Tue - October 25, 2005

iTunes Music Store Australia finally here

Worst kept secret in years

After more than a year of false starts and rumours, the iTunes Music Store finally hits Australian shores. First day of trading for iTMS in Australia featured albums by Aria awards winner, Missy Higgins, Ben Lee and the Finn Brothers.

I feel a bit like a kid on Xmas morning.

Posted at 07:24 AM    

Fri - September 16, 2005

Sun - June 19, 2005

iPod catches up

Linux hackers go where Apple feared to tread.

Hi Tux; where've you been?


I have been growing distressed at the galloping obsolescence besetting the iPod. Apple abandoned innovation for fashion.

While other players and image tanks come along with all manner of capabilities such as decent audio recording, ripping straight to device and even video playback, the poor iPods have just sat still.

Then along came the creative folks at the iPodlinux project and restored my faith in a device that was starting to look more like an expensive paperweight. Now I can do all sorts of things under Linux on my iPod I never imagined it could do under its native firmware. Download v0.3c to see what I mean.

The installation went smoothly, copying off the old firmware and then sliding the new Linux distro alongside my existing data and music without incident. But when the iPod booted into Linux after disconnection, there was nothing. I could hear the clicking of items ticking over as I shuffled the scroll wheel, but couldn't see anything. Turning on the backlight by pressing Menu-Play on my 3G iPod, I could see very faintly some writing. Carefully navigating to the Settings menu, I was able to arc up the contrast -- to reveal Linux in all its glory.

A Linux-powered iPod is more than simply a cool geek statement. Finally, I can record interviews in 96khz mono without the expensive Belkin mic that has such poor 8khz sound it is all but unusable. The same feature rips from a line input. And it will also display photos, although if you have a 3G iPod the limitations of the LCD make this more of a cool hack than a useful feature.

But better is to come. The guys have demo'd video on an iPod Photo and greyscale models.

Now if they could expand that functionality so I can use the iPod as a DivX/Xvid video tank for playback to TV, and not just its own LCD, then we would be rocking. Portable, high-quality digital video wherever I go.

Thanks to former colleague, Cyrus Farivar, for the tip.

Posted at 12:26 AM    

Sun - May 15, 2005

Hilary Rosen beaten with the idiot stick

Former music industry pitbull whines about her iPod.

In the latest example that old windbags never die, they just run out of puff, former recording industry supremo Hilary Rosen (above) rants that her iPod locks her into the iTunes Music Store.

In a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, double-think and plain technical incompetence, Rosen lists in her "Steve Jobs, Let my Music Go" whine reasons why Apple has screwed the pooch on the iTunes Music Store and made her life as a poor consumer on a bloated pension so hard.

And she does it by stealing Martin Luther King's famous 1964 Nobel lecture, "Let My People Go" to make her case as if to imply that Apple was making slaves of us all. Perhaps since Rosen took over at gay rights group the Human Rights Campaign, she feels an affinity for that great man. It's a shame that affinity doesn't extend beyond her bedroom and choice of sexual orientation.

"I spent 17 years in the music business the last several of which were all about pushing and prodding the painful development of legitimate on-line music," Rosen writes, trying to rewrite the history books.

Yet Steve came around and in just a few months signed up everyone.

"Look, I bowed at his feet when the iPod and iTunes was created because HE GOT THE BALL ROLLING," she writes.

Steve, the outsider, who was not even a recording executive and certainly not someone who commanded the ear of the entire industry from the bastion of its most influential chair. It must have really stung when his reality distortion field collapsed and you picked yourself back up from your knees to find that he had put in place the only workable solution that made you look a dead duck and speeding you out the door.

The Prince of Cool bested the Queen of Darkness and, what is more, everyone knows it.

Ouch.

Rosen, who is obviously a Microsoft shill (and I wonder how much Gates is paying her to lobby on his behalf), pastes Apple's use of the open AAC standard. Instead, she says, everyone should use (and pay for) Microsoft's proprietary, closed WMA standard.

"But keeping the iTunes system a proprietary technology to prevent anyone from using multiple (read Microsoft) music systems is the most anti-consumer and user unfriendly thing any god can do."

Bizarre reasoning for a logical person living in the real world, but her comments have to be viewed through the prism of someone who worked tirelessly for years to stop people legally downloading music and having choice.

This is the same woman who:

* Presided over the industry during its anti-competitive cartel years, which saw the US Federal Trade Commission put an end to the illegal behaviour that stole more than $US480 million from US consumers and many more in Europe and elsewhere.
* Started a vicious anti-download crusade that went as far as to argue forcefully in secret emails and meetings that the RIAA should hack our PCs.
* Who instituted the policy of suing individual filesharers, which netted dead grandmothers and children. Why was Hilary silent when this happened?
* Championed the discredited Digital Millennium Copyright Act that has had a wide, negative impact across the globe on interoperability and has shut down companies and threatens entire industries.
* Drove hard new copy-protected CDs against the objections of consumers, the format's maker, Philips, and anti-trust regulators, such as the ACCC.

Although admitting "most agree (iPod) is the best quality player on the market", she wrongly claims that the "cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars" in a bid to show that it is wildly over-priced compared to no-name players "starting at as little as 29 bucks". Typically these cheapy players have just 128MB RAM, not the 512MB that the iPod Shuffle has for $US99. Four-times the capacity for a little more than three-times the price seems a bargain to me. Even the cheapest iPod Mini (4GB) costs just $US199 and it has the benefit of an ecosystem of suppliers that extend its capability, something the cheaper contenders will never have.

That's like buying a BMW for little more than the cost of a Falcon, a prospect that would make most drivers salivate.

This deliberate deceit is typical of the tricks Rosen and her ilk played for years up on the Hill and to the industry in their never-ending bid to gip citizens and consumers.

The problem, Hilary, is when you blog you don't have the insulating bureaucratic apparatus of the RIAA behind you to shield you from the repercussions of your statements.

Her claim that "the problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the online Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s" will come as a surprise to Dom Carosa, owner of Australia's first publicy listed online music store, Destra.

"Destra has seen a 300 per cent annualised increase in downloads from the company’s MP3.com.au website by Apple iPod users," Dom wrote in an April 28 press release.

"Since marketing to Apple iPod owners that free legal music is available on our MP3.com.au website, the download rush has overwhelmed us. Our advertisers love it and the advertising revenue we generate goes straight to our bottom line."

She betrays her lack of technical credentials by saying you have to be a "geek" to work out how to get music other than from the iTMS on to your iPod. I know people who can barely turn on their computer who routinely download music to their iPods from a range of sources, and nary a complaint because the free iTunes software for Windows and Mac makes it a breeze. Unlike much of the free software the WMA player makers ship, or Microsoft's own clunky and bipolar Windows Media Player.

But Hilary's biggest conceit is assuming that we consumers are idiots. She did this her entire tenure at the RIAA, alienating us with her moronic actions and possibly largely responsible for the recession the industry saw through her hard-line and out of touch actions.

No wonder the industry dumped her in 2003.

"There are lots of places you can go for great music at good deals and with a deep catalog of songs from over the last 20 or 30 years. MSN.com, Rhapsody.com, aolmusic.com, even walmart.com," she writes.

No-one is compelled to buy an iPod. No-one is forcing those people to buy music from Apple. iPod owners are free to shop wherever they want. If the stupidity of the WMA digital restrictions management systems reduce audio quality, that is a competitive issue for the online shop owners to sort out. If they don't, they will go broke. If consumers really like those other platforms so much, they will choose them. Some do, but they are in the minority.

That is what a free market looks like, Hilary. It's no wonder you have such a hard time recognising one.

In Australia, as is the case in most of the world where iPods are popular, there is no iTMS. Yet Apple's player outsells the others.

The consumers have spoken, and for once they seem to be in accord with the industry, which also seems happy at the outcome.

Arguing as Hilary does that Apple's use of the open AAC format inhibits progress and consumer choice is like 80s Beta VCR owners complaining they can't use VHS tapes -- except in 2005 the better format is winning -- or that an audio tape won't work on CD players.

I didn't hear Hilary or anyone in the content business argue that consumers should get a free cross-grade of all their content to a different format so they would remain interoperable. The music industry has made the great bulk of its profits over the last forty years from forcing people to pay again for something they already owned.

Yet this is the argument she runs now.

She lies about the facts and tells us we don't know what's good for us.

Deceit and conceit -- that is Hilary Rosen in her own words

Posted at 11:30 AM    

Fri - April 29, 2005

Waiting for iTMS

On the day of Tiger's launch, still no word of Apple's Australian iTunes Music Store.

Forums at the Australian online Mac user site, Appletalk, have run hot with breathless discussion about the pending arrival of the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) ever since mouthy actor Russell Crowe let out the news in a closely choreographed interview with radio jock John Laws.

So it wasn't long before someone found a backdoor into Apple's iTMS staging server, registered, and started to download songs at $A1.69 each. And it wasn't much longer before Apple slammed close that backdoor, especially once the papers got hold of the yarn.

This exercise is remarkable for several reasons:

1. Apple has made progress with its music store download plans -- it has even tricked-up a natty Australian flag button icon (below).


2. Apple would unleash in the wild an insecure e-commerce website that transacts customers' confidential credit cards. That doesn't say much for the company's much-vaunted security credentials.

3. The URL of the Australian store's site was so easy to guess and penetrate.

4. Having penetrated the woefully inadequate security, that customers would be so eager to use the service that they were willing to send their financial details over a dodgy link.

5. There is so much pent-up demand for this service that people who could easily download pirate songs from peer-to-peer networks for free prefer to buy their songs at the exorbitantly inflated rate of $1.69 a single download.

6. Apple gave no formal response to this "pantsing" incident.

I am left to wonder what will happen to the credits that customers bought on the beta site and were unable to use?

Will Apple offer a refund? It formally acknowledged the purchasers in response emails, so what warranties apply?

Meanwhile, sensing that there is not long to go before the iTMS behemoth staggers through their front doors, Telstra BigPond Music and Destra have ramped up their marketing activities to lure as many customers as they can to their services.

Telstra offers 99c downloads and Destra's service is pushing its position as Australian iPod owners preferred destination for legal downloaded music, a fact I find hard to swallow.

Was this all a magnificent piece of guerilla marketing on Apple's part?

I doubt it. I have seen no evidence the company is capable of such creative marketing and engaging its fan base. This is likely just a screw-up of monumental proportions. Apple has had a few screw-ups with its infrastructure recently.

The latest thinking is that the music store will launch soon, possibly next week, once the hype over Tiger subsides.

But before you get all sweaty-palmed at the prospect of paying Apple $24 for a typical 14-song album, consider what you will do if those songs are lost.

Australian insurers will generally cover losses of your CD music library due to fire, accident or theft -- so long as you have the necessary policy coverage and keep records of the CD titles. If your music is lost or stolen the insurer will pay out a cash amount so you can buy the CDs again or get new ones.

But what happens if your hard drive crashes, the computer on which your music resides in digital form is stolen, or natural calamity takes out your precious music collection? Insurers are unlikely to cover legitimately downloaded music stored on home-brew CD-Rs or other storage media.

Who will you turn to for compensation?

Something to chew over before you give any online music store your credit card details to download that latest exclusive track from Green Day, John Mayer or, god forbid, Russell Crowe .

Posted at 12:26 PM