Man Plus Machine

Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music company, recently announced that it will not renew its contract with Apple over iTunes. Instead it will make music available to Apple at will. What this means isn’t totally clear to me and it’s not sure whether this means that UMG will pull any artists from  iTunes. It does mean, however, that UMG can pull artists on a relatively short notice, should UMG and Apple not agree on pricing and such.

I must say this is a surprising move to me since EMI and Apple announced their collaboration on DRM free music a few months ago. I expected other music companies to follow suit and now this happens. In my opinion it’s not a massive loss, however. Apple and iTunes are going  strong and with iTunes being the third biggest music vendor in North America, UMG can’t ignore it completely.

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The iPhone hype is winding up and here are two videos (and then some) to get us all just a tad more excited:

Apple’s own keyboard demonstration (also check out the other videos below this one).

David Pogue demonstrates the phone.

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The first reviews of iPhone are coming. Mr. I-Get-My-Hands-on-Apple-Stuff-First, David Pogue, thinks the iPhone lives up to most of the hype. Also Mossberg has an extensive review, fairly positive. The bottom line of Newsweek’s review is that the phone has a lot of potential in the long run. Interesting.

I think it’s too soon to say anything about the quality and power of the iPhone yet, but at last we get to make some impressions of it.

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Here’s a nice litte guide to upgrade the memory in your beloved Mac. It more or less covers it all.

Besides that, it’s iPhone Mania these days. Apple says the phone can be activated from home - via iTunes. If you consider buying an iPhone, here’s a good overview of the total costs. If you’re cheap, here’s how to minimize your costs when buying an iPhone.

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Today, when I turned on my computer at work and started Google Reader, the first headline to hit me in the face was the news about Apple delaying Mac OS X Leopard until October. The delay is due to lack of engineers on the iPhone project which is scheduled to June. Apple decided to move engineers from OS X Leopard testing and bugfixing to the iPhone project to meet that deadline. Originally, Leopard was scheduled for a 2007 spring release, but now that’s history.

I can’t put words on my disappointment. Ever since I bought my iMac, I’ve looked forward to Mac OS X Leopard, and now I have to wait another six months. Bloody hell! For five or some minutes I sincerely hated iPhone and all its importance, but hey, the iPhone IS a cool project, and I guess the stakes are high for Apple on this one.

Not long after the announcement, the rumours about why Leopard is delayed start spreading. Some believe that Apple wants to finish a special implementation of Bootcamp to support MS Windows Vista directly in Leopard. I find this hard to believe and even disappointing if true.  Leopard is (presumably) so much better than Vista that MS should be supporting Leopard more…

Another rumour that is more likely to be true says that Apple needs to delay Leopard due to the advanced and top secret features Leopard is supposed to be featuring. A fair reason. Apple has promised us some highly advanced stuff in Leopard, and of course things can get a bit out of hand.

However, I believe one of the reasons really is what Apple says it is; iPhone. The iPhone project is very risky business for Apple, and although most people gasp in awe just hearing the word “iPhone” (meaning Apple alredy has sold a gazillion iPhones just by showing it off), the product still needs to be in top shape to win the competition with other mobile phones on the market. Especially market analysts tend to give the iPhone a rough time.

When the first disappointment is swallowed, The Unofficial Apple Blog has a nice list of reactions to the sad news. To sum up: calm down, it’s not the end of the world.

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