Boom.

Apple aimed its PR howitzer directly at NBC Universal this morning when it announced that it would not be selling NBC shows for the fall season on the iTunes Store. Just hours earlier Friday’s New York Times had revealed NBC’s intent not to renew its iTunes Store contract when it expires in December. That Apple would respond so swiftly and so publicly – something it rarely does -- can only mean that Steve Jobs is really, really annoyed with NBC.

In explaining its actions, Apple made sure to portray NBC in the worst possible light: “The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99.”

This dispute is more evidence of the discontent among iTunes’ music and video content suppliers with the ironclad pricing terms that Apple has imposed upon them. We saw it just a few weeks ago when Universal Music Group said it planned to sell songs without copyright protection on just about every music service except iTunes. The music and video companies are determined to break Apple’s dominance of the digital entertainment market so they can re-mold the terms to their liking.

Apple refuses to compromise on its philosophy that a consumer-friendly iTunes encourages people to buy more. Raising prices, charging more for popular items and forcing people to buy bundles of TV shows rather than a la carte (which NBC had wanted, according to the Times article) will deter sales and ultimately result in lower profits, Apple believes.

Universal Music and NBC have made it very clear they strongly disagree and will move away from the iTunes model with or without Apple’s cooperation. Meanwhile, Apple stands to lose a provider responsible for three of its top 10 best selling TV shows last season and 30 percent of its TV show sales (those stats are straight from Apple’s press release). NBC will lose iTunes considerable market clout and exposure to younger viewers, a demographic the TV networks have been struggling to attract and hold. The network has plans to start offering its shows on a service to be launched in October called Hulu.com, but it’s unlikely sales on that site will come close to matching sales on iTunes.

The biggest losers are you and me, people who enjoy the ability to download single episodes of “The Office,” “Heroes,” or “Battlestar Galactica” for $1.99 to watch at our convenience. Yes, “Battlestar Galactica” is affected because NBC owns the Sci-Fi Network. It also owns the USA Network, which shows the marvelous “Monk.” I personally am royally ticked off about this because I have downloaded episodes of both “Monk” and “Battlestar Galactica” when I’ve missed the initial broadcast.

NBC’s Hulu experiment worries me, too. Will they adopt the DRM-crippled Windows Media format, locking out Mac users? And if they’re going to charge $4.99 per episode, I wouldn’t use the service anyway. That’s a 250 percent increase, for Pete’s sake. Even CEO salaries don’t go up that fast. Think about it: you can buy the 16 episodes of Season 5 of “Monk” for $29.95 from the iTunes Store. You can buy the “Monk” Season 5 DVD from Amazon.com for $36.99. If you bought those episodes at NBC’s rates, you’d pay $79.84. Even at $2.99 per episode you’d pay $47.84. What are they thinking?

Rather than be fleeced, consumers will do one of two things. Either they’ll stop watching or they’ll find another, cheaper alternative. Maybe they’ll buy Tivos. Maybe they’ll steal it over the Internet, as people have done with music. Until now video piracy hasn’t been as widespread as music piracy. But start charging $4.99 per show and watch how fast it grows. With broadband connections commonplace and video compression codecs improving, the TV networks should be wary of angering their customers. The music industry still hasn’t recovered from piracy that their numerous errors in dealing with it.

If the rebellious trend among content providers continues, the iTunes Store could be in for a rough ride. True, it doesn’t comprise a huge part of Apple’s profits, but it is an integral part of the Apple ecosystem that marries hardware, software and retailing. Harm to the iTunes Store could affect the iPod business as well as any video ventures the company almost certainly has in development.

NBC’s efforts to circumvent the iTunes Store could well backfire. For Apple’s sake – and ours – I hope it does.

Posted by David Zeiler at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

Yesterday while hunting for some iPhone news I accidentally discovered a Mac Web endeavor at once brazenly sleazy and irresistibly captivating. For nearly a year, the Macenstein Web site has conducted a “Mac Chick of the Month” contest in which it solicits photos of attractive young women who also happen to have an obsession with Apple products. Each month’s winner is showcased on her own page featuring numerous photos of said young lady (some of which push the boundaries of propriety) surrounded by her favorite Apple hardware.

I’m not sure whether I should congratulate or condemn Macenstein’s masterminds. Aspiring contestants must submit at least four photos of themselves using Apple gear, insuring a steady stream of steamy JPEGs to the Macenstein editors. Glancing at the pages of the winners, a surprising number of very attractive and talented women have sought the title of Mac Chick of the Month.

Clearly Macenstein’s staff has done a first-rate job of selecting the winners, most of whom are very attractive twenty-something actresses and/or models shot by professional photographers. (Do you think some of these young women saw an opportunity for a little exposure to help boost their careers?) In an admirable effort to justify the feature, each woman also must have substantial Apple-loving credentials. As Macenstein puts it: “Each month we feature a different die-hard, Mac-loving girl who is (almost) as well designed as the Apple products they love.”

August’s winner, Lauren Reeves, is typical. According to her page, the comely blonde has been a television reporter for the ABC affiliate in Anchorage, a New York actress, a comedian and a model. Her Apple cred includes ownership of an iPod, an iMac G5 and an iPhone. Her page features quotes such as “I couldn’t go a day without using an Apple product.” Ms. Reeves also submitted her entry in AppleWorks format, just to hammer the point home.

I can't imagine how this saucy little corner of the Mac Web escaped my notice for so long. Better late than never, eh?

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

It was inevitable. The iPhone has been “unlocked.” That is, intrepid hackers have found ways to free the iPhone from its dependence on the AT&T cellular network so it could be used on another provider’s network. Many of the numerous news stories this event has generated have implied that this is a problem for Apple. I agree that at first blush it appears to be a problem, but in the long run – maybe not.

Before I get into that, here’s a summary of the situation. The first hack, revealed last Friday by 17-year-old George Hotz of New Jersey, is a two-hour procedure that includes physically cracking open the iPhone, scraping a tiny trace on the circuit board and soldering wires. Hotz describes the 10 steps on his Web site, warning in Step 1 that the procedure could “brick your iPhone.” Considering the $500 or $600 cost of a new iPhone plus the $36 activation fee plus the $175 termination fee of the mandatory two-year AT&T service contract, one had to wonder how many people realistically would attempt such a risky project.

But that same day the Web site Engadget confirmed a second iPhone hack by an outfit calling itself iPhoneSIMfree (the name derives from the tiny card inside a cell phone, called a SIM, that identifies it on the network). This hack is software based – it requires no physical iPhone abuse.

So far none of the hackers has heard from either Apple’s or AT&T’s lawyers, and they may never hear from them. Amazingly, these hacks apparently break no law. A clause in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act explicitly permits unlocking cellphones for use on other carrier’s networks.

So what might this development mean for Apple and the iPhone? From a business perspective, Apple doesn’t have much to lose. It’s making the bulk of its profits from the sale of the phone itself. If a few customers drop AT&T, Apple would lose some money from the revenue sharing deal it has with AT&T. On the other hand, the existence of the hack could tempt new customers who had until now refused to buy an iPhone solely because of the lock to AT&T’s network. In this scenario, Apple actually could make more money as a result of the hack. Of course, AT&T would be screwed either way, as it depends primarily on the monthly service fees to profit from the iPhone.

Regardless, I doubt that any significant number of iPhone owners will “hack” their new toy by any method, no matter how simple it becomes. While geeks may get a thrill out of such tech adventures, most people would never consider tinkering with a pricey high-tech gadget for fear of ruining it.

Furthermore, for U.S. customers at least, there’s little to gain. Even the software hack would trigger AT&T’s $175 termination fee; from what I can tell you can’t buy an iPhone without also buying a two-year service contract. The greatest deterrent to the unlocking hack is the GSM cellular technology built into the iPhone. Only one other major cellular carrier in the United States, T-Mobile, uses it. The other two major carriers, Verizon and Sprint, both employ an incompatible technology called CDMA. So unlocked iPhones in the U.S. can connect only to T-Mobile’s network, which is a debatable improvement over AT&T. The hack could prove desirable in the short term for those who covet the iPhone but live outside the United States, where GSM-based networks are common and the iPhone is not yet for sale. Apple does have plans to partner with carriers in Europe and Asia, though it will take several years before the iPhone will be available in many countries.

Note that Apple issued a patch to block the first widely publicized iPhone hack a month ago, but that hack had to do with exploiting the iPhone for malicious purposes. Will Apple try to block the unlocking hacks with updates? Steve Jobs knows from his experience with Digital Rights Management, the method for “locking” copyrighted music, that hackers eventually will crack any system designed to thwart users. One would think that Apple wouldn’t mind the unlocking hacks if it weren’t for the deal with AT&T – heck, one would have expected a progressively-minded company like Apple to have avoided locking the iPhone in the first place. But locking the iPhone to a single carrier was the price of admission for Apple to enter the cellular game.

It’s intriguing to speculate whether the reality of unlocked iPhones could lead to another sea change in the cellular industry – one in which consumers could purchase unlocked without the need to resort to hacks. Apple’s deal with AT&T, in which Apple was able to dictate most of the terms, represented an almost total reversal from the typical manufacturer-carrier relationship. Who better than Apple to push for the next logical step?

Imagine the sales potential if Apple could sell both GMA and CDMA versions of an unlocked iPhone, with customers able to sign up with the cellular carrier of their choice. I realize Apple’s hands are tied for five years (the length of its exclusivity agreement with AT&T) but by then the iPhone should have a significant foothold in the cell phone market. Apple conceivably could use its leverage at that time to champion the cause of unlocked phones and consumer choice. Steve Jobs relishes empowering the masses as much as he relishes elegant technology and building up Apple’s business. Advocating unlocked phones would serve all those purposes. He’d also have the advantage, as he had on the DRM issue, of widespread public support. The cellular landscape in 2012 could be very different indeed.

Posted by David Zeiler at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Here’s a question for those of you heading back to school this week, particularly those focused on mathematics: Where do you get custom-made graph paper?

Thanks to a Westminster, Md. company called Black Cat Software, you can use your Mac to do it with its Graph Paper Maker (shareware, $19.99). Black Cat has produced quite a few shareware products for the Mac since its founding in 1991 such as Audiocorder, a nicely executed sound recording program.

I can barely remember using graph paper when I was in school, but as an English major I treated math the way Mac aficionados treat Windows – I dealt with it only if necessary. Doing a quick search on Google revealed numerous sources of free PDF graph paper files, but among those PDF files are many permutations. If you need something tailored to a specific situation, you could be in for a lot of hunting.

That’s the purpose of Graph Paper Maker: it provides complete control over the creation of a grid. Options include not just power over line spacing but also the thickness and color of the lines; the size and font of the labels; linear or log scales; and even the paper size. Should you want to generate something quickly with less fuss, there’s an “Easy Graph Wizard” that winnows your options to a less-daunting 8 data fields.

When you’ve finished adjusting all those settings, a click on the “generate” button creates and saves a PDF file of your graph paper. To print copies, you’ll need only open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat Reader or Apple’s own Preview app included on all Macs. Once you have the PDF file, you can open that customized graph paper any time you want to print more copies – you don’t need to re-create it in Graph Paper Maker.

In addition to square grids, Graph Paper Maker has a menu that offers a few more exotic variations, including Isometric Graph Paper, Axonometric Graph Paper, Trapezoid Graph Paper and Hexagon Graph Paper. Don’t ask me what people use it for, although the Hexagon Paper brought back fond memories of board-based Avalon Hill* war games.

Someone must need this stuff; Graph Paper Maker debuted just over a year ago in July 2006. And Black Cat has covered just about every possible customer. Not only is the Mac OS X version Universal Binary, the latest release – 1.6.1, released Aug. 16 – also can be had for Mac OS 9. How many companies are releasing software for OS 9 these days? Oh, and there’s a Windows version, too.

*Local trivia note: Avalon Hill, now part of Hasbro, started out as a Baltimore-based game company in 1958 with it headquarters on Harford Road.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Mac laptop sales are taking off, and it’s only going to get better.

That’s what data released earlier this week by ChangeWave Research seems to be saying. ChangeWave, a Rockville, Md.-based company that conducts surveys of business executives and professionals in more than 20 industries, just released the results of its Aug. 1-8 survey on computer sales.

According to the ChangeWave data, Apple laptop sales over the previous 90 days rose from 12 percent in the June survey to 17 percent while desktop sales dropped slightly from 8 to 7 percent. I would guess that the anticipation of new iMacs (unveiled August 7) stunted sales slightly in the most recent survey. ChangeWave also asks about planned computer purchases. Here Apple laptops remained steady at 28 percent, with desktops actually rising one point from 22 to 23 percent.

Far more compelling than the changes since June is the steady growth in the Mac numbers since January 2006. Back then Apple’s laptops and desktops both comprised just 4 percent of sales over the previous 90 days. The laptop numbers have quadrupled in just over 18 months, while the desktop numbers have doubled.

In the planned purchases survey, laptops stood at 13 percent and desktops at 11 percent back in January 2006. Both of these numbers also have more than doubled.

Long-time Mac users who recall Michael Dell’s infamous 1997 insult should relish Dell’s numbers from the survey of purchases over the previous 90 days. Dell’s laptops have sunk from 44 percent in January 2006 to 30 percent in the most recent survey. But hold your jeers and taunts until you read this: Dell desktops have plummeted from 43 percent to 24 percent.

This is all fantastic news for Mac fans, but can we trust these numbers? The ChangeWave data is not based on a conventional survey of randomly chosen respondents, but rather a periodic survey of a select group of people. ChangeWave describes them as “10,000 strategically positioned experts.” I’m not an expert on polling, so I can’t say if that makes this data more or less relevant. But when you look at this survey in the context of previous computer sales data that also points to ever-growing Mac sales, especially of the laptops, you see a trend confirmed.

My instinct is that a survey of business executives and professionals about computer buying should at least indicate which way the sales winds are blowing. If there’s any weight at all to this ChangeWave survey -- and I believe there is -- those winds are plainly at Apple’s back.

Posted by David Zeiler at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

The other day I saw something that caught my attention: a 16-pack of Duracell AA batteries with a free set of white earbuds. That may not seem particularly unusual, but the earbuds appear to be exact replicas of those issued with Apple’s iPods. The earbuds are shaped exactly the same and have the same grey-shaded plastic around the earpieces (see photo below). Each earpiece also has six small vent holes on the outer shell.

But a closer inspection reveals minor discrepancies. The small circular “L” and “R” labels are grey on the iPod earbuds, black on the Duracell duplicate. Where the two strands join into the one cord that connects to the music device, the iPod cord is solid where the Duracell cord has a ridge down the center. The jack covers have different shapes and the jacks themselves have different colored rings: white for the iPod, black for the Duracells.

The ultimate test, of course, is whether these freebie Duracell earbuds sound anything like those that come with an iPod. Despite the superficial similarities, the sound quality of the Duracell earbuds most closely resemble that of a cheap AM radio from the 1970s. We’re talking about an aural experience so dreadful as to make these giveaways essentially useless. The Duracell package notes that the earbuds will “work with all portable music devices,” but I can’t imagine wanting to use them with any product by any manufacturer, and certainly not an iPod.

I suppose that’s about what you’d expect from something included with a pack of AA batteries, but it irks me that these earbuds obviously were designed to mimic the iPod’s. I wonder how many battery packs Duracell sold to people who believed they were getting free iPod-quality earbuds? People should know better, but it’s easy to imagine people being fooled by the fakes.

The Duracell package directs purchasers to a Web site for more information, but the page contains only a statement that the promotion has ended. With luck that will mean these bogus earbuds soon will vanish from store shelves.

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The Mac platform has been through many hardware and software transitions in its three decades of existence -- 68K chips to PowerPC chips to Intel chips as well as the Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X switch. Each transition has left behind some favorite piece of software or hardware that isn’t compatible with the new gear and never gets updated. Maybe the company went out of business, or stopped development for the Mac to focus on Windows software (a common problem in the mid-90s). But whenever it happens, it leaves affected users searching -- sometimes desperately -- for a replacement.

I recently helped a reader in just such a quandary. He wrote me about a program written for OS 9 he had used called Gofer by Microlytics. Last updated in 1989, Gofer could search files and folders for words or word strings and would display the results in their original context. According to my reader: “Without opening the program, you could just copy a section or even the whole document, and paste it in whatever you were working in.” As he pointed out, the built-in Spotlight function in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger will search for text and display a list of files, but it does not show you the results in context.
Gofer could run in Classic mode on a PowerPC Mac, but my reader is getting ready to upgrade to an Intel-based Mac. The new Macs can’t run Classic mode, and thus no old OS 9 programs. Did I know of any substitutes?

I did not, but relishing a challenge I went on the hunt. I actually found two possible substitutes. The first is a $10 piece of shareware called SpeedSearch X by a fellow named Matt Brunk. The latest official version was released in 2002, although you can chance a more recent (2006) beta version if you’re feeling daring. SpeedSearch X does mostly what my reader required, although I had a little trouble with the interface. My goal was to search a folder of mostly text files for a term (actually I searched copies of some of my blog entries for the word “Apple”).

I couldn’t get the program to find anything until I realized I needed to click a disclosure triangle above the search term window to reveal several more options, including one that tells the program to search file types other than TEXT. Then I got 267 matches, showing each mention of the term “Apple” in its original context (although it’s just a single line -- not a paragraph or even a full sentence.) You can click on an icon to open the selected document in its original program to cut and paste the text, but you’ll still need to hunt it down within that document.

Otherwise, SpeedSearch X is a pretty good text search tool with plenty of options for making the search as broad or as narrow as you require. For example, you can search your entire hard drive or just a folder; or you can tell the program to search for certain types of files by extension, such as .html. You can even add your own categories to the various menus -- I added .doc to the file extension selector menu to filter for Microsoft Word files. SpeedSearch X’s greatest drawback is that it has not been updated as a Universal Binary -- it’s PowerPC only. It still can run on an Intel-based Mac under Rosetta (Apple’s built-in technology to translate PowerPC code to Intel code), but Universal Binary programs run natively on Intel Macs, which always is preferable.

The other option I discovered is TextWrangler 2, a text editor from Bare Bones Software.
Some Mac users may be familiar with an advanced HTML and text editor called BBEdit. It’s been around since the early 1990s, and continues to be updated. TextWrangler is a less-robust offshoot of BBEdit (which costs $124.95) that Bare Bones gives away for free, our favorite price. (Veteran Mac users may recall an older, similar product called BBEdit Lite. TextWrangler has replaced it.)

Among TextWrangler’s many capabilities is text searching. Like SpeedSearch X, TextWrangler brings up a list of results organized by the name of the file. It also shows the search term in the context of the document, with the line of text in which it appears excerpted. But here’s where TextWrangler goes SpeedSearch X one better. Clicking on one of the lines brings up the entire paragraph in which the search term appeared, so you can copy and paste it as my reader does now with Gofer. The only glitch is that text from a word processing program such as Microsoft Word contain a lot of embedded formatting code that shows up in plain text files as gibberish characters. Fortunately, most of the gibberish appears before and after your body text, not within it.

As a program produced by a commercial entity, TextWrangler is much more polished than SpeedSearch X, and it can do a lot more for those who need its text editing features. Considering that it’s free, TextWrangler looks like the hands-down winner of the text-in-context searching contest... unless any readers know of something even better suited to this task. Suggestions, anyone?

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

A lot of people don’t like the new iMovie. Mac user forums and blogs are rife with comments from distressed users calling iMovie ’08 a “downgrade” from iMovie ’06. Although the new version has some flashy features, it’s true some significant capabilities have vanished. Such iMovie staples as DVD chapter markers as well as a timeline that showed graphically how your video and audio clips lined up are gone.

A few comments culled from Apple’s iMovie discussion boards:

"So I paid for an upgrade and received less bang for the buck. iMovie '08 is not iMovie '06. It's barely a movie editor. I'd call it a 'wizard for idiots' who do nothing but shoot a bunch of video of their kids' birthday parties and don't really care about the final results."

"Please, please, please Apple! Fix what can only be a giant mistake. Leaving audio control features out of iMovie is a deal breaker for me. I am in shock that you have gutted this program and then sold it as 'iMovie' at all."

"I paid for an UPGRADED VERSION of iMovie; and I'm afraid this is not even close to an upgrade."

Disgruntled users expected an evolutionary version of iMovie with more features added to the old; what they got was an app aimed squarely at amateurs who need a quick and dirty video editor to throw together something for YouTube or their personal Web page. Yet fans of the new version say they like it for just that reason. Skimming through any discussion of iMovie ’08, one finds an equal number of proponents. They like the new features, such as “skimming” over video clips with the mouse to see its contents and the way the new version stores clips in a library similar to the way iPhoto works. Most tellingly, many of iMovie ‘08’s defenders actually prefer the shift in emphasis from features and effects to ease and speed.

Comments from the other side of the table:

"I think this program is a beauty, slick and sophisticated. Maybe not as many bells as iMovie 6 HD, but it is so fluid."

"Delve into the program itself, and you'll find that this is a serious upgrade to iMovieHD. Much of the features are yet to come, but this platform is simply amazing."

"iMovie '08 is exactly what I had hoped for and is the reason I rushed out to buy the new iLife package as soon as possible. I didn't realize that it was missing some editing features, but I never got over the hump with iMovie before, so I won't personally miss them."

The consternation over the major changes to one of iLife’s oldest components shows how attached users can become to how a favorite piece of software works. I haven’t used iMovie ’08 myself yet, but having used the old version for years I can understand why many are upset. For more involved projects, you do need more control than the new version provides.

But what Apple did to iMovie makes perfect sense when you look at its full range of video editing products. At the low end is iMovie, sold as part of the iLife suite for $79 and included free on all new Macs. At the high end is Final Cut Studio 2, a $1,299 suite of professional video and audio programs. In the middle is Final Cut Express, a $299 prosumer version of the high-end software that leaves out some of the more advanced features in exchange for a lower price tag.

From Apple’s perspective, the trouble with iMovie is that it was a bit too sophisticated for novices and a bit too basic for many prosumers, many of whom nevertheless would prefer not to pay $299 for Final Cut Express. Prosumers hoping for an iMovie one step closer to Final Cut Express got something intended for an entirely different customer that, frankly, Apple had largely neglected. So now they’re annoyed -- with some justification -- that in customizing iMovie for newbies, Apple has left them with a decision between using outdated software (iMovie ’06) or forking out real money for Final Cut Express.

Even though I fall into this group myself, I can see the practicality of revamping iMovie into something more intuitive. Let’s be honest: the core of the Mac message is making the manipulation of digital media so simple anyone from a schoolchild to a grandma can figure it out. It’s incumbent upon Apple to make sure that each of the iLife apps fits that criteria, and iMovie didn’t.

It’s the correct strategy for Apple, with the only snag being the inevitable backlash from long-time users of iMovie who were bound to feel cheated. Knowing this, the company made iMovie ’06 a free download for buyers of iLife ’08 (although anyone who bought a Mac within the past year or so already has the full iLife ’06 suite). That’s not what these folks wanted, but at least it’s a peace offering. And I bet most of the feathers ruffled over this issue could be smoothed over by one more conciliatory gesture from Apple: a price drop on Final Cut Express to $199. Wouldn’t that make you feel a whole lot better?

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

Today I learned that AppleWorks 6, Apple’s veteran production suite has been officially declared “end of life.” Its page on Apple’s Web site now redirects to the iWork suite page. Though not surprising in view of the recent addition of the Numbers spreadsheet to iWork, it nevertheless brings a bittersweet end to a legendary program.

Introduced as ClarisWorks in 1991, the software offered an early Mac alternative to Microsoft's offerings. ClarisWorks differed from most other productivity suites in that it combined six programs -- word processing, database, spreadsheet, drawing, painting and a terminal program for communications (later replaced by a presentation program) – into one integrated app. The components of Microsoft Office, by contrast, function as separate apps.

For true computing graybeards, the program’s pedigree can be traced even further back, to the original AppleWorks for the Apple II released in 1984. Back then the main competition wasn’t anything from Microsoft; it was a spreadsheet program for DOS-based PCs called Lotus 1-2-3. For a while that original version of AppleWorks was the top-selling productivity suite of its day. I bought AppleWorks 1.0 the same day I bought my Apple IIc in 1985, and later used another descendant, AppleWorks GS.

ClarisWorks spent most of its life as a Classic application, built for Mac OS 9 and its predecessors. Apple dusted off the old AppleWorks moniker for the suite in 1998, and with version 6, released in 2000, the suite became Carbonized so it would run in Mac OS X. Amazingly, Apple also sold a version of ClarisWorks/AppleWorks for Windows starting in 1993. So an eventual Windows version of the iWork suite would not be unprecedented.

While I use Microsoft Office often, I still use AppleWorks 6 occasionally. My advice to Mac users who remain attached to the program is to make sure you’ve upgraded to the latest version (6.2.9). You still can use it as you always have. Just because Apple has left it behind does not mean you have to. I can see some people continuing to use it a decade from now.

Some folks on Low End Mac, where Dan Knight wrote an early obituary for AppleWorks the other day, have called on Apple to make the code on abandoned programs such as AppleWorks free and open source so that interested parties could continue to update and improve it. I heartily agree. What does Apple have to lose but the goodwill of many of its oldest and most loyal customers?

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Today Apple issued a press release announcing the immediate availability of John Lennon’s solo works on the iTunes Store. Because his music is part of EMI’s catalog, Lennon’s music is available in iTunes Plus, the higher-quality, DRM-free section of iTunes, for the corresponding higher price of $1.29 per song. A search of the iTunes Store showed that the freshly added Lennon material is not available in the regular DRM section of the store. Considering the full albums only cost $9.99, the same as they would in the regular iTunes Store, it’s a good deal. I would expect most Lennon fans will want the full albums anyway. Several videos at $1.99 also are available, including ones for “Imagine,” “Mind Games” and “Merry Xmas (War is Over).”

An oddity I noticed: although the press release says 16 works are available, I counted only 8 albums on the new John Lennon page. Even if you throw in the six videos, that’s only 12 things. Perhaps more is coming shortly. Or someone in Apple’s PR office can’t add.

The important thing is that Lennon’s solo material has now joined Paul McCartney’s solo material, added in May, on the iTunes Store. Lennon... McCartney.... Why does that sound familiar? Oh, yeah. The Beatles. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Kinda popular in their day. Still not on iTunes. Could this be one of Apple’s crazy marketing strategies? You know, give us solo McCartney in May, solo Lennon in August, the bulk of the Beatles catalog, say, in November – just in time for Christmas?

Steve, please please me!

UPDATE: As of Tuesday evening the John Lennon page on iTunes has the promised 16 albums. I wonder why the collection was incomplete earlier in the day?

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Many veteran Mac users -- those who spent years on the “classic” Mac operating system of OS 9 and earlier – lamented the omission in Mac OS X of one prominent, handy feature: the Apple Menu. While a form of the Apple Menu remains in OS X, it mostly contains basic system functions and is not user customizable.

As a replacement, Mac users got the Dock. The problem with the Dock, however, is that its strength is also its weakness: it holds icons for frequently used programs (that may or may not be running), currently running programs, minimized windows of currently running apps, documents, and the Trash Can. As with the old Apple Menu, the user can add, delete or move these icons (except for the Trash Can). Anything you put in the Dock is easily accessible. But the more you put in the Dock, the more crowded it becomes and the harder it gets to find what you’re looking for.

I always thought that Apple should have kept a customizable Apple Menu as an option for power users who want quick access to a lot of apps, folders, file servers and documents without loading up the Dock to the point of impracticality. Such users need a customizable Apple Menu to keep items they may not use every day but still want readily available. The “Recent Items” submenu in the OS X Apple Menu tries to fulfill this need but its contents and the order in which the items appear change according to what you’ve used most recently. Useful, but it’s still not a menu I can control.

Luckily, third parties have long since solved this problem. Today’s Monday morning Macware features two variations: one I have used for years, FruitMenu, and another I discovered just recently, XMenu.

FruitMenu (Unsanity, $10 shareware) is by far the more powerful of the two. FruitMenu not only returns full OS 9 functionality, it improves upon the original by making just about everything customizable. Not only can you add and group items together as you see fit, you can even assign hotkeys to individual items for even faster access. You can put anything in FruitMenu: apps, folders, documents, even disks. You can even add your Mac’s IP address (geekspeak for network address) to the Apple menu.

That restores the old Apple menu functions, but FruitMenu takes menu customization much further. You can create customized Apple menus for individual applications. If you’re a fan of contextual menus – those mini-menus that pop up when you right click or hold down the control key as you click the mouse – you can customize those, too. Any apps that don’t have customized settings simply use the global settings.

FruitMenu has only one drawback, but it’s a significant one that precludes me from recommending it unequivocally. To work its magic, FruitMenu employs a “system hack.” That means it loads a piece of software into your system called the “application enhancer” which adds some code to the programs you launch and run on your Mac. Unsanity has expended a great deal of effort to ensure that the application enhancer works invisibly and does no harm. I can personally vouch for it, having run it for several years on multiple Macs without incident. Nevertheless it’s possible that some less experienced users could feel uncomfortable running a system hack on their beloved Mac.

That brings us to the second option, XMenu (DEVONtechnologies, freeware), which the squeamish will be relieved to learn requires no system hacks whatsoever. XMenu functions as a background application (it doesn’t show up in the Dock while it’s running) and simply adds new menus to the Mac’s menu bar. Because it’s an app, you have to launch XMenu each time you boot up your Mac -- unless you add it to your Login Items (accessed through the Accounts System Preferences panel) so it will launch automatically when you start up the computer.

XMenu, though far less sophisticated than FruitMenu, does achieve the goal of restoring an old-style Apple menu – with a twist. Instead of altering the OS X Apple menu, XMenu adds new ones on the far right side of the Menu bar. You can add up to five: Applications, Developer, Home, Documents and User-Defined. Each has its own icon. Only the User-Defined menu is customizable, though; the others draw their content from the system folders of the same name. Thus, the Documents menu lists everything in your Documents folder. Any changes you make to those folders are picked up automatically in the respective menus. The User-Defined Menu draws its content from a folder inside the Library folder of the user’s directory. This is more like the OS 9 customizable Apple menu, in which you can keep any apps, folders or documents.

Depending upon how you work, XMenu could serve your needs better than FruitMenu. It costs nothing and won’t monkey with any code. Not everyone wants or needs the level of customization that FruitMenu offers, although power users generally like maximum control. It’s a matter of taste.

Both XMenu and FruitMenu are excellent options for any Mac user yearning for the functionality, flexibility and convenience of the classic Mac OS Apple menu. You can try both risk-free (FruitMenu offers a 15-day free trial).

Posted by David Zeiler at 5:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Yesterday Universal Music Group announced that it will sell some of its digital music without copy protection (a.k.a Digital Rights Management) for a trial period from selected online outlets such as Amazon.com, Google, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Rhapsody. While those of us who abhor DRM applaud this move, the glaring omission of the No. 1 vendor of digital music, the iTunes Store, raises immediate questions.

Universal spokesman Peter LoFrumento told the Associated Press the label excluded the iTunes store so it could use it as a control group in its experiment in selling DRM-free music. Nice spin, guys. Could it be that Universal is just annoyed with Apple’s dominance of the digital download market and is doing everything it can to weaken it?

Let’s rewind one month. Then Universal was wrangling with Apple over the terms of the deal that allows the iTunes Store to sell music by Universal artists. As you may recall, Universal refused to renew its annual contract with Apple. Ultimately, the companies settled on a month-to-month agreement, which is what Universal wanted. At the time Universal said it wanted more flexibility in its dealings with Apple, and that it had month-to-month contracts with other vendors. Most observers, however, saw Universal chafing at Apple’s control of pricing at the iTunes Store (99 cents per song), among other issues. Though Universal “won” the battle, the result had little impact on its larger goal of loosening Apple’s control of digital music sales. For that to happen, the iTunes Store – which at last count still holds about 70 percent of the music download market -- needs stiffer competition.

Realizing this, the brains at Universal came up with a plan to offer DRM-free songs through virtually every vendor but Apple. While I’m sure Universal is curious about how well DRM-free music will sell, it’s at least as curious about how many customers the strategy can lure away from the iTunes Store. If the plan works – that is, if significant numbers of people start buying Universal music from other online vendors -- the trial period could be extended indefinitely. Universal could use the withholding of DRM-free music as a weapon in order to squeeze more concessions, such as variable pricing, from Apple. More ominously, one or more of the other Big Four music labels could follow suit.

At least one of the four, EMI, almost certainly will not adopt such hardball tactics. EMI elected in May to sell DRM-free tracks on iTunes (though at the higher price of $1.29), leaving DRM foes wondering if the other three big labels – Sony BMG, Warner and of course Universal – would hop on board. We now have Universal’s answer. If Sony and Warner follow EMI’s lead and work out agreements with Apple to sell DRM-free songs, iTunes’ will retain its dominance for the foreseeable future. But if they choose Universal’s option of selling DRM-free music everywhere but iTunes, that could result in lost sales (at least for music – video sales would be unaffected). Many would shun copy protected music from Apple if they could buy DRM-free songs elsewhere at similar prices.

Even in such a worst-case scenario, though, Apple has little cause for concern. The iTunes Store makes very little profit, having been created to promote iPod sales. The DRM-free MP3 tracks that everyone else would be selling will play on all iPods. I have never subscribed to the argument that the DRM on iTunes songs “locked” customers into the iPod because the majority fill their iPods mostly with DRM-free MP3s ripped from CDs anyway. From a business standpoint it makes little difference to Apple where people obtain their music as long as they keep buying iPods. The profit margin on an iPod is vastly greater than the measly few percent Apple gets from selling music on iTunes. No matter what becomes of the iTunes Store, the iPod, with its 70 percent share of the MP3 player market, should remain an engine of profit for Apple Inc. for years to come. And if all this results in driving a stake through the dark heart of DRM music, then so be it.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

One thing I mentioned only in passing yesterday on the many announcements from the Apple Event was the changes to the online .Mac service. Critics have disparaged the service virtually since its debut in 2002 as inadequate and overpriced. The argument goes that you can get a lot of what .Mac offers elsewhere for far less money, and in some cases, free. I agree to a point, but .Mac does have one thing no alternative will ever have -- seamless integration with the Mac operating system.

As a .Mac user since its inception, I like much about it – the ability to sync data (addresses, Safari bookmarks, iCal info), the online iDisk storage that I can access from anywhere, the effortless Web publishing, the extra e-mail address. But it never quite seemed worth the $99 annual fee. I’ve always thought $49 per year to be more reasonable (maybe it’s Apple’s own fault – those who were already members of .Mac’s predecessor, the free iTools service, got the first year for $49.95).

When Steve Jobs hinted at the May D5 conference that big changes were coming to .Mac, my hopes were raised. In my fantasies I imagined getting more services and a price cut, so I have mixed feelings about what Jobs unveiled yesterday. The new Web Gallery feature looks very cool, but I can’t use it until I get iLife ‘08. The 10 gigabytes of storage (increased from 1 GB) is available to me today, but in truth I’d only used up half of my .Mac space and didn’t see an immediate need for more. And when my account renews in 60 days, I’ll pay not $49 or $69 or even $89 but $99 – again.

Of course I could drop the service, but I have come to rely on iSync and my iDisk. I also like the ease with which it puts things on the Web, so I imagine I’ll eventually use the new Web Gallery feature, too. Apparently I’m hooked. Sigh.

Helpful tip: If you use .Mac and can’t figure out why it looks like you have less than 10 GB, log on to your account and click on the storage settings button. Apple splits your .Mac space between your e-mail account and your iDisk. When Apple upgraded everyone’s account, it evidently did so proportionally. In my case, the e-mail account allotment had increased from about 250 MB to 2.8 GB. Dropping that setting to 700 MB restored the 2 GB I had perceived missing from my iDisk.

Posted by David Zeiler at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

By the time Steve Jobs took the stage Tuesday morning to announce new Mac products, everyone knew that new iMacs were on the agenda. Because Steve had invited the media to Apple’s campus, a rarity he usually reserves for such momentous occasions as the debut of the iPod, expectations were high.

Sure enough, Jobs introduced a revamped line of iMacs just minutes after he began his presentation. The new iMacs now have glossy screens, aluminum cases, are significantly thinner and feature an optional wireless keyboard. The 17-inch model is no more; Apple now offers two 20-inch models and one 24-inch model. Perhaps the most notable news here is the pricing: at $1,799 the 24-inch model is $200 cheaper than its predecessor; the midrange 20-inch price remains the same at $1,499 (and as usual offers the best balance of price and features). The low-end 20-inch iMac is $200 more than the cheapest 17-inch had been, but the same as a beefier 17-inch offering. Overall, you’re getting more iMac for the money, and that’s always a good thing.

Still, the new iMacs are hardly a huge leap forward. But things got much more interesting once Jobs moved on to the software: updates to both the iWork and iLife suites, which many had not expected until later this year or even the Macworld show in January.

The biggest surprise was the addition of a spreadsheet, called Numbers, to iWork. That makes the suite fully capable of replacing Microsoft Office. While the subject of yesterday’s post, NeoOffice, remains a usable (and free) alternative to Office for the Mac, iWork now becomes a much better option than it had been. If you throw in Apple’s free Mail program, iWork now has an answer for all four Office for the Mac components -- Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. And each of iWork’s components can read and save in Office’s file formats. And despite the addition of a third component, the price of iWork remains a mere $79, far less than the $399 list price for the full retail version of Office 2004 for the Mac. While businesses may continue to need Microsoft’s package, most home users will find iWork a more than adequate substitute and far easier on their budgets. If Jobs really wants to get Microsoft’s goat, he could release iWork for Windows. Maybe in 2008, eh?

Jobs also announced an update to the Apple’s iLife suite – iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb. He demonstrated several nifty new features, particularly the “Events” in iPhoto, which allows better organization of thousands of images, and a completely revamped iMovie that makes it much easier to browse video files and create movies faster than before.

But the major news here was all of Jobs talk of “Web 2.0” features. Apple has added more integration and sharing features to its online service, .Mac, so users can create an online photo gallery that syncs with iPhoto. Friends can contribute to your online album; the images will automatically download to your Mac. If you have an iPhone, you can access your gallery there, too.

Similarly, iMovie has picked up more sharing features. You can send your movies pretty much anywhere you like, including to your iPhone or to the .Mac Web Gallery. Along with further enhancements to iWeb, Apple’s Web site creation software, it’s clear that Jobs has gotten the message sent by such phenomena as MySpace, FaceBook and YouTube. People want the ability to make stuff (photos, videos, blogs) and share it with the world. Apple was a pioneer in the concept of the “digital lifestyle,” and now has the tools – the iLife software paired with its .Mac online services – to capitalize on that concept having gone mainstream. And the iLife suite comes free on every Mac, offering yet another incentive to switchers from Windows.

Although no one will hail today’s iMacs as any sort of breakthrough, they and their Mac kin, primarily the MacBooks, bring in a major portion of Apple’s profits. The software announced today – what you can do with a new Mac -- will be the reason people will buy them, and should help maintain the Mac’s momentum in picking up more market share.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Last week, Microsoft announced that the release of Office 2008 for the Mac would be delayed from the fall of 2007 until mid-January 2008. Craig Eisler, general manager of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, attributed the delay to “quality issu