Weblog of a “Switcher”

This is a continuation of my sad, sad story of the demise of the boot drive on my Mac Pro and the process of recovery. This chapter finds the rather stupid Mac Pro owner looking to recover all the purchased media from Apple and iTunes.

Monday morning at around 8am, I sent off a letter to Apple asking them if they would allow me to download all my purchased media and games from iTunes since I lost all the data on the drive the media was on. I told them that I normally backup my data, but my backup drive had recently crapped out and that I was waiting for my new drive to arrive when the drive holding the media died. Not entirely the truth, but pretty close.

I did have a Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo 1TB RAID drive which contained 2 500GB SATA drives and a very small RAID controller. The drive worked great for about a year, but then started acting strange. Turns out that the fan used to cool the box seized up due to dust and stopped spinning. I was unaware of this fact until the drive completely shot craps. From what I can tell, one of the 500GB drives is dead and the other may still work. I'm testing that fact now and was ultimately the reason why I accidentally wiped the boot drive. I want to use it for a Boot Camp drive for Windows.

My new 1TB My Book Studio Edition II drive is a single 1TB SATA drive. No weird built-in RAID controller, no need for a fan to help cool the unit down. Just 1TB's of pure backup storage for Time Machine to do it's thing with. In fact, it's finished the full system backup now so I am back to being safe once again.

Anyway, I got an email from Apple at 5:30pm the same day telling me that they have decided to allow me to download the tracks I lost. Now, from what I have heard from Leo Laporte and TWiT, Apple allows it's customers 1 of these "get out of jail free" cards (as it were) per year. I shouldn't need more than just this one since I will be not only backing up to the external drive, but also backing up my purchases to DVD later. I'm not going to allow myself to lose my media again, period!

So, now I'm downloaded the thousands of files that make up all the music, movies, and games I purchased over the years. There is quite a lot. It's interesting to see that iTunes is smart about this and is not downloading tracks that I recovered off my iPod earlier. This saves a little time and confusion when it comes to dealing with duplicate files.

So, once again, Apple support shines bright and true. It sure is nice to know you can count on them when you need them. Pity other computer manufacturers can't seem to get their acts together.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, customer support, iTunes

It's been quite a while since NBC decided to pull it's content from iTunes so that it could give away the content on it's own website and Hulu.com. I'm not really sure where the logic is in that since they wanted to control the price of the content being sold on iTunes. After being pulled from iTunes, NBC makes no money at all except for the income from the ads in the content.

So, now I read that NBC has worked out a deal with Microsoft to sell it's content through Microsoft's Zune Marketplace. For how much? You may have guessed it, $1.99!

Zune and NBC sitting in a tree:
Today, Microsoft announced that its Zune Marketplace would begin selling TV programming and guess with whom Zune’s sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Right, NBC Universal. And why? Because, much like Microsoft was more than happy to give music companies a portion of the profit from every Zune sale, the Redmond crew responded to NBC’s demands for variable pricing with a sycophantic “Please sir, may I have another?”

Am I missing something here? I'm guessing that Microsoft is going to allow NBC to set the prices of their content, but it's going to take quite a bit of an increase of the price to match what they would have made if they were still on iTunes.

Well, we all know just how intelligent NBC executives are.

Update (5/8/08): So here some new info on the Microsoft-Zune/NBC deal:

Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune | The New York Times:
First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

So Microsoft tells NBC it will assume that all it's customers are theives/pirates and will check all content to see if content being played or moved to the Zune is pirated. I'm assuming that if it is, it will not allow the data to be transferred to the Zune or at least not played.

I wonder if it has to check every file including pictures. Can you imagine taking a picture of a television with the latest episode of Heroes on because you wanted to show off your television only to have Microsoft not allow you to display the image because the content is the property of someone else?

Now, pundits are saying that Microsoft is agreeing to this to appease NBC but wont actually do the work. However, if this is part of the contract, they will have to do this. Let's hope its not part of the Zune firmware. Otherwise, it's going to slow down the Zune player and make it work as well as Microsoft Media player works. Yuck!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, iTunes, Microsoft, Nbc, zune

Or at least that is what the next headline should read after seeing this one:

NBC to Apple: Build antipiracy into iTunes | Tech news blog - CNET News.com:
"'One of the big issues for NBC is piracy. We are financially harmed every day by piracy. It results in us not being able to invest as much money in the next generation of film and TV products.'"

Who the hell do they think they are kidding with a statement like that. Between revenues coming in from advertising on NBC and DVD rentals/sales, are they actually trying to say that they are going broke? Or can't afford to put yet another mindless reality show on the air? Give me a break.

First off, NBC was on iTunes and they had in place a pretty darn strong DRM protecting their IP. So, why in the hell did they pull up and leave? Not because of piracy I can tell you. No, because Apple wouldn't allow them to change the prices of their products or change the way they were being sold. So, what does NBC do? They leave.

Now that Apple is the largest retail store for music in the US, NBC says that they really want to work with Apple, but they are afraid that Apple's DRM isn't secure enough?

"They can mark up the price and make a profit or use it as a loss leader to get people in the door," Kliavkoff said. "It's really difficult for us to work with any distribution partner who says 'Here's the wholesale price and the retail price,' especially when the price doesn't reflect the full value of the product."

"The music industry guys would have something to say about how the pricing has affected their product over the last few years," he added.

Ahh, so the problem here isn't the DRM issue or piracy. It's the lack of control over the revenue stream if they were to put their IP's back on iTunes. NBC wants to be in control of setting pricing, they don't want Apple to have that control.

So they are blaming Apple's pricing on the poor net profits of their business and the music business on Apple controlling the price. Yet record companies are more than willing to sell their product on Amazon.com for even less that what Apple sells music for and Amazon.com is, what, 3rd, 4th now?

These guys are just going to keep screwing themselves over and over again until they just don't have a business anymore. They want to charge even more for "Survivor" and screw over every person involved in the production of true quality shows so that they can keep as much money as possible for themselves.

Will this ever end positively?

(Via news.com.)

written by Dave M. \\ tags: antipiracy, Apple, iTunes, Nbc, piracy

At first read, Adobe had me thinking that they had decided to treat Macintosh as second class citizens for some strange reason. I recently read that Adobe was going to release it's next version of Creative Suite including Photoshop in 64-bit and for Windows only.

I was shocked since it seemed to me that the majority of sales for Creative Suite comes from the Macintosh side. I really was left scratching my head at such move.
Then I read this short little blurb from John Gruber's Daring Fireball and found out why.

What happened? In short, Apple cancelled 64-bit Carbon:

As we wrapped up Photoshop CS3, our plan was to ship 64-bit versions of the next version of Photoshop for both Mac and Windows. On the Mac Photoshop (like the rest of the Creative Suite, not to mention applications like Apple’s Final Cut Pro and iTunes) relies on Apple’s Carbon technology. Apple’s OS team was busy enabling a 64-bit version of Carbon, a prerequisite for letting Carbon-based apps run 64-bit-native.

At the WWDC show last June, however, Adobe and other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon. This means that we’ll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa.

It’s a great post; Nack does a good job dispelling any potential notion that this is a sign that Adobe’s commitment to the Mac is any way flagging.

It's a shame that Photoshop and other Creative Suite products are written in Carbon for the Mac. It probably got them into OS X very quickly some 7 years back, but not it's biting them.

On the other hand, you really can't blame them. Apple still has quite a few products in Carbon including iTunes and Finder. If Apple expects others to switch to Cocoa, they really should shine a light on the path and make the move themselves. With the news that Apple has dropped 64-bit Carbon, I suspect that Apple will be making that move soon for iTunes, Finder and the rest of the software that is still Carbon.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Adobe Creative Suite, Blurb, Carbon Technology, Class Citizens, Cocoa, Daring Fireball, Final Cut, Good Job, iTunes, John Gruber, Light On The Path, Lightroom, Macintosh Side, Nack, Os X, Plug Ins, Prerequisite, Scare, Strange Reason, Wwdc

One thing I like to do with my iTunes playlists, smart or normal, is to adjust which items are to be played in what order. Most the time, I'm happy with the order that appears when the items are downloaded. However, sometimes, I want to listen to a specific podcast first, or I might want to put a podcast off till the end.

When I attempted to adjust the order by dragging an item in the playlist, I found that my Video Podcasts playlist wouldn't let me do this, my Audio Podcasts let me adjust the order just fine.

Now this baffled me. There was one other time I wasn't able to adjust the order of items in a smart playlist. At that time, I just assumed I wasn't able to adjust the item order in smart playlists back then so I forgot about it. Fast forward to now. I have been adjusting the order of my Audio Playlist without any problems, but I didn't think about the fact that it was a smart playlist.

As you can see, there is a little insert bar that appears when adjusting the order of items in a playlist works.

So I attempted to adjust the order in my Video Podcasts playlist and found it wasn't working.

Here, you can see that no insertion bar appears when dragging an item around in the list.

This made me scratch my head since both are smart playlists. Now, I know I can, in fact, adjust the order in a smart playlist since the Audio Podcasts playlist was working perfectly. I know that the Video Podcasts playlist should work, so what is the difference between the two playlists that made one work and the other not.

I checked the settings in both smart playlist and saw that other than what they are set to display, the rest of the setting are the same. I really couldn't think of anything else that could cause this so I wound up giving up for a few days.

Today, it started bugging me again, so I took a look again. This time I notices something that I hadn't before. The Video Podcasts playlist has a "Name" sort order and the Audio Podcast playlist is sorted by the number column. "Bing" (lightbulb turning on over head) It hits me that if the playlist is not sorted by the first number column, it must not allow that playlist to have it's order changed. I changed the sorting of the playlist to the first column and "presto", I am now able to adjust the playlist order.

So it seems that the only way you can adjust the playlist order of a smart playlist is if it's sorted by the first column (what ever that column is called).

I figured that if I had problems figuring this out, there are probably others out there that are having similar problems and would want to know what the solution is.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: custom order, Few Days, Insertion, iTunes, Playlist, Playlists, smart playlist, Smart Tag, Smart Tags, sort order, Video Podcasts

Secrets is a Leopard Preference Pane that allows it's users to modify settings in Leopard that before were only accessible from Terminal.app. This allows the "less savvy" population of computer users to customize their Leopard installations as a pro might.

It all starts with downloading and installing the Preference Pane from http://secrets.textdriven.com/. Just unzip the downloaded file and double click on the "Secrets.prefPane" file. Leopard knows that this is a Preference Pane and will copy it to the correct location. OS X is just awesome that way.

It will then open the Preference Pane which looks like this:

As you can see from the screenshot, there are quite a few "Secrets" to choose from. The light blue (iTunes like pane) on the left side of the window shows all the programs that have "Secrets" to choose from. There are also two special items. "Top Secrets" shows the most popular secrets and "All Secrets" which will show all the secrets that can be chosen.

When you find an item you which to change, clicking on it will reveal a bit more information about the secret:

You can then click on the User Interface control that changes the secret. In the above example, that would be the checkbox. Depending on what the secret changes, you might be prompted to quit the application that will be effected. This appears at the bottom of the Preference Pane next to the "Revert" button.

A really nice touch to this Preference Pane is the "Update Secrets" button. Clicking this button will tell Secrets to go out to the server that holds the database of all the secrets and see if there is a need to update the database stored on your computer. It also checks to see if the Preference Pane needs to be updated as well. The "?" (Question Mark) button takes you to the Google Code page where the Secrets Project is being maintained. The "Revert" button will restore the secret setting back to it's default value and the "More Info ->" button takes you to the database entry were the selected secret is stored on the server's database.

I personally am not all afraid of using Terminal.app to make these kinds of changes. This can be a problem since I don't always remember that I have made them and then don't know how to set them back to their default value. The Secrets Preference Pane makes this a no-brainer.

If you like the idea of personalizing your installation of Leopard, hope over to their website and give it a try. Best of all, it's free.

Update (5/8/08): It looks like development on the Secrets Preference Pane has either stopped or really slowed down. I talk about it here along with a really good replacement program and a possible reason for the lack of development here: MacPilot: New Version Kills Secrets Preference Pane Utility

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Checkbox, Computer Checks, Computer Users, Correct Location, Customize, Database, Database Entry, Double Click, Downloaded File, Google, Info Button, Interface Control, iTunes, Leopard, Os X, Population, Preference, Preference Pane, Question Mark Button, Screenshot, Secrets, Top Secrets, Unzip File, User Interface

Seems that now iLounge is playing the sensational news headline game. I just caught an article there with the headline: Report: Amazon now #2 digital music retailer

That caught my attention since it was just a few weeks ago that I heard that Apple was the second largest music retailer in the world.

So what happened? Did Amazon sneak past Apple as #2? Well, it doesn't really look to be true. From the article quoted by the iLounge story:

Amazon takes on Apple with copy-protection-free music
Amazon's (AMZN) MP3 store — which sells only songs without copy protection — has quietly become No. 2 in digital sales since opening nearly six months ago, say the four major labels. That's even though Apple (AAPL) dominates digital music with its iTunes Store (the second-largest music retailer in the world, after Wal-Mart) (WMT) and its hugely popular iPod.

Maybe what is being said here is that Amazon is now #2 in DRM-Free digital music sales.

Apple now has 2 million songs from EMI and independent labels available without DRM, out of its 6 million-song catalog. Amazon offers 4.5 million DRM-free songs.

If that is the case, who is #1 in DRM-Free digital music sales? Wouldn't you think we would have heard of them?

Also, doesn't Mr. Starrett know what a paragraph is? Now, I am going to state up front that I am clearly not a good writer. I'm sure a true writer or journalist would go to town over my lack of grammar and style. However, I would think that an article with 216 words would have at least 2 paragraphs. Hmm. Ah well.

Could someone please clear this story up for me. I would hate to look bad again with this claim, but from where I sit, it sure looks like an overly sensational headline to me.

Update (7:40pm): So, during my regular blog reading, I came across another article on this topic from AppleInsider. They state:

Amazon MP3 takes number two spot behind iTunes

Although it's been an option only since September, Amazon MP3 is now in second place behind iTunes in the US for downloadable music sales, USA Today says.

No independent explanation for the jump is available, though Amazon digital music chief Pete Baltaxe points to a larger DRM-free library of 4.5 million songs that allows all its music to work with any portable player, including iPods.

"They appreciate that everything is DRM-free and so comprehensive," Baltaxe claims.

In contrast, Apple has only 2 million unrestricted songs and only obtains major-label music from EMI versus additional support from Sony BMG, Universal and Warner at Amazon.

OK, so now it's clear that iTunes is the number one store for "downloadable music". Not DRM-Free based. So, this makes the iLounge article a bit inaccurate. iLounge's headline should read: Report: Amazon now #2 digital music retailer behind iTunes.

Now I realize that this might make the headline redundant, but considering the article to follow isn't clear at all that the #1 digital music retailer is iTunes, it seems necessary. The way the article reads, they make it sound like iTunes is #3 which would beg the question as to who #1 is.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Aapl, Amazon, Amzn, Copy Protection, Digital Music Retailer, Digital Music Sales, Free Digital Music, Free Songs, Headline Game, Independent Labels, iTunes, Largest Music, Misleading Headline, Mp3 Store, News Headline, Sensational Headline, Song Catalog, True Writer, Wal Mart, Wal Mart Wmt

For quite some time now I have not been able to upgrade my 5th Gen iPod to the latest version of the firmware (1.2.3). I have tried several times to upgrade, but kept getting the following error:

So today, Apple released version 1.3 of the firmware. So I thought maybe now that the software has been updated again, I'll be able to upgrade my iPod. I tried and got the same error.

So, I figured that the problem wasn't the firmware, but something on my computer. So, once again, I headed over to the discussion section of Apple's website and started searching for my error message.

I came across a message that mentioned that he "Enabled disk mode" in the iPod Options section of iTunes. Hmmm, I have Disk mode turned off, I wonder if that is the cause... So I enabled disk mode myself and tried again.

Low and behold, the update worked. So apparently, it's necessary to set your iPod to Disk Mode in order to upgrade it to a newer version of it's firmware. Something that I don't believe I have seen written down anywhere.

I posted this for the same reason as the previous post, so that I'll be able to remember it next time I have to update my iPod.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Apple 1, Discussion Section, Disk Mode, Error Message, Firmware, Hmmm, iPod, iTunes, Options Section, Quite Some Time, Reason, Several Times

Don't get me wrong here, I am really excited that Apple has worked out a deal to allow us to rent movies. I have already used it and am pretty much pleased with it. I'll explain my disappointment in a little bit...

Renting movies from Apple is a real boon for me. I've tried Netflix and Blockbuster's DVD rental via snail-mail and have been nothing but angered with both. After less than a month with each service, I started getting movies that were on DVD's that looked like they had sandpaper rubbed on them. They were completely unreadable. I would return the DVD and let them know that the disc was destroyed. However, the next disc they would send was either just as bad or they had simply sent me the save DVD.

For the longest time, I have resorted to BitTorrent for a way to "rent" movies. I would watch them, then delete them off the computer. This worked pretty well for me, but takes a long time to download and there is an element of danger with using BitTorrent to "rent" movies.

I do buy movies and television shows on DVD. I own all 10 seasons of Stargate: SG1 and the first 3 seasons of Stargate Atlantis (we are currently on season 4). I own over 100 movie DVD's. I have even bought a few movies from Apple. I don't do this often though since you don't get any of the extra's that are on the DVD's when buying from Apple. If I don't care about any of the DVD extra's, I'll buy from iTunes.

Now that Apple is renting movies, I waited till the first movie I wanted to rent was available, The Simpson's Movie, and tagged it for rental. I was pleased to see it start downloading immediately. I was surprised to find that I couldn't move/copy the downloaded rented movie to a different Mac. I'll have to make sure that when I rent movies, that I use my MacBook so that it's on the computer that is attached to my home entertainment system. Otherwise, I won't be able to watch it in comfort.

My "disappointment" came when I was ready to start watching it. I wasn't able to use Front Row to watch the movie. I am able to watch movies I have purchased via Front Row, movies I have "rented" via BitTorrent via Front Row and Perian. Yet, I'm not able to watch rented movies via Front Row. Why is this Apple? What could possibly be done that would break your precious DRM with Front Row?

Also, when playing the movie I rented, I was rewarded with a full screen display that not only had black bars on top and bottom of the video, but on the left and right! For some reason, the full screen experience for the movie was "less" than full screen. Fortunately, my Sharp Aquos HD television has the ability to "zoom" a picture so that I didn't have any black bars. It clipped a few pixels around the image, but was fine for watching the movie. Doing so made the movie a bit pixelated, but I guess that's expected considering the "full screen" they chose to give me.

Oh, I know. They would be competing with TV! Really? TV is $229, a MacBook is $1099 and a MacMini is $599. How could that be competing with TV? Seriously Apple, let us use Front Row with Movie Rentals. Why else would you have opened up Front Row on all Macintosh computers in Leopard if not so that we can get the full multimedia experience with Front Row?

Another disappointment is the lack of ability to rent TV Shows. If I am going to pay over $30 for the ability to watch a season of a TV show, I'm going to just go out and buy the DVD box set. I want to be able to watch the series for a fairly minimal cost. Say $4-$5 for 4-5 episodes. Pretty much a DVD's worth of episodes. I hope they are just testing the waters with movie rentals and will be adding TV shows later.

Now, another possible disappointment is the lack of HD quality movies using iTunes instead of TV. Now, its possible that there just isn't any HD quality movies out yet since the TV software update isn't out yet. I do hope that this is the case. My MacBook is more than capable of displaying 1920x1080 interlaced (1080i), so why not allow me to watch HD content? Now the "Steve" told us that HD content is coming. So I can only hope that it's coming to all rentals and not just TV rentals.

Overall, I'm still pumped about the idea of renting movies via my Macintosh. I just wish they would do a better job of it. If they don't deal with some of these issues soon, I'll have to go back to the "best" way to do it. Via BitTorrent. It's slow, but it works and gives me true HD quality.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Bittorrent, Blockbuster, Boon, Disappointment, Element, Few Movies, Home Entertainment System, iTunes, Little Bit, Long Time, Longest Time, Mac, Macbook, Netflix, Sandpaper, Sg1, Snail Mail, Stargate Atlantis, Television Shows On Dvd

I don't usually write about new products from Apple, but the new Time Capsule just really impresses me.

The idea of having a wireless router that has up to a 1TB HDD in it for backups is just really great. I have a bunch of computers on my home network and have separate external HDD's for backing them up. Plus, noting for our notebooks. Having a wireless device that will allow me to backup devices without having to plug in an external drive is just great.

Now, I know there are other options out there, but I haven't seen one for the price points that Apple is selling Time Capsule for. $499 for 1TB's of HDD space is great. That's how much I spent for an external HDD I have connected to my Mac Pro now and that is just an external HDD
This was one of the biggest new items that came out of Steve Jobs' Keynote speech at Macworld yesterday. The other thing that really made me happy was movie rentals including HD movie rental! When the TV first came out, the idea of hooking the thing up to an HD television and not having any kind of HD content to use with it was just ridiculous! Finally, the TV has HD content that it can display from iTunes via rental. This is going to make the TV a device worth considering!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: 1tb Hdd, Apple, Backup Devices, External Hdd, Hd Television, iTunes, Macworld, New Time, Notebooks, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs Keynote Speech, Time Capsule, Wireless Router