Steve Jobs and DRM

I read Steve Jobs' essay on DRM and iTunes yesterday. Innocuously titled "Thoughts on Music,"it was interesting and certainly not what you would expect from a CEO of two huge media companies, but then I don't think Steve Jobs is the typical CEO. He's the only one I know who laid me off, but that's beside the point. I didn't interpret his essay as a call to end DRM. I don't think that is going to happen. With the pressure from a couple of countries in Europe to remove the iTunes DRM to make the music available to other players, this essay was just a way to deflect that criticism and put it where it should be -- on the backs of the music publishers.

Apple, Inc.

The Apple iPhone is a very big deal, but changing the name of the company is pretty big, too. With the iPod, AppleTV, and iPhone, the company is doing more than computers. Reminds me of the VP who cancelled my video project because Apple "is a computer company." Good luck to Apple! I think I'll have to wait and see what the phone contract includes as far as paying for Internet access before I buy one of those phones.

MacWorld Keynote tomorrow

Less than 24 hours to go on the MacWorld Keynote. I'm expecting a few new items from Apple -- probably the new iPod, maybe the phone and maybe a TV and the media streaming device, plus a few software updates. That might be too much to expect, but we'll see what happens. The last few of these have not lived up to expectations, which tend to be very high because of how closed Apple is about new products.

Apple's phone

I was listening to The Tech Guy with Leo Laporte this morning when some guy called in with all kinds of details on the upcoming Apple phone. You never know how solid this kind of information is, but Leo seemed to find it credible. The guy said the phone will come in 4 GB and 8GB versions at $275 and $335 and will include Bluetooth 2 and some kind of accelerated data transfer technology. He also said it would be made out of zirconium. The caller said he had a friend who works at Apple -- don't all these guys with the rumors? There were more details but I am not much of a phone person so I didn't write anything down. I listen to Leo's show once in a while and I've never heard a call like that before, so maybe it had some real inside information. We should know in 9 days.

Christmas gift

I didn't buy any hi tech stuff this Christmas, at least not for myself. I got 4 of those stick people animated cubes for my sons, but I'm not sure those are going to get a lot of use. I'm saving my money for the Apple streaming device which may or may not show up at Macworld. I hope it will be worth the wait.

Speed of MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro I have is way faster than my iMac. Both have Intel chips, although not the same ones, but I have a feeling that the 2GB of RAM in the MacBook Pro is making a big difference. My iMac has slowed to a crawl at times and it can be pretty frustrating to work with when that happens. Time for more memory!

Waiting on the MacBook Pro

I started to get impatient last week waiting for my MacBook Pro to arrive at work. I've been using an old no-name Windows computer and my 12" Powerbook G4 to get my work done. The problem is that I can't put the Powerbook on the network unless I use wireless and I can only do that outside. So I've been doing some work on the Windows PC and other work outside. There's some other software and hardware I'm also waiting on and it's making it a pain to get some things done. The IT department told me the MacBook Pro won't ship until Nov. 16th, which means another two weeks without it...What's taking so long? by then I will have been on the job 6 weeks without the right equipment to do my work.