Or will it?
If you’re setting up a new computer and have Authorized This Computer (Store -> Authorize This Computer) already, it seems weird that iTunes won’t let you just sync your apps from the device.
For whatever reason, you ALSO need to “Transfer Purchases from” the iPhone or iPod in question. Crazy huh? Nevertheless, it’s actually pretty straightforward.
Your CDs are featured in $10 CD shops. Clearly, enough stock has been made that there can be excess and demand enough that these places will buy it and hope to move it quickly!
I bought a Switchfoot CD today. And enjoyed it. Their music works a lot better as an album than as standalone songs, especially that horrific title track. I don’t understand its appeal at all. The rest is quite pleasant (and surprisingly, to me at least, overtly Christian — probably because they somehow get by without mentioning Jesus or Christ or anything like that on their website)
Almost sarcastic in places, which isn’t quite what I was expecting. I like that sort of thing. Meh.
Also been listening to Sarah Blasko the last week, trying to figure out all kinds of clever links to the poem on which the album What the sea wants, the sea will have is based (Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner). So far I have nothing. Except a burning question as to the hierarchy of the two — is this like “the film based upon the book”, wherein the more artful form is generally taken to be that which was prior? Or is there something else afoot, when one can extrapolate an entire album from a relatively straightforward (though admittedly textually rich and voluminous) poem?
There is a certain frustration deciphering contemporary works that isn’t there with those of dead white men, simply because with one there is the possibility of exertion to obtain a straightforward answer. That, of course, would be admitting defeat — and I probably wouldn’t like it as much as the frustration, anyway.
What the sea wants is, by the way, a prime example of why not to buy albums off electronic music stores. The album is physically superb (though there are dodgy jewel case versions floating around — the cardboard one is the good one) in terms of its packaging (yay for UV spot printed birds & comprehensive liner notes & photos in a separate booklet!) and content.
Also speaking of competitive advantages of… everything vs. online music stores… the $10 Switchfoot CD is not, in fact, a CD. It’s a SACD. Presumably Hybrid goodness because it played in an anachronistic CD player I’m using when in transit at the minute (yes, you read that right. I can’t get a portable device that works with this lossless stuff, it’s ridiculous. And if you dare suggest I buy an iPod, the latest Bond movie has a method of torture that you may be interested in – saw that film tonight with people, was good times – though that scene had every male in the building cringing massively). I wasn’t sure if it would even work — because, yes, I check the packaging that closely before I buy stuff — more for watching out to see if it was infested with crappy doesn’t-really-work-properly copy protection rubbish than anything else. But it did. I don’t know if it’s any better, but I’ve only really listened to the SACD version at work on a crappy Dell computer. It has bad AC’97 audio which = lots of line noise, etc.
Onboard audio can be okay for playback (my Venus is but it bloody well should be given how expensive it was), just that computer wasn’t. And it’s time for me to sleep now so I’m not about to test, or then I’ll have to rip as well and inevitably wind up discovering some new and exciting set of codecs that are better for SACD for x reasons, and so forth, then it’ll be 2am again and… general badness ensues.
I’ve already sat up and read the Wikipedia article and lamented the copy protection measures in place. Sigh. *feels like a geek… at least I’m not playing Wii ;-)*
I said yesterday that I’m a fan of what Microsoft have been doing of late and Slashdotters are idiots. One reason for that is IE7, as that post discussed, but in terms of what other things Microsoft have been doing I didn’t really mention anything. Well, one new Microsoft product that does immensely sensible things is Live Messenger 8.1 Beta (see, I didn’t call it MSN anymore!) which finally lets you appear offline and continue conversations without having to close windows… it’s a polish release, and feels good.
More significantly, though, is Windows Media Player 11. It’s got a new interface, plenty of usability tweaks, a bunch of music store enhancements (eugh, sorry, I can’t be positive about this one) — notably URGE — and probably more DRM to go along with it, and an even-better-than-version-10 CD-ripping interface.
It’s designed as a one-click process, but makes selection of format, bitrate, etc. completely quick, easy, and painless.
It’s great.
My only qualm is that it’s impossible to select any other format than the ones originally presented. Sure, this is a Microsoft product and it’s targeted at computer-illiterate types the world over and having an “add your own command-line encoding option” option probably isn’t great from a usability for all perspective, but what’s wrong with having the option there? I’m not going to rip my music in a DRM format, ever.1 It’s just not going to happen. I’ll sooner be stuck listening to CDs and scratching them to death and then buying new ones. You already give me the option to rip an MP3, so why not other formats you can’t control?
The only reason I can come up with is that other, competing, formats are technically superior. You feel threatened by FLAC (were it to become widely adopted) as it is superior to WM Lossless… probably because it lacks DRM. Justifiably, you don’t feel so threatened by MP3 as it is, in general, inferior in every way (except it lacks DRM) — even though it has massive penetration.
Even that penetration is slipping because people don’t change defaults and are ripping their music using Windows Media Player or iTunes. So, you know, there’s less to be lost by letting the geeks play with their zany open source formats. The proles will never actually know or care enough to embrace them, you keep your control, and an underclass (or silent ruling class?) benefits and is endeared towards your brand. And, of course, geeks are vocal about products: I love Windows Media Player 11, but this little thing really gets to me. If you give me that, then I will be so happy with it I’ll be constantly trying to convert iTunes users — admittedly, I’ll probably fail because their collections are under proprietary lock and key and their hardware has bound them to it, but in a couple of years when their iPod batteries die they’ll see the error of their ways.
Geeks will too readily prostitute themselves and become product evangelists — but, beware, we are notoriously given to infidelity.
1. I will, however, rip my music in non-rights manage formats and let software convert it as necessary for playback on retarded hardware devices. I haven’t required hardware that has such draconian requirements yet, but if I ever do, this will be the closest I get to compromising.
Got back from Orient Point last night at about 10.30 or some equally respectable time (felt like a really short trip despite near-disasters with lack-of-petrol, etc., made much less stressful/long thanks to an iPod shuffle clearly powered by the Energi[s/z]er bunny, good conversation, and shared driving load). Was awesome, featuring lots of console action, a bit of mud, a lot of water earlier in the week, a lot of water in a boat after certain people (see photos referred to later in post) capsized a canoe, Kahlua (straight, with ice-cream, with vodka, milk, and I’m sure there were other variants), moderate quantities of Taboo, a few hours of DVDs, sunset on the headland looking over water (yes, even on Australia’s east coast. I love rivers.), alternately good and okay food (few disasters, I’m pleased to report!), and a not-quite complete absence of Internet (only by GPRS when we were trying to get something working earlier in the week).
Am now sick. (Not very sick, just annoying-cold-sick). Sickness was probably brought on by late nights etc., but it’s not like sleep wasn’t had… plenty of sleep was had, just at slightly, errr… skewed hours. Plus other people made me sick but I timed it well so I wasn’t sick whilst away. *nods* Too many diseased clouds (aside: that so easily becomes diseased clowns, which is all fun and games until you go a step further: deceased clouds (rain) or deceased clowns (black comedy). Words are fun. (Apologies if I used them to annoy anyone too much during the week (seriously (I like brackets))).
Last night was going to be early (after an expedient trip home) then became late as some wedding party rehearsal (the wedding was this morning) locked themselves out and I went to let them back in (should have been a quick trip but I stayed to setup various stuff for a bit). Meh! Then I didn’t get to sleep for ages because of not-being-able-to-breathe badness. I kept waking up and finally gave up and ended up getting out of bed at about 6.30 this morning… yeeeuuuccchhh. Yeah, whatever, I don’t care if you normally wake up at that time. It’s that versus 9.00-ish to 11.00-ish every morning for the preceding week, so twas e’er so slightly painful. And now I’m exhausted (predictably), and plan on sleeping in until about 11am tomorrow morning.
Whilst that’s happening, hopefully 750-odd MB will be trickling up onto Flickr. Since I started writing this (probably twenty minutes to half an hour) I’ve done 8 photos (~2.55MB each)… poor computer :( Gonna be a long night for it! Ah well… Telstra is being retarded this month (still capped speeds despite not officially being capped according to its site, etc. Must call up and whine extensively.) so I’m gonna use it anyway, because uploads aren’t capped (speed-wise, even if they retardedly-count-towards-quota). I could alternatively upload at work (== iiNet ADSL2+ == no upload quota == fast) on Monday but I’m afraid I’m too impatient for that. Plus I *heart* kflickr and abhor their (Flickr’s) Windows uploader tool (fuploader it should be called, which makes a sound suspiciously like a belly-flop does (“fup”/“thwup”/“thwack”/*blood splatter*). F stands for FAILURE.)
Speaking of quotas and the like, how much mucus (I could swear that is spelt incorrectly) do you think it’s possible for a person to produce per day? I’m so sure I’m over quota right about now. Hopefully this means I’ll run really quickly through this cold and be capped by tomorrow! Hehehehe. Insert elaborate metaphor about running noses and de… what’s the word? Some drug. Does stuff with colds. Whatever… point is I dislike cold + flu drugs. They make me drowsy and I forget to take them and you’re not meant to mix them with alcohol… err hi. I mean… Operate heavy machinery. Yes, that.
Good week. Photos coming soon.
I wasn’t driving.
The trip up took about… 3 hours or something ridiculous, coz a bus flipped (no one was seriously hurt but there were helicopters and blocked lanes and stuff). Hence it getting dark.
The theme of the weekend was “Now and Then” (as in “now, and then”, not the colloquial expression meaning “occasionally”), looking at various bits of the Bible with about 3,000 people from across NSW (and a decent number from other states, too) in a big shed, albeit a big shed with a stage and stuff. Basically, it was looking at how we should be living now in view of ‘the end’, and also the nature of that end — a guy called Luke Tattersall (one of three speakers for the weekend) looked at Revelation, which was… interesting. It’s probably the first time I’ve seen that part of the bible really approached, which was good.
Another great part of the weekend was just hanging out with people. I met a whole bunch of new people at the place I was staying, and caught up with old friends (as in… friends who have been friends for a long time, not ex– friends!) and got to hang out with various people from church (everyone was staying pretty close to the site this time, which was cool).
These are the people who were staying in the same place… yep, Lauren was there (pleasant surprise… wasn’t expecting there to be anyone I knew!). If you think you can see something green on my face, you’re right. One of the talks suggested going around sticking green/red stickers on everything that would/would not last past death… I had a green sticker for some reason on the last day so wound up wearing it on my face. It eventually came off and is now on my camera. Go figure! (My little Optio is pretty durable, but I think past-the-end-of-the-world is pushing it.)
Oh, and you must excuse the visual horribleness of that photo. I’ve tried to clean it up as best I can (making parts worse, but it’s more balanced in terms of colour now), but the person taking the photo was utterly convinced that having people in full sun would be a disaster (for the photos). I have no idea how she came to this conclusion: suffice to say, it is abundantly clear she was completely wrong ;-)
Scrabble is the new cool game. Or, more accurately, a variant of scrabble that involves making words as letters are turned over and stealing them from the opposing team by coming up with variants derived from the same word spellings. Great fun! (I’ve heard this called “Grabble”, if that means anything to anyone).
To the tune of “It’s a small world afterall”: I also managed to catch up with Katy and Jo Mason… which was odd, because they totally didn’t have any link to each other beforehand, but somehow knew the same people and wound up at the same house one night. As did I.
Aside from all that, there was a picnic one day and this picture was taken of a kid sitting on someone’s lap, listening to an iPod in utterly engrossed fashion. I include it here for its sheer visual awesomeness.
Well… maybe not. Uncertain as to whether or not the changes to Australia’s notoriously retarded copyright law that are coming into force next year apply retro-actively… but who cares?! It’s not like they ever prosecuted because of it anyway!
Ah, reform. I might finally buy an iPod.
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