Apple announced today that it has sold 3 billion songs from the iTunes Store, another impressive milestone for an arm of the company the primary purpose of which is to encourage sales of the far more profitable Pod. I could have purchased the 3 billionth song myself; I discovered to my absolute delight the other day that the iTunes Store carries a significant chunk of the material by a band legendary in the Baltimore area -- Crack the Sky. The band never caught on nationally (a great injustice) but WIYY 98 Rock played enough Crack to make the group very popular in the Land of Pleasant Living.

Albums available on iTunes include all the great early stuff, including the debut album (which Rolling Stone declared Album of the Year in 1975), Animal Notes and White Music. You can get the debut album and White Music as a combo download for a mere $9.99, a terrific deal.

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

How many songs do you have in your iTunes library? 1,000? 2,000? 5,000 or more? If you’re one of those people that never has enough music in his or her collection, then today’s software pick, The Filter, is for you. The Filter is a utility that works with iTunes and, ideally, a broadband Internet connection to add a few new wrinkles to music listening on your Mac.

Created by the U.K.-based company called Exabre Limited with backing from such notables as Peter Gabriel, The Filter is a free download for both Windows and Mac (which is Universal Binary, good for both PowerPC and Intel Macs).

It does several cool things with your music collection:

Automatically generated playlists: If you select several songs from your collection (Tip: hold down the Apple key while you click on songs with your mouse), The Filter will generate a playlist of similar songs (a jog wheel at the bottom of the window lets you control the number of songs selected). You can tell The Filter to base the playlist on the songs, the artists or the genre. The new playlist appears under your Playlist header in iTunes like any other, and will transfer to your iPod the next time you sync it with your Mac. You can have endless fun selecting odd combinations of songs just to see what the software comes up with. Picking three alt rock songs from the 80s generates a list with other alt rock songs from the 80s. Mixing up musical genres generally results in schizophrenic playlists, but the bizarre juxtapositions can put a fresh perspective on old songs. It’s a bit like the iPod’s Shuffle function, but with more control. You can use The Filter's window at the bottom of your screen to control the currently selected playlist, pausing, playing or skipping songs without going back into iTunes. The Filter even uses iTunes’ album cover art.

Discovering new music: Clicking on "Discover Music" in the sidebar of The Filter’s window brings up a list of recommendations of other music you might like. Double-clicking on one of the songs in the list directs you to the iTunes Store page where you can preview and buy it, if you like. Better yet, if you repeat the process you’ll get a slightly different list of recommendations. This feature could be dangerous to your wallet.

Artist info: My favorite feature is the Artist and Album Information option, also selected from the sidebar in The Filter's window. In addition to showing the basic stuff -- the name of the song, artist and album along with its cover art -- this feature uses your Internet connection to fetch a series of info tidbits about that artist and album from The Filter Web site. It reminds me of that old VH-1 show, Pop-Up Video, except the sort of nuggets The Filter displays are more in-depth. It reads like a hip encyclopedia seasoned with a smidgen of trivia. If you have a lot of artists in your collection, expect to waste countless hours on this, particularly since it provides distinct data for each album, rather than just a generic set of entries for each artist.

The Web connection: If you go to The Filter Web site and create an account, the software on your Mac connects with the Web site and delivers a heavier dose of the same features, plus a few new ones. When you go to the My Filter page, you’ll see an assortment of elements relating to the artist you’re listening to. To the left is a list of recommended artists, with links to both the iTunes Store and Amazon. In the center is information and photos, including a bio of the artist and an album review. Below that is a window showing more albums by that artist. Clicking on an album changes the album review information in the section above. To the left is a “Wishlist” where you can store lists of music you plan to buy, and a Playlist widget, which can store Playlists that The Filter creates (a button on the control strip widget transmits Playlists to the Web site). Below that is a list of the top five You Tube videos (rated by popularity) featuring the selected artist. Awesome!

Caveats: All that said, The Filter has a few drawbacks. The worst for me is that it’s a CPU hog, slowing down my entire system. This could partly be due to the advanced age of my 867 MHz G4 tower, but still. I also encountered some quirky behavior; for instance, it periodically failed to bring up an iTunes Store page. Trying again sometimes rectified the issue, but on a few occasions I had to restart the program to get that feature to work again. To be fair, The Filter is a free and in many ways experimental piece of software, so perfection cannot be expected. It is definitely worth checking out.

UPDATE: Just my luck... they updated this software this morning, so the interface is a bit different. I've revised a few sentences in my review to reflect the changes and updated the screen shot as well.

UPDATE 2: Eoin Norris, a member of Exabre's Mac team, e-mailed me today to thank me for the review and noted that some of my problems coulkd have been related to my old graphics card: "

We have added some cool and snazzy features ( unfortunately I didn't notice that the Now Playing Core Image image manipulations did not work on lower level cards until just before release : we will fix that this week).... Also you can switch between the new version and the older (smaller) player by clicking the green maximise button."

Posted by David Zeiler at 5:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

For the past several years, the tech world’s obsession with the iPod and now the iPhone has obscured a much more remarkable aspect of Apple’s ongoing success: the revival of its Macintosh business. After losing market share to PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system for most of the 1990s, the introduction of the first iMac in 1998 stopped the bleeding, and the past year has shown a powerful Mac resurgence. In Apple’s third quarter earnings report released yesterday, sales of Macs reached 1.76 million units, an all-time high that broke the previous record by 150,000 units. That’s a nifty 33 percent year-over-year increase. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer cited IDC data during yesterday’s conference call that indicated Mac sales are growing four times faster than Windows PC sales in the United States, and two times faster than PC sales globally. That means the Mac is slowly but surely gaining market share.

Looking at Mac sales from just a few years ago you can see how far the Mac has come. In the third quarter of 2002, Apple sold 808,000 Macs, and that was a 2 percent drop year over year. In 2003, Mac sales fell 5 percent year over year to 771,000, less than half the number of Macs sold in the most recent quarter. But the tide turned in 2004: Apple sold 876,000 in the third quarter that year, a 14 percent gain, and 1.18 million in 2005, a 35 percent increase.

The 33 percent increase in year-over-year units sold in Q3 is consistent with the gains of the previous three quarters: a 36 percent increase in Q2 of 2007, a 28 percent increase in Q1 and a 30 percent increase in Q4 of 2006. Note these robust numbers coincide roughly with the Mac’s transition to Intel processors, which began in June 2006.

The switch to Intel is among several factors that have boosted the Mac’s sales numbers. Another is the so-called iPod “halo effect,” the notion that some Windows users who bought iPods liked them so much they replaced their PC with a Mac. Another is the overwhelmingly positive image Apple has cultivated as a hip, innovative company, and its increased visibility in recent years thanks to the iPod, its ever-growing chain of retail stores and its clever TV ads. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is the cumulative effect of PC users struggling for years with such Windows plagues as viruses and spyware. Many such people, fed up with their troublesome PCs, have begun looking to replace them with Macs.

According to Oppenheimer, half of those who bought Macs from the Apple retail stores in the June quarter were “new to the Mac,” a stat Apple trots out almost every quarter. There must be something to it; all these new Mac users are starting to show up in the Mac’s market share numbers. A month ago data from research firm NPD indicated that Apple’s share of computer sales in brick-and-mortar stores rose to 13 percent in May from 11.6 percent in April. Apple’s laptop sales have been particularly strong: while the overall market for laptops grew by 40 percent in May, NPD’s data showed Apple portables with growth of 65 percent.

Apple’s market share in the United States, which in 2004 was as low as 3.2 percent, rebounded to 5.6 percent according to data released by research firm IDC last week, putting Apple into a statistical tie for third place with Gateway. All the data I’ve seen points to continued growth for the Mac. For the first time in a very long time, the Mac Nation can think about a future where their platform once again has double-digit market share.

Part of the genius of Apple’s overall strategy is that each of its businesses helps nurture the others. The iTunes Store promotes the sale of iPods. The sale of iPods enhances the sale of Macs, as will the sale of iPhones. The retail stores provide an environment for people to check out all of Apple’s offerings without distraction from competitors’ products. Because the company’s products are designed to work seamlessly together, the more Apple stuff you have, the better the user experience. It’s all so devilishly clever. Meanwhile, Apple is dreaming up still more must-have gizmos to populate its digital ecosphere and jack up its bottom line.

It’s a great time to be a Mac user, isn’t it?

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Apple posted its best June quarter in company history, with virtually every product line contributing to a net quarterly profit of $818 million, yet many new stories couldn’t resist focusing on the iPhone. Because it debuted on the evening of June 29, the iPhone had only 30 hours of sales to contribute to Apple’s third quarter. But as the Paris Hilton of consumer electronics, it gets more than its share of media attention.

After AT&T lowered expectations with the announcement that it had activated only 146,000 iPhones in the product’s first two days, everyone was eager for Apple’s number. As it happened, Apple says it sold 270,000 iPhones, much higher than AT&T’s number but far short of the outlandish analyst estimates of 500,000 and up. A few stories even referred to the number as “disappointing.” (Some of you may be wondering where you last saw that 270,000 figure; I made that guesstimate in my entry on Tuesday.)

Apple itself never announced a goal for the first weekend, although it has repeated often a goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. The company expects to sell 1 million iPhones within the current quarter. That it failed to meet the sky-high expectations of a few feverish analysts is not cause for concern. As Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer pointed out during the earnings conference call yesterday, it took all of seven quarters for Apple to sell 1 million iPods.

Analyst consternation notwithstanding, the iPhone has enjoyed a resoundingly successful launch. Oppenheimer said Apple plans to start rolling out the iPhone in Europe before the end of this year and in Asia before the end of 2008. Apple officials predictably deflected all inquiries regarding plans for future iPhones, but Oppenheimer did say the company is committed to the product as a “third business” to compliment its Mac and iPod segments. If you want still another hint of Apple’s grand intentions, try this teaser Steve Jobs quote from the press release: “Our new product pipeline is very strong.” He could be talking about Macs and iPods, but that remark is the back end of a longer quote lauding the initial success of the iPhone. Combine the iPhone’s spread onto other continents with the inevitable introduction of models at lower price points, and you’ll get some idea of this product’s tremendous growth potential.

It will take a while, though, for the iPhone to make a dent in Apple’s earnings because the company plans to use subscription-like accounting to spread the revenue from each sale over 24 months. Consider this, however: if you could toss the 730,000 iPhones the company expects to sell by September 30 into its fourth quarter earnings, it would probably comprise about 7 percent of the total. For comparison’s sake, the iPod accounted for less than 12.5 percent of Apple’s third quarter revenue in 2004 – more than two and a half years after its introduction. Just one quarter later the iPod accounted for nearly 23 percent of revenue, and in the most recent quarter, 29 percent. How much do you think the iPhone will contribute to Apple’s bottom line in 2009?

Investors understandably have been preoccupied with potential iPhone profit all year, boosting Apple’s shares almost 50 percent. But the iPhone isn’t the only horse in Apple’s stable: the company’s oldest and still most lucrative business, its Macintosh computers, has been growing dramatically and shows no sign of slowing down. I’ll discuss that further in another post later today...

Posted by David Zeiler at 6:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Apple’s stock dipped nearly 5 percent early this morning on news from AT&T that it activated only 146,000 iPhones during the last two days of the quarter. The number fell short of Wall Street analysts’ estimate of 200,000 iPhones sold in the first two days. If these folks spent a little more time considering the matter, they might realize that the iPhone’s sales numbers probably are a lot closer to 200,000 than 146,000.

Let’s recall, first of all, that the iPhone did not go on sale Friday, June 29 until 6 p.m. local time in each U.S. time zone. So the first two days of sales was more like a day and a half, if that. Second, and much more importantly, we’re talking about iPhone activations here, not actual sales. Have people already forgotten the uproar over AT&T’s slow activation of the iPhones in the first few days? For many iPhone buyers the process took just minutes, but large numbers could not get their iPhones activated for hours or even days. And remember, too, that people who bought on Friday night didn’t even have a full day to get activated.

A poll on the Gizmodo Web site taken the week after the iPhone went on sale showed 33 percent of the respondents still not activated with 13 percent saying activation took “a day or two.” While Web polls by nature are unscientific, they frequently will give you a ballpark idea of what’s going on. If 46 percent of iPhone buyers could not get activated until Sunday or later, that would mean Apple and AT&T actually sold something like 270,000 iPhones. The actual percentage probably is significantly lower, but if just 25 percent of the activations were delayed past the first two days, that would bring us right back to the original estimate of 200,000 iPhones sold.

Apple announces its quarterly earnings tomorrow (Wednesday) after the market close, which will include iPhone sales figures for the last two days of the company’s third quarter. That should clarify things (I hope).

Posted by David Zeiler at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

What if you turned on your Mac and nothing happened? This very scenario greeted me when I returned from vacation over the weekend. I pressed my PowerMac G4’s power button, which would glow only so long as I kept pressing it, but other than that, nothing. No startup chime, no whirring fans, no hard drive noises. Not good.

I did the standard check of the power cables. The UPS (uninterruptible power supply, a battery and surge control unit that protects your computer gear from power surges while supplying several minutes of juice during an outage so you can finish and save open documents) was fully charged and providing power to several other devices. My fear was that the power supply inside the Mac had died. I’m tech-savvy enough to replace it, but dreaded the prospect nonetheless.

Then it occurred to me that I should first check to see if something else – something easier to fix – could be causing the problem. And that brings us to this morning’s featured item: Apple’s online support documentation. Yes, I know it’s not a piece of software per se, but it is free and loaded with vital information on every Apple product, from the new iPhone to the Classic Mac operating system (a.k.a. OS 9). And it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion, including this weekend.

Fortunately I could use my MacBook to access the Internet and search Apple’s support area. Within minutes I found the document describing my problem: “My computer won’t turn on” and followed a link to a page targeted to the PowerMac series of machines. As it happened, there was indeed a possible, relatively painless way to revive my Mac. Pushing a tiny button inside the machine on the motherboard called the SMU (system management unit) would reset it and, with luck, bring my G4 back to life. I unplugged all the cables and popped the machine open (Note: Apple has different methods for resetting the SMU on Mac models that are harder to get into, such as its laptops). I pressed the SMU button, plugged everything back in and – voila! Success.

The alternative to this quick and easy fix would have been calling Apple tech support (which would have cost me) or taking the Mac into an Apple Store (which would have cost me time as well as money).

Though I need it rarely, Apple’s support site almost always has the answers I’m seeking. When it doesn’t because the problem either is too new or unusual to appear in the knowledge base, I turn to a related resource: Apple’s discussion boards, where users can post their problems and seek help from fellow users or Apple’s forum moderators.

Last summer I had a daunting problem with my then-new MacBook, and could find nothing on Apple’s support site. Sporadically the MacBook would boot into a blank grey screen. Resetting the PRAM fixed it temporarily, but the problem kept recurring and was very annoying. Browsing through Apple’s MacBook forum, I soon found several posts offering solutions. All one need do was reset the display preferences. That problem, caused by the OS X 10.4.7 update, was resolved in the 10.4.8 update. It got its own article in the knowledge base shortly afterward.

One last thought: while I commend Apple for its comprehensive online support documentation and active forums, the company does have a reputation for periodically pulling posts that discuss problems Apple finds embarrassing. That shouldn’t happen. In almost every case the whitewashed problem becomes a widely known issue that Apple inevitably must deal with. Instead of using its control of the discussion boards to blot out posts concerning potentially damaging problems, Apple should view them as an early warning system to help it get out in front of these issues so it can start to rectify them before the customer backlash gets out of control. For a company that routinely receives high marks for its customer service, you’d think this wouldn’t be such a tough concept. Nobody’s perfect, I suppose.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

A giant Mac-eating worm is in the loose! Run for your lives!

The worm’s creator, an anonymous security researcher, posted a statement Sunday night that he had made a worm for the Mac OS X operating system that exploits a vulnerability in its Bonjour code. Bonjour is Apple’s name for a technology that allows devices on a network to “discover” each other automatically, with no effort on the user’s part. The anonymous researcher told Computerworld that his worm is “a fully weaponised exploit and fully automated.” He also says he will notify Apple of the code vulnerability “eventually.”

Over the past few days the usual accusations and denials have been tossed about on various tech Web sites. Those gloating are saying this proves the Mac is just as insecure as Windows (a serious accusation, considering the tens of thousands viruses and worms that can infect a Windows PC), Mac users are too smug about their invulnerability, Apple is terrible at patching holes in its code. The Mac defenders think the anonymous hacker is full of baloney, pointing out that no OS X malware has ever spread in the wild to infect home users.

We’ve seen this happen every time some hacker announces a Mac OS X vulnerability. Despite all the heated rhetoric, some truth dwells in what both sides say.

• Every OS has holes -- Because of the complexity of modern operating systems and all the services they must provide, such as networking and multimedia capabilities, exploitable holes in code are unavoidable. Mac OS X has them, too.

• Mac users are exploit-free -- This is true, but the debate has always focused on why. Some argue the Mac OS is more secure than Windows because its default settings are more secure – ports that are closed, user passwords required for software installations (although Vista is better in this regard than XP was). Some say OS X has had no significant malware attacks because of its relatively small market share – still only about 5 percent. Some claim OS X is more resistant to attack because of its Unix code base, which has been fine-tuned over decades of use. Over the years, I’ve come to think the Mac’s excellent safety record is combination of all three.

• Apple does patch holes -- It may not always act as quickly as it should, but Apple does issue periodic security fixes that users can download automatically via OS X’s Software Update feature. In situations like the current one, Apple always reiterates its commitment to security. However, I’ve read a lot of posts in tech forums that strongly disagree. I’m not geeky enough to analyze code vulnerabilities so I can’t confirm who’s right, but as a Mac user it appears that Apple makes a good faith effort to protect its customers.

Though Mac OS X has remained virus-free since it was introduced in March 2001 – that’s six years, my friends –a widespread exploit is not impossible. The Mac’s market share has been growing for the past year or so, particularly among home users. If the Mac achieves penetration of the home user market in the 10 to 15 percent range (some claim it already has), it will weaken the “security through obscurity” leg of protection. That means OS X’s Unix foundation and Apple’s built-in security will need to stand up to more direct attacks as the Mac grows in popularity.

Apple’s adoption of Intel chips could also make Macs more vulnerable to malware (there are some chip-specific exploits), but the greater danger will come from users running Windows (via Bootcamp) on their Intel-based Macs. Windows on a Mac is just as insecure as Windows on a regular PC.

At some point Mac OS X could require virus protection software as does Windows, but we'll need to see a tangible threat or threats (Macs getting infected in large numbers by a worm or virus) before that happens.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

You may see fewer than usual blog entries this week because I’m vacationing in Ocean City, Md. I couldn’t deprive you of this regular feature, however, so I’m going to tell you about a free utility I often use while vacationing – iStumbler.

I take my MacBook with me whenever I travel. Although I might use it for work (you’re reading the proof of that), I also use it to transfer all my digital photos, check the local weather forecast and even locate area eateries. Many of these activities, you probably noticed, require an Internet connection, and that can be an issue. I’m often astounded at the erratic state of wireless Internet connectivity in the hospitality industry. Some places provide it free, some charge a fee and some offer noting but a “data port” plug on the phone, as if you would even consider using dial-up. Let’s please move into the 21st century, OK?

A Mac user traveling under these problematic conditions can almost always use a little help locating free wireless Internet, and that’s where iStumbler comes in. It’s true that any Mac laptop of recent vintage can automatically detect compatible wireless networks, but the built-in Internet Connect Utility provides limited information, particularly the critical bit about whether it’s an open or closed network. You can’t access a closed network without a password -- and you shouldn’t try, since the network owner obviously doesn’t want outsiders pirating his Internet connection.

iStumbler shows you any open networks within range along with its signal strength as a percentage, which is far more accurate than the Airport icon in the Menu Bar or the meter in the Internet Connect utility. Better still, iStumbler shows the signal noise (interference) for each network, as well as its channel and MAC address (Internet Connect gives you the MAC address as well, though it’s called “Base Station ID.”)

The creators of iStumbler did so to help Mac users find open public networks, which are the kind you can use with a clear conscience. That said, the software does just as good a job finding open non-public networks, such as those set up in private residences. Whether you decide to piggyback on someone else’s network without their permission is a personal decision -- you’ll almost certainly get away with it – but you’ll have to live with the guilt.

iStumbler has two more abilities I have not had cause to try: it can search for Bluetooth devices and can use Apple’s Bonjour feature (which allows devices on a network to “see” each other automatically). But I consider iStumbler’s primary function of locating Airport-compatible wireless networks enough to make it an indispensable app on my MacBook. And yes, it is Universal Binary, which means it can run natively on both PowerPC Macs as well as the current Intel-based models.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

For those of us who remember the Dark Days of the mid 1990s, when the media prefaced nearly every reference to Apple with an adjective like “beleaguered,” the current climate of pro-Apple mania brings a certain “we knew it all along” satisfaction. But the pendulum has swung far enough in the opposite direction to trigger irrational behavior.

This week offers a prime example of how both the media and Wall Street sit on a hair-trigger when any nugget of Apple news surfaces, no matter how dubious its origin. On Monday a report from a Taiwan-based JPMorgan analyst that a cheaper “iPhone Nano” was likely before the end of 2007 caused Apple’s stock to jump 3.2 percent, though it slipped back by the end of trading. The analyst, Kevin Chang, based his prediction on anonymous sources in the iPhone supply chain and an application Apple had filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for a “Telephone Interface for a Portable Communication Device" that features a click-wheel dialing mechanism.

This sort of guesswork has heretofore primarily been the domain of Mac rumor sites. For years Macolytes have eagerly devoured any crumb of news at such places as AppleInsider, LoopRumors and MacRumors, trying to discern if a particular Mac model was indeed getting a faster processor next week or if the next version of Mac OS X would include the native ability to run programs written for Windows. But the world at large generally ignored the speculation of a few Mac fanatics – and rightly so.

For a professional analyst to release an official opinion based on the stuff of rumors is nothing short of alarming. Investment banks like JPMorgan must carefully tend to their reputations. If investors have cause to believe a financial institution is basing their advice on smoke in place of careful research grounded in verifiable facts, it risks losing all credibility. Though Chang hasn’t destroyed JPMorgan’s credibility, he did punch a substantial hole in it.

Nearly as guilty are the lemming-like media who rushed to report Chang’s prediction without skepticism, and the equally gullible Wall Street types who bid up Apple’s stock on those weak reports. It’s not like these folks haven’t been burned before. Back on May 16 Apple’s stock plunged 3 percent in six minutes after the Web site Engadget published what it said was a leaked internal Apple e-mail indicating that the iPhone launch would be delayed until October. The stock recovered after Apple issued a statement refuting the news and shortly afterward the e-mail was revealed as a hoax.

As it turned out the Chang report, too, was refuted, but from an unlikely source – another JPMorgan analyst. On Tuesday New York-based analyst Bill Shope pulled the plug on the buzz when he sent a note to clients saying that a cheaper iPhone Nano would be “unusual and highly risky.” He acknowledged that a cheaper iPhone with improved features was “inevitable” (duh!) but that such a development was “unlikely in the near term.” A refreshing dose of common sense, but it put JPMorgan in the uncomfortable position of having to reconcile its dueling analysts. An unnamed source at JPMorgan told The Times of London that Shope’s comments did not represent a retraction, and that somehow it stood behind both reports, explaining that the bank had “several analysts looking at the same stock.” Uh-huh.

Yet with so much embarrassment to go around, I expect the same reaction the next time a juicy, yet unsubstantiated Apple rumor arises. They just can’t help themselves.

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)
                    

Of the five television ads for the iPhone we’ve seen so far, the one entitled “Calamari” has become a favorite, probably because it shows off how well the device integrates its multiple personalities. Created by renowned agency TBWA/Chiat/Day, the ad depicts a user watching a scene from a “Pirates of the Caribbean” film and suddenly yearning for calamari. Using the iPhone’s Internet capabilities, the user searches for a nearby seafood establishment, identifies one called “Pacific Catch,” and taps the number on the screen to dial up the restaurant.

All well and good, but for a few avoidable hiccups. Though TBWA/Chiat/Day did obtain permission from the restaurant to use its name in the ad, it neglected to check a few key facts. The first issue is that Pacific Catch, a two-restaurant chain in San Francisco, did not have calamari on its regular menu. In fact only one of the two even served it as an occasional special. Not surprisingly, after the iPhone ads appeared both locations were swamped with phone calls, many asking for the absent calamari. According to an item in the San Francisco Chronicle, Pacific Catch’s executive chef, Aaron Noveshen, astutely made spicy fried calamari regular menu fare. So far, the calamari has proven popular, though the Chronicle failed to note whether those ordering the dish were also packing new iPhones.

The second issue is just a tad embarrassing. The manager of the Pacific Catch located in San Francisco’s Marina District, which is the one featured in the iPhone ad, told the New York Times that he had been telling callers asking about the iPhone that “We’re a restaurant, not an Apple Store.” Furthermore, he said, they don’t even use Macs there – the restaurant’s computers run Microsoft’s Windows.

Ouch.

Posted by David Zeiler at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

Until now I have used this weekly feature to call attention to exceptionally useful Mac software that is either free or reasonably priced. Today I’ll go one better – a very practical piece of software many Mac users may not even know they have even though it’s included on every Mac sold.

I speak of Disk Utility, Apple’s much-overlooked tool for managing and repairing hard drives. Disk Utility is indeed great for formatting, partitioning and erasing drives, and can fix basic disk problems. But it can do much more than that, which makes it a tool every Mac user should check out.

For example, Disk Utility can burn CDs (and DVDs, should your Mac have a SuperDrive). Sure, you can do that from the Finder. But Disk Utility allows you to burn multi-session CDs (though not DVDs), meaning if you have a lot of leftover space on the disk after burning your first batch of data, you can add more later. When you click on the “Burn” button, the dialog box that appears contains a checkbox that says “Leave disk appendable.” Clicking on it will allow you to burn more data again and again to the disk until it’s full.

To use the multi-session feature, you need to draw upon yet another handy tool included in Disk Utility, its ability to create and manage disk images. A disk image is a sort of virtual disk, a container that holds files and folders in a form that appears to be a disk on your Desktop. When you download Mac shareware, the files frequently arrive as a disk image. Double clicking on the file’s icon generates another icon that looks like a white floppy disk drive, which can be opened and used as if it were an actual disk. To burn a CD with Disk Utility, you must create one of these containers and copy the files you want to burn onto the disk image. Then you select the disk image from the Disk Utility window that lists your available disks and click the yellow and black burn button (it looks like a nuclear radiation sign).

These features also make Disk Utility a great tool for copying disks you’ve made yourself with Apple's iLife suite -- iMovie, iPhoto, etc. (You cannnot copy commercial disks, as they’re protected. Anyway, what were you thinking? It’s illegal!) You pop your CD or DVD in your Mac and when it appears in the list of available disks, select it. Then you just click on the “New image” icon and Disk Utility will create a disk image that you can burn as I described above. Burning more copies is as easy as dropping in another blank CD. This sort of thing is helpful if you have, say, a photo slideshow on a CD that you want to duplicate for several family members.

Though Apple doesn't do much to promote Disk Utility, as it does with iLife, if Apple hadn't already installed it on your Mac you'd probably want to buy it.

Posted by David Zeiler at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

One week after the iPhone’s launch, the lines of impatient buyers have disappeared. The Apple Stores and AT&T stores have gradually begun restoring iPhone inventory, much to the heartbreak of those who bought extra units last week in the hope of scoring big profits reselling them on eBay.

Nevertheless, the iPhone’s first week as an available product was a busy one. Initial sales estimates for the weekend alone started at 200,000 and quickly climbed to 500,000, with Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey estimating 700,000. Meanwhile, some Wall Street observers were calling the iPhone a disappointment because it failed to sell 1 million units in its first weekend. Patience, my friends: according to the waitingforiphone.com Web site, AT&T Mobility had activated 1 million iPhones by Thursday (once AT&T recovered from its system overload that delayed activations for hours or even days over the weekend). And investors certainly weren’t registering any disappointment – AAPL has risen 8.4 percent this week to close at $132.30, on top of an already impressive 44 percent gain over the first six months of 2007.

Still more interesting numbers came from technology industry research firm iSuppli Corporation, which disassembled an iPhone to determine its cost of manufacture. They came up with a bill for materials and manufacturing costs of $263.83, leaving Apple with $333 of profit per each $599 iPhone, a margin of about 55 percent. The margin on the $499 version is slightly less at 52 percent, but Apple can take comfort in a survey by Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster that found 95 percent of the first-weekend buyers preferred the pricier model.

Putting all the numbers together, it appears Apple made a profit of well over $300 million from the iPhone in its first week. Of course, now that most of the fanatics have their iPhones, sales will slack off somewhat.

But I wouldn’t expect them to drop off a cliff. Throughout the week one tech critic after another – not all of them Macophiles -- praised the iPhone as worthy of the pre-release hype. What has impressed them is not so much what the iPhone can do, but how it does it. Most of its individual features are not groundbreaking, but Apple has made the iPhone so easy to use that anyone can figure it out. It is, at last, a cell phone that’s fun to use, and that’s what will keep the merchandise moving.

Drawbacks? Yes, the iPhone has some, but they’re not severe enough to outweigh the device’s benefits. Use of the faster 3G network would be great, as would more flash memory for storing music, among other quibbles, such as the tricky touch-screen keyboard. But Apple can and will fix most of these in time. No doubt overworked Apple engineers even now are laboring on amazing future versions of the iPhone in a skunkworks on the company’s Cupertino campus.

And as if being a blockbuster success were not enough, eventually the iPhone also will be remembered as a product with historic implications. Other cell phone manufacturers for years have tried to sell innovative phone designs to the major carriers such as Verizon, only to be rebuffed. Now that Apple has shown that a fresh approach to the hardware can sell, many analysts expect cell phone makers to have much better luck convincing the carriers to give them more latitude in designing new handsets. The iPhone could very well change the cell phone industry as we know it. Wow.

Posted by David Zeiler at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Vivendi’s Universal Music Group has refused to renew its contract with Apple Inc. to sell its music catalog on the iTunes Store, according to anonymous inside sources. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr disputed the reports that Universal had rebuffed the iTunes Store in any way. “We’re still negotiating with Universal,” Neumayr told Bloomberg.com. Hmmmm, what to make of that?

For that past couple of years, the Big Four music companies – Universal, EMI, Sony BMG and Warner – have watched uneasily as Apple became an increasingly powerful player in the world of digital music. The iTunes Store has about 75 percent of the market for online music downloads. It recently passed Amazon.com in a survey by NPD Group to become the third largest retailer of music in the United States, online or otherwise, with 10 percent of the total music market (Wal-Mart was first with 15.8 percent and Best Buy second with 13.8 percent. Fourth-place Amazon had 6.7 percent.)

Until now, Apple’s strength has allowed it to dictate terms to the Big Four. But they haven’t been happy partners. They wanted more control over pricing, particularly the ability to charge more for popular songs (iTunes charges 99 cents for each track). They wanted to be able to offer songs on other services without having to offer them on iTunes as well. They urged Apple to make its FairPlay Digital Rights Management available to makers of competing music players so iTunes songs would play on more devices (the DRM, an anti-piracy measure, prevents the songs from being played on unauthorized devices). They, along with other critics, claimed Apple had “locked in” iPod owners by selling them songs that would not play on other portable music players.

Though few consumers would shed a tear over the music companies’ woes, one can see why they would want a more favorable deal. Big businesses like to be in control of how their products are marketed. And any musician signed to a major label will tell you that it’s the record companies who prefer to do the dictating. While Apple’s market dominance has been a formidable shield, it was unlikely that Steve Jobs could hold off the Big Four forever.

In a story on Business Week’s Web site this morning, “sources close to Universal” said the new deal with Apple would be an “at-will” arrangement in which Universal would at least have the flexibility to make exclusive deals with other services, and possibly would even get the right to charge a limited-time premium for hot new hits. If this happens, no doubt the other three music companies eventually will want similar terms. Warner’s deal with iTunes comes up for renewal in a few months (more fireworks?), but Sony has already agreed to a one-year deal, so they’d have to wait.

EMI, of course, went in an entirely different direction in May when they agreed to make their full catalog available DRM-free (and at a higher quality) for $1.29. That move negated the argument over “lock-in,” since iTunes’ AAC-encoded songs without DRM can in fact be played on rival devices, as long as AAC support is included on those devices. Current players that support the AAC format include the SanDisk Sansa, the Sony Walkman S Series and, if you can believe it, Microsoft’s Zune. The AAC format, by the way, is not owned or controlled by Apple. Any manufacturer can include support for it on its player; any digital music vendor, such as Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace and Amazon’s download service expected to launch later this year can offer music in AAC format.

In any case, you won’t see Universal’s artists vanish from the iTunes Store any time soon, despite all the bluster. Universal, as the biggest of the Big Four, releases about a third of the music in the United States, but Apple has two-thirds of the digital music player market in addition to 75 percent of the digital download market. They clearly need each other. Anyway, if Universal did get the concessions mentioned in the Business Week piece, this battle’s already over.

What does that mean for Apple and its place in the digital music business? It may not be all that bad. The realm of digital media is a rapidly changing one, and Apple will need to respond to these challenges as they come along. The deal with EMI to sell DRM-free songs was a win for Apple, and should pay dividends in future negotiations with the other three music companies when EMI’s profits from iTunes increase. At the same time, the current flap with Universal will loosen Apple’s grip on digital music. That will give a slight boost to Apple’s competitors, both the digital music vendors and the makers of rival music players.

But Apple has nothing to fear as long as it keeps doing what got it into such a dominant position: making the best music players and operating the best music download service, anticipating and responding to customer desires. Increased competition isn’t a problem as long as you’re still better than they are.

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Sooner or later it happens to every Mac user ... you encounter a file of some sort that requires a piece of Windows software to open. Thankfully, this happens much less than it used to. Most of the files people exchange these days cross platforms easily: photos in the JPEG format, songs in MP3 format and Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files for which Mac users have several options.

But video files can be a bit more challenging, as there are a multitude of formats. Fortunately, Mac users can play almost all of them by adding a few free components to their system.

Of course, the primary means of playing video on a Mac is Apple’s own QuickTime Player, included on every Mac. The QuickTime format comprises a relatively small portion of the video you’ll encounter on the Web, but the player handles several other formats, too. However, with a free utility called Flip4Mac, the QuickTime software can play any Windows Media 9 Player file unless it’s encrypted with digital rights management (DRM). Nevertheless, Flip4Mac works seamlessly in most cases. Microsoft actually endorses it on its Web site, no doubt delighted at the excuse to drop development of Windows Media Player for Mac OS X.

One other format you’ll encounter from time to time is RealPlayer, which last week released version 11 of its software, so far for Windows only. The Mac OS X player (another free download) is still on version 10; here’s hoping Real upgrades the Mac version soon. RealPlayer has lost popularity to Windows Media Player, but it’s still commonly used by many Web sites for streaming video.

Adobe’s Flash Player, once confined to displaying animations, has also become quite a force in Web video, chiefly because You Tube uses it. It’s probably already loaded on your Mac; if not, it’s a free download from Adobe, available in both PowerPC and Intel flavors. You probably should download it in any event just to ensure you have the latest version. The software works within your browser, as QuickTime does, so when it’s working properly you’ll just see the video appear on the Web page in its designated window.

But even with all that video software loaded on your Mac, you could run across a video file that just won’t play. For that you’ll need the VLC Media player, a sort of Swiss Army Knife of media players. It resulted from an open source software project called VideoLAN, and thus is full-featured and free to all. It supports newer formats, popular existing ones (like WMA and QuickTime), but most importantly it supports less common or older formats such as DivX and Cinepak. Generally speaking, the VLC Media Player can open any video file not crippled by DRM.

Just for good measure, the VLC Media Player can also open most audio formats. As a utility of last resort, it can’t be beat. It’s a good idea, however, to check frequently for updates as the folks who work on it often fix bugs and upgrade the code.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)