably talk to me for 10-15 minutes without charging, but that's rare in my limited experience. Very rare.
When corporations assume people operate as they do, with the same sorts of access to legal representation, cash and credit lines, and other resources that its employees, other than a few past CEOs, would never have on their own, they should be, in select cases, held liable for providing such little legal guidance for their tools. If ripping a CD is illegal -- ever -- Apple should tell its users in the readme that nobody short of weirdos like me read anyhow. And when iTunes' installer has a button labeled "Read license" that doesn't require clicking before the app installs, well, they should be liable for whatever users do after moving forward.
I don't like the RIAA. I don't like it much at all. I despise the current length of copyright protection that essentially neuters the growth of the public domain. But when it comes to such willful negligence as you see in quotes like the above and installers like iTunes 9's, I can't help but wonder how protections and rights in the US have swung so far over into the corporations' favor. A hint: The people, by not staying vigilant, let it happen. I'm not sure how one makes protections shift back.
The most important iPod, the Touch, is getting a camera, and I believe will match the iPhone 3GS on processor speed and RAM. Three sizes: 16/32/64 GB for $199/299/399. ... That’s about it for the sure thing bets. ... My gut feeling is that the current no-button Shuffle has been a dud sales-wise, and at best has been a disappointment. ... So I’m thinking Apple will announce a brand-new design — maybe even with a button.
Well, he was waaaaay off on the 8 gig iPod touch -- wrong on its updated hardware, wrong on the storage size, wrong on the camera.
Fake Steve has been having and continuesto have a proverbial field day with Gruber's predictions, if you can call them that.
Daring Fireball is great. It'll again be better when Gruber gets the hell out of making predictions.
posted by ruffin
at 9/10/2009 11:17:00 PM
* Intel, PowerPC G5 or 1.0GHz PowerPC G4 or faster processor is required to play Standard Definition video from the iTunes Store * 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or faster processor is required to play HD video, an iTunes LP, or iTunes Extras from the iTunes Store * Screen resolution of 1024x768 or greater; 1280x800 or greater is required to play an iTunes LP or iTunes Extras * Broadband Internet connection to use the iTunes Store
Macintosh Software
* Mac OS X version 10.4.11 or later; Mac OS X version 10.5 or later is required to play an iTunes LP or iTunes Extras
As you might have noticed from the bolding, what gets me is that you need a pretty fat, Intel-only Mac to get your LP liner notes. I realize there's more to the iTunes LP than notes and images, but is there anything you really couldn't do on G3 and OS 9? Probably not if you can spell assembler and worked on it. OS 10.2 and a G4? I'm betting it could handle LP.
The interest then isn't iTunes' limitations but what is revealed about the way Apple develops. The interest is not with backwards compatibility. No surprise there, as they sell hardware. I'm not going to say it's a bad design practice to require the latest and greatest, especially when you're the one selling it, but it does factor into my Apple loyalty quotient. Cutting off loyal customers by coding software that requires unnecessary secondary upgrades is A Bad Thing. The drive to make the consumer consume more, more quickly is, in general, a negative social force. It requires the removal of, well, "aura", if I can steal a word, about our items. The aura moves from representing something to be inherently good (the grandparents' house, china, paintings, and shotgun, let's say) and thinking that something new is automatically better (today's nano with camera, a new Mactel 10.5 with iTunes LPs). Aura lodges no longer in the object but its newness.
Speaking of Apple loyalty quotients, did anyone catch the Planet Money podcast on Apple recently? What a fluff, fanboy piece. "You don't have to upgrade if don't want to! It's an alternative market to Microsoft. And Apple's [it's implied in the podcast] is winning!" What crap. It's not like 10.4, .3, .2 were $29 upgrades. And if you want 10.6 and have a computer more than a few years old, you can't upgrade at any price short of, well, buying a newer Mac.
I like Apple, but the great part about Windows is that I could buy an old PIII 600 MHz Toughbook with Windows 2000 on it a few months ago and still do pretty much whatever I need to with it. The latest versions of VIm, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Filezilla, XAMPP, etc still work fine. In fact, there's really only one piece of software that I use where I had to scale down to a much earlier than the latest version. Yep. iTunes.
I guess I should also add that Apple's pricing remains incredibly manipulative, and I say that to mean that I'm really impressed. A new camera in the nano? That would be awesome. $149? Well, it is a new iPod with 8 gigs of space, plays video, has Nike+, and a video camera. But for $50 more I can get an iPod touch, with apps, WiFi, VOIP phone, etc. That's worth one video game's worth of expendable cash, right? But the $200 model doesn't have the new iPhone hardware inside, so no Open GL and quick performance. That stinks a little bit. But $300 for the new hardware? Seriously, how much was the iPhone again? And it has the camera...
Man, they're clever.
I'm guessing I'll pounce some time after the nano hits the refurb page.
Here's a feature that's looooong overdue. Now if they could just get two computers using the same drive for iTunes (say a Mini running OS X and Windows) without screwing things up. From engadget:
10:14AM 'Home sharing: we're going to let you copy songs, TV shows, etc. with up to 5 computers in your house. You're going to see all the computers you can share with, and you'll see the contents -- you'll be able to drag that and copy it to your library.'
More recently, I learned of various projects to build simple computers similar to those 80’s machines, constructed entirely of discrete logic chips like counters, adders, flip-flops, and NOR gates. No Pentiums or PowerPCs here– these people built their own CPUs from the ground up, along with the memory subsystem, I/O, and everything else the computer required. I had stumbled onto the world of the homebrew CPU. To create such a computer required a detailed microarchitectural design, custom instruction set design, custom software tools like assemblers and compilers, and of course a custom circuit board or three populated with lots of fat DIP chips and a big mess o’ wires. Projects like the Magic-1, D16/M, and Mark 1 FORTH Computer showed me the way.
I decided to build a homebrew CPU computer of my own. It was a big mess o’ wires.
Gosh I hope this works. I'm getting freakin' crazy with iTunes not finding any of my files after I start it up with the drive disconnected -- even after I reconnect the drive. You either have to add everything again (losing all your ratings, playcounts, etc) or reattach files one by one in my experience.
I have found a slight 'work around' for this problem. If you move the iTunes Music Library (data) and xml files to the external drive and replace the ones in your ~/music/iTunes folder with aliases (or symbolic links) to the ones on the external drive, iTunes will give you a message that the Library could not be found or written to. This will remind you to turn on or plug in you external drive and won't change the location of the iTunes Library.
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