According to TechCrunch Apple and EMI will start selling all of their tracks without Digital Rights Management (ie copy protection) Here are the details:
New version of iTunes next month
You decide if you want DRM music or not
DRM free music is $1.29 per track, or $0.30 more than a protected track (Sneaky way to get a fee hike in)
DRM-free music is also 229kbps AAC, not 128!
One click in iTunes to upgrade your music for $0.30/track
In an earlier posting, I complained that I had bought the 10th Season of South Park, only to later find that Apple had split the season into two parts, 10A and 10B. I was to only receive 10A.
Anyway, I complained to Apple and after several emails, they gave me $5 store credit. Which I used. Live and learn I thought.
Tonight I get a xmas gift from Apple:
Thank you for purchasing the South Park Season 10A Season Pass from the iTunes Store. We know that the decision to split this season into two parts created some confusion for our customers.
We strive to create a perfect experience, so iTunes is giving South Park Season 10B to everyone who purchased the South Park Season 10A Season Pass. To download these seven free episodes, click this link.
Ah yes, this is why I love Apple. Downloading all seven episodes now!
shhhh, don’t tell her. ok, she knows. I had to ask what she really wanted engraved on it.
She is writing a 50,000 word novel in a month along with a lot of other people, and I’m damned proud of her, so I got her a motivational gift (its engraved with the event and her email on the back)
She is coming over tonight to get it, but if you wan to see what Apple’s gift wrapping option looks like, here it is. Nice quality ribbon, too!
Thanks to the ever wonderful Erick Laabs at The Mac Store, I tried plugging my iPod in and told iTunes to not sync the music library.
I was then able to select the iPod and choose settings. Then on the music tab I selected sync manually.
Now I can drag things to the iPod or delete them off!
Podcasts added in this manner do not show up under Music->Podcasts. That is reserved for the synced special playlist. But they do show under Music->Genre-Podcast.
I also added a dumb playlist called “Added from Laptop,” drug my laptop music into that playlist, then that playlist to the iPod.
Once added, music is there for good until you either manually delete it or do a full sync to a library.
Is kind of a yawner but the real story is the TV shows, at a small 320×240 video size.
I bought Desperate Housewives Season 2 Episode 1. It is 206mb in size. Then it took an hour to authorize my laptop to watch what I had paid for. It tells me I have 3 machines authorized out of 5. DRMs suck. DRMs suck.
Check out this counter. Every 100,000th song they are giving away a mini, and for the 500,000,000th song they are giving away 10 iPods, 10,000 songs, a concert trip, etc.
If you’re getting the “We’re having technical difficulties” error while submitting your podcast rss feed to the iTunes music store, don’t you believe it! It is your XML.
I use Movable Type to generate my page and it had a bunch of extra namespaces, improper dates, etc that iTunes did not like.
I stripped my feed down to a very small feed, then added in the itms tags needed to make the store happy. I am now submitted
He says he could not stop a sync to his iPod after 30 mins, needed a reboot of the machine, etc.
I’ve seen issues like this before podcasting. The Mac gets blown away by the iPod being attached, usually when my iPod is plugged into a hub, or there is a second firewire device also attached (iSight or DV cam) and the Finder and/or iTunes totally borks up, is slow, or just completely locks the machine.
Gone are the black and white ipods, all iPods (except the shuffle and minis) are color now.
Even bigger news, Apple has shipped iTunes 4.9 with podcasting support. The UI is a little goofy. You go to the iTunes Music Store and subscribe to a podcast there and it is added as a new class of audio at the top of the list, like Library, Music Store, etc. Not just a playlist.
The first two podcasts I subscribed to were bookmarkable AAC files. You can add your own via the Advanced menu, Subscribe to podcast.
The iTunes Music Store had the open source sex show, and gay escapades, but not The MUG (Mac Users Group) Center podcast.
Several podcasts were listed 2-4 times on a search.
iTunes does not appear to convert podcasts to bookmarkable AAC files automatically. BOO! Oh but wait! All podcasts are bookmarkable now! The new ipod software and iTunes know how to work with mp3s, etc, to keep your files in sync.
For those confused, this means that if I start listening to an hour long podcast at home and get 25% of the way through when I need to leave, I simply pause the podcast, update my ipod, go to the car, plop the iPod into the cradle and press play. The podcast will pick up where I left off. When I get home, I update the ipod again, and iTunes will pick up where the iPod left off. Sweet.
Because you really want that ugly round red thing. You have no sense of style, what do you care how it functions! Pack on the functions, bloat up, this is America!
“You’ll want a display. When you have hundreds of songs on your player, you really need an easy way to select your music by artist, album, or genre. This is critical if you want to find that one song or artist you really want to hear.”
Again, you have no idea how you want to listen to music - We’ll tell ya. And get that display, cuz we offer it on our big red ugly thing!
“Let a professional make your next playlist. “
We at Microsoft don’t think you’re smart enough to make your own playlist, nor figure out smart playlists. Just buy a radio and screw the whole personal music revolution! What do we care, we’re just trying to sell you Windows.
“Don’t get locked into one online store. Have you ever been on the hunt for a particular song?”
We don’t want to remind you that you can buy CDs and rip them into your iPod quite easily. We also don’t want to mention that if the other stores were any different than iTunes Music Store, they’d sell unencrypted MP3s. But they don’t. They lock you into Windows Digital Rights Management. Oh there we go again, selling Windows. Sorry!
My homemade mount kind of fell apart in a hand swiping accident last week, so I ordered a Pro Clip.
This thing should attach to my mount in the car and let me slide in the iPod and plug in the cable. I wanted a more dock-like experience, but this will work.
As reported last year, I bought a Belkin Auto Kit for my iPod. It contained a cigarette lighter adaptor and a line out from the dock connector, as well as a built-in pre-amp.
I went through two of them, both exhibited the same behavior - Because of the pre-amp, they coupled noise from the engine into the line out signal. Also, the pre-amp was lame and would often whine and hiss even with no iPod connected.
The Monster works perfectly. The audio connector comes off the dock connector, so it does jut out a little into my shifting space but is not bad. The sound is incredible, just clean line out quality, no amplification, pure bass, etc.
The Monster dock connector is much thicker, so I had to modify my iPod Mount by making the dock connector slot bigger. Then I could not disconnect the connector once attached to the iPod due to the space taken up by my holder, so the solution, which I like better anyway, is to push the connector up through the iPod mount and connect/disconnect it there. Then the cable rests nicely in the iPod mount when not in use.
The Monster is much lower profile and I think people will like that also.
The Monster does not pause the iPod when power is lost - This is fine by me, as it is one less capacitor in the chain to screw things up.
If you are concerned about the battery in the iPod, head over to the iPod Battery FAQ for a great collection of information. Now those cheese head brothers can stop whining and spreading false information about the iPod.
