iTunes Music Store - 'Coolest Invention of 2003'

Pingsmoth writes "Time Magazine has just named the iTunes Music Store as their Top Coolest Invention of 2003. Also among this year's favorites are 'fish-skin bikinis, a new love drug, the car that parks itself, and the invisible man'."

Comments

Invention ?

[mirko]

Making some digital media available online is not new.
I remember having the possibility to purchase media online long before this.
Now, if, of course, having these integrated in iTunes is cool, I somehow doubt it is that "cutting edge" (even though I am a Mac enthusiast and I love OSX).

Re:Invention ?

[TheDredd]

The way the store is presented, easy and powerfull is the invention they are talking about; Making it easy to use for everybody

Re:Invention ?

[mcpkaaos]

What's even more sad is that a piece of entertainment software, regardless of originality, would ever be ranked as the coolest invention. I know it's been slow since the bust, but man o' man.

Re:Invention ?

[LordLucless]

It may not be new, but iTunes was the first one that worked. Say what you will about originality, in the end, it's not worth a hoot if nobody uses your product.

Re:Invention ?

[Lussarn]

Who exactly is everybody. I run Linux and I can't use this store. I also heard the windows client sucked pretty much breaking other programs and what not. It isn't exactly "windows native looking" either. It's also only works with Ipod. and altough all mac users have ipods other people might have something else.

It pretty much seems like a store where you can only wear apple boots or you can come in at all.

Re:Invention ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they invented an easy-to-use store? Great!?!

Re:Invention ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Linux and I can't use this store.

That's your choice. It's not Apple's problem.

I also heard the windows client sucked pretty much breaking other programs and what not.

You heard wrong.

It isn't exactly "windows native looking" either.

Yet another point for iTunes.

It's also only works with Ipod.

If you look at the market numbers, you'll see that it's basically the iPod, and nothing else. There are more iPods being sold every month that all other computer-interfaced portable digital music players combined.

It pretty much seems like a store where you can only wear apple boots or you can come in at all.

Yup. That's exactly right.

How's it feel to be left out in the cold?

Re:Invention ?

[TheDredd]

So they invented an easy-to-use store? Great!?!
Yeah, that sounds almost as stupid as an easy to use computer

Re:Invention ?

[ncc74656]

Who exactly is everybody. I run Linux and I can't use this store.

There's a bunch of stuff you can't run. There's a bunch of stuff you can. Deal with it.

I also heard the windows client sucked pretty much breaking other programs and what not.

You heard incorrectly...no breakage here, at least.

It isn't exactly "windows native looking" either.

That much is true...unfortunately, it's also true about Winamp, Windows Media Player, and most other such programs. Why they all have their own non-native interfaces and widgets is anybody's guess.

It's also only works with Ipod.

Now we're back to falsehoods...while the downloaded files only play in an iPod at this time, converting them to other formats is trivial.

Re:Invention ?

[bojan]

does it say "new" or "coolest"?

I remember having the possibility to surf the web in 1992, as well, so what was so big about Netscape anyway?

Your logic is a bit flawed.

iTunse is the coolest way to buy music online, and that's what the article states.

Re:Invention ?

[NanoGator]

"Making some digital media available online is not new."

I see this style of argument used a lot these days. Folks, what makes a creation important is not who did it first, rather it's who made it useful. Some caveman invented the hammer, but the dude who invented the handle for it is the one I'd remember.

Seriously, stop harping over who did it first. If it was great when they invented it, then how come they weren't as successful with it as a competitor? They deserve credit too.

Re:Invention ?

[danila]

It may not be new, but iTunes was the first one that worked. Say what you will about originality, in the end, it's not worth a hoot if nobody uses your product.

Is the list called "Coolest Consumer Products of 2003"? I though it was called "Coolest Inventions" and if so, iTunes hardly qualifies, because it is not one. It might be a cool innovative product, but it is not an invention.

Who do you think invented the radio? It was Popov, not Clear Channel, even though radio was not really used that much in 19th century and so does not qualify according to your definition.

Re:Invention ?

[shotfeel]

Yes. Just like a lot of things.

Did Apple invent the personal computer, the mouse, the GUI....

Wether you answer yes or no to each depends on your perspective.

Re:Invention ?

[WatertonMan]

Can't iTunes run under Wine? (I honestly don't know - so don't flame me)

Re:Invention ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Linux and I can't use this store.
That's your choice. It's not Apple's problem.
And that may be the difference between making it a real 'Cool Invention' and not some lamo's bitch toy.

I also heard the windows client sucked pretty much breaking other programs and what not.
You heard wrong.
No, he heard right.

It isn't exactly "windows native looking" either.
Yet another point for iTunes.
That's no point at all. In fact that's a negative point. Mac enthusiasts often point that Windows interface is inconsistent and that the Mac UI is o the so much better. My ass. In this case Apple is part of the problem.

It's also only works with Ipod.
If you look at the market numbers, you'll see that it's basically the iPod, and nothing else. There are more iPods being sold every month that all other computer-interfaced portable digital music players combined.
Just plain wrong.

It pretty much seems like a store where you can only wear apple boots or you can come in at all.
Yup. That's exactly right.
And that is exactly why I beg to differ that it is the 'Coolest Invention'.

blah

Re:Invention ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking retard

go check out www.listen.com, www.emusic.com, www.pressplay.com

they were all there before apple i-suck-dick-tunes

Re:Invention ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with you fags and the word 'cool' ?

Re:Invention ?

[cjfoste]

Actually the comment on the fact that they only play on the iPod is true, but that doesn't stop you from burning it on to a disc and ripping it back to an mp3..then allowing you to put it wherever you feel like it.

Re:Invention ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you answer no, you are firmly grounded in what is real. Otherwise you are caught in the Job's distortion field.

Re:Invention ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're a fucking illiterate. Read the post. The whole point was that it isn't whoever gets their first, it's whoever succeeds first that leaves their mark.

Other cool things

[rf0]

Camera phones: This has lead to people being arrested for taking photos up girls skirts

Robo Lobster: For clearing mines

Robo Cat: Sits there and does cat like things with all the mess

Rus

Hardly an Invention

[locarecords.com]

..

Much as I think Apple have created an amazing proof of concept in the Apple Music Store I am not convinced it qualifies as an invention.. Downloading music off the internet is not new and paying for it is not new either... Now if they radically opened up the distribution to bypass the majors... now that would be rather revolutionary... but we'll have to see how far they take it..

Re:Hardly an Invention

[EinarH]

Now if they radically opened up the distribution to bypass the majors... now that would be rather revolutionary...

It's called Magnatunes.

-No DRM. MP3
-Try before you buy
-Artists get 50% of the purchase price, artists keep the rights to their music.
-No RIAA connections.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Talez]

Much as I think Apple have created an amazing proof of concept in the Apple Music Store I am not convinced it qualifies as an invention.. Downloading music off the internet is not new and paying for it is not new either...

It's not that they did it. It's that they did it RIGHT. It's an elegant solution which people actually enjoy throwing money at.

Now if they radically opened up the distribution to bypass the majors... now that would be rather revolutionary... but we'll have to see how far they take it..

Hello, we're Apple and we want to sell your music

Re:Hardly an Invention

[hype7]

It's not that they did it. It's that they did it RIGHT. It's an elegant solution which people actually enjoy throwing money at.

Plus, Apple is cool, and Time wanted somebody cool at the top I guess.

-- james

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Mononoke]

-No DRM. MP3
-Try before you buy
-Artists get 50% of the purchase price, artists keep the rights to their music.
-No RIAA connections.

-No inventory.

One unknown record label that seems to be a refuge for bands that aren't good enough for the big time isn't gonna cut it. Imagine a grocery store that only carried generic house-brand items. Wouldn't be very popular or successful, would it.

iTMS is successful because they've made the proper deals with the right product sources, much like any other successful retailer has to do.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[dreamchaser]

Being good has absolutely nothing to do with whether the major labels sign an artist or not. Case in point: Britney Spears, InSync, etc. ad naseum.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Mononoke]

Being good has absolutely nothing to do with whether the major labels sign an artist or not. Case in point: Britney Spears, InSync, etc. ad naseum.

Record labels are in business to make money. The bigger labels sign good musicians (Robert Randolph, etc.) and good entertainers (Britney, etc.) because they know they'll make money.

What's left after no one else wants them is picked up by minor labels, if at all. Just because you can make music doesn't mean you can make listen-able or entertaining music.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Ubergrendle]

I challenge the argument that they 'did it right'.

1. Its hardware dependent.
2. Until recently it was Mac OS dependent too.
3. Terms of licensing are high with the music labels...recent articles suggest iMusic is a loss-run enterprise intended to drive iPod sales (see #1).

I've seen nothing compelling about their 'invention'...I've no reason to go and purchase an iPod or iMusic. (www.magnatune.com is closer to what i'm looking for!)

At $1/song locked into a propietary platform, I may as well stick to CDs. Future Shop in Canada has dropped prices 30-40% in recent weeks to try and drive up sales. $10 canadian per CD will bring me BACK to the CD format and BACK to supporting the 'labels, unfortunately.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[EinarH]

I have not tried Magnatunes so I don't know about the quality of the music.
But i doubt that its worse than a lot of the crap that the major record companies throws out.

Imagine a grocery store that only carried generic house-brand items. Wouldn't be very popular or successful, would it.

A large and significant percentage of Wal-Bart brands are in-house or previously unknown brands.
Lidl, the largest grocery chain in Germany carries only their own brands.

90 % of the sucsessful artists on the market producees music that is commodity. What seperates those artists from the less succsessful is marketing. For those that don't succumb to the marketing hype Magnatuse is probably just as good. And it's cheaper.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[code_echelon]

I completely agree with you.

"I've seen nothing compelling about their 'invention'...I've no reason to go and purchase an iPod or iMusic. "

I don't think this is a revoulutionary idea at all, distributing music online is not a new concept and they are not the first ones to do it 100% correctly they are the first that have done it somewhat correctly. The three points this user gives are a perfect examples of why it is not a perfect system and with the advent of more music companies on the Internet they are going to lose even more buisness to other competitors as this is not something that is going to be hard for others to reproduce.

Furthermore at $1 a song I may as well go buy the CD since I also live in Canada and most CD prices have gone down to $10 to $14 a CD. This makes $1 a song hardly an amazing deal.
They also don't even make money off it, they use it to push there iPod sales. If Microsoft was doing this, there would be 800 replies to this by now and everyone would be screaming how they have a monopoly and are an evil company. I'm not a fan of M$ but am a fan of Apple even less, and if something else popped up I know plenty of people that would switch just to stop using anything affiliated with Apple. The downloads this week of Kazaa also annihilated the sales off iTunes.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Talez]

And being good has absolutely nothing to do with whether they're an independent who hasn't "sold out" to "the man".

Case in point: 90% of the shit that used to be on mp3.com.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[JayAndSilentBob]

Imagine a grocery store that only carried generic house-brand items. Wouldn't be very popular or successful, would it.

You mean Aldi? There's never anybody in there.....

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Kneo24]

I wouldn't necessarily say that they've done it right. After all, iTunes isn't completely consumer friendly, or artist friendly. Also, Apple makes no money from it (using this to sell iPods isn't exactly the greatest idea, IMO). The majority of your 99 cents goes to the RIAA. I highly doubt that the RIAA trickles any of that money down to the labels who will spread it out amongst their artists.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[jtdubs]

So...

> 1. It's hardware dependant.

If by that you mean that it runs on hardware, then yes. It is dependent on you having a computer. It supports Windows on any supported platform. AMD or Intel. It supports any Mac capable of running OS X. Meaning, G3, G4 or G5.

If you mean iPod dependent then you are full of crap. Perhaps you haven't actually tried it?

> 2. Until recently it was Mac OS dependent too.

This is my favorite complaint. "They did it wrong cause it USED TO have a problem." Jesus, son.

> 3. Terms of licensing are high with the music
> labels...recent articles suggest iMusic is a
> loss-run enterprise intended to drive iPod sales
> (see #1).

And your final complaint is based on an unfounded rumor...

Congratulations! You win!

Justin Dubs

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the best music I own is independant.

Though admittedly you have to buy it in CD form.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

reasonable licensing too

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Trurl's Machine]

Much as I think Apple have created an amazing proof of concept in the Apple Music Store I am not convinced it qualifies as an invention..

Then - in your opinion - does the work made on steam engine by James Watt qualifies as an invention? He had many predecessors, too - to begin with, there was Heron of Alexandria in the ancient times, there was Thomas Newcomen and various other constructors in the XVIIth and XVIII century. However, it was Watt who designed an universal engine that eventually everyone wanted to use and that was an inspiration for the modern combustion engine. You seem to assume that you have to be the author of the original idea to be called "inventor". It is simply not true. The greates inventors of our times (Watt, Marconi, Daimler & Benz, Aitken, The Wright Bros) were literally standing on the shoulders of giants, i.e. developing ideas of their predecessors.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Talez]

The majority of your 99 cents goes to the label. It's then up to the label to see how the royalties are to be distributed. I find it hard to believe your assertation that Apple is unfriendly to the artist when they hold little if any contact with the artist.

You could try to imply it with Apple's decision to only work with record labels (big and independent) but I'd say thats more to do with them wanting to use the record labels as quality controllers rather than Steve Jobs waking up in the morning and saying "How can Apple screw the artists better today?"

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not being signed to a major means that the record industry isn't shoving whatever type of music you are making down consumer throats at this time. On top of that, the majority of indie-rock and punk bands have been turning down major labels for years.. just because you like to adhere to Clear Channel's brainwashings, doesn't mean that independent musicians aren't talented.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[bojan]

but what is new, is being able to do it without caring about the underlying technology and being able tot ransfer it to an mp3 player I'm going to listen to at the gym, all by clicking a single button labelled as "buy now"

that si cool. Nothing else can do that, not yet, and not for quite a while.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[tbone1]

You mean Aldi? There's never anybody in there.....

Well, no one paying with their own money ...

Re:Hardly an Invention

[E-Rock]

Honest question since I haven't been to iTunes:
What portable MP3/Music player will the ACC format play on other than the iPod?

Re:Hardly an Invention

[KirkH]

Right now? None, as far as I know. But it's an open spec and you will certainly see support for it in other devices soon. Evidence: Sony's PSP handheld will support AAC.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

How in the hell am I supposed to take you seriously when you put "Britney" and "good entertainers" in the same sentence?

Re:Hardly an Invention

[MoneyT]

According to Apple, any player which supports the MPEG4 AAC codec will play iTunes songs. Of course, whether any players support that format is not in Apple's cotrol, and it would probably be a good idea for you to complain to the maufacturer of your player and have them add AAC support.

That said, aparently the iRiver has AAC support, so it's likely that would play the iTunes songs

Re:Hardly an Invention

[pod]

Being good has nothing to do with whether YOU like the music or not. If Britney Spears goes triple platinum in the first week, or whatever, then obviously people like it, and it's good music by some measure.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

After apple gets done marketing, I'm going to guess all next gen players will support it.

It's easier/cheaper to support than WMA, and many people support that.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's not a mousetrap where none existed before; it's a BETTER mousetrap.

And the world seems to be beating a path....

Re:Hardly an Invention

[WatertonMan]

But will it suppor the DRM that iTMS uses? After all it isn't just straight AAC. I'd hate to buy a player that claims to support AAC only to find it doesn't support iTMS.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that slut is a crappy musician, but she is certainly "good" at entertaining the dopey masses of the USA. She is not a singer. She is not a musician. She is an entertainer aimed at teenage wannabe sluts like herself and horny adolescent boys. You can't argue with that!

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Hoser McMoose]

I've been exploring a few of the music download services (iTunes, Napster2, MusicMatch and Puretracks), and I would definitely NOT say that iTunes did it "right". What they have done is a less shitty job than the rest of the pack, but it's still VERY weak.

First off, the selection is terrible as compared to what a 2-bit CD store in some dank corner has to offer. It was at best a 50/50 shot if bands I was looking for were there, and I was looking for fairly well known bands signed to major record deals. Even if they were there, usually there were only 1 or 2 albums, or in some cases just a few songs from their albums. FWIW MusicMatch was the service that I found which had the best selection (albeit not by too much), but their interface is absolutely terrible.

Second, it's only available in the US. Ok, that may be the biggest market and they are working to get into other markets, but until they do...

Their interface also needs a LOT of work. Half of the time it suffers from the Apple "I have a paw and not a hand" one-button mouse syndrom. If you right-click on most things, it brings up a menu that gives you the option of "Eject Disc" and nothing else. Great, real useful.

You are VERY restricted in how and where you can play music as compared to CDs. Sure, the restrictions are less than other services, but they are still pretty restrictive. For example, if I boot into Linux to do some work, about the only way I could play their songs is to burn them to CD and possibly re-rip them (thereby losing audio quality).

Their pricing scheme could use a bit of work. Sometimes you can find them charging the usual $9.99 for a full CD of 10 (or fewer?) songs, when buying the individual songs would be cheaper. They also charge the regular $0.99 for "songs" that are just a few seconds long intros.

Now I'm all for music downloads, I see great potential in the medium, but at the moment I see that potential being BADLY underutilized. I could even put up with most of the flaws if I could: a.) buy the music in the first place (I don't live in the US and therefore can't buy from most services yet) and b.) they had GOOD selection. In particular services like iTunes could potentially be a GREAT way to get rare CDs and imports which are often hard to track down in conventional stores. However, for right now, unless your looking for top-40 material, you probably won't find it.

As I said, iTunes did not do it "right". The potential is there, but they have a LONG way to go.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[tunah]

Probably nothing. But there's always burn and rip.

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

if I see the initials 'iTMS' once again, I think I'm gonna rip one of you fags a new asshole

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

your fag opinion is irrelevant too, so you might as well go back to sucking dick

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried www.listen.com ?

Re:Hardly an Invention

[atrader42]

The greates inventors of our times (Watt, Marconi, Daimler & Benz, Aitken, The Wright Bros) were literally standing on the shoulders of giants, i.e. developing ideas of their predecessors.

So what it really takes to invent great things is not good ideas or hard work, but simply a very large friend who'll let you hang out on his shoulder for a while?

Re:Hardly an Invention

[Queer Boy]

This one, these two, this one (and probably most of Creative's new portable adio).

I'm sure there's a lot more. AAC is an open format, it's based on MPEG4 and the licensing fees are nothing like WMA.

What, not the Segway?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, the amount of technology that went into that thing rivals the scientific output of the smaller industrialized nations. Gyros that keep you from tipping over, flywheels that recharge the battery when slowing down, even the polymers they make the thing out of are fascinating.

iTunes integrates a music store with a music player. Ooh. Maybe I'm missing something because I'm only using it on Windows, but it doesn't exactly wow me the way I expected the 'Coolest Invention of 2003' to.

Frankly, I'm even disappointed with the Segway. They shouldn't be handing out this invention to anything that doesn't have wings at this point.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[Trent05]

Nah, those are old school now.

http//maddox.xmission.com

Re:What, not the Segway?

[AKnightCowboy]

Ooh. Maybe I'm missing something because I'm only using it on Windows

There isn't really any reason to anymore since you can get iTunes for Windows. Granted, it sucks and seems to take far too much background processor time so I had to kill it off, but it's available.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Impressive as the technology may be, the Segway just isn't cool. It's an over-priced solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Segways are almost exculsively the domain of the rich and lazy.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[Colonel Cholling]

I think all the Segway proves is that throwing lots of cutting-edge technology at something does not guarantee its success. Nobody wants to pay the price of a good used car for an electric scooter, no matter how hard it is to tip over. You can buy a bike for a whole lot less.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[localghost]

Notice how it says "Coolest Invention of 2003." The Segway was released in 2001.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, our esteemed President didn't seem to have such a hard time tipping it over. Bush on a Segway BTW, a Google image search failed to show a single image of this hilarious event even though it's plastered all over the internet. A search for "bush" and "segway" showed a single image of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush riding one.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[dema]

Well, I can say I pretty much agree that the coolest invention of 2003 should be something to "wow" a person. But I'd just like to point out that iTunes itself did not recieve the award, but iTMS did. So I don't think Time saw it as an "integration" as much as they did an alternative to a rising music piracy problem, and the first of it's kind (I think, were there others?).

Re:What, not the Segway?

[Lumpy]

The segway is not that innovative.

the gyroscope in that use has been around for decades in robotics (yes the segway is to be considered a robot if the remote control cars on steriods that you see on tv are robots.) regenerative breaking has been around for decades. and the polymers are certianly not that innovative... you want innovative polymers look at what the automotive industry are creating.

the segway is the coolest overpriced toy of 2002-2003. and you can build your own for much less as a past slashdot article points out.

segway is not innovative... it's neat, but not innovative.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can build your own for much less

You can build your own pale imitation for much less. Or did you just ignore that part of the page? Maybe this is the same thinking that pops up every time someone mentions how expensive Macs are. It's just not so easily demonstrated, and so it persists.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[katarac]

you can get iTunes for Windows

I think he knows it's on windows since he said "I'm only using it on Windows"

Re:What, not the Segway?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

yeah, but they rereleased it in 2003 since they had to recall it... so I'd say it's still applicable. Oh, and it's just so cool it should be the coolest invention every year for the next 10 years.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[Queer Boy]

Nobody wants to pay the price of a good used car for an electric scooter, no matter how hard it is to tip over. You can buy a bike for a whole lot less.

Plus, ya know, "Hey, that's my Segway!" does not elicit the same response as, "Hey, that's my bike!" when someone rides by on your stolen kit.

Re:What, not the Segway?

[admactanium]

too bad you didn't realize that itunes was running "soundcheck" during it's initial run to control the volume between songs. that's why there was excessive processor load. it goes back down to normal after that.

RIAA: "An award for Terrorism!"

[Anonymous Coward]

After we fought successfully the demon of P2P terrorism and millions of people deleted their MP3 we're facing a new kind of terrorism. Capitalism and other people earning money.

iTunes as Jukebox

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to the music store, iTunes works great as a jukebox - plus the software is free and they didn't cripple it unlike Napster and Musicmatch.

iTunes?

[heironymouscoward]

This counts as an "invention"?

Look, the absolutely coolest invention of 2003 is the USB wristwatch. My watch holds all the essential stuff I used to keep on a diskette. Nothing helps bonding like showing people that your watch can store porn. Or a PowerPoint presentation. Or your latest baby photos. Whatever they need: my watch has it.

But iTunes? I can't carry it on my wrist.

Re:iTunes?

[TCaM]

Well being as the itunes installer is only about 19 megs or so I'd bet you could fit it in there.

Of course using it is another thing, but you can carry it.

Re:iTunes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...

(Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy)

Re:iTunes?

[Lumpy]

and wash your hands once with it on and it's toast.

USB watch = cool if it can stand the tortures of living on a human... most regular watches cant.

call me when they make a bluetooth one that is waterproof and shock proof.

Re:iTunes?

[Anonymous Coward]

The USB wrist watch is as cool as the calculator watch...

As long as you like avoiding sex and love algebra you may be on to something...

Re:iTunes?

[bojan]

wristwatch? I have never in my life worn one, and I think the concept of oen is stupid, considering every public place has a time clock of some sorts, it's useless to have one on my hand.

so the USB wristwatch doesn't cut it.

Not only that, but it can't even hold 20 gigs of digital video.....how useless.

Re:iTunes?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, if the USB wrist watch didn't at first glance look just like your average run-of-the-mill swatch. I've never had someone notice I was wearing a USB wrist watch before I showed it to them. Ofcourse, if one goes around showing off their usb wrist watch, then they are most definitely a geek, but hey...

Re:iTunes?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

But iTunes? I can't carry it on my wrist.

yeah, but at least you can store the iTunes installer on your wrist with your watch... doesn't that count for something?

Re:iTunes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you've never been outside in your life, either? Then again, we are on Slashdot...

Re:Burning AAC audio files to disc

[displaced80]

In the words of Our Mighty Insectoid Overlord, Bugzilla:

WORKSFORME

Spot the connection

[Anonymous Coward]

Much as I like iTunes... spot the AOL Time Warner and iTunes connection.

Re:Spot the connection

[release7]

Thanks for pointing this out. As pop culture continues to morph into shop culture, the entertainment field becomes nothing more than a huge stage for product placement. Television shows sponsored by Palmolive are one thing, but when once-respected magazines sell their entire reputation to make a few bucks selling songs, you know we're just riding one huge spiraling merry-go-round into the crapper. Read Time and understand where reality stops and the bullshit begins.

Re:Spot the connection

[pohl]

Moreover, iTunes isn't the only "product-placement" in this article. They claim that Gibson will release the first digital guitar in January 2004 when the Variax has been on the market for a while now.

Re:Spot the connection

[sfe_software]

They claim that Gibson will release the first digital guitar in January 2004 when the Variax has been on the market for a while now.

They serve two distinctly different purposes. The guitar you link to simply has a DSP effects processor, and though it does have some kind of digital I/O, that's merely a side-effect of having an on-board DSP.

The Gibson contains an A/D converter, and provides a digital feed via an Ethernet cable. They are hoping to establish this as a new standard for all instruments to connect. I believe it uses the same low-level (hardware-level) protocal as Ethernet, but beyond that it's not the same. There was a /. article about this a while back.

The idea is that in a few years time, an entire stage or studio may be digitally connected, eliminating electrical interference problems and allowing for pure digital mixing. Digitizing each input at the source would give the cleanest possible signal.

The only thing I'd miss is the 60 Hz BUZZZZZ as you're plugging the guitar in. I just hope you don't hear the Windows XP "device connected" sound on stage...

Re:Spot the connection

[Chief Typist]

Spot the AOL and Winamp connection. It's interesting that AOL Time Warner couldn't come up with an invention using their own property.

Re:Spot the connection

[pohl]

I don't really see the distinction. The Variax doesn't really have an effects processor so much as digitally modelled instruments, and it does have a digital interface that one can use to send the instrument's signal directly into a digital interface on the Vetta amplifier (I have one of those; I don't have the Variax though.) While Line6 may not be attempting to establish an open-standard digital guitar/amp interface, they do have an instrument with a digital intetrface to an amp.

Of the top ten listed...

[switched4OSX]

my favorite would have to be the snorkel fm radio. Of course, the wet babe in the bikini may be influencing my opinion.

Re:Of the top ten listed...

[ElGanzoLoco]

Yeah... I don't really know about FM radio, but it would be a cool way for divers to reveive voice information from the ship above, or between them (if you manage to build a microphone / laryngophone that works underwater, that is..)

Re:Of the top ten listed...

[sysadmn]

Obviously you didn't click thru to see the topless babe in a salmon skin miniskirt. Recycled fish skin - how eco-friendly!

Still!

[McDutchie]

From the article:

When Steve Jobs holds forth in public, it's usually to a mob of fawning Apple-ites--the true believers who still develop software and accessories for Apple products. (emphasis mine)

I got to admit, there is something cool about being an endangered species facing imminent extinction*. You get so much admiring and attention, you get to be on lots of TV documentaries and in lots of newspaper articles, and everyone wants to be like you because you're beautiful. :-p

* Especially if you've been facing imminent extinction for some 20-odd years.

Re:Still!

[Artifex]

got to admit, there is something cool about being an endangered species facing imminent extinction

You should be doubly happy, now that you use a BSD-based operating system. The first thread in reponse to Linus announcing that he had just written a little OS and people could play with it was probably a debate about how it was a good thing, because BSD was dying.

Just kidding, of course, but you get my point.

You get so much admiring and attention, you get to be on lots of TV documentaries and in lots of newspaper articles, and everyone wants to be like you because you're beautiful. :-p

Ick. now you sound like a supermodel, anorexic and delusional. Get help! :)

No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[Newt-dog]

I just had to check out the Fish Skin Bikini's at Skini.com

Newt-dog

Re:No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[cscx]

Its only fault seems to be that it doesn't come in sizes for women that actually eat solid food.

Re:No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[illuminata]

Whoever said that's a bad thing? As long as they have tops for larger cup sizes, I'll be happy. I sure as hell wouldn't want to see a normal chick in one of those.

Re:No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[llauren]

An interesting bit: All other of those "coolest inventions" had relevant or correct pictures (not iTunes, though), but the fish skin bikini story surprisingly showed a picture from the next story, glowing fabric...

The pics on Skini's site make up for any omissions (steamy stuff!)

~llauren

Re:No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[Newt-dog]

(steamy stuff)
hehe . . . That's why I just had to post the link to the Skini. I wouldn't want someone to overlook a visit to their site.

Newt-dog

Re:No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that some models are unnaturally skinny (Kate Moss...) but those didn't look so unusual...?

Oh, compared to American women...

Re:No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[bkr1_2k]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'd want my girlfriend wearing anything fishy as a bikini. That stuffs hard enough to keep clean without Adding a fish smell to it.

bkr

Re:No Drooping or Sagging when Wet!

[Anonymous Coward]

What moron marked this as a troll???

I actually did want to see photos of this fish skin stuff, and as another poster mentioned, there oddly weren't any in the article.

Stupid moderators can't even be bothered to RTF *synopsis*!

Invention?

[Realistic_Dragon]

A pocket nuclear fusion reactor is an invention, a biplane made out of recycled cheese is an invention, a new kind of breaking system for cars is an invention.

iTunes is a store. It happens to be on the internet. That's not an invention, no matter how well executed it is.

Re:Invention?

[nacturation]

iTunes is a store. It happens to be on the internet. That's not an invention, no matter how well executed it is.

Apple is a company which advertises. It happens to advertise in Time magazine. I'll bet if I spent as much advertising in Time as Apple does, I too could win product of the year for my Ronco Turnip Twaddler 2003 Special Edition!

Re:Invention?

[olafo]

No such thing as software inventions, right? No reason to contact the patent office right? Logarithms were not invented, right? YOU'RE WRONG (as well as Slashdot) Take a look at the definition of invention: \In*ven"tion\, n. [L. inventio: cf. F. invention. See Invent.] 1. The act of finding out or inventing; contrivance or construction of that which has not before existed; as, the invention of logarithms; the invention of the art of printing.

Re:Invention?

[olafo]

Here's a bit more regarding ITunes and patents. Even "double click" is considered an invention and was issued a U.S. patent. It doesn't matter if you don't agree. One of the reasons for computers rapid growth is that no one had a patent on them as the court ruled Dr. Atanasoff was clearly the inventor and he claimed no patent.

Re:Invention?

[code_echelon]

"iTunes is a store. It happens to be on the internet. That's not an invention, no matter how well executed it is."

Couldn't have said it better myself. I wonder if it would have been the invention of the year or what the repsonse would be like here on Slashdot if it was another company instead of Apple. I bet no one would look twice. This is not an invention it is a store, nothing more. One that doesn't turn a profit at that and one the vast majority of people will never use and have no interest in using.

Re:Invention?

[Stephen Maturin]

Three words:

Amazon

One Click

Re:Invention?

[cybercuzco]

Actually A biplane made out of kite material and used bycycle parts by two bycycle repairmen is an invention.

Re:Invention?

[neverkevin]

I disagree, their business model could turn out to be a very important invention for the next 10-20 years. iTMS and other online music stores could fundamentally change a multi-billion dollar industry. I would diffinately say the year CDs came out they were the coolest invention of that year. As someone who has hundreds of cassette tapes, I was glad to see those dinosaurs disappear and I can't wait until the same thing happnes to CDs.

Re:Invention?

[Anonymous Coward]

[b]contrivance or construction of that which has not before existed[/b]

Internet stores existed before iTunes--LONG before, in fact. Even online music sales existed quite a while before iTunes was conceived.

What was your point, again?

Re:Invention?

[Queer Boy]

BMW makes very nice cars... Does that mean they invented "very nice cars"

No, Mercedes did.

Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music!

[Anonymous Coward]

Small independant labels that give their artists good royalties are nothing new. However, such a label coming up with an online music service that is actually *good* is new!

Let's compare this service to iTunes, the most popular current service.

Price:
iTunes - $0.99 per song
Magnatune - $5.00 an album
If it's a good album without crappy filler then Magnatune is the big winner here. Classical fans get a great deal, but pop fans may not, depending on the band. Overall, I'd give the edge to Magnatune, but not a big one.

Format:
iTunes - AAC with some annoying DRM
Magnatune - Uncompressed WAV's!!!
Absolutely no contest here. Finally an online music store has listened to audiophiles! They'd be smart to use a lossless compression format to save on their bandwidth costs though...

Ethics:
iTunes - Apple takes it's (big) cut and then the Artist's (frequently RIAA affiliated) label takes most of the rest.
Magnatune - The artist gets 50%!!!
Again, no contest. Instead of feeling guilty about fueling a powermad monster when you buy music you can feel good about supporting the people who actually made it!

Selection:
iTunes: Lots
Magnatune: Not a lot
iTunes is the clear winner here.

To sum up, you get more for your money with magnatunes, including peace of mind. You just can't get many albums there... yet. If magnatune manages to get off the ground that may change, but they have a long road ahead of them. Their biggest challenge is getting more content. In my opinion they need to forge alliances with other like-minded independant labels. There are a lot out there, but many use mail-order as their only form of distribution! Magnatunes needs to get these labels on board pronto.

Re:Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music!

[supersam]

Apple takes it's (big) cut and then the Artist's (frequently RIAA affiliated) label takes most of the rest.

On the contrary, a big cut of the $0.99 goes to the RIAA while the credit card companies swallow the rest. Steve Jobs says so.

Re:Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music!

[Demolition]

Ethics:
iTunes - Apple takes it's (big) cut and then the Artist's (frequently RIAA affiliated) label takes most of the rest.
Magnatune - The artist gets 50%!!!
Again, no contest. Instead of feeling guilty about fueling a powermad monster when you buy music you can feel good about supporting the people who actually made it!

Actually, according to Steve Jobs, Apple doesn't make any profit from the iTMS. Their cut of the proceeds barely covers their costs, apparently, while the RIAA takes the lion's share (leaving the artist with a pittance, of course).

(This info came from Jobs' recent financial results conference call (of which the iTMS data can be found in this CD Freaks new item (with a link to the original story from The Register.))

Other than that, I mostly agree with the points that you raised in your post.

D.

Re:Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music!

[skamp]

They'd be smart to use a lossless compression format to save on their bandwidth costs though...

They do use a lossless codec, Flac.

Selection: iTunes: Lots Magnatune: Not a lot

You can't even compare several hundreds of thousands of songs to hundreds of songs... But the philosophy behind Magnatune sure is cool!

Re:Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music!

[edalytical]

I like there slogan: "We are not evil." Very reassuring. Seriously though, they have some quality artist, based on what I heard on their streams.

Re:Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music!

[Anonymous Coward]

Selection:
iTunes: Lots
The other guy: Not a lot

To sum up, you get more for your money with the other guy

Sounds to me like you get considerably less for your money with whatever that other thing is.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but last time I checked, the purpose of a music store was to sell music. No music, no sale.

Re:Finally, UNCOMPRESSED online music!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't even compare several hundreds of thousands of songs to hundreds of songs... But the philosophy behind Magnatune sure is cool!

This may be true, but if only 10% of the songs at some other place are worth listening to, then you've got a much better chance to find something you like with only hundreds or thousands of songs.

This is, enough, for me to use them.

Whew...

[cdrudge]

Must have slept in longer this morning then I thought. Good thing 2003 is over. Those last 2 months went buy really quickly. Nothing significant must have been invented...

Re:Whew...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those last 2 months went buy really quickly.

Hrmm...holiday season...somewhat appropos typo...there has to be a joke in there somewhere.

In Soviet Russia...no. Imagine a Beowolf...no. Hot grits...gah! Dammit slashdot...I used to have a f***ing sense of humor.

Re:Whew...

[Galvatron]

A lot of the things mentioned are still under development. I think it's safe to say that if a company is going to release something before the end of the year, they've started publicizing it by now. Also, as others have mentioned, the Christmas shopping season has begun, so companies have pretty much released all the new products they're planning to release by now (or else the product is delayed, and they're advertising all over the place that it'll be out in the next couple weeks so that people will wait for it). Given that it's a dead tree based magazine, I'm guessing it probably hasn't hit news stands yet, and by the time it does, it'll be close to the end of the year.

Apple records?

[ScottSpeaks!]

The article mentions that the iTunes store doesn't have the rights to resell the Beatles' music. I wonder if that's due to the ongoing trademark turf war between Apple Computer and Apple Records (the Fab Four's label, and - according to legend - the appleinspiration for the name Jobs and Woz gave their kit computer). As I recall, one of the terms of a past settlement between the two was that the computer company would stay out of the music-publishing business.

Re:Apple records?

[JulianOolian]

he Fab Four's label, and - according to legend - the appleinspiration for the name Jobs and Woz gave their kit computer

I heard the apple of Apple came from the story of Alan Turing's suicide.

Re:Apple records?

[pauljlucas]

... the iTunes store doesn't have the rights to resell the Beatles' music.

AFAIK, nobody does. AFAIK, Apple Records still exists only because of the Beatles which they've been milking for years.

I wonder if that's due to the ongoing trademark turf war between Apple Computer and Apple Records

Nope.

Re:Apple records?

[whorfin]

Well, Apple Records has sued Apple Computer because of iTunes.

So I wouldn't expect them to license the iTunes store to sell the music while at the same time taking them to court challenging their right to sell that same music.

One word about iTunes

[mrsev]

DRM

Re:One word about iTunes

[fafaforza]

Without DRM there would be no iTunes store.

Fuck Yeah

[cscx]

iTunes for Windows is my official new favorite MP3 player.

I am proceeding to rip all my 500+ CDs into iTunes. With one click.

Winamp has served me well for many, years, but it lacks the snazzy playlist/library editor, and the ability to transfer music from CD, to the hard drive, tag it, and add it to my playlist at the click of a button. Literally.

Sure, it's a little slow, but who cares. Its functionality is unmatched. The music store is snazzy, too.

Good move, Apple, with iTunes for Windows. You may see a future Mac / iPod customer soon...

Re:Fuck Yeah

[DeadScreenSky]

I suspect ripping over five hundred CDs takes a little more work than a single mouse click...

Re:Fuck Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I am proceeding to rip all my 500+ CDs into iTunes. With one click.

where did you get a 500 disc CDROM changer?

or are you lying to us again....

Re:Fuck Yeah

[aoty]

If you think iTunes is cool, you should look into Media Jukebox (or it's big brother Media Center). Both surpass iTunes in power, speed, and flexibility.

disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the company that makes MJ or MC aside from the fact that I bought the program, and I think it's excellent.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[rufo]

Actually, you don't even have to click a mouse. You can set iTunes to rip a CD upon insertion, and eject when finished. The only time you would have to click is if iTunes finds multiple matches from the CDDB library, but that doesn't happen very often.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[mbbac]

I am proceeding to rip all my 500+ CDs into iTunes. With one click.

You should try it with no clicks. Check your preferences.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[jandrese]

Well, it's no fair that you have voice recognition or something on your computer so you can start the application without clicking.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[bojan]

now you understand how I think. I used to use unix for 10 years, windows for even longer, and now I have nothing but Macs in my house, I feel like I have it all in one OS now.

may not be overclocked, water cooled, but y'know what? I actually use my computer now, isntead of spending my time "modding" it and "upgrading" it, and all that stuff....

heh... whatever.. right.. but iTunes is cool.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[cscx]

Glad to know the "it just works" philosophy is appreciated by more than one person :)

Re:Fuck Yeah

[pHDNgell]

Well, it's no fair that you have voice recognition or something on your computer so you can start the application without clicking.

It might be different in the Windows version, but on the Mac, I can place an audio CD in my slot loading drive, and it will automatically rip with my settings and spit the CD back out. It makes the process about as easy as it can be without creating a robot to change the CDs.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[mbbac]

Well, it's no fair that you have voice recognition or something on your computer so you can start the application without clicking.

I guess its true that the Macintosh's voice recognition capabilities are far better than Windows'. But, that isn't what I was referring to. You can setup iTunes to rip & eject a CD when it is inserted. You can also setup iTunes to start when a CD is inserted. Therefore, all you need to do to rip a CD and have it ejected after it's done is to insert a CD. Zero clicks.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[spectecjr]

It might be different in the Windows version, but on the Mac, I can place an audio CD in my slot loading drive, and it will automatically rip with my settings and spit the CD back out. It makes the process about as easy as it can be without creating a robot to change the CDs.

Sounds just like Windows XP's CD ripper.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[pHDNgell]

Sounds just like Windows XP's CD ripper.

Will it rip to any standard formats? I can configure iTunes to rip to AIFF, MP3 or AAC.

Not that ``rip and spit'' is anything novel, I've written shell scripts to do the same thing, but that's not the original point.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[tonydiesel]

yeah, but if you're anal about your ID3 tags, you don't do this... the CDDB information is sketchy at best (with misspellings, poor genre classifications, different info in the same fields for multi-disc albums, abbreviations for band/album/track names, etc.)

I love iTunes (have been using it for years) - but I think they might want to consider moving away from CDDB to another service (maybe based on their store, or perhaps allmusic?)

It is great that this is possible, but it sure isn't something I would ever do...

Re:Fuck Yeah

[spectecjr]

Will it rip to any standard formats? I can configure iTunes to rip to AIFF, MP3 or AAC

WMA and MP3 (with a $10 encoder).

Re:Fuck Yeah

[DeadScreenSky]

And inserting CDs is more work than one click, which was really my point (I was apparently too vague for one moderator). And as another poster pointed out, you really always want to double-check the CDDB data before committing to it.

Re:Fuck Yeah

[1110110001]

Winamp had a Libary since Winamp3. Winamp 2.9x has it too. It has views too (like the smart playlists).

Currently I'm using Winamp 5 Beta 2, which is able to rip and burn CDs. I'm converting all my audio CDs to Ogg Vorbis with on CDDB data check and an additional click.

I used iTunes for two days. I wasn't able to rip to Ogg Vorbis and while iTunes tried to read my other ogg-files it froze at startup until I deleted the whole libary.

b4n

Re:Fuck Yeah

[cscx]

I steered clear of Winamp 3... brrr!

I downloaded one of the Winamp 5 alpha releases, but it was buggy and crash-prone... so far iTunes hasn't crashed on me... yet.

From where is the Winamp 5 beta available? Any better than Alpha 2?

Re:Fuck Yeah

[1110110001]

Winamp 5 Beta 2 is avaible at http://download.freenet.de/archiv_w/winamp_5719.ht ml - or many other site: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22winamp%205%22%20 beta

For the libary and videos winamp 2.9x can do the job for you. But Winamp 5 Beta 2 seems as stable as the normal version. And yes the alpha versions sucked. Thus if you need ripping and burning v5 beta 2, if not 2.91 is enough.

b4n

Fish leather bikini? Old news.

[martinX]

I remember seeing fish leather products in Darwin at a Kawasaki/Harley dealership about 7 years ago, though I don't recall if there were any bikinis.

However, I did find this reference to fish leather bikinis, dated 2001. Sorry, can't find pics :-(

Re:Fish leather bikini? Old news.

[modme2]

Havent seen the fish leather clothing, but there's croc leather everything. Other than that, all I can really tell you is its currently fkin hot ;)

A New Love Drug?

[whig]

Sorry, but something that gives you a longer erection is hardly the successor to MDMA.

Re:A New Love Drug?

[dabadab]

Yeah, I guess the world would be a much more lovely place if we could figure out how to make the effects of MDMA permament. A research toward that would be the real pursuit of happines.

Re:A New Love Drug?

[whig]

DMAE (dimethylaminoethanol) may be helpful. It's a precursor of choline, and it extends the duration of empathogenesis a bit. Unlike MDMA, it's legal, too.

Re:A New Love Drug?

[Joe Tie.]

That was my reaction as well. This dosn't have anything to do with emotion, it's an erection pill. Euphemisms should die a painful death.

Re:A New Love Drug?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it make your erection longer or does it allow you to hold your erection longer?

If the former, then it's the next best thing to a cure for baldness and would be the saviour of spammers everywhere. If the latter, well - been there, done that.

Re:A New Love Drug?

[jezzgoodwin]

So by taking DMAE you can increase the effect of MDMA?

Re:Too bad iTunes for Windows is Crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh golly! 19.9 megs on a cable modem! How terribly they have wronged you.

Let's see... I'll try downloading it again on my cable...

Done. 1 min, 31 seconds. Of course, even if the player had been 500k, it would have taken an hour on the first day.

Remember people, just 'cause you're trolling doesn't mean you HAVE to be an idiot.

Except it lacks music

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried searching the store for about ten of my favorite artists and couldn't find anything. No, I do not have obscure tastes. I like classic rock and oldies, and had great difficulty finding a lot of great hits from the past. I say stick to CDNOW or others until iTMS becomes more complete. It's very geared towards the current top 40 instead of great music. Innovation? No, not until they get a reasonable library.

not available...

[jlemmerer]

hmm, i just installed iTunes and wanted to take a look to the music store. I'm living in Austria and when i wanted to connect to the store a message informed me that this service is not available here. so, does is help when i change the value in the "country" state at the registration or does apple a lookup where the ip adress is registered? furthermore, since i pay by credit card where is the problem with buying music from iTunes Store. if the RIAA is making problems concerning the copyright in different country's, hell, they shoud be glad someone actually buys their music and not downloading it from kazaa.

Re:not available...

[rufo]

There's licensing issues. Music is often sold through a different company in each country, meaning that Apple has to ink a deal with each one of them. I don't think Apple checks the IP - I was traveling through Canada (no iTMS there, either) and I was able to purchase quite a bit of music. If you happen to have a credit card with a US billing address, or a friend who could send you a gift certificate (it should be noted I don't know if that works), then you could buy music online. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until next year when Apple can support Europe.

Fish Bikini NOT a new invention

[Anonymous Coward]

I just dont see how something that has been sold at a high cost for 20 years can now count as an invention. Sharkskin bikini's were quite a rage back in the early 90's, but i guess that doesnt count huh?

What? No SCO?

[darnok]

An entirely new approach to running a business isn't cool? Did we learn nothing from the dot-bomb experience? Consider this:

1. Alienate potential customers, existing customers and existing resellers of your products.
2. Piss off biggest computer company in the world
3. Piss off regulatory groups in many countries in the world
4. Make unsubstantiated demands for money from complete strangers. Provide no mechanism whereby said strangers can pay the requested money
5. Threaten all and sundry with lawsuits. Specifically refuse to tell anyone the basis for these lawsuits, with the explanation that doing so would allow people to stop "breaking the law" which would be unacceptable
6. Issue verbal indemnities to potential lawsuit recipients, based on constantly changing criteria. Ensure nobody can tell whether they're actually indemnified or not, which actually isn't that big a deal as nobody knows what the basis of the lawsuits is anyway (refer previous point)
7. Continue distributing for free that which you proclaim to be illegal to give away. Distribute it under a licence that specifically says "it's OK to give this away"
8. Sell product in blatant violation of the rights of the owners of the product. Simultaneously complain that others are doing the exact same thing with "your" product

If the Iraqi Information Minister was cool - and who among us thought he wasn't THE man for 2003? - then this is also cool.

Debian dselect iTunes implementation

[Debian Troll's Best]

Normally I'm a pretty hardcore Debian user, but at my current contract job at a fairly major publishing house, I've been dealing with quite a lot of Mac systems. While OS X still has a ways to go before I would consider replacing my trusty Debian desktop, things like iTunes Music Store (iTMS) really make the switch worth considering. But if only iTMS could come to Debian!!!

While writing a little multithreaded print workflow app in AppleScript for the client, I struck upon an idea: what if I could expose the functions of iTunes using AppleScript in a client/server type arrangement, and then make those functions accessible across the network to a Debian system running a modified dselect iTunes browser? AppleScript is pretty powerful, as any seasoned Mac user will attest, so it was quick work to create a handy little mutithreaded fully re-entrant AppleScript based server for the core iTunes functions (load song, play song, browse playlist, buy song etc).

The next part was to patch dselect on the Linux side so it could connect to my AppleScript server/wrapper on the Mac. I'd previously extended dselect with a Scheme-scriptable plugin, so it only took me a day or two to modify dselect with some Scheme macros so that it emulated to look and feel of iTunes (using ASCII art of course!!), but accessing the actual iTMS functions though the network exposed AppleScript..errr..script.

It worked a treat!! It is now a simple matter of running dselect on my Debian box to browse the iTMS, as long as the Mac over in the corner running the AppleScript wrapper is turned on of course. I have actually implemented a direct USB->USB cross over connection to get around bottlenecking problems with our Ethernet so I don't have to put up with skipping in iTMS MP3 playback. Now it works great!!!

The final step will be to patch apt-get with iTMS interface functionality...then buying my favorite music legally will only be an apt-get install Justin-Timberlake away!

Which is nice.

Re:Debian dselect iTunes implementation

[Cyclopedian]

I have actually implemented a direct USB->USB cross over connection to get around bottlenecking problems with our Ethernet so I don't have to put up with skipping in iTMS MP3 playback.[Emphasis mine]

You plugged in your iPod?

Seriously, nice writing. =)
-Cyc

Re:Debian dselect iTunes implementation

[bojan]

where is the code for this?

Re:Debian dselect iTunes implementation

[atrader42]

I turned up my speakers so I could hear it on the other side of the room.

iTunes Music Store

[bsDaemon]

I just bought a brand new iBook G4, which is like the coolest thing ever. But as far as sequenced groups of electrons go, iTMS kicks so much ass it isn't even funny. seriously. I totally dislike buying CDs because well, I hate malls, and the record stores here in Tralee don't have any of the Boston bands I like, such as Dropkick Murphys. P2P is unreliable. If I had a job I'd trash all my mp3s and just buy a whole new collection off of iTMS (a lot of my files got screwed up from transfering them from CD-Rs which i highly abused).

Problems with iTunes (repost)

[Anonymous Coward]

This was posted earlier on, but an Apple Zealot who thought "Apple is god, you can't critisize it". If this was windows Media Player it would be Immediatley slapped up to 5, insightful. So, I am reposting this, and this is a true account of what happened.

A few days after Itunes for Win32 came out, I decided to reboot from Gnu/Linux to try out Itunes on my decficated Windows XP partition.

First of all, I had to download the HUGE 19.9 Mb .exe file which of course was being slashdotted by millions of Apple zealots, so it took around an hour on my Cable modem.

When it finally downloaded I double clicked the install file. Yuck, an installshield, so much slower than the RPM format I am used to. I had to read the Apple EULA, wait around 20 minutes for it to install, and GASP Reboot, installling xmms.rpm didn't go that.

After rebooting, a dialog came up telling me where to scan for files. I selected "my documents" of course. Unfortunatley it retardedly thought my pr0n mpgs were "music" so I had to spend around 30 minutes removing them from the list.

After pissing around i decided to actually tried it out. First of all I could tell it was retarded. I had previously tried the Mac Version on a G5 at my local PC world, and this was a completley different looking App. Its used non standard controls, no way to maximise it and looked retarded similar to what Windows 3.1 looked like. Looks like whoever ported it to Windows had NO idea of the Windows HIG. Brushed metal looks so inconsistant on Windows too, and unlike other media players its not skinabble.

Its visualiasion feature was completley stupid, for the first 10 seconds it ALWAYS swowed a gay little Apple logo in the centre of the screen, with no way to turn it off.

The Musique store was useless for me, since I live in the UK, I could only listen to crappy previews that even on my 15 quid speakers sounded like ass.

I think that the music store could be a good idea, providing Apple provides an API for other Music Players to be able to connect to the Apple store, and that they provide service world wide (and at decent exchange rates, charge no more than 59p in the UK). But i don't like the Windows version of itunes. Lukily the other day I found a linux program called Rhythmbox [rhythmbox.net] that a similar layout to itunes but has the crap stripped out, actually conforms to Operating System HIGS and does what its supposed to DO, and THAT IS TO PLAY MUSIC!

Simple

[cscx]

They are protecting themselves against credit card fraud.... see here to see what I'm talking about..

Fish Murdering Bastard!

[illuminata]

Stop supporting the murder of thousands of helpless fish! Don't you understand that millions of fish are being senselessly killed and raped of their skin just to support a fashion trend? How would you like it if somebody wore your skin?

I wish that you could feel the suffering that our friends in the ocean are feeling every time their skin is being harvested for pure capitalist profit. It tears my soul apart when I hear someone advocating such violent acts against creatures that have brains twice as complex than our own!

I'm going to go listen to some emo and cry about what you said. I hope you're happy, killing fish and sending people like me into deep, dark, depressive states.

Go to Hell,
Your Friendly PETA Activist

Re:Fish Murdering Bastard!

[mirko]

How would you like it if somebody wore your skin?
Somebody's actually wearing my skin, and the b4st4rd's also posting on slashdot now!

Re:Fish Murdering Bastard!

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I hope you're happy...sending people like me into deep, dark, depressive states.

I'm starting to crave seafood, but I don't know why.

Re:Fish Murdering Bastard!

[illuminata]

Man, this post and another post of mine, as well as other posts about the fish skin bikinis are getting downmodded. I think we've got some angry fat chick in PETA with an angenda really pissed off.

Go have your PMS somewhere else, tubby!

Re:Finally, music by people you've never heard of!

[Anonymous Coward]

>Selection:
>iTunes: Lots
>You just can't get many albums there...

Understatement of the year.

>Magnatune - $5.00 an album

"Name brand" artists won't allow their work to be sold for $5/album.

Microsoft Server 2003...

[MosesJones]

Surely that is the coolest thing in the world, I've seen the adverts, its lets me do more with less, I can consolidate all my domains down to just 4. AND I can then slide.

Microsoft Server 2003 is the coolest invention of the year, and MacDonalds are a healthy food option.

Wha' da' ya mean dominated by advertising ? Me and Mary Beth were only on Jerry Springer twice.

It's official

[LordLucless]

"Mac users, who represent only 3% of the computer world...in the 97% of the world that uses Windows PCs"

Sorry guys, it's now official. *BSD is dead. Time says so. In fact, so is Linux.

Serious Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should someone pay for music (minus the moral issues) when Kazaa Lite has the ability to download music for free? It also has a rating system, so if something is rated Excellent, you can be fairly sure you are getting what you expect. I don't see how iTunes will make it in the long run.

A fish-skin bikini? I don't think so

[MissTuxie]

Salmon skin bikini? I'd rather go naked to the beach. On a second thought, I already do. And have salmon-skin sushi on the beach. Isn't that a better combination? :)

Re:A fish-skin bikini? I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

One bikini comment... this is sloshdat. I saw the bikini note and thought that nobody would comment on it, so one comment is utterly amazing and from a girl too I take it? W000000t!!!

You are kidding!

[16K Ram Pack]

It's nice to use, but ultimately, it's a piece of software for downloading music. Nothing particularly breathtaking about it.

I'd rather put Open Office 1.1 in there.

Re:You are kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather put Open Office 1.1 in there.



Uhhh..... at least iTunes isn't an obvious CLONE of something!

Re:You are kidding!

[16K Ram Pack]

So, which Office suite has export to PDF built in? Which was the first suite to have native file formats in XML?

There's nothing particularly original about iTunes. It's music downloading software. Find music and download it. Plenty of people have been doing this before.

Re:You are kidding!

[bojan]

most open source zealots will state something similar, but the key reason why Apple software is used and enjoyed more than open source, is the misconception by the open source community.

people don't care about IP, about paying licensing fees, about the work involved in getting an app made. PEOPLE care about getting things done.

And if I can do it without worrying about the underlying technology, I will pay a premium. This explains why most artists use Apple products.

Open Office is not intuitive at all, in fact, it's far worse than Microsoft Office for OS X, which Microsoft claims themselves is better than the Windows versino. Intuitive workflows are something that open source lacks.

And how can it have it, when after all, it's always lagging behind the Windows versions of software it tries to mimic. WHen you're playing catchup, you can't be ahead.

Re:You are kidding!

[16K Ram Pack]

people don't care about IP, about paying licensing fees, about the work involved in getting an app made. PEOPLE care about getting things done.

... and what about who controls the standards, and how that can impede on getting things done. Try changing a MS Office file without having an office license, and consider the data processing issues of this. Maybe the main users of Macs, which seems to be artists and graphic designers don't worry about such things, but in the data processing world, it's a big concern.

I'm starting to work on people I work with to explain this. We got sent a bunch of data in spreadsheets and someone wanted to process it on a server, until I explained that we can't run an office license on a server.

As for lagging behind? Since when has MS Office had XML file formats or PDF export? Open Office will start moving ahead of MS Office in the same way that Mozilla has moved ahead of IE.

I'm not an open source zealot, and OOo 1.1 isn't that important, but iTunes most definitely isn't. And that's part of my point - I view even OOo 1.1 as more important than iTunes. As far as I can see, there is nothing original in iTunes, except it looks pretty.

Re:You are kidding!

[bojan]

you're debating something entirely different.

iTunes is wicked for a simple fact. It brings the "retail store" experience to a user with literaly a single click of a mouse button.

Nothing else does that. Not yet anyway.

Re:Humph, it's advertising allright

[Alan Partridge]

"which makes money off of ITunes"

which makes money FROM iTunes

Re:MOD PARENT UP! IT WAS MODDED DOWN BY A ZEALOT!

[gdarklighter]

The parent was not modded down for criticiziing iTunes. It was modded down because it was flamebait. Notice the use of the phrases "Apple zealots" and "gay little Apple logo" along with vague derogatory adjectives like "crappy" and "retarded." If the author of that post would like to post a revised edition of his comment that had been proofread and written in a logical, mature manner, I would be more than happy to pay attention to his opinions.

Not that I'm holding out hope or anything. This is Slashdot, after all.

outside the USA

[martin]

quite possibly, but those of us outside the USA don't get squat with all the new services, or have to put up with a windows only facility.

hmm sees a business oportunity, if only the various RIAA type organisations around the world could be convinced about non-DRM implementations of this stuff. I mean it's a pain having to go via a couple of phono leads to put the material on a CD I play in my car (via cassette in my case so the quality drops).

argh...

[mantera]

i guess it qualifies as "coolest" since the definition of cool these days seems almost synonymous with music.
maybe i'm odd, but i don't see why so many people believe the hype that music is so essential to life. I swear some people say stupid things like "music is my life" as if it's a cool thing and kids define themselves by the music they like. people who have different tastes in music now seem to belong to different "crowds". "what bands do you like" and "are you in a band" seem to have become almost as standard cliches as "hello" and "how are you". This is insane.
"come see my band play", groupie girls stupidly having their lame thing over "band boys" and the slut-izisation of american teenagers under peer-pressure that makes giving head to someone who's in a band an admirable and eviable thing is pure degradation of minds through the incessant brainwashing brought upon them by MTV & co and other industry-driven glamourization of music.

get a grip people, music isn't essential, isn't that glamorous, and it's a sad sad state of affairs that it occupies such a big share of the national entertainment culture. It's even more than entertainment for some.

Re:argh...

[Hitchcock_Blonde]

I think history speaks to the necessity of music. If music is not an important part of what it means to be human, why has it existed in every culture since the beginning of recorded history (and, most probably before)?

Re:argh...

[Anonymous Coward]

spoken like a true vanillageek.

Whack... back to your coding!

Greed

[Talisman]

From the article:

"At most, Jobs is left with a dime per track, so even $500 million in annual sales would add up to a paltry $50 million profit. Why even bother?"

Excuse me? A paltry $50 MILLION dollar profit?!?

'Paltry' and '$50 million dollar profit' don't belong in the same sentence.

This mentality is what's screwing the entire downloadable music process. It's not about whether it's profitable, it's about whether it's profitable enough.

Just for them saying that, I'm going to download some MP3s tonight. WTF...

Tal

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, at $15,000 a week you'd need to make $780,000 a year per exec to cover thier cocaine habit alone. Have some respect. This is the USA and it is thier right to make as much money as possible, morals and ethics be damned.

Re:Greed

[MosesJones]

Good point, we are talking here about a 10% profit margin. Something most businesses would consider to be ample. This also says how dumb analysts are for considering 10% profit margins to be nothing and hyping up people who claim bigger, and less reliable, numbers.

Put it this way, iTunes hasn't bumped up the Apple Share price in any way like the SCO price hike, one has real profits... the other a near suicidal legal case.

Re:Greed

[jwachter]

'Paltry' and '$50 million dollar profit' don't belong in the same sentence. This mentality is what's screwing the entire downloadable music process. It's not about whether it's profitable, it's about whether it's profitable enough. Just for them saying that, I'm going to download some MP3s tonight. WTF...

If you're being sarcastic (I suppose you are), you clearly have no understanding of corporate finance.

Apple, like any corporation, is legally responsible to its shareholders (mostly private US citizens) to make as much money possible. To the extent that that they are deciding whether to invest $100m in some new business project (building an online music store, porting OSX to windows, selling flat panel TVs), they choose amongst those projects by determining which will yeild the highest return on their investment. Initiating an investment that is merely "somewhat" profitable can be an enormous mistake for ANY corporation if it means foregoing an investment that could be hugely profitable.

Re:Greed

[Artifex]

Good point, we are talking here about a 10% profit margin. Something most businesses would consider to be ample.

Especially for something that is absolutely Internet-dependent. A good, reliable 10% return would be a very sound investment. Especially since the costs as a factor of production will be even better as they expand the business to include more artists.

Speaking of which, if I were a recording artist, I'd love to cut a deal with Apple where they'd get 25% or more profit in turn for great promotion, because my net profit per unit sold would be so much greater than a deal with a traditional distributor.

Re:Greed

[Talisman]

Wasn't being sarcastic, but the comment wasn't directed solely at Apple. I understand the principle of maximizing profit on investment, but what I'm saying is that a business model with a 10% profit margin and the volume to generate $50MN in profit should not be considered a failure, especially when the resources needed to accomodate 100,000 users to 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 are a (small) fractional increase. Increasing bandwidth/servers is a relatively easy and low-cost expansion. Such a business can grow painlessly if the foundation is built correctly.

Downloadable music, in and of itself, is demonstrably profitable. That the records companies are digging in their heels against the technology has to do with greed, even if it is greed in the name of shareholders.

Perhaps piracy needs to become so widespread that the traditional distribution model becomes unprofitable, or simply less profitable than legal downloads, a la iTunes.

Tal

Re:Greed

[bill_mcgonigle]

This mentality is what's screwing the entire downloadable music process. It's not about whether it's profitable, it's about whether it's profitable enough.

But in the case of Apple, the issue is whether the return on investment is a good business decision. If they spent $50M building the store and they're going to make $50M from it, it's not a profitable venture. Sure there are yearly residuals, but what if they put that $50M into the newest iApp, or into getting the G5 into a laptop.

But, the whole question is a red herring; on the last analysts' conference call, Steve Jobs stated that iTMS is a loss-leader to sell iPods. He questions why anybody who doesn't sell hardware is in the business:

"Most of the money goes to the music companies. We are the largest by far" .... "We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it's not a money maker. That's why when I look at Roxio with Napster and MusicMatch, These guys can never make money. They've started money losing businesses and I'm perplexed as to why." ... "They don't make iPods, so they don't have a related business where they do..."

Re:Greed

[zpok]

You open a bussiness that requires a huge investment and at only 500 millions of sales can generate a profit of 10%.

Take into account they're only at 14,5 million songs now. Meaning they must be making a loss.

Re:Greed

[SB5]

Even in the movie business this would be considered a big success, if you made a film for $450 million and got $451 million in sales then its considered profit. And the movie business is much more risky, you can't guarantee getting 1/10th of the cost back in profit. Seems to me to be a very well thought out business plan.

Of course compared to what the record companies ACTUALLY make in profit on CD sales is grounds for calling 1/10th profit paltry.

Re:Greed

[/dev/trash]

But that 50million in profit was only for one segment of Apple's whole business. That may or may not be enough to for Apple to have an overall profit.

Re:Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple, like any corporation, is legally responsible to its shareholders (mostly private US citizens) to make as much money possible."

If that's the case, we've got a really screwed up system in the US. If that were true all corporations would be investing in the sex industry - extraordinarily high profits. There needs to be a awareness of the social construct surrounding the business, or the whole show is shot.

time names pateNTdead eyecon0meter heroic

[Anonymous Coward]

in yOUR pursuit/disempowerment of unprecedented evile, aka, the corepirate nazi life0cide.

time loves a hero? get ready to see the light.

Smart Playlists..

[ciroknight]

Smart Playlists is what did it for me. Being able to categorize my music by how much I listen to it and my favorite artists instead of having to add each and every song by hand is a great time saver. Maybe the dudes over at nullsoft can borrow this idea...

Re:Smart Playlists..

[cscx]

And they are, truely, "smart" -- they update in real-time. Flatfile text (m3u and friends) can't do that.

Re:Smart Playlists..

[Trurl's Machine]

What's really great is the ability to make a playlist of the songs you value for 4 or 5 stars and hadn't listen for - say - month or two, played at random. It's like you browse the radio stations and suddenly discover the one that plays a golden hit you used to love in some old days, but then it was forgotten. I love that feeling and it's great to have it in your pocket.

It just works!

[camperslo]

I can see people having trouble with Time's use of the word "invention". It's their language, not Apple's. So many have used patents in an abusive way, it's easy to get into a defensive posture on even hearing the word invention. In the context of the Time article, "creative consumer offering" would better fit what they are talking about.
A product is more than a list of features. It's also about philosophy. Fairness, paying attention to the overall experience, and caring about behind the scenes detail is all part of this. Most consumers aren't likely to know that Apple is paying for the high-quality Fraunhofer IIS MP3 codec to let them use it for free in iTunes. Don't expeect to see things like that from MS/Napster. As any Linux user can tell you, beauty is more than skin deep.

actually

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason for this is licensing- European distributors haven't gotten around to licensing the music to Apple to sell in Europe (not for lack of trying on Apple's part).

The widget is # one...

[DMCBOSTON]

...according to a poll on technical innovation website T3.co.uk. The story is in this Ananova article describing just how vital it is.

Invention/Idea Forum on SlipHead.com

[Telluride]

SlipHead.com is a cool new site following in this trend if any of you are interested. It's basically a free forum for the exchange of ideas with a methodology similar to open-source software. Take a minute to check it out!

2003?

[Ed Avis]

It's November. How can they possibly know what the coolest inventions of 2003 are?

Re:2003?

[Dr. GeneMachine]

Obviously, a time machine was amongst the coolest inventions. It escapes me why they failed to mention it, though.

Re:2003?

[Mesaeus]

Coolest invention of 2003 : The Time Machine.

Re:2003?

[tbone1]

They're journalists; like rock stars, they know everything.

Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[citizenc]

It's so cool that anybody who doesn't live in the United States can't use it! THAT'S SO FREAKING COOL, ISN'T IT!? ARRGH!!

[Breathes]

Seriously though. One would have thought that, when releasing a product to a world-wide audience, the software would be usuable by said audience. As it stands, when things like this happen, it just demonstrates that the United States still thinks that it's the center of the Universe. Grrr.

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[zpok]

Yeah, it's a bitch, but in all fairness, blame ourselves for being so culturally diverse (good) and hopelessly hung up on our own little plot of land (bad).

Apple tries to cut across all that diverseness and give us Eurotrashers the same deal. Imagine the amount of work that is, the language-problem alone must be daunting...

Same with iPhoto

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US thinks it's the center of the universe? This is one company you're bitching about. It probably doesn't employ a hundredth of a percent of the population of the US. There are plenty of other ways to attack the US, but doing it through apple just doesn't make sense.

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

it just demonstrates that the United States still thinks that it's the center of the Universe.

Nah, it doesn't demonstrate that at all. What it does demonstrate is that companies in countries where cool stuff is invented sometimes go with a local roll out first before expanding to a larger market. If the US thought it were the center of the universe, you would likely never see iTunes (or any other US product) made available outside the US. Maybe some admiration and thanks should be given for a product you clearly desire to have?

Or, if you prefer, you can use the music download services already available in your part of the world.

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[MrWa]

Apple does not equal the United States.

Microsoft does not equal the United States.

Despite what some on Slashdot would want you to believe, the corporate interests do not, in fact, completely run things here (yet...)

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a summary of the reasons why itms isn't in europe yet. Hint: if it were up to apple, it would be, but sadly it's not up to apple.

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[citizenc]

I wasn't trying to imply that (well, kinda, but not directly). Rather, what I'm frustrated with is the fact that it appears as though the major online music retailers didn't even bother to concider audiences outside the United States.

The Apple iTunes website doesn't even make it clear that I, as a Canadian citizen, are not welcome to pay their artists for their music. It didn't even occur to them that maybe, JUST MAYBE, there may be people in countries outside the US which might also be interested in using their software.

Canada has a significantly higher adoption of broadband internet (either cable or xDSL) then in the United States. The Internet is a global community; it's time that major corporations started treating it that way.

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[f97tosc]

As it stands, when things like this happen, it just demonstrates that the United States still thinks that it's the center of the Universe. Grrr.

And what proves that the US is right is the fact that Europe does not simply construct their own system, but rather directs its energy to anger and envy towards the US.

Tor

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[.com b4 .storm]

As it stands, when things like this happen, it just demonstrates that the United States still thinks that it's the center of the Universe.

Err, wow. Talk about pent-up aggression. It's not that Apple doesn't give a sh#$ about the rest of the world (they do sell hardware and software outside of the US, you know), nor is it the USA's fault per se (although I agree, much of what we do has a center-of-the-world attitude to it). I think the real issue here is that the RIAA simply does not want to deal with the "other" countries, currencies, laws, etc. at this point. Apple has to negotiate with the RIAA, and so their hands are tied.

I don't like the all-too-common American arrogance and exclusionist ways anymore than you do, but try to keep perspective on things like this. It's just like the internet sales tax thing - there's so many variables and differing jurisdictions to take into account, you can't just make a blanket statement about it.

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[citizenc]

I'm Canadian. I love 2 hours away from the United States.

And take my word for it, there is NOBODY here who envies the United States. Pity might be a better word.

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[bojan]

Apple is a USA company. Time is a USA publication.
iTMS is for USA customers.

What is your point?

(I live in Canada though, and although I wish I could access iTMS, it's not up to me to complain or decide, is it?)

Re:Global Community, Restricted Usage?

[f97tosc]

I'm Canadian. I love 2 hours away from the United States. And take my word for it, there is NOBODY here who envies the United States. Pity might be a better word.

My point was not that the US is the center of the universe. Rather I wished to point out the contradiction in the original post. How can one expect the US to provide music downloading for the world, and at the same time be angry because the US think it is great?

Good for you to be so happy in Canada. Of course your hapiness is not uncommon; anthopologists are well aware that citizens of virtually all societies (including the US, Canada, and the most primitive stone-age tribes in Africa) are convinved that their own society is the best in the world.

Tor

Re:Gnome 2.6 to be released soon, still crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome has a new web browser
Yawb! Along with Galeon, mozilla, thunderbird, konqueror, atlantis, lynx, netscape and w3m. Yes I need another browser! Not to mention that its got a religiously offensive name and it dosen't allow bookmark folders. It also crashes like a crazy! Apple chose khtml for a REASON! its stable and light!

yes it does.

everything else is more or less true.

Fishy Boobies?

[gbulmash]

The salmon leather thing is neat. And if you visit the manufacturer's designs page, you get to see the bikini model topless twice.

Ah, those shameless Europeans. :-)

And now, with fish-leather thongs, I can see millions of women saying "no, honestly honey, the smell's from my bikini."

Re...Restricted Usage? Real World Contracts

[borkus]

Actually, record contracts are geographically specific. Contractually, a record label gets the rights to sell recordings on behalf an artist in one specific country or group of countries. For example, the rapper Dizzee Rascal is on XL Records in the UK, but will be on Matador in the US. Since labels are responsible for promoting and manufacturing records, they usually limit themselves to a certain region. It makes sense in terms of physical recordings being sold through shops. I have to agree that such a system doesn't make sense online. However, you run into the same issues with books and electronics as well.

This doesn't make the U.S. the hub for all music. In fact, there is a considerable amount of international music that never makes it to the States. There are even bands from Canada that don't make it to the U.S.

Re:Re...Restricted Usage? Real World Contracts

[sweede]

"There are even bands from Canada that don't make it to the U.S. "

Ya, and look how bad the bands are that do come from Canada !

Maybe you missed this....

[raygundan]

This guy built one himself.

I don't think it's as groundbreaking as the hype would lead you to believe. That, and I think it predates 2003 by a bit.

As they might say over at Fark.com

[michaelnz]

"Still no cure for Cancer."

Old joke, old effect

[Metryq]

I've seen that so-called "invisible" cloak before, and I wish they'd stop calling it that. It is a special effects technique nearly as old as cinematography. Someone wears reflex material while a scene is front-projected onto them. I don't think much of it as a stealth technique. FX man (walking up to armed guard at secure installation): 'scuse me, would you mind looking through this beam splitter while I set up a projector at your feet? Thanks! --Metryq

Lots o' bots

[StrawberryFrog]

Anyone else notice how many functional robots there are in this section?

Robots have been "the future" for so long, I kinda wrote them off with flying cars and moonbases. But slowly, they are becoming real ...

Which is cool. Except for that robo-cat, which looks to me like a creepy undead reanimated cat-pelt.

Re:Lots o' bots

[Joe Tie.]

While I like the idea of a robot cat, I've allways had the same reaction to it as you describe. It looks like some kind of dead zombie demon cat, not at all comforting. The aibo looks cuter somehow. Plus I'm unimpressed by a robot animal that can't walk. While not really a robot, the Power Assist Suit was my favorite. That's such a weird comic book idea that I never would have thought the real thing would have appeared in my lifetime.

Re:Lots o' bots

[Physics Dude]

Hey... don't you remember SNL?

It's Toonces!

Quicktime Task

[Anonymous Coward]

Concerning the Windows version of iTunes, does anybody know how to stop iTunes from adding a value to win2k's registry that makes Quicktime start at bootup? It added said value on initial installation and I chopped it out, but then I noticed that every time I run iTunes the value is put in again.

Re:Quicktime Task

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, windows still does crap like that , and probably assuming you wanted it, without asking you. joy of joys, quality operating system.

Re:Quicktime Task

[Anonymous Coward]

ya know, at first I ended the original post with "and c'mon, don't say 'don't use windows'." but I deleted it because I figured anyone who would bother answering wouldn't be so assanine as to say that. It's grimly satisfying to see that I was wrong.

Re:Quicktime Task

[Hoser McMoose]

Hmm, that's odd, I've never had it recreate the registry key after I deleted it.

However, that being said, iTunes leaves far too much clutter around. Not only does it automatically start QuickTime on bootup, it also starts up an iPod executable (even though i don't own an iPod) as well as GEARSecurity CD-RW service (even though I don't currently have a CD-RW drive). If you stop the CD service then iTunes complains every time you boot it up.

All of these can be disabled if you know how, but they are things that shouldn't be installed in the first place.

Three words about DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring it on.

Without DRM, there will never be practical online music delivery. Period. Fly-by-night outfits that purport to deliver music without DRM only deliver music that nobody wants; these are the examples that prove the rule.

Apple did the best thing: they created a DRM schema that protects the rights of both the creators and the consumers. And they should be lauded for it.

What were they thinking?

[Xpilot]

Among the contenders, we had stuff straight out of sci-fi : a invisible camouflage suit, a wearable robot suit which augments your strength (just like in those cartoons), glasses with a built in screen and camera, and the winner for coolest invention was... iTUNES? WTF??

Re:What were they thinking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, unlike the other contenders, Apple actually buys advertising space in Time. Not that I'm saying there's a connection or anything like that...

Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

So iTMS is all cool and stuff, but better than a flu vacinne (sp?), or a water purifier? I mean, this stuff could save lives, while the iTMS is just for downloading music. Mabey it's that Time is par of TimeWarner and they own the music companies...

it's business

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had some money, would you invest it at a 10% return or a 20% return?

The question isn't whether $50M is a lot of money. The question is whether the capitsl investment could return better than $50M if invested elsewhere. It's quite possible that $50M is paltry compared to the alternatives.

The money doesn't just roll in without expenses you know.

Re:it's business

[HarveyBirdman]

If you had some money, would you invest it at a 10% return or a 20% return?

A meaningless question in the real world. You need to look at the downside, or the overall risk. For example, what's the odds of either investment resulting in a -100% result? Most likely the 20% potential return is riskier. There's also questions of liquidity.

There's also the concepts of building a brand image and getting in early to grow a market which is still pretty nascent. *That's* how a CEO serves his long term shareholders properly. The "gimme billion percent profit margin now!" daytrader "I've owned this stock for two hours and I haven't doubled my money yet!" types can go get bent. It's their influence that has led to so many BS products and ripoffs and overpriced junk, especially in the tech market.

Re:it's business

[danila]

Your numbers are irrelevant. You speak about return, presumably a return on investment (profit/investment). 10% return and 20% return are pretty much equal, because higher return is always negated by higher risk. The article, though, speaks about the profit margin (profit/sales). The profit margin has no direct influence on the attractiveness of the business. For different industries it varies greatly. We have no way to tell whether 10% is a lot, until a serious competition emerges in this market.

Invisible man (Thanks Monty Python)

[stud9920]

Compere: Well, you can't get much more interesting than that, or can you? With me now is Mr Thomas Walters of West Hartlepool who is totally invisible. Good evening, Mr Walters. (turns to empty chair)

Walters: (off-screen) Over here, Hughie.

Compere turns to find a boringly dressed man sitting by him.

Compere: Mr Walters, are you sure you're invisible?

Walters: Oh yes, most certainly.

Compere: Well, Mr Walters, what's it like being invisible?

Walters: (slowly and boringly) Well, for a start, at the office where I work I can be sitting at my desk all day and the others totally ignore me. At home, even though we are in the same room, my wife does not speak to me for hours, people pass me by in the street without a glance in my direction, and I can walk into a room without...

Compere: Well, whilst we've got interesting people, we met Mr Oliver Cavendish who...

Walters: (droning on) ... Even now you yourself, you do hardly notice me...

iTunes really *is* the "coolest Windows app ever"

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using iTunes on windoze for only a few days and I love it!!! Though I haven't purchased anything from their music store, I have looked at the prices. $10 a CD when it's up to $20 in a (physical) music store! And the online radio completely blew me away. BrainGell Radio is the best!!

At most != at the least

[mactari]

I believe we might be overlooking what the phrase "at most" means. Apple's probably outlaid millions in R&D, hosting, advertising, etc to make -- at most -- $50 million annually. At the least, Apple might not even be making the dimes mentioned above. The return on investment is perhaps not the best as far as Apple's stockholders are concerned, as another post mentions -- if taken at face value.

That's why iPod sales are so important. When increased iPod sales, or even sustained iPod sales to Windows users in the face of new competition, and only then, is "WinTunes" a good idea and produces a better ROI than buying US Treasury bonds.

Folks, Apple's a big corporation. A fifty million dollar gain annually is, whether we like it or not comparing it to the scale of dough in our bank accounts/wallets, not horribly big money.

Re:At most != at the least

[danila]

Apple's probably outlaid millions in R&D, hosting, advertising, etc to make -- at most -- $50 million annually.
Which makes what, around 500% ROI? How much could their R&D actually cost? This is not rocket science, folks, this is just a simple application to sell songs online. Many slashdotters could probably make a rough version of online music store in one day. How much functionality is there in iTunes store? We can't tell how much it costed Apple until they release their next annual report, but I guess it didn't really cost too much.

Folks, Apple's a big corporation. A fifty million dollar gain annually is, whether we like it or not comparing it to the scale of dough in our bank accounts/wallets, not horribly big money.
This is just a project. Apple didn't bet their future on iTunes. Even Microsoft, being the largest corporation in the world, has small projects. Yeah, writing a new macro for MS Word may not be such a big deal for MS, but these things add up.

Re:At most != at the least

[TheRaven64]

Folks, Apple's a big corporation. A fifty million dollar gain annually is, whether we like it or not comparing it to the scale of dough in our bank accounts/wallets, not horribly big money.

Apple posted a net profit last quarter of $44m. Assuming that this is representative (it isn't. They posted a net loss of $45 in the same quarter of last year) then a $50m additional profit would be a 25% increase in profit, which is huge for any large tech company, outside bubble times. It is, however, highly unlikely that they make anything like this on iTMS.

What makes this new?

[blanks]

Companies have been doing this for years. This isn't new or even an Invention.

From the way it sounds they are leading in the technology, and have found the best ways to distribute music, but that doesn't mean this style of business is original.

Good for Apple, but Time really needs to pull their head out of their asses if this was the best invention they could find.

Marketshare NOT equal to installed base

[Spencerian]

Mac OS systems may comprise about 3% of the yearly sold amount of personal computers. That's market share.

However, Mac OS systems do NOT comprise 3% of the total installed base of all computers. A more likely number of Mac OS systems in use is around 20-25%, if not a little larger.

An installed base of 3% could not possibly support the software sales for Mac developers, particularly games and business applications. It's just not possible. Try not repeating what you hear unless you understand it.

Re:Marketshare NOT equal to installed base

[Lochin Rabbar]

However, Mac OS systems do NOT comprise 3% of the total installed base of all computers. A more likely number of Mac OS systems in use is around 20-25%, if not a little larger.

Are you standing next to Steve Jobs, that's the funniest thing I've read since the last SCO press release.

Freaky

[vigilology]

Look at that cat. It's meant to keep you "calm and happy". It turns its head, moves its ears and blinks its eyes. Calm and happy? More like nervous and scared. Think Chucky :-/

iTunes != iPod (once again)

[repetty]

"It's a disarmingly simple concept: sell songs in digital format for less than a buck and let buyers play them whenever and wherever they like--as long as it's on an Apple iPod."

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Again, wrong.

You can tell the author of this article never actally used iTunes or the iTunes music store. The iPod is completely optional.

I don't have an iPod and I've been using iTunes for years. I will probably never get an iPod. Still, I'm a daily user of iTunes.

It was my fault for reading this silly article. I mean, this is Time magazine. What do they know about technology? Just enough to write some copy. The harm here is that it really short-sells iTunes AND the iTunes Music Store by harping on an optional component.

--Richard

Re:iTunes != iPod (once again)

[martyn s]

Nope, iTunes has been around for years. He's talking about the player, not the store. And I imagine that if it works with the player it works with the store.

Re:iTunes != iPod (once again)

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using iTunes for years

Wow, a time traveler! Tell me, what's it like in 2007?

Re:iTunes != iPod (once again)

[Kneo24]

If iTunes has been around for years, then it could hardly be the 'coolest invetion of 2003', since it was supposedly invented years ago and being used.

Re:iTunes != iPod (once again)

[scrod]

If iTunes has been around for years, then it could hardly be the 'coolest invetion of 2003', since it was supposedly invented years ago and being used.

Sigh. iTunes has been around for years.
You do understand the difference between iTunes and the iTunes Music Store, right?

Re:iTunes != iPod (once again)

[scrod]

Wow, a time traveler! Tell me, what's it like in 2007?

Tell me, what's it like living in a cave?

Re:iTunes != iPod (once again)

[Kneo24]

Sorry, I just felt like I had to jump in on the bandwagon and say something similar. It's my fault for not making my lack of being serious that obvious.

A Troll from the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod this troll someone!!!

It is of NO FAULT by Apple that iTunes has not made it to Europe yet. It is the European recording industry execs and record labels (that are twice as bitchy as the RIAA) that not allowing iTunes overseas. NO download service is international right now that I am aware of.

Elect people who would reform your system over there or be quiet!!!

Re:A Troll from the UK

[citizenc]

I'm in Canada, chief. Not from the UK. I'm a two-hour drive away from the oh-so-glorious United States, in fact.

Wash my hands?

[heironymouscoward]

Hey, I do this at least once a month and the watch survives, believe me! I even think my MP3s sound better when the USB port has been washed a little.

Actually, and seriously the watch is 'water resistant', and because the USB port is basically dead if it's not connected, I suspect that it can get wet and not care so long as it's dried before use.

It's just somewhat easier than carrying a USB flash drive around with you, and sitting on one's wrist it's probably safer than hanging off a keychain or rattling around in a pocket.

Bluetooth would be sweet too... but I suspect it would have bad battery issues, which the USB watch does not.

I want my Led Zeppelin

[semanticgap]

...and the Beatles!

Re:I want my Led Zeppelin

[CrazyTalk]

yeah, and I'm sure you are holding out for Metallica, too.

Troll or not, this brings up a good point - there are certain bands that are in all likelyhood never going to show up on a pay music service like iTunes. Apple records is still battling Apple computer after all these years, so no beatles. Metallica is still a big opponent to online music, so no Metallica - and so on. Bring back the original Napster so I can download like its 1999!

Water Purifiers

[heironymouscoward]

Purifying water (one of the lauded inventions) is a cool thing, very relevant to billions around the world, but doing it by distillation is just a joke.

There is a much simpler and just as effective way to purify water in tropical or desert countries: place it in a transparent plastic bottle in the sun for a day. The water heats to 80 degrees and after a few hours is totally sterilised. The mud and gunk settle to the bottom, and what's left is clean and drinkable.

I spent a few days on this once, trying to improve the process of separating the gunk from the water: the principle was to extract the gunk from the bottle which could then be closed and carried some distance. My design requires a straw and a bit of clay. But even that's not worth doing: to solve the problem of drinkable water in most of Africa, all one would need is to ship a billion or so used PET bottles.

Sigh. People like complex solutions to simple problems.

Re:Water Purifiers

[Theaetetus]

There is a much simpler and just as effective way to purify water in tropical or desert countries: place it in a transparent plastic bottle in the sun for a day. The water heats to 80 degrees and after a few hours is totally sterilised.

... except for the bacteria. Need to get up to at least 130 deg F to denature the proteins. Anyways, as for your 'more effective' solution - did you RTFA? He's doing 10 gallons in an hour. You're doing 20 oz in 'a few hours' with much less degree of certainty of the results. I'll take his idea.

-T

Re:Water Purifiers

[Anonymous Coward]

Uuuuhhh, you obviously haven't ever been in Africa. Africa is a SEPTIC continent. Pasteurizing water to 80 degrees or so will certainly help to kill most of the germs in the water, but the ones that are left are the really bad ones that will kill you...

You not only have to think of common germs, you also have to think of various parasites and really ugly things that have been eradicated in the western world a hundred years ago: Polio, yellow fever, aids, smallpox, hepatitis, bilharzia... the list goes on and on and on!

You go and draw water form an African shit hole, pasteurize it and then test it and you'll probably discover a few new life forms that nobody knew about.

Re:Water Purifiers

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a much simpler and just as effective way to purify water in tropical or desert countries: place it in a transparent plastic bottle in the sun for a day. The water heats to 80 degrees and after a few hours is totally sterilised. The mud and gunk settle to the bottom, and what's left is clean and drinkable.

Tell you what then, I'll piss in a plastic bottle, and dilute it with 50% water. Next, I'll leave it out in 80 degree sunlight all day, and you can drink it.

Re:Water Purifiers

[jaoswald]

In fairness to the original poster, the 80 degrees could have been 80 degrees Celsius, if the poster happened to be in the 95% of the world population that is not in the U.S.

Though I have a hard time imagining a bottle in the sun getting that hot.

Re:Water Purifiers

[Theaetetus]

In fairness to the original poster, the 80 degrees could have been 80 degrees Celsius, if the poster happened to be in the 95% of the world population that is not in the U.S.

Right, stipulated. Nonetheless, I'll take the $1000, 10gal/hour solution over his 20 oz/several hours with uncertain results. :)

-T

Re:Water Purifiers

[Timmeh]

But regardless, how exactly is he heating the water to 80C?

Re:Water Purifiers

[danila]

Have you ever been in a greenhouse? Have you ever heard about the greenhouse effect? Visible light penetrates glass and transparent plastic. Infrared light doesn't. Light from the sun enters the bottle and heats the water. Hot water tries to radiate heat in the infrared spectrum, but infrared can't escape. What happens with the heat? It is trapped inside the bottle. Try it someday, you will be surprised.

Re:Water Purifiers

[heironymouscoward]

The treatment is known as "sol-air" and depends on UV to create reactive oxygen molecules which kill the worst bacteria.

Yes, it's a technique that has been tested in some of the worst African "shit holes", and produces drinkable water which may not be Evian, but is significantly safer than the alternatives (drinking untreated water).

In most of Africa, electrical means are simply not an option. Sol-air, on the other hand, needs nothing except empty plastic bottles, sunlight (not even direct sunlight), and time. There is no reason why you couldn't build large-scale sol-air purifiers, only it hardly seems worthwhile when you can just as well lay a thousand bottles out on the ground.

And as what is "obvious", I was born in Africa, grew up there, am married to a Congolese woman, and have spent much time in Congo, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Angola, Burkina Faso, Togo, and a few other places that I thankfully forget. Since you asked.

Here is one link on sol-air, there are others if you care to research this.

Re:Water Purifiers

[heironymouscoward]

Thank you very much.

80 degrees celsius, quite attainable when you leave a bottle of water in the African sun for a few hours. Infrared heats the water, UV attacks the bacteria both directly (literally, the UV breaks down their cell walls), and indirectly by producing peroxide and other free radicals that sterilise the water.

Of course we'd all rather drink purified water, but most (sadly, most) people living in Africa don't have that choice. It's well-drawn water, often muddy and mixed with low levels faecal bacteria, not a big deal for adults but very harmful for children, who die in shameful numbers from it.

Re:Water Purifiers

[Mryll]

Yep! Sunshine can be a pretty amazing disinfectant.

A ChemE professor with an interest in mycology emphasized to me how well it works. Was once caught in the desert with the only nearby water in a rock pothole, contaminated by very old cow dung. Was still pretty yellow looking after filtering through ceramic/iodine pump filter. An hour in the scorching desert sun helped the color slightly and improved our confidence in the water. Not so fun to drink, but did the trick and didn't make us sick...

It's a ghey Apple zealot mods!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

GHET HIM!!!!!!

Mod Parent Up

[mekkab]

THank you. You saved me the time and typing.

and to further clarify:
point 3: uhm, what exactly is point three? Terms of licensing are high? AS in cost to the customer? Or cost to the record label? Indie's and Majors all get the same treatment (link found elsewhere in this article)- its 99 cents a song, albums for 9.99, songs over 7 minutes are only available as albums. If an album has less than 10 tracks, its number of tracks times 99 cents (5 track ep costs 4.95)

As for driving iPod sales, this is actually a COUNTER to your claim- they don't care to make money off iTunes, they just want a kick ass service, so you'll use iTunes, and then maybe you'll think about buying an iPod.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't want to make money... Right. Must be nice living in your own personal dream world.

Profit Margins

[chia_monkey]

I love how in the article they say iTMS is giving Apple a mere $0.10 per song. 10% profit doesn't sound too bad to me, especially in the highly-comoditized PC market. Granted, it's not what Apple is used to. They're used to 30% profit margins from their computer sales. But 10% of millions (and some day billions) is nothing to cough at. I wouldn't mind a nice steady stream of 10% of $500 million. But like Steve said...they're selling iPods which gives them a cool 35% or so for each one sold. Niiiiiice.

Re:Profit Margins

[SomeOtherGuy]

Is that 10% before internal costs (Bandwidth, Web Design, Packaging DRM - Encode, Advertising, Server Admin, etc.) That 10% could quickly become 2-3%. If you believe apple then it is a loss leader....Which means in a few years it could be called FedoraTunes. (When apple decides it costs more money than it is making or it is worth.)

Bah

[Sloppy]

The only "innovative" thing about iTunes music store that mp3.com didn't already have, is that they're willing to sell in smaller units (songs instead of albums). I guess that's an improvement for mass-advertised style music (where people hear a song on the radio and are programmed to like that one song) but for many genres, it isn't a serious improvement at all, since the user will want the whole album, in which case the iTunes approach can even end up being more expensive.

So yeah, that one part of it, happens to be innovative you like massively-pushed music.

And of course, iTunes music store sells their stuff in a weird format for which there are very few players. (Some people (well, usually AC trolls) keep saying that the AAC format isn't "weird" and is standardized, but they forget that the DRM effectively makes the files nonstandard.) The fact that MS Windows users needed special software before they could take advantage of the service, and the fact that every other platform in the universe except for Windows and MacOS still can't use the service, shows just how flawed the approach is, from a "standards" perspective. mp3.com (and other services like them) beats the living shit out of Apple's product in this regard, has had that advantage for many years, and there is little hope that Apple will ever modernize and become competitive, thanks to their DRM requirement.

The DRM is really dumb, too. In order to make the DRM at all tolerable to users, they had to effectively neuter it by letting people burn the music to CD. So it doesn't actually provide any copy protection at all; it merely adds a monopoly chokepoint to the users' toolchain. Worst of all worlds: inconvenience the good guys, don't slow down the bad guys. (In other words, the typical results whenever copy protection is involved.)

Re:Bah

[Theaetetus]

And of course, iTunes music store sells their stuff in a weird format for which there are very few players.

Riiiight. Very few players. (80% marketshare for the lazy)

Some people (well, usually AC trolls) keep saying that the AAC format isn't "weird" and is standardized, but they forget that the DRM effectively makes the files nonstandard.

In your world "nonstandard" apparently means "protected". If it's not freely shareable, it's not standard. For the rest of us, standard means just that - it's a recognized, non-proprietary standard... which AAC is, even the .m4p protected format.

The fact that MS Windows users needed special software before they could take advantage of the service, and the fact that every other platform in the universe except for Windows and MacOS still can't use the service, shows just how flawed the approach is, from a "standards" perspective

Someone always has to be on the beginning end of a standard. With your attitude, no innovation would ever catch on. 10baseT? You need special hardware to move up from coax 10base2. That's not standard. USB? You need special hardware to use it instead of serial. That's not standard. And this whole 'wheel' thing - don't you need an axle first? How "unstandard".

mp3.com (and other services like them) beats the living shit out of Apple's product in this regard, has had that advantage for many years, and there is little hope that Apple will ever modernize and become competitive, thanks to their DRM requirement.

Heh. Apple - 17 million in sales. MP3.com? Less than a million. Fewer artists, worse selection, and no RIAA member artists - and before you get on your indie high-horse, there are some good artists that are [gasp] mainstream. Not everything out there is Britney. If you want us to be open-minded about indie artists, you have to likewise be open-minded about large-label artists. And it's the DRM requirement that's making Apple competetive, by allowing them to actually work with the RIAA members.

The DRM is really dumb, too. In order to make the DRM at all tolerable to users, they had to effectively neuter it by letting people burn the music to CD. So it doesn't actually provide any copy protection at all; it merely adds a monopoly chokepoint to the users' toolchain. Worst of all worlds: inconvenience the good guys, don't slow down the bad guys. (In other words, the typical results whenever copy protection is involved.)

Hmmm... I can burn an album 10 times to CD without changing the playlist. Not at all inconvenient. The "bad guys" who are burning 10,000 copies to sell on the streets? They have to change the playlist 1000 times. Very inconvenient. I don't see what your problem is.

-T

Re:Bah

[Sloppy]

Riiiight. Very few players. (80% marketshare for the lazy)

Yes, very few players. Let's see: iTunes for MacOS, and iTunes for MS Windows, and the iPod. That's three players. Can you name a fourth? There are literally hundreds of music playing software packages and hardware devices, and I have great difficultly believing that 80% of them can play this music. Even 8% would be an impossible dream, forget 80%.

In your world "nonstandard" apparently means "protected". If it's not freely shareable, it's not standard. For the rest of us, standard means just that - it's a recognized, non-proprietary standard... which AAC is, even the .m4p protected format.

Im my world, "standard" means that anyone can implement it and be interoperable, without having to get permission or trade secrets from a 3rd party. HTTP, Ogg Vorbis, OpenPGP, RS232, and having your car's accellerator pedal to the right of the brake pedal, are examples of standards.

Hmmm... I can burn an album 10 times to CD without changing the playlist. Not at all inconvenient. The "bad guys" who are burning 10,000 copies to sell on the streets? They have to change the playlist 1000 times. Very inconvenient. I don't see what your problem is.

Surely you're joking. A Bad Guy would just burn the CD once with iTunes. After that, iTunes' limitations and the concept of "playlists" would be irrelevant, because the information would be in an unprotected format. They could then make 10000 copies of the CD, or re-rip it and upload it to a p2p network. He's slightly inconvenienced by the burning step, but that's something he only goes through once per 10000 copies.

Now look at what a Good Guy goes through: suppose he has a portable player that doesn't know how to play files downloaded from iTunes (as is the case for every single portable player on the market, with the exception one single product: the iPod). He uses iTunes to burn a CDR, then rips the CDR, then encodes it into whatever format his player knows how to play. He's using up a CDR every time he wants to do this, just so he can make one transcoded (with artifacts thanks to twice-lossy encoding) copy of the song. He'll probably do it in batches (10 or so songs per CDR) so he doesn't use CDRs so fast. You don't see this as inconvenient?

I guess it might not be too bad, if you can virtualize the burn-to-CD part to not actually have to use physical media. (I haven't checked to see if this is possible.) If you can "burn" to an ISO image file on hard disk, then it'll be merely stupid, and only slightly (but still gratuitously) inconvenient.

Re:Bah

[Theaetetus]

Yes, very few players. Let's see: iTunes for MacOS, and iTunes for MS Windows, and the iPod. That's three players. Can you name a fourth? There are literally hundreds of music playing software packages and hardware devices, and I have great difficultly believing that 80% of them can play this music. Even 8% would be an impossible dream, forget 80%.

Maybe I shouldn't have provided that figure for the lazy people, since you missed the point. I'll spell it out for you: iPods make up 80% of *all* of the hardware mp3-type players out there. You're right, there are hundreds of *kinds* of players, but guess what - only Joe Shmoe runs ShmoeMP3, only Bob Dobbs runs DobbAmp v2.0, etc. Factor out all those, and you've got iTunes for Mac, iTunes for Windows, WinAmp, WMPlayer, and Real Player. 2 of those software players play the AAC files that are used on the #1 dominant hardware player, the iPod... which was the point of my link. I don't give a crap about the software, we're talking hardware, particularly since the software is all free - it's the hardware, and the money you pay into it, that lock you into a solution.

Here's another take - look at the Dell player. It can't play the open-standard MPEG-4 audio files that the #1 dominant player, with 80% of the market can play. Instead, it plays some sort of closed-standard proprietary WMA files (and the MP3 and WAV which both can play. No AAC, though).

Again, yes, 80% of the hardware players out there can play AAC files. Give it a year or two, and 19% of the rest will be able to, too, with firmware updates. That's the nice part of open-standards like MPEG-4.

Surely you're joking. A Bad Guy would just burn the CD once with iTunes. After that, iTunes' limitations and the concept of "playlists" would be irrelevant, because the information would be in an unprotected format. They could then make 10000 copies of the CD, or re-rip it and upload it to a p2p network. He's slightly inconvenienced by the burning step, but that's something he only goes through once per 10000 copies.

Re-ripping takes time. Nonetheless, yes, once the "bad guy" has the Redbook CD, he can put it into a high-speed mass-duplicator and burn away. I fail to see how this reflects poorly on AAC or iTunes.

Now look at what a Good Guy goes through: suppose he has a portable player that doesn't know how to play files downloaded from iTunes (as is the case for every single portable player on the market, with the exception one single product: the iPod).

When you say it like that, you're putting horrible spin on your argument. "Every single portable player on the market, with the exception of one single product: the iPod". Come on now. As I've said, and as I showed in that link you never clicked, 80% of the marketshare belongs to iPod. So, let's just revise and continue:

Now look at what a Good Guy goes through: suppose he has a portable player that doesn't know how to play files downloaded from iTunes (such as one of the many players that collectively make up 20% of the market, but individually only account for a few percent each).
He uses iTunes to burn a CDR, then rips the CDR, then encodes it into whatever format his player knows how to play. He's using up a CDR every time he wants to do this, just so he can make one transcoded (with artifacts thanks to twice-lossy encoding) copy of the song. He'll probably do it in batches (10 or so songs per CDR) so he doesn't use CDRs so fast. You don't see this as inconvenient?

Not terribly because...
I guess it might not be too bad, if you can virtualize the burn-to-CD part to not actually have to use physical media. (I haven't checked to see if this is possible.) If you can "burn" to an ISO image file on hard disk, then it'll be merely stupid, and only slightly (but still gratuitously) inconvenient

Yes, you can. Right within iTunes, in fact. There's a "convert to..." selector that converts the track and resaves it on the hard drive. No CDs necessary.

-T

Re:Bah

[Sloppy]

Re-ripping takes time. Nonetheless, yes, once the "bad guy" has the Redbook CD, he can put it into a high-speed mass-duplicator and burn away. I fail to see how this reflects poorly on AAC or iTunes.

...

I guess it might not be too bad, if you can virtualize the burn-to-CD part to not actually have to use physical media. (I haven't checked to see if this is possible.) If you can "burn" to an ISO image file on hard disk, then it'll be merely stupid, and only slightly (but still gratuitously) inconvenient.

Yes, you can. Right within iTunes, in fact. There's a "convert to..." selector that converts the track and resaves it on the hard drive. No CDs necessary.

This means that the protection didn't get them anything, except the software lockin as an end itself. Instead of them making a tradeoff where they said, "Well, the users will be limited to a single specific toolchain (which is bad), but at least we'll accomplish the goal of inhibiting piracy (which is good)." Instead, they decided: "Well, the users will be limited to a single specific toolchain, and this gratuitous restriction will not accomplish anything or address the RIAA's concerns."

But I see why you don't see the software lockin as being a big deal:

Maybe I shouldn't have provided that figure for the lazy people, since you missed the point. I'll spell it out for you: iPods make up 80% of *all* of the hardware mp3-type players out there. You're right, there are hundreds of *kinds* of players, but guess what - only Joe Shmoe runs ShmoeMP3, only Bob Dobbs runs DobbAmp v2.0, etc. Factor out all those, and you've got iTunes for Mac, iTunes for Windows, WinAmp, WMPlayer, and Real Player. 2 of those software players play the AAC files that are used on the #1 dominant hardware player, the iPod... which was the point of my link. I don't give a crap about the software, we're talking hardware, particularly since the software is all free - it's the hardware, and the money you pay into it, that lock you into a solution.

Tragic. And surprising, in 2003. The Microsoft years taught you nothing?

Again, yes, 80% of the hardware players out there can play AAC files. Give it a year or two, and 19% of the rest will be able to, too, with firmware updates. That's the nice part of open-standards like MPEG-4.

Open format + proprietary wrapper = proprietary format.

They'll be able to play some AAC files. But they won't be able to play the files downloaded from iTunes music store, without some sort of proprietary software (available on only two platforms -- yeah, I know what you'll say: the software is available to 80% of the market) to decrypt them before loading it onto the hardware players.

That is why iTunes for Windows was a noteworthy product. Until then, Windows users could not play music they downloaded from iTunes music store, despite the availability of AAC players. And they still can't unless they use that software.

You flame that atrocity from Dell, but I wonder: What if Microsoft made some software for Windows (and gave it away for free) that converted WMA files to MP3? Your iPod would then be able to play music that you bought from a store that sold only WMA files. Would you then consider WMA to be a tolerable standard? 80% of the market would be able to play them.

Re:Bah

[Theaetetus]

Instead, they decided: "Well, the users will be limited to a single specific toolchain, and this gratuitous restriction will not accomplish anything or address the RIAA's concerns."

Sorry, no - this *does* address the RIAA's concerns. That's why they signed on to it. That was the point, not to provide intrusive DRM for the fun of it - it was to shut the RIAA up and get them to join the project, which they never would have done if Apple was selling .m4a files (or mp3, or Vorbis, etc.) instead.

Tragic. And surprising, in 2003. The Microsoft years taught you nothing?

Oh, you're one of those... The ones that say that Apple is a monopoly because you can only use the Mac OS on Mac computers.
Anyways, the point is that .m4p is an open-standard. Anyone can get the white papers from the MPEG group and write their own codec... and in a year or so, you'll see a whole bunch supporting AAC... which leads to your next incorrect point:

Open format + proprietary wrapper = proprietary format.

Guess what? The open format is MPEG-4. MPEG-4's audio layer, using AAC, has DRM built into it. .m4a files are MPEG-4. .m4p files are also MPEG-4. There's nothing remotely proprietary about them. They have copy protection, yes, but the way that copy protection works is completely, 100% open. The key is stored on a secure server, but the standard itself is *100% open*.

That is why iTunes for Windows was a noteworthy product. Until then, Windows users could not play music they downloaded from iTunes music store, despite the availability of AAC players. And they still can't unless they use that software.

Yes, you're right. But it's still an open standard. Look, you're on Slashdot, therefore you know about the GPL, right? Open licensing, but still protection of the intellectual property. That's essentially what this is. The protection, the 'key', is what you're paying for. The format, however, is completely open, and thus if other companies either sell their own .m4p files and use their own servers for the keys or license Apple's servers to use the iTMS songs/keys, they also can use the DRM side of MPEG-4.

You flame that atrocity from Dell, but I wonder: What if Microsoft made some software for Windows (and gave it away for free) that converted WMA files to MP3? Your iPod would then be able to play music that you bought from a store that sold only WMA files. Would you then consider WMA to be a tolerable standard? 80% of the market would be able to play them.

No - because then you've got 80% of the market having to transcode rather than 20%.

-T

Re:Bah

[Sloppy]

Sorry, no - this *does* address the RIAA's concerns.

I must be really confused about what RIAA's concerns are, then. I got the impression that iTunes has a "convert to" feature that will create a CD image on the user's hard disk. (Or failing that, the user can burn to a physical CD and then rip it.) Once a pirate has an unprotected image, he can make a zillion CD copies (without having to "change playlists" or anything inconvenient like that) using his favorite CD burner software and sell them on the streets. Or he can recompress the songs (with some artifacting, I'll admit) and upload them to a p2p network. Aren't those kinds of activities that the RIAA is concerned about?

They have copy protection, yes, but the way that copy protection works is completely, 100% open. The key is stored on a secure server, but the standard itself is *100% open*.

I don't believe it. If the standard is open, then the server will have no way of knowing what its client is going to do with the plaintext (play it vs write an unprotected copy).

It's either not really open, or it doesn't work. I have a hunch that if it were open, then someone other than Apple would have written an "iTunes for Windows" type program before Apple released their version.

My Letter to the Editor of Times.com

[g_bit]

E-Music was first in this arena, and if anybody should get credit for "inventing" the $0.99 music download, it's them. Are you sure that you're not just trying to keep the hype on iTunes going by publishing this??

I bet if I looked into the corporate conglomerate that Times belongs to I'd find some interesting reasons as to why.

check the sizing...

[hakalugi]

Clothing Sizes Chart for listed items:

American
8
10
12
14
16
18

huh? 8 - 18 girls eat.

Invention?

[DisKurzion]

So what this is saying is...

If I build a mouse (click click, not squeak squeak) that just happens to be the most responsive, comfortable mouse on the market... Does that mean I invented the mouse?

BMW makes very nice cars... Does that mean they invented "very nice cars"? No, of course not.

Maybe if I had something truely original and revolutionary in the new design, I could claim to have invented that part of it. But just because you came up w/ a better version of what's already out.

Nitpicking I know, but I get peeved when people say Edison invented the light bulb.

Besides, I never considered Time to be a good source of judging ANYTHING. There's better stuff out there.

Something smells rotten at the beach...

[H8X55]

hmmm, fish skin bikini....

"What is that smell?!?"

"No, i swear it's my bathing suit!!!"

Your complaint is misdirected

[ianscot]

C'mon, you've read the other umpty-lumpty stories about iTMS; It's time to remember all those posts about how the licensing arrangements are what's keeping Apple from selling outside the US.

You think Apple doesn't want to sell you stuff because of some center-of-the-universe conceit or other? They would gladly sell you anything you wanted, anything they could convince you you wanted, if their deals with the labels allowed it. They don't -- and this isn't different from any traditional music licensing in that way.

The next company you run into that could make a bazillion dollars in a foreign market, but chooses not to because they're a bunch of arrogant Americans, that'll be a first. You post a story about that one then.

Re:Your complaint is misdirected

[citizenc]

Touche. I bet you're right -- Apple, most likely, at least THOUGHT about selling music globally, but when they saw that the record labels weren't going to allow it, they didn't exactly fight for it, did they?

My parents always emphasized effort over success -- if you expect somebody to do something, if they can't, but have at least TRIED, then they deserve at least some credit. It appears, at least to me, that Apple just said "What? You don't want to sell music to Canada? If we fight over this then it will delay the launch of iTunes? Fuck it then, we'll just deal with the United States." instead of actually making an effort to get the record labels to adapt to the global Internet community.

Hell, I LOVE iTunes. I was even ready to purchase some tracks when, low and behold, they didn't want to take my money. That's just stupid. =/

Greatest disappointment: the car that parks itself

[dajak]

The "car that parks itself" was the biggest disappointment of 2003 for me. I sometimes drive around for 40 minutes searching for a parking space near my house in Amsterdam. I would love to have a car that finds itself a space after I get home.

Turns out it only manages the 2 second parallel parking routine. Now that helps. And it "senses kerbs": I wouldn't try this on the canalside parking spaces we have a lot of here. This system isn't even a good idea for tourist rental cars.

Record Contracts + Global Distribution

[citizenc]

Ok, I see what you're saying, and you're right -- for the most part, music licencing is region-specific. That is exactly what's cheesing me off. :P

The Internet is a global community; I'm of the opinion that, if a software company is going to release a product to said community, then EVERY member of that community should be able to use it. (Or, if not, at least have a large message on the site indicating this.)

As it stands, I'd love to use iTunes, but Apple only bothered to think about the United States when it determined the licencing scheme. That is, in a word, crap. :P

Why the invisible man is the winner - or not

[sewagemaster]

Also among this year's favorites are 'fish-skin bikinis, a new love drug, the car that parks itself, and the invisible man

why would anyone need a fish-skin bikini or a new love drug when you're an invisble man? you can already see everything... all the naked flesh you want... and i'm sure you wouldnt need a love drug there... uh wait.. you're inivisble, your partner wont be able to feel *ahem* ANYTHING? ;)

Inspiration To Us All

[Anonymous Coward]

> I just bought a brand new iBook G4 [ ... ]
> If I had a job [ ... ]

You, sir, are an inspiration to us all. *8-)

-A Random AC, saving my pennies for a G4 iBook so I can take Darwin on the road with me to the ski slopes.

Re:Inspiration To Us All

[bsDaemon]

I am a university student. My mommy bought it for me.

The US

[citizenc]

This isn't me attacking the United States; however, you must certainly concede that MANY companies in the states are focused primarily on their domestic interests without seeing that there is a global community forming.

If I wanted to attack the United States, I would bring up things like.. say.. the fact that a movie star is now the govenor of California, that the president is a complete and total moron who has, in a little over a year, managed to destroy much of what the United Nations stood for, the fact that the US government continually lies to it's citizens, the fact that the goverment brainwashed the US populus with the Sept 11-Terrorist / Iraq-Saddam connection. (2/3rds of the citizens of the US think that Iraq was involved in the Sept 11 attacks. The ENTIRE REST OF THE WHOLE WORLD knows that this was false and the country was lied to.) Or the right-wing government. Or privatized health care. I can continue, but this is about iTunes and Apple.

Kneo24 vs Steve Jobs and RIAA not involved

[nullard]

using this to sell iPods isn't exactly the greatest idea, IMO

I'd trust Steve Job's business sense over yours any day unless you've managed to start a company as successful as Apple and then managed to save it from the administrative blunders of the next few CEOs.

The iPod is now Apple's highest margin product. If they sell $2000 of computer or $2000 of iPods, they make more money on the iPods. The iPod is the most popular portable mp3 player on the planet, so Apple must be doing something right with their sales strategies.

The majority of your 99 cents goes to the RIAA. I highly doubt that the RIAA trickles any of that money down to the labels who will spread it out amongst their artists.

The RIAA's cut is exactly $0.00. The money goes to the label, whose job it is to pay the artists. If an artist doesn't want to deal with a big label, they can always use CDBaby and put their music on the iTMS and get a very large cut of the profits.

Re:Kneo24 vs Steve Jobs and RIAA not involved

[Kneo24]

Yes, right now, the iPods are selling well. There will come a time when their allure fades out and people no longer buy iPods, but still buy songs from iTunes. Short term, great investment. Long term, probably not that great of an investment.

Furthermore, think who pays the RIAA's salary. Gee, isn't it those record labels you speak of? Doesn't ASCAP and the RIAA collect royalties anyway? Aren't ASCAP and the RIAA notorious for not handing the royalties down to the artist?

Attention People That Disagree with This Article

[Frank of Earth]

You will be proven wrong point by point by Apple zealots, so don't even try.

Everything runs faster, more stable on a Mac. Nothing can complete with the Mac and that's why it's the standard on every single desktop and laptop in the world.

With that said, I think Amazon's Full Text search should have won.

Of course, it's 2004 nearly and the biggest invention to speak of is software to buy music or books. I want my damn hover-skateboard and to take vacations on Mars!!!!

Re:Greed -- MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod the parent up.

Re:Humph, it's advertising allright

[bojan]

clear case of you not finding the post relevant. You realize slashdot lets you control which headlines you are interested in, so if you aren't interested in apple, then de-select it. simple.

I found this post very useful and very interesting, unlike you.

iTunes fits well into the coolest inventions of 2003, maybe you don't understand why, maybe it's an advertising conspiracy.... I wonder which it is?

Re: 2003

[anonymous loser]

Well, that didn't keep them from putting camera phones in there, which have been around much longer than the Segway, at least in Japan.

Finally a solution to those AOL CD's...

[ElGanzoLoco]

Here it is: http://www.time.com/time/2003/inventions/invshredd er.html

Not "literally" dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

The greatest inventors of our times ... were literally standing on the shoulders of giants...

Not "literally" dammit! Figuratively! It's the opposite of literally. What, you think Edison rode around on one of the New York Knicks in his lab all day?

"Literally" is a really useful word with a very specific meaning, and misuse of it like this will lead to its destruction. People like you are turning it into just another content-free emphasis word.

You want a content-free emphasis word? Try "dammit" for a change. "The greatest inventors of our times were standing on the shoulders of giants, dammit."

Coolest music ever?

[JustinLong]

I dislike iTunes immensely because it forces you to use its format... I have thousands of tracks (legally obtained, mind you, from years of collecting CD's) scanned into Windows Media Player. Converting from the iTunes format to anything else requires WORK... work that I don't want to do. So I dropped iTunes. The biggest problem with these services, too, is the "smaller" artists aren't in there. I have mostly Christian/gospel music. Try finding the complete works of Ginny Owens or such. You'd probably find the same problem with small-market secular artists, too.

Re:Coolest music ever?

[tomem]

The iTunes store sells mp4 (MPEG4) files, which is the new and higher quality open format that supercedes mp3 (MPEG = Motion Picture Experts Group). iTunes will also play mp3's. So it is backward compatible in an open "industry-standard" sense. The fact that it won't play proprietary formats such as Window's Media Player or Real Audio is a necessary cost of adopting open industry standard formats. Apple's approach is the right path away from the literal "tower of babel" of proprietary audio formats. It'll be worth the extra work to be free of the monopolistic proprietary approach you've suffered under with WMP.

Re:Coolest music ever?

[JustinLong]

Who's being monopolistic? Windows Media Player will play its format and MP3. iTunes will play its format and MP3. Unfortunately all of my stuff is in Windows Media Player format. iTunes won't SAVE downloaded files in MP3 format, so I can't play iTunes in WMP (or RealOne, as far as I know, though I don't use that format). Basically we have two siblings who won't talk to each other -- they'll only talk to a third party (i.e. mp3). I should have scanned everything in MP3... but I don't want to go back and rescan. If iTunes is going to make it hard for me to convert (by making me rescan my whole library) then I won't convert at all. Which is my point. If they raise a barrier that requires me to spend my time - which I have a very limited quantity of - to switch from one system to another, then its not worth it to me... especially when, to my ears, iTunes doesn't play music any better or worse. I'd rather buy the same tracks from Napster, for the same price, but be able to play them in WMP. (Napster has roughly the same number of the kinds of tracks that I'm looking for, anyway.)

Re:Coolest music ever?

[tomem]

Maybe this will only be a problem until mp4 replaces mp3 as the "MPEG" standard. We might expect MS and Real to eventually adopt the mp4 standard as an alternate source format, unless they are so bitter about Apple's success that they refuse to implement it. But that might be self-defeating if it truly is a better performing format.

I'm not sure why Apple tried to get "ahead of the curve" on file formats, but I assume it must have to do with the higher quality (or smaller size for given quality) of mp4s vs mp3s.

Lego Segway hurts ginger's rep

[lullabud]

not to mention that anything you can replicate with lego's would be hard to image as being the greatest invention of the year.

http://perso.freelug.org/legway/LegWay.html

Invention?

[gordgekko]

So Apple invented selling over the Internet? Wow...and here I thought it was merely a refinement of previous efforts. That reality distortion field even effects Time Magazine.

Where did their faces go?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see some makeup...

iTunes does *NOT* require an iPod!

[sakeneko]

It's a disarmingly simple concept: sell songs in digital format for less than a buck and let buyers play them whenever and wherever they like?as long as it's on an Apple iPod.

This isn't accurate. I installed Itunes a week ago on my Win2k laptop. I've downloaded about fifty songs (mostly old tunes I loved as a kid), and played them a lot. I don't own an iPod. I don't even own a Macintosh, although that will probably change when I buy my next laptop.

Further, people who have CD burners can burn purchased songs from iTunes onto an Audio CD that will play in any CD player. I *think* the software limits you to making only ten CDs for each tune, but as far as I know that's the only limit.

Apple apparently is using iTunes to sell iPods, but you definitely don't need an iPod to use and benefit from the iTunes service.

Re:iTunes does *NOT* require an iPod!

[silverbax]

I don't think iTunes limits the number of times you can burn to CD.

Re:iTunes does *NOT* require an iPod!

[CrazyTalk]

The limit is 10 CDs of the exact same playlist. This is reasonable, considering the only one people who would likely need 10+ of the exact same CDs are true pirates who are trying to sell the disks. Change the song order, add or delete a song from the playlist, and you get anothe 10 CDs to burn.

Why it really is the coolest invention

[patman600]

Read the article people. They give it credit because Jobs was able to get the music industry to agree to it. Before, they were scared of piracy, and allowed only heavily restrictive DRM. Jobs got them to agree to moderate DRM, and the service has taken off. That is why they are the coolest.

Re:Finally, music by people you've never heard of!

[Anonymous Coward]

The fucking hell they wouldn't, if they get a full $2.50 of it... WHICH THEY DO.

Jobs other companies..

[shotfeel]

Let's also not forget the other companies Jobs founded.

There's NeXT. Wether that's a plus or minus I'll leave to the /. masses to determine.

Then there's Pixar. A definite hit. Funny how many people forget he's still CEO of Pixar. Especially when they talk about things like the Rip/Mix/Burn campain indicating Jobs condones piracy.

Re:Jobs other companies..

[Ohreally_factor]

It's Rip. Mix. Burn.

not

Rip. Mix. Burn. Distribute on a P2P Network.

If the R/W/B campaign indicates piracy to you, that says more about you than it does Steve Jobs.

Re:Jobs other companies..

[bobrk]

There's NeXT. Wether that's a plus or minus I'll leave to the /. masses to determine.

Well, NeXT has pretty much become Apple and the current very successful OS based on Unix is really based on work done at NeXT, I'd say he was pretty successful. It got him his old job back, anyway.

Re:Jobs other companies..

[shotfeel]

No, it absolutely does not mean piracy to me. I was trying to make the point that others, including Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who blasted Jobs for the Rip/Mix/Burn campaign in a congressional hearing, seemed to be ignorant of the fact that Jobs is also the CEO of Pixar. Thus he has as much of a vested interest in protecting the "industry" as anyone else. If Jobs doesn't have a problem with Rip/Mix/Burn, why should anyone else?

The really ironic part is that Eisner used Monsters, Inc. as an example of a movie that was floating around the internet before it was even released. The ironic part being that Monsters, Inc. was made by Pixar.

A new love drug?

[gadders]

Does this mean rohypnol has been upgraded?

Kamen

[SB5]

If Dean Kamen's water purifier can be turned into a still then it might be something to look into. 10 gallons an hour is whole lot of moonshine.

Yeah, I resort to alcohol in seducing women, unlike these new age freaks that use roofies, GHB, and ketamine.

Camera Phones!

[theantix]

What a great 2003 invention those have been. Good thing we Americans came up with this brilliant innovation long before the industrious Japanese or the traitorous Europeans. Only with our great tradition of innovation and capitalism could our industries achieve new heights like these camera phones. Long live America!

Bikinis?

[Bitmanhome]

Who cares about the gadgets, just show me the leather bikinis.

Re:Humph, it's advertising allright

[TyrranzzX]

But you see, the very fact that if I deselect ITunes and all of a sudden they implement the listeners lisence, I'll be out of luck in finding out quickly enough.

As for the kewlest inventions, Sharaza ver 1.9 that handles multiple p2p networks is far neater. But of course, if you read the "media monopoly", and "you are being lied to" as well as a guide to brainwashing you might have an idea of why I'm right in that statement. Most P2P apps have them on their if you don't have the moolah to spend on stuff plus the author won't have a problem with you downloading it, so why don't you mosey onto sharaza and get the book and tell me again if Itunes is neater than a p2p app or, say, the segay, or a quantum cnot gate, or waste?

Java Log?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually after an initial dose of GI-irritating caffeine, it ain't a log.

Re:Humph, it's advertising allright

[bojan]

I won't correct any of your grammar or spelling mistakes, but will merely state you have more than most other things I've read in weeks.

As far as comparisons go, you are comparing two items that cannot be compared. iTunes and iTMS provide the legal means to obtain music and to listen to what you have.

The P2P networks provide a distribution channel, for content, whether it's illegal or legal is unknown, but there is a good case most of it is illegal.

We are not debating legalities or moral stances on whether it is legal or not, that is not the scope of this conversation, nor of this post.

iTunes is not a P2P application, thus your comparison is not valid. The reason why iTunes is the coolest app is simple. It brings the simplicity of a real retail store to the average computer user. That feat alone requires a lot of thought.

Not a single open source product has achieved this, and not a single P2P offering, as you insist on arguing, offers it either. iTMS is the only application/store/1-click/online offering that comes close to replacing online retail stores.

For now anyway. There might be others but iTMS is the first, and so far, the most popular.

Invisible Man, and others...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, can everyone stop ranting about iTunes long enough to look at some of the other stuff?

That Invisibility cloak looks pretty sweet. Although it actually looks too good. Some of the videos on their website look fake. It's also a long way off from completion - expected arrival date is 2008 (Why this rates in the 2003 awards is another matter).

There's also the souped-up speakers that look like they belong in the Jetson's house. Given their price tag of $16k, I'll live with my current stereo for quite a bit longer.

And the electrical ladies' jacket. Not something I'd want to mess with. Or wear for that matter. "Even when it's not in use, it crackles with tiny, visible electrical arcs that send a message". Yeah, that sends a message that you can't turn it off. Beware of hanging it on a metal coatrack.

The exoskeleton could be very useful. Imagine hard manual labor getting easier. Crank up the power on it, and you could get a lot of interesting applications. Remember the mech suits in Aliens.

The skydiver wings look like they'd be a lot of fun. And hey, most of the inventions in this list were mere toys anyways.

It's probably for the best

[Anonymous Coward]

any girls larger than size 18 aren't in those bikinis (although your mileage may vary). Seriously though, part of the prestige of high end goods is the image it conveys. If you have fat people spilling rolls of fat out of your clothing, it's not going to make your product look good; especially when you're selling $330 bikinis.

If Kate Moss, Calista Flockhart, Lara Flyn Boyle, et al get blamed for anorexia and bulimia, the other end of the spectrum should Oprah, Rosie O'Donnell, Camryn Manheim, et al receive commensurate opprobrium for the obscene obesity rates in the US? If anything, obesity is a larger (no pun intended) problem in the US.

Re:It's probably for the best

[cscx]

I was just poking fun at the fact that all the models on there weighed about 60 lbs... apparently some people took it differently ;)

Just aim right, that's all

[ianscot]

You're probably right -- after Apple'd gotten the notoriously wrongheaded industry to roll over on tons of the points that've made DRM and song-by-song purchasing such a big hurdle in the past, they decided to move on to the Windows market first before they tried to get more concessions from the labels. You weren't their top priority, or they didn't think it was a winnable fight until they'd shown the labels this model wasn't the devil, or something like that.

But American cultural arrogance and hegemony? As usual, when it looks like a conspiracy, it's more often short-sightedness. The record labels just don't get it, they're living in past models of distribution. Even when someone cajoles them around to seing a way that works, they're hanging onto their old mindset. There's your arrogance. It's more like idiocy.

Re:Mac users are FUCKING RETARDS

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on bro.

Re:Mac users are FUCKING RETARDS

[Anonymous Coward]

you kick the truth from start to finish, word up

Other 'cool' inventions

[pyrrhonist]

From the Java Log part of the article:

There's nothing like a crackling fire made from good old-fashioned firewood.
But real logs produce lots of soot and carbon dioxide, and real trees often have to be felled to make them.

Investigative journalism at it's finest.

Re:Mac users are FUCKING RETARDS

[douglasq]

Hey, it was TIME magazine that made the call. Not some geek with a collection of OS release t-shirts.

You should call the editorial staff of TIME magazine FUCKING RETARDS if you are going to open your mouth at all. Mac users are not to blame.

BTW, this Mac user's I.Q. tested at 155. What's yours?

Re:Mac users are FUCKING RETARDS

[Anonymous Coward]

You're still a fucking retard by my standards

Re:Mac users are FUCKING RETARDS

[cjfoste]

Just because some of you prefer to use lower quality software and non-intuitive buggy crap does't mean that us Mac users are retards. I know fellow mac users that could run circles in unix knowledge and/or programming knowledges and I also know mac users who know nothing beyond clicking their icon in the dock. Truth is..you can go any way you want in the Mac world, even if you just want something that 'just works'.