fscklog

Pepsi-iTunes Super Bowl Ad, die QuickTime Variante vorab (Update)

Wer sich den seit heute offiziell bestätigten Spot bereits vorneweg zu Gemüte führen will, der wird bei Apple Insider fündig, oder bei Überlastung alternativ hier, hier oder hier (jeweils 6,5 MB .mov).
Interessant, dass in diesem doch recht mauen Machwerk kein explizites Apple Logo (vom verwendeten iMac mal abgesehen) zu entdecken ist, lediglich am Schluss leuchtet kurz ein dezenter Hinweis auf iTunes.com auf.

Update:
USAToday liefert noch ein paar Zahlen hinterher:

"Pepsi expects redemption rates of 10% to 20%. Apple and Pepsi would not discuss financial details.

Analysts expect Apple will reap huge rewards from the contest. Analyst Charles Wolf of Wall Street research firm Needham & Co. estimates the firm is selling 2 million songs per week. "This campaign will get them to 5-10 million per week by summer, or 200 million songs for the year," he says."

MittwochsMacOrama

Der erste iTunes kompatible Music Store 'nupha' (neben dem iTMS selbst natürlich) ist an den Start gegangen, Downloads werden wahlweise in AAC oder WMA-Form dargereicht, die Auswahl an Independent Labels scheint noch recht gering zu sein und überlastet ist man bereits auch schon, mehr bei macminute:

"According to the company, Mac users must download and install a small package (known as the nupha kit) which allows iTunes to play nupha encrypted music, which sells for 99 cents a track and $8.99 an album." Kein Wort zu einer iPod Kompatibilität bisher.
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Hochgesteckte, aber dafür umso spannendere Ziele hat das Darwine Projekt:

"The Darwine project intends to port and develop WINE as well as other supporting tools that will allow Darwin and Mac OS X users to run Windows Applications."
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Zur Abwechslung mal zwei Polls, Ergebnisse bitte wie gewohnt mit entsprechendem Stirnrunzeln betrachten:

Nummer 1 kommt aus der Macworld UK und dreht sich um die vieldiskutierte Akkulaufzeit/-lebensdauer des iPod:

"Of the 1,047 readers polled 70 per cent have not experienced any reduction of battery life, and of these nearly half (49 per cent) admitted "I accept it will lose charge over time."
Although 30 per cent of respondents have experienced decreased battery life just 14 per cent of these people state that they are "unhappy" about the situation. The remaining 16 per cent have already accepted that their battery will not live on indefinitely."

Nummer 2 findet bei Ars.technica statt, gefragt wurde nach dem 'main e-mail client', dabei führt (momentan) mail.app mit 30% der abgegebenen Stimmen.
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MIDI Basics bei macjams.com für GarageBand Anwender:

"This document is intended to be a basic introduction and tutorial on the topic of MIDI, which is short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI is a protocol that was developed so that electronic instruments could communicate with each other as well as computers and other electronic devices. Through MIDI, a variety of musical information can be transmitted. MIDI is not only used to indicate what note is played, but the duration of the note, the velocity/volume, and sometimes the aftertouch or other information as well. MIDI is also used to transmit non-note information such as pan, effects, track or overall volume, and the like. In essence, MIDI is a basic communications protocol used by musical instruments and computers, much like Firewire is a protocol for computers and peripheral devices like hard drives, scanners, and camcorders. Read on for all the information you need to work with MIDI and GarageBand."

Eine deutsche MIDI FAQ hatte ich erst letztens verlinkt.

Ein deutsches GarageBand Forum hat Michael (esse es percipi) eröffnet.
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USAToday setzt sich mit dem Einfluss des legendären Apple 1984-Spots auseinander:

"Twenty Super Bowls later, many tech industry leaders say the ad and the first Mac played an inspiring role in their career paths. It was one of those rare bolts of lightning that can mobilize a generation in a particular field — the way John F. Kennedy's call for a man on the moon motivated the aerospace crowd, or Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein rallied young journalists with their Watergate investigation."
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Studenten (und Professoren) haben zunehmend Spass am iPod:

"The students like it just because it is compact and you can store so much music on it," he said. "Also, [the iPod] allows you to store data if you want to back up [information]. A lot of departments buy the iPod just for that - they use it for data storage capacity. A professor can take 10 GB of information and go to another Mac somewhere else across campus and be able to transfer that file."
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Ein wunderschöner Artikel über Besuch vom FBI findet sich bei SecurityFocus, IT&W lieferte die Geschichte schon vor über einer Woche und ich hatte vergessen sie daraufhin hier zu posten, deshalb schnell (aber unaktuell) hinterhergeschoben:

"I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box.[...]
Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac."
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WMA vs. AAC setzt sich fort, die Business Week bietet dazu FAQ, unter anderem:

"Is Microsoft going to win, like always?
Not necessarily. Microsoft scares executives, even powerful record bigwigs. They're wary of being beholden to the software giant, so they're working with many different tech companies. RealNetworks is the weakest player in the bunch, and Sony is a wild card because it's late in selling downloads. Most experts think the battle will play out between Microsoft and Apple. Apple has the early advantage, with 70% of the music-download market and 25% of the music-player market. Still, Microsoft's WMA works with 60 different music devices and a handful of download services. So Apple will have to be innovative if it doesn't want to be marginalized once again."

Die Format-Diskussion hat schon längst die üblichen Glaubenskampf-Züge angenommen, schöner Einblick findet sich bei Dubium sapientiae initium.
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Außerdem (Halb-)Wissenswertes aus dem Terminal - heute:
01/28 Jimi Hendrix headlines Madison Square Garden, 1970
(Anleitung).

Pressemeldung zu den Pepsi-iTMS Super Bowl Ads

Wie vergangene Woche bereits vermeldet, wird Pepsi im Super Bowl Ad zu den 100 Millionen verschenkten iTunes Music Store Songs nicht Britney, Pink und Beyonce in die Arena schicken, sondern 16 'real-life' Teenager, die für ihr Musikdownload-Verhalten von der RIAA verklagt worden waren und nun, untermalt von Green Day's 'I Fought the Law'-Version, den iTMS als legale Alternative promoten. Die entsprechende Pressemeldung zählt zusätzlich die weiteren Pepsi-Spots auf, die in ihrer Banalität ("Two bears exploring an empty cabin in the woods come across food but nothing to drink: the Pepsi cooler is empty.") kaum mehr zu übertreffen sein werden, wenn sie der dortigen Beschreibung auch nur annähernd entsprechen.
Apple hat übrigens die eigene Startseite in eindrucksvoller Hässlichkeit der Aktion entsprechend angepasst. Übrig bleibt Wehmut, nicht von Enrique Iglesias als 'evil Roman emperor' erheitert zu werden...

Napster: 'Stay-off the Apple platform'

Während Napster Chef Gorog einer neuerdings anscheinend beliebten Tätigkeit nachgeht und die auf der MIDEMNet in Cannes Anwesende vor Apple warnt, berichtet der SPIEGEL von einem enorm umjubelten iTunes Music Store:

"Wie einen Popstar haben 600 Fachbesucher beim Technologie-Forum MIDEMNet in Cannes Eddie Cue gefeiert, den Online-Chef von Apple. "Jetzt kommen alle zur Party" sagte Konferenz-Chef Ted Cohen zur Begrüßung und nannte auch gleich den Grund für das wieder erstarkende Interesse aller Marktteilnehmer am digitalen Musikvertrieb: "Der 28. April 2003 hat unsere Welt verändert".

DienstagsMacOrama (Update)

Mac.Ars zügeln etwas nach mit ihrem iPod mini Konkurrenz Vergleich (mehr zur Bepreisung findet sich auch bei mir: Preisdiskussion bei iPod mini und iLife '04 in vollem Gange und iPod mini wohl doch ein Schnäppchen), bieten dafür aber eine schöne Übersicht:

"There's your iPod Mini competition. That pricing does not look as bad when compared with its intended target market. A high-end flash player is going to set you back anywhere from US$149-299, depending on which model and features you want. Of particular interest is the pricing on the 512MB players. The least-expensive one, the MPIO FY-200, is priced identically to the iPod Mini. The iRiver and Creative players will set you back even more. So instead of looking upward at the larger hard-drive players and bemoaning the comparatively small price difference between a 15GB iPod and a 4GB iPod Mini, gaze in the other direction. The 20% of the market Apple is going after will be getting six times the storage for the same price or less."
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Es ist mal wieder Wurmzeit, denn 'MyDoom' geht um, erste Exemplare haben sich bereits in meinem Junk-Mail Folder angesammelt:

"The worm is being called several names by antivirus software vendors, including W32/Mydoom, Shimg, Novarg and Mimail.R. It is now being analyzed by the antivirus companies.
Experts differed on the worm's payload, but said it is spreading faster than Sobig-F, the most widespread email worm of 2003.
"It has been moving very quickly for the past three hours and has been generating a hell of a lot of e-mail," Vincent Gullotto, vice president of the Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team at Network Associates Inc., said this afternoon. Some businesses have shut down their e-mail gateways to block the worm, he said."
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Die Gerüchteküchenspatzen hatten es seit einiger Zeit von den Dächern gepfiffen, heute folgt die offizielle Bestätigung, Virginia Tech tauscht ihre 1100 PowerMacs gegen den neuen Xserve G5 aus:

"The price of the upgrade has not yet settled on, but Varadarajan said it would be minimal compared to the cost of building a new supercomputer from scratch.
Asked what would become of the 1,100 PowerMac G5 computers being retired, Varadarajan said: "We're working on getting them very good homes."
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Per Softwareaktualisierung ist AirPort 3.3 verfügbar (8,5MB):

"This software update provides improved AirPort wireless networking software, and is recommended for all users with an AirPort Extreme and AirPort enabled computer or an AirPort Extreme base station.
New AirPort Extreme Features
This software provides support for the Wi-Fi Protected Access™ (WPA) specification for the AirPort Extreme base station and AirPort Extreme and AirPort clients. Please see AirPort Help for more information on WPA. Also included in this release is v5.3 of the AirPort Extreme base station firmware. Instructions for updating the base station firmware can also be found in AirPort Help."
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Alan Graham befasst sich bei O'Reilly mit der iTunes Music Store Konkurrenz:

"I've had a peek at some of the other vendors out there. Their solutions are clunky and feel like they were slapped together by monkeys (no offense to actual monkeys). Remember all the houpla BuyMusic.com made last year when they used the motley Tommy Lee as an anti-establishment icon and positioned themselves as a better solution than the iTunes Music Store? Like using Windows made you a rebel or something? Whatever happened to those guys? I haven't seen a leading story about them since their launch in July. In fact, openly mocking Apple for delivering an excellent solution didn't really carry any weight in the real world. While Apple controls one of the smallest computing market shares, they've certainly left Napster, BuyMusic.com, Wal*Mart, and others scrapping for some of the limelight. I mean talk about being the middle kid in the family. If I were the CEO of BuyMusic.com right now, I'd be about to have a Jan Brady meltdown.
"It's always iTunes, iTunes, iTunes!"
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Alex Salkever nimmt sich in der Business Week nochmals Apples letzte Quartalszahlen vor und erkennt Potential:

"Further, Apple is developing a strong niche in the scientific computing market as more Unix jocks at institutions of higher learning decide to combine their workstation and their PC into one box. That's likely good for sales only in the tens of thousands of machines per quarter. "But that can make the difference between a good quarter and a ho-hum quarter for the PowerMac line," points out veteran Apple watcher and Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf. He further notes that PowerMac sales in the past had run at around 350,000 in strong quarters."
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Die Washington Post freut sich an GarageBand:

"The GarageBand name hides a certain irony -- it's hard to make a song sound any way but slick and seamless in this program. But this same relative sophistication (especially all the effects-processing options) opens up some fascinating possibilities for anybody with a keen ear for sampling and hip-hop production values. You can have a lot of fun here."
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Noch ein verspäteter Gratulant bei RandomMaccess:

"The image of the woman in the 1984 ad remains a potent and fitting symbol for Apple and the Mac. Because distilled down to one word, the Macintosh is about revolution. It's what the old slogan "the computer for the rest of us" really means. None of what the Mac allows us to do is impossible without the Mac. But it is beyond the reach of most of us, reserved for the rich or very gifted. The revolution is that these abilities are now in the hands of us -- the masses. The revolution that started with the power to create professional-looking documents and spreadsheets continues to this day in GarageBand, which lets the most tone-deaf among us make "real" music. And in between, we've been given other tools to do what was once, if not impossible, than highly impractical."
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Möglicherweise hatte ich den Artikel über den Editor/Cutter von 'Cold Mountain' (läuft auch auf der anstehenden Berlinale im Wettbewerb) verpasst, der komplett mit Final Cut Pro auf 4 Dual G4s arbeitete:

"You’ve cut a major project on Final Cut Pro. What’s your assessment?
Certainly it’s a great product, and it just got significantly greater with Final Cut 4. We were about as far out on a limb as you could be, 6 months in a country that 14 years ago was solidly part of the Soviet Bloc and is still one of the most hard-pressed of all the Eastern European countries. And there we were in the middle of it all with 4 Power Mac G4 Final Cut stations happily cutting away, with no serious downtime at all on any of the stations. We were really very confident in what we were doing and in the hardware and software supporting it."
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Außerdem (Halb-)Wissenswertes aus dem Terminal - heute:
01/27 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart born in Salzburg, 1756
(Anleitung).

Globaler iPod Exhibitionismus relaunched

Die 'iPods Around the World' Fotogalerie bei iPodlounge war bereits enorm unterhaltsam und wurde nun noch bestens überarbeitet. So ist es neuerdings möglich, Fotos in iPhoto/iTunes-Art zu bewerten, zu kommentieren, eCards zu versenden sowie eigene Bilder hochzuladen und schneller online zu sehen ('see them appear within hours, not weeks or months'). Dazu gesellen sich etliche praktische Sortier- und Suchmöglichkeiten, fehlt nur noch die schon bald zu erwartende Flut an iPod mini Bildern...

Security Update 2004-01-26

Wie bereits heute morgen verlinkt, gibt es jetzt ein Security Update per Softwareaktualisierung (7,8MB):

Security Update 2004-01-26 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components:
Apache 1.3
Classic
Mail
Safari
Windows File Sharing

Additionally, Security Update 2003-12-19 has been incorporated into this security update. Those components are:
AFP Server
ASN.1 Decoding for PKI
cd9660.util
Directory Services
fetchmail
fs_usage
rsync
System Initialization

Gottschalk ohne iPod im Knast

ZDF online erstattet Bericht:

"Auf die Frage, ob er etwas Besonderes ins Gefängnis mitnehme, schwant Gottschalk bereits Böses: "Ich habe einen iPod dabei, aber ich weiß nicht, ob sie mir den nicht abnehmen ..."
Die Sorge ist mehr als berechtigt, denn der iPod muss leider draußen bleiben: Gegenstände aus Metall sind im Gefängnis nicht erlaubt."

Richard 'Mem' Dawkins: Mac a 'macromutational leap into the future'

Richard Dawkins, Begründer der Mem-Theorie gratuliert dem Mac kurzzeitig verspätet im Guardian:

"Nothing in my 20 years' intensive experience of programming and using computers had prepared me for the Mac. It wasn't an evolutionary advance on its predecessors; it was a macromutational leap into the future. It is that future we are now living in, whether we use a Mac or a virus-compatible PC."

Kill Bill Vol.2 Trailer

Vielleicht eher als Teaser (QT) zu bezeichnen...
(via kottke.org)

Ebenfalls natürlich bei Apple zu finden.