To all iPhone Customers…
Steve has taken the bull by the horns and issued a statement to all iPhone customers. Bottom line, if you bought iPhone before the price break, you’re getting a $100 Apple Retail/Online credit.
Steve rocks.
Category: iPhone
iPhone price drop…
Apple just went and killed the 4GB iPhone, and dropped the price of the 8GB model to $399. Two and a half months, and a $200 price drop. Wow.
Thanks Steve. By the way, the wife says I no longer can buy new Apple products the day they come out. I’ll have to wait 2-3 months first. Sorry.
UPDATE: Double ouch. Even the refurbs have dropped. For $349, you can now get a refurbished 8GB iPhone.
Category: iPhone
Eudora 8.0b
A new beta of Eudora 8, code named “Penelope” has been released. Eudora 8 scrapped its previous code base and was rewritten using Thunderbird as a starting point. In my first look, Eudora 8 basically looks like Thunderbird with really crappy icons.
Category: Software
Mars Edit 2
Red Sweater Software has released the highly anticipated Mars Edit 2. If you blog on a Mac, this is the app that you want to use. $29.95 for a new license, $9.95 for upgrades.
Category: Software
NBC/Universal goes to the mattresses
Today’s announcement that NBC will not be renewing their contract with Apple to distribute content through the iTunes Store shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. NBC is just the latest content provider to look at iTunes, scratch their heads and say “why are we letting a third party company dictate the terms of our content distribution?”
I’m of two minds on how this can play out. Scenario one involves NBC soldiering on with their new video site partner (FOX) and successfully launching Hulu.com. Of course, if this happens, NBC/Universal is vindicated and Apple becomes a diminished player in the content distribution space.
Scenario two has NBC launching Hulu.com, and for one reason or another, it is a huge flop. We’re talking an URGE sized flop. In this scenario, NBC takes it on the chin for pissing away a lucrative revenue stream (iTunes sales), and the shareholders demand that NBC find a way to quickly fix the problem. Of course, NBC goes crawling back to Apple and we’re back where we were before this announcement was made. Except that Apple has now played chicken with one of its major content partners, and won.
I’m sure NBC (and Fox) feel pretty confident about their chances with Hulu.com. However, they should learn from the failed wreckage of Napster, Urge, and Sony Connect and realize that customers flock to the iTS because Apple makes this simple and affordable.
I’m not an expert in what makes a successful audio/video content distributor, but by looking at what all of the failures had in common, you can deduce the following:
1) DRM must be as flexible as Fairplay or better. Apple’s Fairplay is pretty generous as far as DRM goes. Having no DRM would be much friendlier to the consumers, but these are television executives we are talking about. They care as much about their consumers/customers as I care about Fidel Castro.
2) The content must be iPod friendly. This really is the defining factor on whether the distributor will succeed. Napster? Not iPod friendly. Sony Connect? Nope. URGE? Nope. All three are huge failures. Outside of the successful iTunes Store, the next successful digital content distributor is eMusic. And guess what? eMusic distributes DRM free tracks that are iPod friendly.
I’m pretty certain Hulu will “screw the pooch” on both of these items. After all, it will take a technology company partner to provide them with their precious DRM. And who do you think they will be partnering with? Yep, good ‘ol Microsoft.
Category: Opinion
October is getting close
With October about 30 days away, Apple is still keeping the exact release date for Leopard under wraps. Usually Apple announces the release date for a major OS at least 30 days out. In the most recent seeds of Leopard, a new default desktop background and intro movie have appeared. These are usually the last pieces of the OS to be added, so it’s pretty safe to assume we are still on track for a October release. The only question is, when?
I’m still sticking to October 5th as the release date. I haven’t seen anything that leads me to believe Apple can’t hit that date. The significance of releasing OS X 10.5 on 10/5 should not be glossed over. Plus, it’s a Friday, which is the day all of the other big OS X releases have been on.
If you want to count down the days until 10/5, get your countdown widget.
Category: News
SCPlugin (almost) ready for prime time
If you are doing dev work on Mac OS X, you are most likely using Subversion. Well, unless you are stuck on CVS, or are living on the cutting edge with git. Subversion on the Mac works just like Subversion on any other platform. However, Mac users have been looking longingly at Windows users and their TortoiseSVN plugin. TortoiseSVN provides a GUI to Subversion through Windows Explorer. If you’ve used it, you know how well it works and how easy it makes working with Subversion.
Mac users need not be envious anymore. The SCPlugin project, which aims to bring a TortoiseSVN like plugin to the Mac Finder, has hit version 0.7. While not completely finished, SCPlugin now allows you to do everything that Subversion is capable of, including checkouts and password integration. Additionally, a real installer is in place now. The SCPlugin team warns that this is still a beta, and should be treated as such.
If you are using Subversion on a Mac, you owe it to yourself to check out SCPlugin.
Category: News
.Mac Email vs. Yahoo! Email
Why is it that free Yahoo! email accounts can “push” their email to an iPhone, yet the $99/year .Mac email accounts can’t?
I don’t really know the answer, but it’s a pretty frustrating question.
Category: Apple
iWork ’08 Trial
As soon as the Apple Store got over its shyness, I placed my orders for iLife and iWork ’08. However, later in the day, Apple made the iWork ’08 suite available for download as a trial package. While the iWork ’06 suite was installed on all new Macs, it was never available as a trial download. What’s nice is that you can actually just buy the serial number from within iWork now. Nice. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have opted for the shipped package.
It’s nice to see Apple finally adopting the shareware approach to software distribution.
What’s even nicer is that the education price for the download is $49, while the price for the boxed version is $71. However, there is no download discount for the consumer version. Bummer
