The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Strange things have been afoot in the Mac shareware community over the past few days; manifested by the cute-as-a-button icon you see to the right popping up on multiple different sites. All we know about this cute lil' guy so far is that his name is Hubert.

Oh, and he doesn't want us to talk about him.

It's probably safe to say that Hubert is the brainchild of Mac Marketing guru Phill Ryu, and developer Austin Sarner of Disco and AppZapper fame is probably involved as well. If I had to hazard a based on what information we have, I'd say Austin is working on a new application, and a fun one at that. Maybe the OS X equivalent of BonziBUDDY? At this point, we can't do much more than speculate, but perhaps you readers will do some digging and find some info that I might have missed. Good luck!

The deal between Yahoo and Musicmatch has generated lots of reports today. This one from MP3.com has a pretty funny brand for the service: Matchoo

In an article about REM, The Guardian reports that guitarist Peter Buck filled up the iPods of everyone who worked in the recording of their latest album—Around the Sun (Dig)—with songs that he thought they might like. Personalized 10,000 songs mix!

He recently filled up the iPods of everyone who worked on REM’s new album with songs that he thought they might like - and considering iPods can take up to 10,000 songs, this was a Herculean feat of downloading. “He’s become obsessed with it,” says Stipe. “He has done this for everyone who worked on our new record, including the engineers, who he had only known for a couple of weeks. What’s interesting is to discover what he thinks we should be listening to. Mike got entire albums by Miles Davis, for example, while I only got the greatest hits.

[Via BoingBoing <- Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection]

I've been giving a lot of thought to all the hype that Skype has been getting as of late.  So much has been said about the great aspects of Skype, of which there are a few, that in the interest of balancing this with a bit of perspective on the downsides, I thought I'd throw a few of my own opinions into the ring for you all to chew on.

Before we can really talk about what Skype is, and why it's good and cool and innovative (oh...wait, it's not really innovative), we need to be clear about what Skype is not.  Skype is not a new concept and Skype is not a replacement for your other phones.  It may be good for calling your other geek friends (I do) and it may be good for calling your possibly tech savvy parents in Florida, but don't try calling grandma or grandpa.

I'm not trying to bash Skype here.  I think it's an interesting and innovative solution in the sense that, well, it's free, but it's not the first of its kind.  Ever heard of Net2Phone or the more or less defunct NetMeeting which also added video conferencing but never got around to allowing you to call peoples land lines?  There are others as well.  Not to mention the recent offering from BT / Yahoo.

Continue reading “My gripe with the hype around Skype and five good reasons why you shouldn't cancel your other phone services just yet”

No need to comment about this huge deal: “Florida State finalizing huge deal with Apple to provide free copies of iTunes and 99 cent songs for students.” A As Jason Kottke said:

Wow! How will they keep everyone else from taking advantage of this great deal?

[Thanks Andrew!]

Peter Rojas from Engadget gave us the scoop about the new iMac G5 unveiled at the Paris Apple Expo 2004.

Here’s the scoop: it comes in both 17-inch and 20-inch widescreen versions, and it’s an all-in-one with everything built-into the monitor. The 17-inch model comes with either a 1.6GHz or a 1.8GHz PowerPC G5 processor, and the 20-inch only comes with a 1.8GHz chip.

All come standard with 256MB of RAM (which is expandable up to 2GB), and the 17-inch model comes with an 80GB hard drive and a DVD/CD-RW combination drive, while the 20-inch model comes with a 160GB hard drive and a DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive. Click to see some more pics.

Continue reading “The “French-born” iMac G5”

We had mentioned during iTunes UK launch that users were upset because most independent artists wouldn’t be included in the catalog. Now some users are using the playlist-sharing feature to protest against the lack of indies by creating iMixes with titles like “iTunes needs indies!”. As you would guess these protest lists are climbing up the iMix charts (in the pic above the IMix got 4½ stars.)

I’m sure it will be a matter of time until Apple brings the indies in. I mean, if Steve Jobs really want to get serious in the European market.

European users have bought over 800,000—16 times as many as its closest competitor, OD2— songs on the newly launched iTunes stores in UK, France and Germany. 56% of the total (or 450,000) was downloaded by British music fans. Top selling artists were Pixies, Alicia Keys, Anastacia and Herbert Gronemeyer.

Let the price war continue. Apple iTunes service was just unveiled in an event that took place in London. Apple announced the launch not only in the UK but also in France and Germany.

Another surprise is the cost of a song that’s 79p, instead of the expected 99p (equivalent of $1.43, which is the cost practiced by Napster UK.)

Some users are still upset due to the fact that most independent artists are unavailable at this time. According to the Association of Independent Music (AIM) negotiations with Apple have broken down with ‘a number of its members’.

As we’ve been reporting here there’s fierce competitiion to get the biggest chunk of the European market — starting from Britain.

Yesterday, Napster’s British operation announced an exclusive distribution deal with broadband provider NTL. Napster will now be bundled with NTL’s Broadband Plus service package beginning in July.

Microsoft also announced an expanded alliance with online music provider OD2 to create a sort of music-service jukebox in Europe. Microsoft MSN’s SonicSelector jukebox, already powered by OD2’s and available in the UK, France and Italy is expanding to include Germany, Belgium and Spain.

A survey conducted by JupiterResearch concluded that the ideal capacity for a digital music player is of storing 1,000 songs.

Ninety percent of consumers have no more than 1,000 songs on their PCs. And 77 percent responded to be interested in players with a capacity of 1,000 songs.

The 4GB hard drive included in Apple Computer’s iPod Mini, and in MP3 players from some Apple rivals, holds roughly that number of songs. ”Hard drive players with such large capacity for content go above and beyond not only the music that most consumers want on their portable music player, but also beyond the digital music that they own.” Hard drive size isn’t the only thing that matters to music lovers. When asked which features matter most, 55 percent listed a rechargeabl

I remember the 20 Mbytes hard drives many years ago. If anybody asked I would never think of storing multi-gigabyte files.

What about an informal survey? How many song files do you have? Comments are open.