New iPod and music service
 

from Apple arrived today.

New iPod and music service
 

And it looks pretty cool, too. It will be interesting to see how this music venture plays out. Will folks pay $1 a song, and for how long. Assuming the answer is yes, how long before a competitor hits the market and tries to take Apple's new market space?

I might pay a buck if the site was user friendly and fast -- while limewire works, it is slow at times and kludgy to use (not that I know from personal experience).

New iPod and music service
 

I played with it very briefly last night. It strikes me as incredibly easy to use within iTunes. All you do is choose "music store", and it takes you to the front page. It has some featured selections, but you can search. Search for say, U2, and most of their recent albums come up at the top of the screen, and all of the songs on those albums, plus several EPs come up at the bottom. Click on a song. It plays for 30 seconds or so. Then there's another button to click to purchase (I didn't do that). Amazing.

I think $1 is a great for buying a la carte songs. 20 years ago when I started buying 45s, the price was $1.50 or something (and that's pre-inflation). Here, the selection is anything you want (that's in the catalog) and far cheaper. There are plenty of CDs I bought for 1 or 2 songs. Going forward, such CDs are entirely irrelevant.

I think the success depends on a couple of things. 1) Will people decide to be honest, and pay a buck for a high-quality version of a song rather than stealing through Kazaa or whatever. 2) Will Apple eventually roll out a windows version of iTunes or a comparable interface so others can use it. As to 2, there will be plenty of debate whether windows users should be give access, but if they're not, someone else will get a similar deal with the music cos. (barring an exclusivity deal, which Apple may actually have gotten for a couple of years), and push apple's service to the margins.

My cynical view would be to make a windows version of iTunes, but make the hardware requirements for effective use pretty high (let it run on slower machines, but really slowly). That way, people who already have a $2000 machine can get it's full benefit, but are already in the apple computer price range, so are viable switchers.

New iPod and music service
 

And I have now received my new iPod. Quite sweet for those unfamiliar. No bigger than a cassette tape (albeit heavier), yet it holds all the CDs I want it to in digital format. I now can drown out the sounds of the unwashed masses on Metro.:D

If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. They are so choice.

New iPod and music service
 

Did you go with the 10, 15 or 30? 10 sounds like plenty of room for my needs, and I am trying to figure out if I really care about a base and remote. Any thoughts?

New iPod and music service
 

I went for the 15. It still doesn't hold all my music (honestly procured), although I ripped at 192mbps. The pricing made the choice difficult, since the 10 is a great value, and the step up from the 15 to the 30 is only $100.

That said, the remote is a plus and a minus. The plus is you can leave your 'Pod in a bag/pocket, etc.. The minuses are 1) it adds a lot of cord, which seems permanently tangled with the headphones and 2) operating using solely the remote is impractical, unless you set up playlists that you're entirely happy with, which I haven't done yet (so I choose an album, and then need to choose another using the controls on the ipod). You can always buy the remote later for $40 or so.

As for the base, it's pretty unnecessary. As someone put it, it's basically an L shaped connector for the power/firewire cord. The cord to the computer plugs in either to the base of the ipod or the dock, into which the ipod goes. It does have a line out jack, which might be helpful for connecting to a stereo. But if you need that, it probably means you need two docks -- one for your computer, and another one for the stereo in the other room.

iTunes can be hacked to permit file sharing
 

Is Apple stupid or courageous? {Spree: a blogger muses about whether the iTunes 4 hack that turns it into a (legal?) Napster-like peer-to-peer way to share music files was actually intentional on Apple's part because iTunes is likely to survive the industry's inevitable challenge}.

iTunes can be hacked to permit file sharing
 

You don't even need a hack for streaming the music. Where apple was stupid (or not) was making it easy (apparently) to hack iTunes so one can actually download that music. It seems like an obvious problem, but maybe the engineers thought they had it blocked and just weren't trying too hard.

Edited to note that Apple has released iTunes 4.0.1, which eliminates the internet-streaming capabilities.

Airport Card
 

There are two versions of airport cards, regular and extreme. Now, of course, I want extreme, because, well, why wouldn't you?

Does anyone have experience with the extreme card? Will it fit in my 14" iBook? (It seems that the answer is a big fat no.)

Even(getting my wireless network this weekend)Odds

Airport Card
 

Check apple's website, but I believe the answer is that unless the computer was built with the extreme card size in mind, you can't use it. But it will still work with the extreme base station and a regular card, just at teh slower speeds.

Mac OS and IE
 

After vociferously claiming for years that its control over Windows did not unfairly advantage it against Netscape in the battle for browser supremacy, Microsoft has announced it will discontinue IE for the Mac, because Apple's control of the Mac OS gives it an advantage with regard to Safari versus IE.

Too funny!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...explorerformac

Oops
 

Apple posted specs for its new desktop computers on its site momentarily last night. Release expected Monday.

Oops
 

Interesting that the leaked stats were right on...

AdL

Oops
 

Well, I'd hope Apple would get it right. I think it was a screwup, not a "ploy."

Oops
 

If that is the case, someone has already been fired. I saw a link to the apple jobs datase somewhere, and there was a recently posted position seeking applicants for the aple store. I wonder if this posting is related to the screw up?