Apple

The Macworld Expo San Francisco keynote is less than 4 hours away. The whole Mac community is waiting with baited breath. Personally, I want to find out more about Tiger. In particular, a release date more specific than “first half of 2005” and hopefully sooner rather than later. We also get to find out which rumors were worth something. The current most popular rumors are: iWork Apple’s new office suite flash-based iPod headless iMac the $500 Mac Mac OS X Tiger info and release date Powerbook updates with slightly faster processors I still don’t get the head-popping excitement being generated by the flash-based iPod. Shortly after the keynote is done, I’ll do a quick summary. Later tonight, I’ll do my little rant on what all the news will mean for the future.

As we draw close to Macworld Expo San Francisco, the number of rumors generally increases. The reason is multiple fold. First, supposedly more leaks happen closer to the expo. Second, people’s desire for rumors increases exponentially. Finally, it’s a quick and easy way to draw traffic as a Mac based website. Yes, I’m a traffic whore too, so let’s review Flash-based iPod For almost as long as the iPod has been around, this has been the popular rumor. And why not? It seems like a natural progression. Flash memory based MP3 players tend to be smaller and cheaper than hard drive based players. The ridiculous, respect-less rumor wells throw caution to the wind, ignoring hard real analysis (done by such people as John Gruber). It combines tiny size (as if the iPod mini’s compact flash hard drive is bloating it terribly and flash memory is that much small) and low costs (as flash memory is so cheap, still hundreds of dollars for any significant size) to make for a some people’s wet dreams. Ignore the fact that the iPod’s main attraction is having your entire music collection in your pocket. We’ve got a rumor to foist upon the public and get attention. To make the situation worse, iPod sites such as iPodlounge are encouraging the rumor with iPod flash Concepts contest. Dangle some expensive headphones in front of work starved artists and watch as you get hundreds of designs that are either physically impossible or hopelessly stupid. Yeesh. ...

There was quite a stir when Real announced that they would make songs for their new online music service available for use on iPods. What made this so provocative was that their music service uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) to prevent copying, exactly as Apple does with FairPlay and Microsoft does with their own scheme. However, Apple didn’t license FairPlay to Real. That was the rub. Real was maintaining DRM without a license to use FairPlay. In order to accomplish this feat, they reverse engineered FairPlay. They got to use software that Apple supplied without paying for it in some way. The fact that Apple didn’t want to license at any price is a moot point. They are the legal owners and it is their decision whether to sell licenses or not. Just because I’m not willing to sell my car to you doesn’t give you the right to jack it. ...