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Radiohead Generation Believes Music Is Free
The RIAA Will Come To Regret Its Court Win
The Future of 'Quicksilver' Power Macs in the Age of Leopard
Apple 'to be bigger than IBM'
Leopard’s Impact on Apple: $240 Million in Q4, Says Analyst
"Trillian" and "Mac" don't belong in the same sentence... until now
Mac Users Are Crazy To Use Desktop Photos
Apple’s MagSafe Airline Adapter Makes Air Travel Fun Again. Mostly
Church Slams Cathedral Gun Battle Game's Bafta Nomination
PC Mag: The Worst Tech Products of Q3
The Mac Night Owl: Is Apple Losing its PR Edge?
Radiohead Generation Believes Music Is Free
The Telegraph's Juliette Garside reports
As if the record labels didn't have enough problems, now bands such as Radiohead are putting albums on the internet for nothing.
Supporting a rock band used to be an act of rebellion. In the face of today's mounting music piracy, it has become an act of conscience.
Radiohead, the contrarian giants of British rock, last week released their seventh album on an unsuspecting public with the challenge of paying as little or as much as they chose. In Rainbows is available on the internet only, and the only compulsory charge is a 45p credit card handling fee.
In the same week indie legends The Charlatans went one better and made their new single, You Cross My Path, available from radio station Xfm's website at no charge.
"I want the people to own the music and the artists to own the copyright. Why let a record company get in the way of the music?" says Tim Burgess, the Charlatans' lead singer.
These gestures are without doubt a two-fingered salute to the fat cats at the major record labels. More worryingly for the four international companies that account for 80 per cent of worldwide music sales, they could also sound the death knell for paid-for music......
For the full report visit here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/10/07/ccmusic107.xml
The RIAA Will Come To Regret Its Court Win
The Register's Guy Kewney says:
Can you spell p-y-r-r-h-i-c v-i-c-t-o-r-y?
You can understand why an unpublished writer might resort to blooking; but when a successful author with a best-selling business title behind him gives away a chapter a week, it piques curiosity.
Gerd Leonhard is an ex-muso, with a message for the recording industry. Judging by the RIAA's triumphant win receiving $220,000 in damages for the downloading and sharing of 24 songs, it's a message they aren't ready to hear. But Gerd is sharing his ideas - free - in book form. There is (he says) a better way of getting money out of people's wallets than going to court.
The book is "The End Of Control" and chapter one is already out. It follows his highly successful business title The Future Of Music which has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, since its publication two years ago.....
His message for the middlemen: "You are about to become squashed between hundreds of managers and artists that want to go direct, large retailers like amazon that re-write the rules of online music selling (think bundles... think flat-rate), telcos and operators that are getting fed up with the tedious and outmoded licensing practices, and search engines that are powering or becoming music communities and the next generation of radio."
And, he told his blog readers: "If [the industry tries to] keep up the strategy of 'you need us badly and therefore we make the rules' you will lose the artists, their managers... and the audience.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/08/0810_riaa_comment/
The Future of 'Quicksilver' Power Macs in the Age of Leopard
Low End Mac's Dan Knight
In January 2001, Apple moved the Power Mac to a 133 MHz system bus and adopted AGP 4x for video cards while retaining the look of the original G4 Power Mac. Seven months later, Apple introduced a new look.
With Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" rumored to require an 867 MHz G4 CPU, these may be the oldest Macs that are officially supported. We'll know more when Apple ships Leopard later this month, and we're pretty certain that all versions of Mirror Drive Door Power Mac will be supported by Leopard.
For the full report visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/musings/mm07/1008.html
Apple 'to be bigger than IBM'
Macworld UK's Jonny Evans reports:
Apple looks set to be bigger than IBM, according to a leading investment website.
Apple "currently has a market capitalisation of $140 billion," writes Georges Yared of Yared Investment Research.
Writing on the Seeking Alpha blog Yared compares Apple's market worth with that of IBM, $158bn. He observes: "Apple will surpass IBM before the first quarter of 2008 is in the books, if not sooner."
For the full report visit here:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/business/news/index.cfm?newsid=19315
Leopard’s Impact on Apple: $240 Million in Q4, Says Analyst
Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog says:
With three weeks left before the promised ship date of OS X Leopard, the long-awaited and much-delayed sixth major update of Apple’s (AAPL) flagship Macintosh operating system, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster is already calculating its impact on the company’s revenue stream.
In a note to clients issued this morning, Munster observes that OS X Tiger, Leopard’s predecessor, was also released at the end of the first month of a fiscal quarter (April 29, 2005 vs. Oct. 26, 2007). He writes:
At that time, the OS X installed base was 12 million and Tiger sales added $125 million to the quarter. The Mac OS X installed base is now approximately 23 million, so we expect Leopard to add approximately $240 million to the Dec. 2007 quarter...."
For the full report click here.
"Trillian" and "Mac" don't belong in the same sentence... until now
Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng reports:
For some Mac users who have never had to use Windows in their daily lives, Trillian may not ring as a very familiar word. However, for the rest of us, Trillian is something that holds a dear, special place in our hearts as one of the only tolerable IM clients under Windows. Even that is up for debate at times, but overall, it's a popular client for a reason, and that reason is that it doesn't tend to suck as much as the others.
These days, I no longer have to work under Windows for 10 hours a day, and therefore I no longer have to use Trillian for all of my instant messaging needs during work hours. Now that I've gone back to Adium, I can't say that I've missed Trillian, and I imagine the sentiment is similar for most others like me. That's why, when I first heard that Trillian was coming to the Mac, I questioned whether it was a practical joke.
But no, it's actually true. Cerulean Studios, makers of Trillian, has written on its company blog that it is working on a Mac client as we speak. The team makes it clear right off the bat that this isn't a port—"we always said that we would never ‘port’ Trillian to OS X"—this is a newly-written UI.
For the full report click here.
Mac Users Are Crazy To Use Desktop Photos
Mac360's Wil Gomez says:
How many Mac users open a few dozen folders on their Mac’s desktop? Desktops are cluttered with folders and files all over the place.
So why have a desktop photo as a background on your Mac if it cannot be seen? Desktop photos are a waste of time and effort.
Sometimes I have the privilege of helping out a new Mac user who switched from Windows. Invariably, their Mac’s desktops are cluttered with folders and files and that’s how they navigate the Mac’s file system.
Double-click, double-click, double-click, ad nauseum. It’s almost as if new Mac users don’t know about Column View in the Finder. Just as common is the desktop photo or image. Nearly every new Mac user customizes the image, adds a photo. Why? For the most part, the Mac’s Finder obscures the desktop.
For the full report click here.
Apple’s MagSafe Airline Adapter Makes Air Travel Fun Again. Mostly
MacUser's Dan Moren says:
I don’t want you to feel guilty or anything, but I feel that you should know that a week ago today, I was lying in a hammock on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, letting the breeze ruffle my hair and the sun warm my face, all while sipping a cool refreshing glass of tropical fruit juice. And now, I’m back in the rainy cold northeast. Just in the interest of full disclosure. Thanks: I missed our little chats.
Anyway, while Hawaii was great, its location is about as convenient as the delete key on the iPhone’s touch keyboard. Twelve hours spent on a plane is not the most pleasant way to bookend a relaxing trip. But one thing that mitigated the cramped airplane seats that make me wish I’d studied a bit more yoga was picking up a MagSafe Airline Adapter for my MacBook. So far, this is the only MagSafe available on the market (not counting the MikeGyver “hack” adapters). At $60, it might seem a little bit pricey, but once you get past a few caveats, the thing is worth its weight in salt (really, much more useful than gold, when you think about it).
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.macuser.com/accessories/apples_magsafe_airline_adapter.php?lsrc=murss
Church Slams Cathedral Gun Battle Game's Bafta Nomination
The Register's James Sherwood reports:
The Church of England is pleading with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) to remove PlayStation 3 game Resistance: Fall of Man (RFOM) from its Video Games Awards because the game depicts the alleged desecration of Manchester Cathedral.
The Dean of Manchester cathedral told The Guardian newspaper there was disgust among parishioners at the fact an intense gunfight takes place in the cathedral during the game.
Another church official said the award nomination is "like rubbing salt in the wounds".
For the full report visit here:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/08/rfom_bafta_ps3/
PC Mag: The Worst Tech Products of Q3
Buyer beware: These are the worst products we saw and tested this past summer.
To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2192486,00.asp
The Mac Night Owl: Is Apple Losing its PR Edge?
There’s a lot to be said about Apple’s famous marketing machine. They have managed to grab the world’s attention big-time, with a laser-like focus on the company’s important products and other announcements.
Here's the link to the story:
http://macnightowl.com/2007/10/08/is-apple-losing-its-pr-edge/
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Charles W. Moore
Tags: News ď Tech-Industry ď
