Ace--you've reached a new level of patheticness.

KCMW--the albums-at-same-price thing is VERY interesting; it's an extra inticement to push customers towards full album purchases, just like last weeks' complete-my-album addition.

Question: if I have a previously-bought *album* and want to upgrade to the DRM-free version, do I pay a price difference? I would imagine you'd have to do so.

Nicely done--$1.29 for 256k DRM-free AAC versions *or* the current $0.99 DRM versions.

Second smartest move: upgrades of already-bought songs available for the $0.30 difference.

Smartest move: Upgraded *albums* available a the *same price* ($9.99), if I understood him correctly. VERY smart.

Only disappointment: no Beatles yet.

You need either WMP or RealPlayer to listen to the audiocast???

Anyone else see the irony in that?

I think you're misunderstanding the "limited time offer"--it looks to me like the *feature* is permanent; it will *normally* be good for only 6 months from the date of purchase; the "limited time offer" is that they're waiving the 6-month limit for the moment.

In other words, for a limited time, you can complete albums regardless of how long ago the single tracks were bought; after that, you'll only be given 6 months from the purchase date to do so.

I just tested it out; when you click on this link, it lists every qualifying album based on the individual songs you've purchased in the past:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZPersonalizer.woa/wa/viewCMASeeAll

In my case, I went ahead and completed REO Speedwagon's Greatest Hits for about $6 instead of $10 (I had 4 already).

Once you've completed the album, it's removed from the list.

VERY nicely done; this is one of the features that's been requested since the day the iTunes store opened. I presume that it isn't available for every album, but it's a nice start.

Cute.

Of course, it's worth noting that there's been about a zillion spoofs/parodies of the Mac/PC ads, whereas there's been how many of Windows ads?

(crickets)

I took the plunge--just pre-ordered CS3 Web Premium from Amazon (saved a whopping 1%, or $16.00, yee-hah).

Cost: $1582.99. Expected to ship on 4/24.

According to the upgrade policy, I might've been able to save another $183 by upgrading from my copy of Photoshop 7 (which just barely qualifies for a $1,399 upgrade price). I thought about it, but in the end said "screw it" and got the "full" version. Why?

The copy of Photoshop 7 I have is *itself* an upgrade from 6.5, which was in turn an upgrade from version 6. The last thing I want to have to do is enter as many as 4 different license codes (as well as having to keep 4 different CDs safe).

I know, that sounds like a stupid reason to blow an extra $183, but this way I can give or sell Photoshop 6/6.5/7, GoLive 4/5/6, LiveMotion 1/2 and Illustrator 8/9 to someone else while keeping the latest & greatest (and without having to store a dozen CDs just for 4 apps).

$1,600 is a painful amount, but not too bad considering that I skipped both CS1 and 2. It's time (I suspect the most painful thing is going to be moving from GoLive to DreamWeaver).

OT: Yep, ours was a preemie as well (8 weeks), though I'd never post pics of him during that period--too many painful memories (it was a pretty unpleasant time, though both mother and son came through it just fine :))

Tomm--(sigh) yup, and none of the bundles are what I need, really:

"The "Standard," and most affordable of all six Creative Suite 3.0 bundles, will cost €999 and include Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks CS3, and Contribute CS3. A €1699 "Premium" package will also cater to web "designers," adding Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, and Acrobat 8 Professional."

All I really need are Flash, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. The Standard bundle has the first two, but not the third. The Premium one has all three, but also costs gobs more, and I have no need of most of the other stuff (Fireworks, Contribute, Illustrator or Acrobat).

Still, I've skipped the last two releases, so I guess I'm due for a full-scale update...

Colorado--beautiful! While we're at it, I'll see your little girl and raise you my little dude:

Agreed the October Leopard rumor smells--why wouldn't they just release it this spring, and then include Vista support in an "mini-major" update whenever it's ready? They could even include a "Vista support coming soon!" note with the release if it's that important (which, personally, I doubt it is at this point).

Tex--"DVD player for the Internet age" is a silly slogan anyway, because the DVD PLAYER is the DVD player for the internet age!

The time/cultural/technological gap between the "peak" of DVDs (a year or two ago) and the AppleTV is hardly a fair comparison to the gap between the peak of the Sony Walkman (mid-80's) and the iPod.

Tex--I have Google ads running down the left side which bring in a few bucks, but nothing beyond that; I hate the ones that get splatted in the middle of the page, and the comparison charts eat up the bulk of the pages anyway, so I've kept it to the single column for quite awhile.

Brings in enough to cover the bandwidth and a bit of my trouble, but it's really a labor of love :)

KCMW--I don't really know how long they've had the link there (it actually shows up on two pages):

http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/tco/

http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/tco/index2.html

Dunno...my hits have averaged about 1,000 per day for quite awhile now. On the other hand, it's also been quite awhile since I last announced any updates to the site, so it normally would have tapered off by now, so perhaps that link is helping shore up the traffic...no idea...

Color me shocked: Take a look at the top-right corner:

http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/tco/index2.html

Do Your Homework

Read what trusted experts, computer publications and other users say about different brands. Here are a few to start with:

* PCMagazine Reader’s Choice
* Winn Schwartau, Security expert “Mad as Heck” column
* Mac vs. PC System Shootouts

Good grief. Apple is officially putting my site in the same company as these guys??

Should I be flattered or disturbed by this?

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics:

After all the percentage-crunching, RoughlyDrafted concludes that MSFT sold a mere 29,000 Zunes in January, total:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/FFE4A8E2-9816-4344-9FB0-61BED246674C.html

Bootz--not sure; I only have Parallels installed on my MacBook, not my iMac (which is a G5); I only use my MacBook once a week or so.

OT: What I Did Last Summer

As I may or may not have mentioned at the time, I was retained as an expert witness in a civil court case last year. The case went to trial and was resolved in September, and while much of the story is public record, I decided to wait awhile before posting anything just in case there was some lingering issue that might involve me.

Fortunately, a local newspaper was covering the story from time to time, so everything I post is available from other publicly accessible sources.

Again, I was NOT the plaintiff, I was just a third-party brought in to explain industry terminology, standard practices, and so on (I won't say which side I was retained by, however).

It was a fascinating case; the real story actually started in 2002, but the earliest I could find online was from 2004:

Charges dismissed against ex-Web site operator
http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/070204/loc_website001.shtml

Prosecutor to seek reinstatement of charge against ex-Web site operator
http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/080904/loc_website001.shtml

Sheriff's Web site dispute settled, but Webmaster may sue
http://macombdaily.com/stories/122404/loc_website001.shtml

(it was after the above story that I first became involved, eventually culmnating in the following)

Jury hears sheriff's Web site lawsuit
http://macombdaily.com/stories/091306/loc_website001.shtml

Hackel wins civil case against former Webmaster
http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/092306/loc_hackel001.shtml

Here's a few related links which fill in some of the backstory--but only from the developers' point of view, so take them with a large grain of salt:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/05/0314219

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=69462

http://www.justice4pat.com/

Needless to say, the whole story was MUCH more complicated than any of this, but the above should give you a general overview.

Just thought some of you might be interested; if not, nebbermind :)

OT: Metropick--including personal attacks in your sig graphic? Very classy.

I'd say the ultimate "realistic" goal for laptop battery life would be 16-18 hours (ie, from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night). Short-term, a full 8-hour day (of *real world* use, not the "theoretical" benchmarks that they dream up in the lab) would be beautiful.

I remember back when the OS X beta (I think) had been announced as being released "that summer", Jobs actually put up a slide showing the technical definition of "summer" (ie, that they technically had until September 21 to release it).

Tex--re. the Cube--I was an Apple Demo guy at both CUSA and Circuit City during the doomed "Cube" era (Holiday Quarter 2000). The entire Apple culture at the time screamed "arrogance". Remember, they had just come off of their *BEST* year ever (at least, the previous holiday quater (1999) had been astonishingly successful, selling 1.4 million Macs), the fruit-flavor iMacs were a huge hit, etc etc.

Filled with hubris, Jobs & Co. made IMHO not one, but three major mistakes as their 2000 follow-up:

--the Cube
--going with DVD-ROMs instead of CD-RWs
--keeping the iMac at 15" instead of 17" (aka eMac)

Plenty has been written about the Cube; it was way overpriced, combined with the at-the-time $1,000 15" LCD, it meant that a full system ran upwards of $3,000. The "cracks" debacle seems silly, but it was a legitimate gripe considering that the whole point of the Cube was how aesthetically pleasing it was supposed to be (along with being quiet).

The decision to stick DVD-ROMs in the new iMacs instead of CD-RWs was another disaster; the Napster/MP3 craze was at its' peak (just before the RIAA got nasty), and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who came into Circuit City/CUSA wanted a computer with a CD-RW, period. Apple was pushing iMovie hard at the time in conjunction with DVD players, but no one I spoke to was interested; they all just wanted to pirate music off of Napster & burn CDs.

The other big deal killer was that by 2000, a 15" CRT was unacceptable to every customer I spoke with. If the eMac had existed at the time (with a CD-RW), it would've been a smash hit, but for all the people who had bought 15" CD-ROM iMacs the previous 2 years, no one was interested by this time.

Of course, Apple made up for the CD-RW bigtime the following year, when they launched iTunes and added CD-RWs across the board, but it took another year before they moved to 17" displays (and the butt-ugly "Blue Dalmation"/"Flower Power" iMac designs didn't help).

KCMW--two thoughts: 1. I suspect that Jobs wasn't necessarily thinking of cell phones specifically at the time, I think he just meant that the stores would be the perfect venue for displaying *whatever* the NextBigThing® that they came up with was.

2. Since his return as Apple's CEO in '97, Jobs has been *very* careful to pointedly thank the team at every keynote (asking them to stand up) *as well as* their families.

I have no idea whether this is reflected in the actual day-to-day work environment (bonuses, vacation time, etc) but in public at least he's pretty clearly been trying to wash away the "asshole" image he had as Jobs 1.0 :)

Well, let's review again:

10.0 - Cheetah (internal only)
10.1 - Puma (internal only)
10.2 - Jaguar
10.3 - Panther
10.4 - Tiger
10.5 - Leopard

What's left in the big cats? lessee...

--Lion
--Lynx
--Wildcat
--Cougar
--Bobcat
--Ocelot

Somehow I don't think we'll be seeing "Mac OS X - Ocelot", however.

Maybe they'll switch to Big Dogs for OS 11? Wolf, Fox, Coyote, Wolverine, Jackal, Dingo? Ummmm...maybe not the last two...

OT: Libby GUILTY on 4 of the 5 counts

Tex--actually, I was referring to this classic Doonesbury circa 1973:

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Wow, the Clinton/Obama slugfest is heating up faster and more brutally than I expected...I really don't think Hillary ever anticipated more than token opposition to her getting the nomination, certainly not from someone who popped up on the political scene as recently as Obama.

(Yeah, I realize that the ad wasn't made by Obama's actual campaign, but it's a sign of how nasty things are about to get, I think...)

So, unless I'm misinformed, at the moment the race is shaping up as:

DEMOCRATS: Clinton, Obama & Edwards, with Richardson the only other viable candidate (unless Gore decides to jump in at the last minute after all).

REPUBLICANS: McCain, Giuliani & Romney, with Brownback as a pipe dream for the far right and Gingrich as the "might jump in" counterpart to Gore.

Bootz--Ah, that was my mistake--I forgot to uninstall the old version of Parallels Tools before installing the new version. The result was that the video driver got mucked up--XP would load, but the desktop screen was completely blank (I could see the cursor, but everything else was blank no matter what). When I deleted the disk image and recreated/reinstalled XP, everything was fine.

The only irritating part was the bullsh*t activation code, which required calling MSFT, being put on hold for 15 minutes, entering a 54-digit code, being put on hold for another 15 minutes, being interrogated by an Indian/Pakistanian guy named "John", then being read a *different* 54-digit code to plug in, and finally activating it.

I just installed the 3186 Parallels build update last night and yep, it's a vast improvement (although in my case, the first time I tried installing the Parallels Tools, I screwed something up and hosed the video driver, requiring me to wipe the virtual drive and reinstall XP from scratch). Once I redid it, however, it worked like a charm.

For anyone looking for detailed dates/specs on Mac models:

http://apple-history.com/

The info box contents are up to the board mods.

I have no complaints; the iPhone is Apple's Next Big Thing (hopefully), and Bush leaving office is America (and the worlds') Next Big Thing, so both seem appropriate to celebrate.

It works the other way as well, however; my 2 most popular clients' sites break down as:

--only 1.4% Mac OS for a private Catholic girls' high school (every student & teacher has a Windows laptop, and much of their traffic is from within the school itself, so this makes sense)

--only 0.3% Mac OS for an accounting software sales & service provider. This also makes sense since they provide sales & support for Great Plains, Peachtree, ACT!, TimeSlips and other heavy-duty accounting software. I believe the only title they work with which has a full Mac version is QuickBooks, and even that doesn't have feature-parity.

On the other hand, another high school website client of mine (debate team only, not the main site) has a Mac usage of 10%.

They oughta buy out Unsanity (or simply commandeer most of the haxies--ie, put 'em back into OS X; it wouldn't really be "absconding" since all of 'em were available in OS 9 for years...)

KCMW--FWIW, here's a different, fairly popular webstats provider's numbers for the past 2 years (6-month intervals):

Mac OS Share February 2007: 4%
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/February/os.php

Mac OS Share August 2006: 3%
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/August/os.php

Mac OS Share February 2006: 2%
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/February/os.php

Mac OS Share August 2005: 2%
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2005/August/os.php

Mac OS Share February 2005: 2%
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/February/os.php

So, Mac OS had a steady 2% share right up until about a year ago, and has roughly doubled since then!

I'd say that's pretty significant regardless of the other factors.

Tex--actually, it's about 1/3 Intel Macs (2%) and 2/3 PPC Macs (4%). "Mac OS X" seems to refer to PPC Macs only, since the numbers are both included in the 100% total.

My own stats:

SystemShootouts: interestingly, only 19% of my visitors are using Macs--much higher than normal, but lower than expected given the nature of the site.

Brainwrap: about 7% of my visitors last month were Mac users, but since I list Mac support on the site, this probably skewed it a bit.

Tomm--not as surprising as you might think. Remember, a significant percentage of Windows machines probably never access the internet (or at least, never surf the web), as they're single-purpose machines, kiosks, internal servers, part of clusters, ATMs and so on. Net Applications numbers don't show what percent of computers are Macs, they show what percentage of computers SURFING THE WEB are Macs.

Still an impressive increase, and still very useful for convincing website developers & web-based businesses to stop blowing off Mac users, however :)

Plus, the 50% increase in the past 6 months *does* suggest that a) overall Mac sales are increasing significantly, and/or b) Mac users are more comfortable surfing the web than Windows users (not surprising given all the virus/phishing nasties out there...)

sinclap--given the absolutely awful inventory management system that they had when I was a Apple Rep at CUSA, I'd be surprised if they even knew WHAT they had lying around...there were dozens of systems either mis-listed or not listed at all in their database...

Thanks for the heads up, though--Michigan is losing every location except the Lansing store, so I have 2 local ones to scour for bargains.