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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I’ve taken a look at a few of the most interesting Apple related blogs and gathered what they have to say about EMI and Apple working together on DRM-free music. To recap, EMI announced that they are selling all of their signed artists as mp3 with no limitations and a higher bitrate. To help this along the way, EMI have made a deal with Apple to sell the music in iTunes as DRM-free (or “FairPlay-free”) AAC-encoded music at 256 Kbps.

I must admit that I focused on two blogs/newssites but on the other hand they have quite a lot to say. First, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has some predictions related to the deal that are both obvious and somewhat interesting. Will the price model in iTunes move on to a more flexible one with new music costing a higher price than older music? Interesting, I’d say. My biggest concern is how big the difference will be.

TUAW also has a good article summing up the pros and cons about upgrading your existing iTunes music library to the new format. This is a good one if you’re uncertain whether you should take the offer or not. You could think that upgrading is only an advantage but the article has some good points to take into consideration before you click that button.

The AppleInsider has been productive and has four good articles about the subject. First of all, their article about the press release is very descriptive and informative. Also, AppleInsider has transscribed the Q&A session following the press release Monday afternoon. This is a good place for more in-depth information and details about what changes are coming to iTunes. Lastly, they have an analysis of the future of the iPod market and how this new deal will affect it. Opposite to what critics have said before the announcement, analysts believe that the iPod will increase sales as a result of the deal. Critics think that Apple are risking giving away a great market share because music from iTunes now can be played on other music players than the iPod.

The fourth article from the AppleInsider is just 99% related to the EMI deal. Almost a year ago, the Norwegian Consumer Council complained about how Apple isn’t playing nice by forcing its customers to use Apple hardware to play their legally bought music. Now, they applaud the new deal with EMI and suggest others to do the same.

There is no doubt that the EMI/Apple deal is a great moment in modern music history. Consumers have been taken much more seriously this time. I think EMI are right to work together with Apple on this one. iTunes already has a huge amount of users, so the new product is more or less laid right under the nose of a big percentage of online music consumers. If I was given the opportunity to buy a DRM-free file at a higher bitrate today, I’d do it, and I’m certain that many others feel the same way.

When - not if - this is a success, other record labels have to follow suit.

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In half an hour you can listen to a live webcast from the Apple and EMI press conference where the two companies will tell us about their future cooperation. Rumour has it, Apple is finally allowed to sell the Beatles’ music in iTunes and EMI will ditch DRM. I think they have more stuff up their sleeve and I’ll almost bet they’re going to present a new Beatles special edition iPod like the U2 version.

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The first (at least to my knowledge) review of AppleTV is ready. It’s Walter S. Mossberg from Wall Street Journal who got his hands on one of these babies.

Bottom line, AppleTV is a very nice product. It’s very easy to setup and use and it works perfectly in general (also with a slower, non-802.11n wireless network). You can share everything from iTunes to an AppleTV from up to five other computers in your home network. Both macs and Windows machines are supported - although running this kind of equipment along with Windows is for dumb people ;) It can also show your photos, although these have to be synchronized before showing up on the AppleTV - no streaming.

On the downside, the AppleTV has a few limitations. For instance, the device cannot access the internet directly (as of now). It must synchronize its content with one or more of the computers in your local network. According to Mossberg’s speculations, Apple will release a patch to open up for this capability in the future, but this is only speculations. Also, you need a widescreen TV to use AppleTV. It won’t work with older 4:3 TVs and has problems with some older widescreen TVs.

Though limited, the AppleTV is a fine product. Actually, Mossberg sums up in one paragraph, why the AppleTV is good and not just an expensive paper weight:

“Part of the secret of Apple TV is that, like most of Apple’s products, it doesn’t try to do everything and thus become a mess of complexity. It can’t receive or record cable or satellite TV, so it isn’t meant as a replacement for your cable or satellite box, or for a digital video recorder like a TiVo. It can’t play DVDs, so it doesn’t replace your DVD player. Its sole function is to bring to the TV digital content stored on your computer or drawn from the Internet. Like a DVD player, it uses its own separate input on your TV set, and you have to change inputs using your TV remote to use it.”

Read the whole review on the Mossberg Solution at the Wall Street Journal homepage.

I look forward to more reviews from other sources to see if this is the general attitude towards Apple’s newest member of the product line.

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Tonight I added another user to my iMac. Up until now we only had one user on the system and we both used that but now it was necessary to add an extra user. Extra users are good for separating files and access to other systems. For instance I like to connect to Messenger and other services quickly, have my own bookmarks, e-mail, calendar among other things. This becomes hard to maintain, but adding another user solves the problem. Luckily Mac OS X supports easy switching between accounts and it even adds some fancy GUI to it.

One drawback is the music collection added to the first user. I’ve spent hours importing my CDs to iTunes and I don’t want to waste neither more time nor diskspace importing them again. However, it is possible to share the music across accounts on the same machine. Apple has this nice article with a step-by-step description on how to share your music. It involves moving your music library to another location than the default one, but so far it works fine. I haven’t tested whether importing new music automatically will update the other user’s music library, but time will tell.

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