Tuesday, June 1, 2004
News
.Mac Subscribers Top Half A Million
Apple's subscriber-only UK .Mac page reveals Apple now boasts over half a million subscribers.
Wave Of Attention Rushes Back To Stephen Shore's Photography
New technology has brought Shore almost full circle, back to the kind of small book Ruscha made.
Review
Big Bang Chess
Download Big Bang Chess if you want a good free chess game. Just don't expect too much, yet.
Making Macintosh More Corporate
With Office 2004, Mac users for the first time in years have an office suite that is at least the equal of its Windows equivalent.
More Personal iTunes Sharing
One of the more impressive developments in iTunes 4.5 is its ability to share iTunes libraries between users on the same computer.
Sidetrack
People don't want to rent music, observed Steve Jobs, which is why there isn't a subscription-based service over at the iTunes Music Store. And I tend to agree on this point.
But, one of the "advantage" of the old Napster, a lot of people have also observed, is the ability to sample and discover new music. And sampling and discovering new music on the iTunes Music Store, currently, is too much work. A lot of clicks. A lot of waiting.
Maybe the new iPod division should invent something like a personalized radio station, which can be listened via iTunes or iPod. The tunes selection will be partly based on what the user have on his iTunes library. And, oh, a 30-second preview is simply not enough for discovering new music.
Simply choose the option, "Include iTunes Music Store samples", and iTunes/iPod will selected previews into your current playlist. Perhaps even with a text-to-speech announcement. Oh, of course, make it easy for the user to then buy the tune.
Fried Chicken, the way Elvis used to love.
Wintel
Microsoft Slows To Support Customers' Pace
Microsoft's decision to extend support for many of its products reflects a new reality: Customers are increasingly reluctant to update major software compoents every few years just to keep up with Microsoft's shipment schedules.