RandomMaccess

In a post on his “Zune Insider” blog, Microsoft’s Cesar Menendez says reports that the company will include content blocking filters in its media player. “I am setting the record straight in stating clearly that we have no plans to add content blocking features in Zune,” Menendez said.

We cited a New York Times article that claimed Microsoft would add software to the Zune that would prevent media from playing unless it could verify that it had been legitimately licensed for playback on the device.

“We know you guys are following this discussion closely, and wanted to be absolutely clear on this issue,” Menendez wrote. “We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.”

In a comment on the same blog post, the Times’ Saul Hansell responded that although Microsoft did not say it had committed to implementing the filtering software, it had committed to “explore filtering.”

From Hansell:

Here is what Mr. Sohn, the Microsoft spokesman, told me yesterday when I asked him about what Mr. Perrette said: “I don’t think they are wrong, but we are not going to characterize those discussions.” Later he added, “We have agreed to work with NBC across a range of topics, and protection of copyrighted material is certainly one of them.”

It’s possible that Microsoft is just playing semantics here, but the indication that it understands the backlash that content filtering would cause among users is a positive one.

In almost 20 years of purchases, I have never bought a “consumer” Mac for use at home. Since the first Mac I bought for my own use — a IIci with an obscenely generous 8MB of RAM, for those wondering — it’s been pro-level machines for me. The last couple of iMac revs have made me re-think that policy, though. They are more than fast enough for all but the most processor-intensive tasks and most expandability these days is accomplished through external USB ports, not internal cabling. The only time I’ve gone into the innards of my current PowerMac G5 is to put in an extra internal hard drive or add RAM. As the time draws nearer to consider replacing “new Betsy,” I am for the first time, giving serious thought to an iMac.

Macworld has been thinking along the same lines lately, too, it seems. Jonathan Seff and Jason Snell have put together a great piece that “busts the myths” of choosing a new Mac. If you’re in the market for a new Mac and have always eschewed the consumer side of the line (or always thought your primary machine had to be a desktop), the article is definitely worth a read.

I’m back on the MacJury for the latest session, along with Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica, Scott McNulty of The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Warren Williams of the AppleWorks User Group. We had a fun discussion on two topics: Microsoft’s abandoned attempts to acquire Yahoo! and “Can we dump Microsoft Office yet?” It was a lively discussion, with different points of view on both issues, which I always think makes for a better show. One of my biggest concerns on these panels (other than sounding like an idiot), is that everyone will be in complete agreement with each other — that makes for a really boring show. Luckily, we each had some good points to debate.

If you haven’t already subscribed, the show is listed in the iTunes store, or you can just follow this link.

By the way, I’m looking for recommendations for a decent podcasting microphone — preferably a USB condenser mic. Scott and host Chuck Joiner were both using Snowballs, but I’m looking for something a little less bulky and a little more old school.

Yet another example of why Microsoft is no longer worth worrying about.

The idea that anything that can’t “prove” it’s legal is therefore presumed illegal is insulting, contrary to the American principle of law and potentially illegal itself. Microsoft’s willingness to hand over its users rights to Fair Use and essentially sell them out to accommodate its business partners makes them unworthy to survive in the marketplace. As I said in a recent MacJury podcast, they’re like a ponderous dinosaur whose brain is too small and weak to let the rest of its body know it’s already dead.

(via Ian Betteridge)

There are few things as satisfying to me as taking a really dumb argument and ripping it to shreds with logic and facts. If that stupid argument is delivered with pomposity and arrogance, it’s all the more fun.

Few people have elevated this to the level of sport as well as John C. Welch. A hunting analogy comes quickly to mind, but the more I think of it, the more I realize it’s not so much the hunter-with-rifle-tracks-deer kind of hunting as it is the lion-in-the-plains-gets-gazelle kind. It’s graceful, masterful and can sometimes make you wince at its brutality.

The clueless gazelle this time out is Matt Freestone of Windows Connected, who is clearly talking out of his nether regions in a post that creates a fiction presented as a comparative piece about the compatibility of Mac and Windows operating systems on older hardware. John breaks down his arguments and counters them with beautifully presented facts. Think of it as poetry without mercy.

The piece is worth reading just as a lesson in persuasive writing, but it’s also entertaining as hell. You can almost see Freestone’s arguments squirm under Welch’s attack. In fact, there’s really only one difference between this and a nature channel documentary: in the documentary, I sometimes feel sorry for the gazelle.

The must-read article is on bynkii.com.

Microsoft announced it was abandoning its attempted acquisition of Yahoo!, according to a statement from Microsoft. Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO, said “Yahoo! will never know how good they could have had it,” “We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees.”

I think the marriage would have done more to hurt what had been Yahoo! than help the combined company. As I said in MacJury #802, there were too many not only cultural differences, but technology differences to overcome. Most Yahoo! developers probably didn’t even use Microsoft development tools, and it’s hard to see how Microsoft could have practically moved Yahoo!’s properties over to its development platform.

Apparently, now we’ll never know.

[Update: Yahoo! shares dropped over $4 a share to $24.43 in this first day of trading since the Microsoft announcement. Not too bad, though, as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber notes, Yahoo! stock was trading at $19 when Microsoft began its takeover bid.]

The slides from my Macworld San Francisco 2008 session on setting up a WiFi network are now available as a PDF file. Thanks to all of you who attended and responded so enthusiastically. I was lucky enough to have great crowds for all four sessions — they were attentive, asked great questions and were very kind with their feedback. Thanks, too, to all of you who have been inquiring about the slides — I’m sorry it took me so long to get them posted.

Click here for the PDF.

Thanks to instructions provided by The Joy of Tech’s Snaggy, RandomMaccess now has a custom icon for those who add it as a web clipping to their 1.1.3 iPhone. The technique is very straightforward. Simply create a 57×57 pixel icon, save it as a PNG with the name “apple-touch-icon.png” and drop it in the root level of your web server. Don’t worry about that glassie effect other iPhone icons have–it will be added automatically (to ensure consistency across all iPhone icons, obviously.) Since the glassie effect makes things at the edges of the icon appear somewhat distorted (pulled in as if the top of the icon has rounded edges), it’s best to keep text or images toward the center.

The icon’s pretty basic right now, but as a “proof of concept,” it’s kind of cool.

I didn’t write my annual look at the state of the Mac for the upcoming year this time around mostly because it seemed what was ahead was fairly obvious, with the notable exception of what “one more thing” Steve Jobs might pull out of his hat at some point during the year. I had already called for–and been wrong about–a true “convergence” device and I would have called for it again this year (although the iPhone has some of those qualities and will probably get more.)

Movie rentals were pretty much a given, as was some kind of sub-notebook. The iPhone update had been leaked reports were spot on, right down to the cartoony jiggling of the icons to show they can be moved. I was a little surprised that the iPod touch got so many of the iPhone’s capabilities. That moment was marred, though, by the dead silence that greeted the news that adding them would cost $20. The only thing missing was the sound of crickets chirping.

The movie rentals are priced right, I think, and along with the direct Internet access make the Apple TV Take 2 much more appealing. One thing that Dave Hamilton of The Mac Observer noted, though and I agree 100% is that 24 hours is a little too short a window to start and finish a movie. He gave the example of parents who can’t really start a movie until the kids are in bed. If they start a rental at 10 and don’t finish it that night, they can’t pick it at 10 the next night–the rental period will have expired. Even 28 hours would be alright–it would allow that kind of two-night spanning and still be a reasonable tight window: start at 8 on night one, for example, and you have until midnight on night two to finish.

The MacBook Air was a real disappointment to me, though I admittedly am not Apple’s target market for a sub-notebook. I came away thinking there was a lot missing on the “but” side of the description: “It doesn’t have an optical drive but it has… it doesn’t have an Ethernet port but it has…, etc. The only thing that could have been filled in after the “buts” was “it’s thin and light.” For me, that’s not enough; for others, it may be everything: time will tell. Jobs also mentioned that the optional solid state hard drive was “pricey,” but didn’t mention how pricey: an extra $999.

I like Time Capsule, Apple’s AirPort Extreme wireless router and network attached storage device in one, and I think the price is fair. The next time I’m in the market for an 802.11N router, I’ll probably consider it, but lots of people may already have separate components to do the same thing. One thing is still unclear: does the fact that Time Machine supports the network storage within the Time Capsule mean it will support other networked drives? I asked two separate Apple “Blue Shirts” (the experts the booth staff directs you to if you have a question they can’t handle). One implied the answer was no and one implied it was yes. My guess is that neither of them is sure. I also suspect that–supported or not–it will be possible, although it may well involve a terminal command to do it.

One more note: Jim Gianopulos, the CEO of 20th Century Fox Studios, is by far the best “Guest CEO” I have seen at a Macworld keynote in recent memory, and a refreshing improvement to the stiff PR-speak of AT&T’s chief last year.

Good riddance to a stupid idea.

The interesting question to me is not so much what this means for iTunes, but what does the record industry think it means for iTunes? Three of the big four are selling their DRM-free tracks only on Amazon. Is it pure spite? Do they have promises from Amazon of tiered pricing for the future? Do they think they are going to “punish” Apple and use this as negotiating leverage or drive iTunes into the ground? Or will they all eventually allow the DRM-free versions on iTunes?

For all the noise about DRM, I don’t think enough of the buying public cares that much that it’s going to hurt iTunes significantly. The iPod to iTunes to iTunes Store channel is seamless enough that I think that’s where most of the buying is going to come from, DRM-ed or not.

Tiered pricing may come eventually, but I think non-DRM songs are coming to iTunes first.