iTunes Extra (& LP) answered, but keep it to yourself…

The ever-excellent Roughly Drafted goes into great detail here, about how iTunes Extra & LP work.

From what I can tell, the whole iTunes Extra experience is done inside iTunes 9, using Javascript, CSS & HTML. The media file, is actually a bundle, a mini website if you will, all under a framework called “TuneKit”.

So that’s my question answered, however Roughly Drafted also goes on to postulate that the real benefactor for this approach is Apple TV, or whatever it’s successor is to be called.

The real kicker though is the fact that all this is done using open standards – no proprietary Flash or Silverlight required.

It would be really nice if certain people, who have lambasted Apple in the past for their horrible, closed proprietary systems, to maybe just admit, just for once, that Apple just might have the user’s interests at heart.

And of course, as RD points out, their own hardware sales. Once Apple’s users have enough iTunes LP & Extra content on their Mac/PC, Apple will release Apple TV 3.0 and all that content now plays on that device, effectively replacing DVD players in one fell swoop.

As always, there’s far more info in Roughly Drafted’s article, it’s highly recommended, but sometimes I wish RD would keep these plans to himself – we don’t want the enemy knowing all our plans do we?

iTunes Extra: How?

On a slightly more serious note, it’s interesting to see iTunes Extra with interactive content, basically like the content you get on a DVD.

I’m interested to know how they’re doing that – is this embedded in the downloaded file, or is it hosted remotely on iTunes?

I’m no techie-expert but I remember that Quicktime supports hyperlinks, but this is more than that.

I wonder whether you can buy iTunes Extra movies, or just rent?

Apple – iTunes – Explore the new iTunes.

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Safari 4 beta

Apple surprised everyone recently by announcing Safari 4.0. It’s released as a beta, put don’t let that put you off, it’s every bit as stable as the previous version.

Opinion is divided on some of the new features, with some people hating the fact that the tabs have moved to the top (as Chrome), the ‘Top Sites’ feature not being particularly useful, and the intrusion of ‘Cover Flow’ into bookmark & history browsing.

Other people love these features, but I think it’s a mixed bag. The feature that wowed me first was the ‘Top Sites’ feature, however this enthusiasm has faded as I realised I cannot seem to find it useful. Time will tell.

The feature that I hated at first was the ‘Cover Flow’ intrusion. I don’t like Cover Flow, I don’t use it in the OS, or iTunes, however it seemed to make more sense in Safari, because it’s better than what it replaces, and I’m warming to it.

The traditional way, by earching your history by looking at hundreds of similar named bits of text, is not user-friendly at all, however quickly skimming through thumbnails of those pages is much more intuitive.

Thurrott is having a bad time in finding anything to like in Safari 4 beta. This isn’t surprising, but he seems to blow lukewarm to cold on Apple, depending on whether he needs to up his site visits. I’m purposefully not linking to his article.

Everyone seems not to mention the speed. The stats seem incredible, and although they seem to be true and not exaggerated, (they have been independently tested and confirmed), the average surfer won’t see much difference.

The question for me remains, is why are Apple introducing more (albeit useful) eye-candy into Safari? It’s a browser, and shouldn’t it be lean, fast & mean?

It comes down to pushing the hardware. I do most of my personal surfing on a little iBook G4 and it’s beginning to show the strain. Apple need to keep selling their hardware, so they keep pushing the specs, to make you upgrade.

I’ve held off, because, like most I can’t afford to upgrade my hardware every time Apple releases new Mac’s.

I put it off for as long as possible, and I’m planning to purchase a MacBook when Snow Leopard is released.

It seems that Apple are heading towards Snow Leopard as the pinnacle of what they can achieve, after they threw away OS9 all those years ago.

Snow Leopard seems to be everything that Steve Jobs has been aiming for – a lean, mean OS, with no legacy code. A good foundation to build upon.

I predict that after Snow Leopard has been released, together with the hardware that’s designed to take full advantage of it, Steve Jobs will announce his retirement, with the knowledge that his job is done.

However it will be sad when SJ retires. To most new Mac users he has significant, but not irreplaceable influence.

When he does go, I’m sure that Apple will carry on, and be better off in the long run, but the Apple that I have grown up with (since System 6) – my Apple – will never be the same again.

Safari is all part of this, and it’s apparent that Apple are slowly putting the pieces together to make the Mac best tech-experience, bar none.

Thank you all for listening…

I know that this lowly blog isn’t totally responsible for this news:

Amazon fails to dent iTunes

but it’s nice to know that the record companies plan to cripple Apple’s dominance in the downloadable music industry, isn’t working.

Amazon’s entry into the market has nothing to do with consumer choice. They have allowed Amazon to have DRM-free music, because they want to stop Steve Jobs from keeping prices of music low.

If Apple is reduced to an also-ran, then they can safely ignore them when they increase prices across the board, and believe me they would.

Amazon, being the faceless corporate behemoth they are, will simply roll-over and take it up the ass, but Apple? Steve will probably pull out of the industry all together.

Which is what the music industry wants.

Anyway, I’ve always wondered why people have such a problem with Apple’s Fairplay DRM. 

It is the fairest out there (obviously), and I’ve never come up against it’s restrictions. But then again, I don’t pirate music.

So, if you are fair with the music industry’s property, you don’t come up against the DRM. It’s perfect.

If you never come up against a DRM mechanism, can you really say that DRM exists?

Anyway, it now seems that Apple is finally winning the battle, with the rumours that they will have DRM-free music shortly. But, I spoke too soon:

Labels making specific demands in iTunes talks

It seems that they are still holding out. Time will tell whether they make the right choice for consumers.

iPod software development…

I love my iPod. Well actually I love my iPods, because I have 4 of them, but there’s one thing that’s been troubling me.

The hardware changes, the design changes, but the underlying software features don’t seem to change.

Things have moved on from version 1, and I know that Apple like to keep things simple, but there’s one thing I wish they would add, or I could add myself.

More often than not, I’m listening to my music on shuffle, and I come across a song by an artist I really like, and by extension I like other songs by this artist.

Why can I not simply skip to a list that says:

1) Shuffle to other songs by this artist

2) Shuffle to other songs in this genre

3) Shuffle to other songs in this year

Maybe this could be a special section that you could programme from iTunes, so you would have an Applescript that does this, but it executes also on the iPod.

I know that the ‘KISS’ principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), is behind a lot of reasoning at Apple, but time and time again I come across a situation like this in the car.

The only way around it is to navigate back to the top level,  select ‘Artist’ and shuffle from their entry – it’s not very easy and probably quite dangerous and distracting if you’re driving.

Maybe now that the AppStore is open we’ll see this, but what with Apple restricting certain apps when they duplicate in-built features, it’s not likely.

Still they don’t get it…

I’ve recently subscribed to a new podcast, ‘MacNotables‘ hosted by Chuck Joiner (a great name and a great podcast).

Episode #824 caught my attention, because it discussed in the main, the new Napster music store, and then the topic of the Amazon music store and why the music labels have given more favourable terms to other music stores at the expense of giving them to Apple.

Now I’ve discussed this before here, and I feel I make a valid arguement that the reason why this is happening is nothing to do with consumer choice, but is mainly about the music companies getting their industry back from Apple, so that they can control it again, and raise prices, re-introduce DRM, and make even more money for themselves.

But after listening to this podcast, I can see that even the most intelligent and insightful Mac-pundits simply cannot see the wood for the trees (or the music for the albums as it were).

Andy Inakto Innhakto Ihnatko, (who joking aside, have enormous respect for), is totally wrong here.

In listening to the quite heated discussion amongst the protagonists in MacNotables #824 episode, the conclusion I can draw from Andy is that he feels that Amazon’s music store is a good thing, and iTunes could do with the competition.

He uses iTunes to search for music and listen to the samples, but then goes to Amazon to buy it.

To save what amounts to a few bucks.

Every buck he saves erodes Apple’s dominance, and further entrenches Amazon’s.

Now I’ve nothing against Amazon, I use it all the time to buy stuff, it’s the way in which Andy, and others like him have been totally suckered by the recording industry to effectively allow them to, sooner or later, completely ignore Apple when they argue with them over pricing.

And when that happens, all those little bucks that Andy has been saving, will be won back when the recording industry is allowed to raise prices, because they can safely ignore Apple again.

Well done Andy.

Microsoft PlaysforSure, doesn’t play for sure anymore (for sure)…

Here’s the bad news.

It’s amazing that this has not been reported more widely in the press. After countless arguements that Microsoft’s DRM was the future, and you’d be mad to go with iTunes, now comes the news that puts Microsoft’s take on the user/provider firmly into sharp relief.

Put simply; you know all that music that you spent your hard earned cash on from any one of a number of ‘PlaysForSure’ partner of Microsoft’s?

Well, they want it back please and no, you don’t get your money back.

Can someone please explain to me again, why Apple isn’t at 95% market share and companies like Microsoft at 5%?

Why do Windows users put up with being slapped in the face constantly – do you think they actually like it?

Can anyone really trust Microsoft again?

I’m glad that all my online music purchases are from iTunes, because at least I know that Apple will still be around in 10 years time.

It’s strange that back in the 90’s the ’still being around in 10 years time’ was the reason given by a lot of IT Managers when giving a reason for choosing Windows over the Mac.

How times have changed, it’s a pity a lot of IT managers haven’t.

Are you complicit in iTunes downfall?

 

 

Recent developments in the market place for digital downloads of music have resulted in iTunes being seen as the black sheep in the family.

Although Apple have made a lot of money for the record companies, (Apple sees iTunes as a break-even arrangement, taking very little from each song sold, making money from sales of hardware instead), the record companies are not happy.

iTunes success, has resulted in Apple having a great deal of power in terms of the prices they are willing to sell music at (regardless of what the record companies want), to-wit – we see prices on iTunes remaining pretty consistent across the range.

This benefits the consumer, (who are Apple’s main focus here), for other online retailers who have allowed the music companies to dictate pricing terms, have not been as successful as Apple, hence their almost complete demise.

This has irked those record companies greatly, for they are used to having almost total control of their industry.

So we have seen a change of direction; they have now started offering competing online music providers, different, and much better terms and arrangements to sell their music, while Apple is left out in the cold.

We’re seeing no DRM, better choice of music and lower prices in competing services.

Most, if not all the media see this as a benefit to the consumer, and a sign that the record companies are finally giving in and embracing the future, and hey, iTunes having competition is a good thing, right?

They’re wrong. Why? let me explain.

Apple have remained steadfast in their demands that pricing on iTunes is consistent. The record companies wanted tiered pricing, and Apple correctly stated that one of the reasons why iTunes was successful, was the ‘across-the-board’ pricing.

The record companies then realised that this was a battle they could not win, unless they sacrificed a couple of things in the short term, to win back something in the future.

These 2 things are DRM, and pricing.

They sacrificed DRM because a) of a change in customer demand and media momentum which they couldn’t control, and b) to give them leverage against Apple, hence the offering of DRM-free music to the linkes of Amazon.

They sacrificed pricing to again, give them leverage against Apple, but only temporarily.

Why do they want leverage against Apple? They want this so they can bring competitors to iTunes dominance.

Is that not a good thing though? NO IT ISN’T.

Why isn’t it? Because 5 years from now, if they are successful and iTunes dominance is eroded to the point where the record companies don’t have to listen to it’s demands, what will be left?

You will have the record companies on one side, and on the other side a number of partners who will not be powerful enough to dictate pricing terms, as Apple has in the past.

What will then happen?

PRICES OF ONLINE MUSIC WILL RISE. GUARANTEED.

They will then be able to do what they like, kill online music stone dead if they want to and return to the more profitable and controllable model of CD’s, or worse.

Do I have any proof of this? No, of course not. But answer me this, if this isn’t true, and the only reason why the record companies are doing this is to bring competition, cheaper prices and no DRM to the industry, then why don’t they let Apple join in now?

By not letting Apple join in now, they seek to erode its dominance, and they want to topple iTunes, so they can get the pricing back under they’re control.

So the next time you buy music online from Amazon, just remember that you giving more power to the record industry with every purchase, and taking power away from Apple.

Apple want to keep music prices cheap and consistent, the record companies want you to pay more. Just remember that.